AP Composition Is Sucking My Soul Out Through My Fingers.

The test is next Wednesday... I'm wavering between not caring at all and panicking.  That's sort of how I'm going about school at the moment, too, actually.

I've signed up for classes next year, and paid my deposit.  It's looking okay.  Hopefully, no classes before 9:30 or after 3:30.  In no particular order, in case you give a damn:

BCAB (some absurd initialization for the easier pre-calculus course)

AP United States History (reputed to be hell, but the teacher's great)

AP Biology (we'll see...)

Lit. Theory

Chinese I

Some Sort Of Outdoor Woodsy Rock-Climbing Fitness Thing

I'm really excited about Lit Theory.  I was signed up to take American Lit, because I'll be a junior next year and all the really great classes  - Brit Lit, Lit Theory and AP Lit - are senior classes, but I was finalizing all this with my advisor this morning, and she decided to run into the next classroom, grab the Lit Theory teacher and check.  She asked me if I was interested in philosophy, if I could handle the
workload, and if she was likely to get an angry letter from my parents when she taught something about female genital symbolism.  And then I had the all-clear, in the space of five minutes.  Next year looks bearable now.  Life's okay. 

I've passed in my annotated bibliography and outline for my final Comp paper, decided on a topic for my food studies paper - how food divides us culturally, from kosher law to self-righteous veganism - and I'm getting help in math and chem, though they can't really cure me of not caring.  Three.  More.  Weeks.  And we're done.  For three months.  And China can go screw itself, I'll have fun this summer. 





I'm having dreams about Washington, D.C.

Updates

Okay.  It's been a while, and a lot's happened.  I'll go chronologically.

So, Saturday morning we all piled onto the buses to go home for a week.  I brought a friend back with me, and she stayed until Tuesday - which included Passover, a phenomenon she'd never before witnessed.  It was the least organized seder I'd ever been to, and my mother's friends got drunk on Maniscewitz and asked my friend things like "you're not a Mormon, are you?"  We had fun.

So, remember how I was accepted to that Chinese language programme?  Well.  Last Monday, the woman from the Chinese school organizing the trip called me up and told me no dice.  Apparently, NSLI-Y wouldn't supply her school with the grant for me for the same reason they wouldn't send me to Tajikistan - I'd gotten a scholarship from them last year, and for the summer programmes, they give priority to those who haven't studied abroad.  They want repeaters to go for longer.  I a) didn't know that, and b) couldn't miss school for that anyway.  I couldn't graduate.  So.  I'm not going to China.  I cried a lot, but I'm done now and trying to find something else to do.  There are a few people I'm thinking of visiting, and I'll probably find some work and start learning to drive.  But I didn't want to speak English this summer...  As a consolation prize-type thing, the Chinese school offered me a scholarship to three weeks of language classes.  I'll probably take it, to get a head start on Chinese classes next year at school. 

The week improved on Wednesday, when my mother and I got up at something like 5:30 am to drive to Portland.  We stopped for breakfast at some little diner, where I had what must have been the best doughnut in the history of fried things - it was still warm, so crispy, not too sweet or oily or heavy... it was my friend - and cranberry-walnut pancakes I'm still dreaming of a week later.  Then it was onward to Portland, where we generally dance in the streets singing "civilization, darling, we're home!"  This time we were in a hurry, so we just did a little shopping.  Or intended to.  We ended up doing rather a lot of shopping, actually, and now I have some really fun summer dresses, shorts, etc.  There was no time for Trader Joe's, which is the only thing I regret about the whole day, because I had a lunch date to make it to.  I guess it was technically an interview, with a good friend of my Senator who's also the former chief of staff of her husband, who was the Governor who set up my school.  Anyway, the interview concerned my application to the Page Program in Washington.  We had a lovely time, and lovely eggs benedict, and though I haven't yet heard back from the Senator's office, I'm hopeful about being accepted.

After all that, my mother and I drove back home, stopping en route at John's Ice Cream for dinner.  John's Ice Cream is the best ice cream on the face of the planet, it's a tiny roadside shop run by a hilarious, tiny Italian guy, and whenever I have the chance I consume as much of his dazzling product as I can stand to.  He has an astounding range of flavours - chocolate orange or lemon peel and strawberry rhubarb, the best ginger and pistachio, chocolate that tastes like frozen mousse.  We shared a milkshake and two scoops of heaven, and didn't regret it for a minute.  I fell asleep in the car, and was happy.

And now I'm back at school.  I hurt my back on Sunday and haven't been feeling phenomenal, so I stayed in bed today.  Real life will start again tomorrow, but there's only a month left of it!  Granted, I don't know what I'm doing with my summer, but I will never, ever again study chemistry after a few weeks, and that alone makes them worth fighting through.  I'm actually sort of excited about my final paper for AP Composition - it's about globalization - and the rest I can gasp through. 

I found my old art class portfolio from last year.  God, so much has changed... here's my favourite piece from it.

Only Here...

...at the geekiest school in New England, would we get a half day of classes off for Pi Day.  This is, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, today, March the fourteenth, because of the numbers.  π = 3.14..... and the date matches up, etc.  So.  I had two classes this morning, and now I'm free until the various π and pie-related contests start after lunch.  We'll be having pie baking and eating contests, π recitation, we're auctioning off teachers to be "pied," ("we" being the student senate), est., etc.  So, today is basically one very bad, very long pun.  Oh, and THIS IS HELL WEEK.  It's official.  Three hours of rehearsal every night during structured study, for which we have to make up with awkwardly scheduled study halls throughout the day.  The Importance Of Being Ernest will be the death of me. 

I've submitted my application for the Senate Page Program to the office of Olympia Snowe.  That's very exciting.  I'm also just sort of waiting nervously for next month, when I'll hear about NSLI-Y and whether the Middle East has gone so mad that they won't send me there.  Or that I just didn't get in.

Bitterly cold outside, and I'm hungry.  And getting sick of Great Expectations.

"And I Believe, California Succumbed To The Fault Line"

It's been a while since I wrote a proper post, hasn't it?  For a long time it's been pictures or copies or videos... I've not been sick or without internet - it's more that I've been neglecting blogspot for more glamourous sites.  I'm quite ashamed, but my life hasn't been all that interesting.  There was break, which was fantastically indulgent.  I finished Torchwood: Children of Earth, ate lots, and generally decompressed.  But then came this week.  I cannot make this clear enough to you, though I understand that bitching online is not generally a cool/fun/clever thing to do.  This week was *censored*.  This week was so *censored*ing awful I contemplated, among other things, going to sleep behind a shelf in the library and getting myself locked in for the night just to spite the world, a career in spontaneously crying in chemistry class and study hall, and, by Friday, religion.  Yeah, I was pretty desperate by the time this weekend rolled around.  I just... sort of woke up nervous on Monday morning, and spent the rest of the week in varying states of distress ranging from exhausted irritation to legitimate (well, perhaps not legitimate, but very real), if irrational, fear that I was dying.  And there were some people I just had to avoid because they made me so angry and terrified.

However.

There is a Very Good Thing I want to talk about.

This Thing is called The King Is Dead, and it is the new Decemberists album (it just occurred to me that their web site looks a whole lot like Elvis Costello's), which I listened to thoroughly on Grooveshark, purchesed all legal-like, and have continued to listen to exhaustively.  I am listening to it now.  This, to me, demonstrates that it is good music and I'm not just using it to feel like a rebel by not-paying-for-it.  Know how much I like it?  Or.... know how bored I got one day during break when certain people had decided to go to New York City without me and I was in a house with a cat and a father, neither of whom wanted to harmonize on ukulele songs with me?  I filmed the snow.  Just sat my camera on the windowsill and filmed it falling.  And then!  I had even more time (in which I was not going to study chemistry - yes, I regretted it, but yes, it was worth it) so I set this very boring footage to a song from this newly-purchased Decemberists album, and the result is this thing.  I hope that you will watch it, or, more to the point, listen to it, and then buy the album. 









(I am not in the employ of the Decemberists, their producers or anybody involved in the folk-rock industry.  Just so you know.  But I've been converting people to this band all week with these songs.)

The play is in two weeks!  Jesus Christ, help!  Importance of Being Ernest on March the 19th, if you happen to be kicking around Northern Aroostook County, and I've got my lines basically down, but we've still got a lot of work to do.  We're having an accent workshop tomorrow, featuring Me, resident British Girl, as frustrated teacher.  Should be fun.

Oh, and I've joined the volleyball team.  I hadn't really played before, but I really like it, though we've all got stinging bruises on our arms from bumping for hours on end.  I even went to an optional practice today.  Me.  I like sitting still, people, I work my fingers hard typing and that's enough, but I legitimately enjoy this stuff.  I serve terribly, but there's time for all that.  So.  FUN. 

I've been taking a lot of peoples' yearbook photos.  That's fun.  But they all think that editing a photo is some sort of arcane art, when what I do is so basic, and I've never been good at taking compliments and when I try to convince people that I honestly don't deserve praise for adjusting the exposure on a photo and blurring out a few blemishes, it gets really awkward.

Okay, I'm riffing now, so I think I'll just quite while I'm ahead... if I ever was.  I'm still sort of moody, haven't shaken off the nerves completely, and, scariest for me, I haven't got much appetite.  So.  Goodbye, my darlings, and please be happy and apologize to somebody you've been evil to.  It feels so much better afterward.

All I Want This Year is Something to Regret When I Am Older

Well.  I hate the Wizard of Oz, but I'd absolutely forgotten how cute Judy Garland was and how sweetly they dressed her in that film.  Okay, so this is a test.  I think it's possible to show you my lookbook stuff from this blog.  We'll see. 

It's really nice to be home.  I've seen my friends, eaten some truly magnificent food and watched Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, Billy Elliot and Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil.  I call that productive, don't you?  All magnificent films.  It's bitterly cold and windy here, so I've been staying in, and when I'm not with friends I'm writing songs or gearing up to do bits and pieces of homework.  On Thursday, my mother end I are going to a lecture at Colby college.  It's one of the three really good schools in Maine, and I would absolutely look at it seriously if it weren't so close to home.  But my parents are panicking a little bit about university for me.  The school I'm at, we all do pretty damn well in the national standardized tests.  But the classes are graded so hard that our transcripts don't match up, and so it's harder for us to get into top-tier schools, a lot of people say, than it should be.  Some of the seniors I'm friends with have gotten into all sorts of great places, but some haven't at all, and it is quite worrisome.  SO, my pushy Jewish mother wants me to practice visiting colleges.  I'm not much inclined to think about college at this point, let alone apply to any - I'm in tenth grade, for Christ's sake! - but I suppose it's sensible.  But, my god, you should see the emails I'm getting daily, the stack of promo mail I that was on my desk when I got home.  This whole process... they whore around to get you interested, you whore right back to get yourself in.  It's disgusting, and it makes me want to throw my chem books away, take sitar lessons and major in painting or dance. 

I also went to the dentist today.  I hate that fluoride stuff. 

I've started Great Expectations for English class.  I didn't think I liked Dickens at all, but this seems really great - it's funny, in a very English sort of way, and clever, and I care about Pip.  So, good first twenty pages. 

Oh.  And.  I have discovered eBay.  I mean, how to use it.  And I am just praying, praying that it's blocked at school, because I do NOT need to be spending this kind of money. 

So.  Lamb curry for dinner, then I'm watching the baby, but that's okay because the internet doesn't turn itself off at 11:00 p.m. here!!!

Summer Vibes

I must be getting pretty easy to please.  It's about 40°F outside, and sunny, and I feel so good.  There are still three feet of snow lying about, but life seems so beautiful.  Today is set to Ingrid Michaelson - hopeful and idealistic and mildly sweet and pleasant.  I ran from the dorm to the school in my converse with my research paper in my hand. 

It's warm.  I swear it is.


I suppose it might also be the prospect of, oh, I don't know, one more day before break.  My god, how we need it. Lots of parents - including at least one of my own - are coming up tomorrow to see J Term presentations and then lug us all home for a week.  And how we need it.  February has been sick and stressed and ugly, and I am excited to be shod of the learning part of it. 


And, oh, Ms. Baker, I want to write you a really beautiful essay.  I am pouring my heart into this clinical research assignment, because I love your class, I really do.  It's a sort of escape from all the maths and the science and the stress and the competitiveness, and you work us hard, but I love it like water, need it like chocolate.  And that's the point of English. 


I've listened to Girl from the North Country about twenty times this afternoon already... it's like heartbreak, and it makes me so happy.  Sorry, I'm all abstractions today...

And She's Every Girl You've Seen In Every Movie

Yesterday, I had not one single class.  It was a beautiful thing.  My Wednesday mornings are completely empty this semester, but I had double chemistry scheduled for after lunch.  Well.  We all thought it was the snow, which was falling rather heavily and still hasn't quite made up it's mind to stop.  But the teacher's cancelled for the rest of the week (hence my sitting in the lounge typing right now instead of measuring the molar density of hydrogen gas at standard pressure and temperature), so... guess not.  And while I hope he'll be well and all, it is gorgeous to just lounge... after five weeks away, this is a nice way to ease back into homework.


So, I just had my first food studies class.  We read a couple articles ahead and discussed food philosophy, and we have a collective blog.  It's a very small class, but the people in it are pretty serious and lucid about food, and if you have no life and want to know how I write for classes, click here (I'm maoismdoesntwork).  I'm excited about this class.  Really excited.  And thoughts of lobster ravioli and kokoreç (Turkish grilled sheep intestines) are now crowding out the geometric sequences and logarithms that belong in my head.  So, I'm listening to Suzanne Vega and Carly Simon to remedy it.  Yeah, that's clever, I know.

Have I told you about the Gatsby Ball?  Before judging, just listen.  Because, by all accounts that I trust (there aren't many, but they come from people with excellent taste in wine and music) it will kick ass.  My English teacher puts it on every year, and it's part of her American Literature course.  I'm in AP Composition and therefore required to go, but I would have anyway.  You go as a character from the 1920s, dressed & researched etc.  I was asked to be Jeeves to somebody's Bertie Wooster, but have opted instead to stick with the dress I'd already borrowed from a friend at home.  Haven't yet worked out what sort of person I'll be, but I'm looking forward to next Saturday rather a lot.  Because I am a geek, and I really do love ballroom dancing.

I'm not particularly looking forward to this Saturday, though.  There's a swim meet about four hours' drive away.  If I don't go I'm off the team, which means I'm no longer excused from fitness classes.  And I love swimming.  I just don't want to spend a day on a bus feeling chlorinated and getting stingy rashes all over my thighs and dealing with damp towels in the cold and strange pools and a bad-tempered coach who, I am convinced, wants my head.  I hate it when people hate me. 

 

Here's a picture from Washington.  Goodbye. 

And The Talking Leads To Touching...

Aaahh, it's after lights-out, which means that there's a blanket block on all web sites EVER.  But still internet, for some screwy reason.  SO, I'm just usin' my mail programme to email-post some stuff... let's see if it works this time.

It is so good to be back.  I feel amazing.  Just being back with my friends, doing homework again... even the nasty lights-out policy.  Oh, and the only reason I'm still awake and not comatose from swim team - which was really, really tough today, and my shoulders ache - is that I have no classes - count 'em - tomorrow until after lunch.  Zero.  Despite just having picked up food studies (finally got the O.K. on that... some fool in admin thought I'd have to reschedule my chem class, which I wasn't going to be allowed to do, but it turns out all that changes is math.... though it changes to 8:30.  Shoot me.  Anyway, today was the first day I have written in my new marble-notebook food journal, where I am to record everything I eat if I'm not too ashamed.  It really makes me think about it, too.  Can I really be bothered to get up and find the book?  Do I honestly want to admit that I had milk and cookies for breakfast?  Etc.).  So.  Life is sexy.

Speaking of sexy... I have the Quieter Poster Boys!  I ordered them a while after I got the tip from my maytag model (bottom photo, he's looking fine), and we've shared them.  They are beautiful.  I'll post pictures of them on my walls tomorrow - it's dark now and my roommate, whom, I have concluded, is a mad evil genius scientist, is either sleeping or planning the world's end under her blankets.  And I wouldn't want to disturb either of those things.  

I have also just been introduced to Rilo Kiley, and they are amazing (I guess I'll embed that later, but for now just click, please).  The minute I found them*, I realized that a load of my friends from the National Spelling Bee had been going on about them for ages too... the things I don't notice are always the most important.

I should probably throw you a picture... Sunday was my first night back and everyone was in the gym... I went a little nuts and black-and-white-grainy-low-exposure on you, and I'm sorry.  But here:

What d'you reckon?  Keepers?

More on DC when I finish the video... maybe tomorrow on all my goddamn free time!  Although I should probably work on my lines for the play, instead.  Or, um, a big research paper, or... math?  

Okay, time to call it good.  I'm getting eight hours tonight.  Good night, my darlings!  

Oh, and how about that State of the Union address!?  Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love.  Fantastic.

*Okay, the minute my friend down the hall came into my room during structured study with a list of songs for me to look up.  Thanks, Emma!

Goodbye, Washington

Sorry for not-posting in so long.  I'll give you the full story soon - it's been a crazy two weeks - but here's an interim video.  Flight tomorrow morning: Baltimore --> Philadelphia --> Bangor, ME.  If it's not too snowy.  Then a night with my darlings, then school! 






I think I got a little bit frostbitten walking around a freezing-cold (yet bleakly snowless) DC today because I didn't have to go into work.




Tonight I'm going to a pizza restaurant with ping pong tables.  Life is beautiful. 

'Tis The Day Before The Math Final

And all through the dorms, people are lazing about in pajamas and alternating between study and hanging and feeling wonderful because they're inside in pajamas and it's snowing and they have fairy lights in their rooms.  At least, I am.  No classes AT ALL today, so I didn't get up until 8:30 when I got hungry and went and stole some milk from the cafeteria.  I'm half-packed, studying and actually feeling okay about most of this test.  I took the chem test yesterday.  It was all multiple choice, only an hour, and I think I passed.  I brought my laptop in my backpack and, as we were all about to start the test, reached in and opened it and started playing Single Ladies.  Everyone got it and laughed and it was all good fun... do you get it, too?  Remember I told you about that time?  And after the test, the teacher let us make liquid nitrogen ice cream (damn...that's my old url).  So much fun.... it actually boils when you pour it into the cream, and there's so much vapour.  The night before, I'd made myself roasted mushrooms and potatoes and creamed spinach.  And that day I wore neon pink and black striped thigh highs, so I felt pretty good.  Pictures coming soon.  Oh, and today I have another shoot with my Maytag model - this time for a Lookbook contest where you style people to look like characters from a TV show.  Needless to say, my tights are hot currency. 

Well, I'm going to spend the next 3 hours (swim team after that....it's a pain but I sleep well) eating, taking pictures, studying, and finishing Siddhartha.  Why, God, WHY must the math final be at 8:30 am?  And be three hours long?  Why?  But I will survive....  my mother wants me to play that at her funeral. 

I am so excited to get home.  I can't wait to see my friends and spend time with them while they're not at school, and cook and watch films and then go to England, and then D.C!!!  Aaah!  And I just found out I'm going to Colorado for a few days this summer... more on that later, but I've never been that far west and I really want to see the mountains.

Flashdance.... 

Blue Train

Last night I was tired.  And sick and headachy.  I was resolved to come back from structured study (7-9 pm, Sunday through Thursday) and singlemindedly, unswervingly, invincibly finish my work and go to bed.  As I was on my way to my room to execute this magnificent display of efficiency, someone asked me to play ultimate frisbee.  My feeble, math-drenched little mind thought "Ultimate Frisbee = Fun" and tacked on "Me Sleeping Better From Utter Exhaustion • Guys With No Shirts On = Good" and made my mouth say "Sure, just let me get changed."  After that I spent the remaining hour before lights-out crying in the shower because I felt physically inferior and failing completely to do math homework that was due at ten this morning.  These two things should have been a clue that something was wrong.

 Today I got up.  I ate breakfast.  I sat outside the chemistry classroom and did chemistry homework in the absence of the necessary chemistry teacher.  I came back to the dorm.  I talked to the nurse.  I went back to bed.

Three hours later, I'm up and still feeling sick.  My teeth ache at their roots, and that's how I can always tell I'm not well.  I've been getting chills on and off for a week, and just decided it would help my midterms more if I finally shook them off than if I went to class and learned things.  In the hours I slept (incredibly soundly, considering the brightness of the snow outside, the lack of curtains, my roommate and my phone), I dreamed that my parents had come to take me away from school, that I wasn't packed, was trying to find my neon pink converse - which seem to have disappeared in reality, too - in a mountain of shampoo bottles, had a secret impromptu sleepover with some of my girlfriends here... in a teacher's attic... and slept staring at a ceiling painted with fishes and ropes and seaweed.  Perhaps I need to go back home to the beach.  It also started snowing again while I slept.  I adore the snow here - it's O.C.D and just can't stop.  Look:

I took these out of my window and from one of the lounges on my wing (love, love, love my stalker lens).  Let's compare them to this, which is how the school looked the first week.  That was August:

Just a little scary.

I've also sworn off facebook until after the math final, which is December 17th.  This means that, idiotically, I'll probably be blogging quite a lot.  Now I've got two hours until English, which I probably won't go to, but I should hand in a draft of my final essay.  I'm pretty much done with Huck Finn.  It was nice while it lasted, but now I've broken up with that book and I don't want to write a paper about why.  Or about how religion is satirized in the first twenty pages or so.  Never mind.  Oh, gosh, I'm hungry. 

But, hey, in case this whatever-the-hell-it-really-is bug or the final exams do kill me and you have
nothing       to      read, let me direct you over HERE, to the new, far superior and less egocentric blog of a dear friend of mine from the Scripps National Spelling Bee.  Enjoy it and marvel at the fact that there are people out there like that, who are actually willing to share their "awesomeness" with you and me through this silly little screen and keyboard.

Feelin' The Same Way All Over Again

I feel like a real mess.  But today I'm very glad that I use blogspot.  Please, Tumblr, get off your knees so I can read!  Loads of people are sick here, and I feel awful, too.  Why must we be so ill here, so often?  When I woke up this morning it was snowing, wet and heavy, and about half the teachers didn't make it in today.  So it's a semi-snow day, I suppose... I'm a bit jealous of all my friends at home, though.  They're so far south!  Why do they get a cancellation while I still have to sit through technology class?  Ugh.

On Friday night, the chemistry teacher used alkali metals (or something) to light this enormous bonfire in a field by the school.  It was dark and cold and a lot of people got sick of standing in the rain, but I stayed out there a long time.  It was rather magnificent, and the local fire department kept getting calls because of the light and smoke and explosions.  I went out the next morning around ten, and it was still burning.  I stayed for nearly an hour taking pictures, and when I came in one of my friends felt my hands and looked at me like the idiot I was for forgetting to wear gloves. 

And, my god, can we all just take a moment and be grateful and retrospectively terrified and incredibly relieved that we live in a (mostly) post-Roe vs. Wade society?  Can we just be glad of that?  In a lot of states, including the one I live in, you need parental consent to get an abortion before you're 18.  But you can get one.  And you can get condoms.  And birth control.  And plan-B pills.  And abortions.  One of my favourite Supreme Court cases is Griswold vs. Connecticut.

Okay, that was a ramble.  My grades are slipping.  I posted about that earlier, but then deleted it.  I'll redo it, just scroll up.  But I'm pretty sure I failed my last chem test as well, though I was sure I understood it, and I got a C- on the rough draft of my final essay.  It's evening now and I'm feeling horribly cold and sick.  And there is So Much To Do.  But enjoy the pictures.  I'll be memorizing the charges and solubility of ionic compounds.

...And Back

And, my god, it feels good.  Everyone's quite stressed, what with finals coming up and a whole week of (unproductive) break right behind us, but I am just so happy to be back with my friends that it's almost okay.  I had a rather mixed week at home.  On the one hand, it was brilliant to see my friends (and Brokeback Mountain.  Awestruck) and go to school - I stayed in the art room this time so there was no awkward biology-crashing, and my teachers seemed happy to see me and everyone who didn't know I was coming to visit treated me like I was back from the dead.  I also ate excellently and feel very pretty as a result - I love the way my back looks when I've gained a little weight.  However, there was a lot of fighting going on as well, and if a breast cancer scare (false alarm, thank god) can't unify my family and get us to stop bickering for ten minutes, I don't really know what can.  But, yeah.  If you have breasts and are thirty-ish or older you should go get a mammogram.  Now.  Did you know that one in eight women in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer? 

I just joined the swim team.  Yesterday was the first practice, I hadn't done butterfly since eighth grade, and I am sore.  I know that sounds like a completely idiotic thing to do right before midterm exams, but I slept so incredibly well last night that, if this is anything to go by, it might actually help my grades in the next couple weeks.  This school doesn't technically have any sports teams, so for things like football soccer we just play with the local school, with which we share the academic building, but for some reason we can't do that for the swim team.  So I and the only other MSSM girl have cajoled two other girls from our school into swimming, so that we have a relay team.  Otherwise we couldn't compete.  I used to hate swim meets and I am sure they're no different now, but we have a nice pool here and being on the team exempts me from fitness classes - which would conflict with the practice schedule anyway!  So, I'm quite well-satisfied with that and hope to fulfill one of the boys' predictions that I'll have six-pack by the end of the season. 

That's really all that's going on... I have to finish the rough draft of my midterm English essay - about satire in Huck Finn - and study like hell for a chem test that looks about as friendly as my sister after she gets caught taking other peoples' Christmas presents out of my room and decides that the best course of action is to scream, slam doors and cry loudly enough to render us all deaf for several hours....but that's another story.

I got a few lovely birthday presents.  The primary one was, of course, a contribution to my new lens, but I also got a couple lovely books and some beautiful new tights.

Okay.  Sites That Are Blocked At School (Mostly For "Pornography") That Shouldn't Be:
Some of Smitten Kitchen.  Like, this one.  This is a food blog!  What the hell, people?!
Stockings HQ
UK Tights
My Favourite Underwear Blog   (However, this is absolutely fine for us to look at, apparently!  Jesus, people, find some real porn to block)
And loads more, but I don't want to incriminate myself by going on all these sites to get the links in one day.


Okay, so here are those recipes I said I'd post.  In both cases, I used yoghurt and milk instead of buttermilk.

Chocolate cake   (in this one I used Green&Black's ginger chocolate)

Ginger-apple-upside-down cake

Night!  I'm high on Fawlty Towers.

It's None Of It True

Now, I don't mean to go all sentimental photo-montage on you, but a friend of mine, one who talked me out of all my money convinced me to get my camera and all ensuing tchotchkes, made this and it's really too good not to show you.







In other news, I'm home after an uncommonly pleasant bus ride.  I woke up at sixish, with far more ease than almost everyone else in the school, mostly due to the fact that I hadn't gone to a midnight-ish showing of Harry Potter the night before (I passed most of my birthday evening wandering about outside and looking in at the boys' windows - there is some frightful pornography to be seen on those walls).  Anyway, I came outside for breakfast and there was a thin layer of snow on the ground and more falling.  It was absolutely magical, and even in the groggy, cold, flip flop-clad state I was in I was delighted.  Boarding the buses was fun - I was the last on - and I found the usual company for my route enhanced by an addition with whom I listened to several issues (is that the right term for a podcast?) of The Bugle before dozing on the shoulder of a lovely boy whose taste in music rivals those of even my friends here.  He approved of the above video.  All through this is was snowing rather thickly and the bus was cold, but when I woke up we were 'south' and it was ridiculously sunny again.

I'll skip the part where I drag my father underwear shopping and go right to the food.  I swear, my next post will be nothing but pictures of what I'm eating.  I have been reduced to tears by real food that I didn't cook.  Last night, we had greens and Brussels sprouts with ginger and roast chicken and parsnips and garlic and potatoes and beets and carrots.  It's not the meat that I really miss, oddly enough - I could go vegetarian after having been at school this long - but it was all gorgeous.  I made fairy cakes, but went to bed before dessert.  Five weeks without a break is too long, though I don't imagine the scotch and soda helped.  In any case, I was out at seven-thirty, back up at nine and then asleep for the next twelve hours.  Then to a friend's house for a stunning breakfast of eggs, sausage and biscuits, and home with some other friends to make two cakes - count 'em - watch Torchwood and eat roast lamb with rice and lentils and open a few birthday presents.  I'm going to school tomorrow, just to hang out in the art room and catch up with whomever is cool enough to drift in there, so I've got to go to bed now.  Studying for finals starts tomorrow.  Just remind me. 

(Oh, what a lot of tags!)

A Sad Excuse For A Post

Yeah, I know.  It's-been-a-week, what's-Leah-doing-that's-so-important-she-can't-write-three-paragraphs-some-evening, lazy-bitch-blogger, etc.  Not going to talk about how busy I've been, or the weird stuff that's happening, or how I'm still putting off paying that photo money.  But I am going to talk about my new baby.  The one that arrived on Tuesday.  This one. 


We're still getting to know one another, but I have never met a more charming piece of equipment in my life.  It's very gossipy, but so smooth and agreeable that I forgive its intrusiveness in a minute.  It makes me feel... oh, I don't know, besides powerful.  But that's not all.  It makes me feel desirable and sexy and totally wonderful.  Which is shallow and ridiculous.  And it's not as if anyone likes me better for it - it's not that kind of thing.  Okay, I'm going to change the topic now because nobody gets this. 

So, Armistice Day.  We didn't even get a holiday - living at school has its downsides.  Also, no snow days.  Goddamn dorm life.  Oh, well.  So, yeah, cool.  I still really like my new url, but my family has found it, so that's awkward.  I'll be fabricating a few things in the future here.  But you'll be able to tell.

Ah, so much homework!  I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.  Giant chemistry test yesterday that I felt ready for, which probably means I wasn't, and the girl who lives next door has this alarm clock that goes off at three in the afternoon and doesn't stop until she shuts it off after dinner.  Drives me nuts.  Also, they've closed the school kitchen temporarily because people were making such a mess in there.  I'm not saying I wasn't contributing, but I've ended cleaning up a lot of other people's cake projects.  But something nice happened yesterday, I suppose - My group got an A on our math major, and there's a fun one due soon.  I have to research mathematics in African history and culture.  So, perhaps I'll scrape a B in maths this semester.

I'm doing a lot of lying around listening to music, actually.  Yesterday was all Norah Jones in my room, and I swear the world's babies stopped crying as a result.  That woman is magic. 

I feel like I haven't really got much to report, which is entirely untrue.  There was a medieval feast/murder mystery this weekend, put on by the Brit Lit class, and that was immense fun.  I feel like the teacher had too much fun assigning me my character and seat, but I suppose that's what happens when you live at school - everyone gets to know you rather too well.  God, by my third year here I shall be unbelievably bitter. 

But this weekend is Youth In Government.  I'll keep you posted on that and get you some best-dressed delegate photos!

DISCLAIMER: Nothing I Write Here Is True

Not even that title.

Having read this over before posting, I feel that this needs another disclaimer: I am not a psych case.  I am a thoroughly with-it, under-control, normal human being on hyperdrive.  But no, really, you'll understand when if you get that far down the page.  I am never in therapy, very rarely cry and do not project angstiness into the world on a regular basis - I had that gland removed as soon as I got up here.

Oh, and Blogger is being most irritating and insisting that I have filled up my free 1GB of space in Picasa and must pay Google $5.00 a year to upload any more.  See the sacrifices I make for you, dear reader?  I shall pay it, but you must promise it will not be in vain. 

Well, that chemistry test was far more entertaining than expected.  We were all sitting there working on our stoichiometry problems as our teacher sat in front of his computer when, about fifteen minutes into class, Single Ladies started playing very loudly.  He looked utterly stunned, and after we'd all taken a second to absorb the fact that the music was coming from his speakers, he stammered that it had been a pop-up, that he'd been looking at e-brochures.  Nowt so queer as folk, I suppose... but the poor man was mortified.

Another week down, and there's Pulp Fiction in my future.  I do love weekends.  One afternoon last week I called in sick (I was, genuinely, suffering from the effects of exhaustion, eating nothing but pretzels for two days, and an English essay) and turned off all the lights in my room except for the fairy lights, and just laid on my lovely wide bed and dozed and read The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe and listened to a rain storm.  When excused from classes here, one can't really go about looking healthy, but I had visitors and we sat and chatted for a lovely long time.

So, on Tuesday something really weird happened. 

I Am Not A Fashion Blogger. I am Not a Fashion Blogger. I Am Not A...

But I have figured out The Secret.  Yes, that one.  The one on which the only-recently-fallen empire waist...well, empire... was founded, and that only fell because people got sick of looking semi-pregnant.  And now, two years behind everyone else who's ever worn clothing made of something more sophisticated than fig leaves, I know this secret: High waists.  They make your tits look bigger.

Now, I actually found this out by accident this morning while I was getting dressed.  I had put on a a longish skirt, whose hem I wanted to raise so that my new skeleton socks were a little more visible (do I actually think like this?).  And, just as an experiment, the kind you'd never try out unless you were all alone with the mirror  your roommate was very fast asleep, I sort of...pulled it up.  And.... well, I belted it.  And bang!  Where did you come from?  I don't know what kind of optical-perspective-illusion-THING this is, but I shall definitely treat it with care in the future.  I feel like there's a reason I didn't get the memo about this when it first started happening...no matter.  I don't like to be in current style anyway.  So, yeah, I kind of loved what I wore today - so much that I didn't even change it between classes.  Crazy.

 (Credit for these two goes to my neighbour again)

But this post was actually meant to be ALL about my legs.  I know, right?  I always thought of myself as a semi-serious writer... but I get too excited about tights to let these past you.  So, maybe not my legs, but the way I present them to the world...or some other pretentious bullshit like that.  I like clothes, so get over it and then I'll talk politics with you.  It doesn't make me a ditz.  I adore tights and an early birthday present I ordered myself from Sock Dreams (I couldn't think of another excuse) arrived yesterday.  There's difinitely a theme to what was in the package, but I plan to wear these all year:

The photos of the stripey tights and the spiderweb fishnets are from the SockDreams web site...haven't worn them yet but I can't wait.  But I took these:

I think they're my new favourites.  They come to just above my knees, but I'm quite tall.  These all shipped for free, by the way.  So go get some.  I was everyone's favourite Leah today at school (I really hope I did okay on that math test....and there's a chemistry exam tomorrow!  Eeek!) and had loads of fun - several people sort of looked at me like I had three heads when I told them I ordered socks online.

 Not a great day for food - dinner was pretzels and goats' cheese, but I've got a Plan.  It involves pancetta.  I will keep you posted.  And I've got some other news that I don't have time to go into right now - they're about to switch off the internet - so don't let me forget to tell you what I'm official photographer for.

Good night!

If You Can't Handle Me At My Worst, Then You Sure As Hell Don't Deserve Me At My Best

Okay.  Horrible week.  And we only had three days of school!  But after getting back from a disgustingly indulgent holiday on Tuesday and all throwing ourselves at one another with an abandon usually reserved for sex and seizures, desperately keening and making arduous declarations of adoration - how the last four days apart had rent our souls - we didn't all really settle back into the work thing - the weekend was too close to take the interim seriously.  Bad Idea.  So, I'm guessing it was the under the combined strains of two all-nighters in a row (I may or may not have been found sitting in front of essays in my underwear at 3 a.m., eating chocolate-covered almonds and dry coffee grounds to stay awake), a flu jab, malfunctioning uterine lining and forgetting to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner yesterday that I sort of collapsed last night and spent a few hours alternating clutching my stomach on the floor, drinking litres of very cold water very fast, shivering and sweating...  I think that last night was the first time in recorded history that I've gone to bed before my roommate.

When a friend and I decided to make ourselves some eggs recently, we found them frozen... and cooked them anyway.  It was so weird.  We peeled off the shells from these gushy, crystallized, freezing-melty eggs and threw them right in the pan, and they were delicious - but strange. 

Oh, I'm getting really excited about my birthday, which is in less than a month.  I've been known to obsess, and I'm trying to figure out what to do - it falls very fortunately on a Friday this year, and, less fortunately, one day before Thanksgiving break.  Also, Hallowe'en.  And I know, I know, everyone at school who's reading this is going "What?  She's English!" but I lived in a rather American neighbourhood in London and we always had crazy parties and pumpkins and costumes.  My best year, I think, was sixth grade, when I was a box of Kleenex.  I painted it myself and everything, and since then have worn a box almost every year.  This time, I'm being a Rubik's Cube.

This was the ninth week of school.  While I'm of the opinion that nine weeks is far too long to spend anywhere, I do feel obliged to acknowledge how remarkably pleasant these ones have been.  I have friends with whom I chat and walk and watch films, almost more than I did before.  I am able to feed myself to the extent that I have not yet died, nor become so remarkably emaciated that some concerned faculty member has had to have me hospitalized.  While I do not particularly care about chemistry or advanced math, they have not taken any particular dislike to me and are the subjects in school I get along the worst with.  I live with a hundred-odd people who seem to be able to tolerate me far better, on average, than they generally can at home, and while I'm sometimes slightly put out by having to yield my grip on some friends to their paramours, that would happen anywhere and is, I suppose, the price of not having one or any of the accompanying grief (though I get more than my share of other peoples').

I've started Three Cups Of Tea, that incredibly famous book about the mountaineer who got lost on K2 and was taken in by Pakistani villagers and then decided to build trillions of girls' schools around the Taliban.  As everybody else in the world, which is who's already read this, knows, it's quite fantastic once you get past the disconcertingly ghost-written introduction.

Finally, the first read-through for The Importance Of Being Ernest was yesterday - I'm Miss Prism and quite enjoy my part.  The improv club also met for the first time, and both promise to be thoroughly enjoyable and quite satisfactorily distracting from any coursework I might happen to consider doing in the coming year.  I am well pleased.

Home For Not Much Longer

It interests me how the standards in 'quality' for writing and images are set up.  When writing is 'dirty' it's trash, no?  It's a trashy romance novel that people are ashamed to read, until one comes along that has a couple good reviews as well as a chapter that turns them on in just the same way.  Then photography - well, anyone can press a button while someone looks sexy, right?  But if that's the case, all photography and every claim it has to 'art' status is invalid.  And why is Robert Mapplethorpe's work considered art, not just porn?  Because he was good, better than almost anyone else who took nude photographs or anything else in his vein of work.  He was skilled above them in the same way that the Pullitzer-winning writer is more adept at writing than the outcasts who publish those paperbacks.  But Robert Mapplethorpe and, oh, I don't know... Nabokov?  Or whoever it was that wrote Madame Bovary.... they weren't always great artists.  They must have started off as unskilled as the 'pornographers', they weren't born with their talents.  So when did their work become art - socially acceptable, intellectually prestigious - and not cheap kicks you keep under the mattress?  Because they have been recognized and legitimized as artists, is their pre-quality work 'art', too?  And if these great figures in culture were writing, photographing, painting, singing - somehow expressing - sex, then, goodness, they were certainly thinking about it.  Just like everybody else.  Because their expressions of sexuality are more valued, were their actual thoughts about sex also somehow more 'okay'?

No, this picture has nothing to do with what I've just said or what I'm about to say - I've got no clue what that is anyway. 

All right, tonight's exhausted perambulation stops there.  I am so ready to go back to school tomorrow.  This weekend has been great, totally indulgent on my part in so many ways, but I miss my routine and pretending to myself that I have the discipline to sit down and get something done.  His Girl Friday is the leading candidate for the highlight of the holiday just at present, though the food has been stellar as has seeing my friends, of course.  And the apple beignets....I'll get the recipe for those up soon, because they were heaven.  I am ready for snow cover for as long as I can fry doughnuts and watch films with sexy people I want to kiss my friends, either here or at school... but I'll take it back, I'm sure, after a couple weeks snowed into the dorm.  It's sure to happen soon.

I stay up so late on extended weekends.  I don't understand it, but I quite like being there for the margins in between days.  They're quiet and more interesting.  But why can't I bear to go to bed?!

Okay, this is going to be a ridiculous post, with no organization at all.  I have to write a bill for Youth In Government.  I don't know how to write a bill.  I don't know what to write a bill about.  Everyone else seems pretty clear on this... is it something I just missed out on, like algebra II or that memo explaining what all those internet shortcuts stand for (rofl, anyone?  I am at a loss)?

I Should Be Doing Homework

I just realized that I never posted this.  I took it weeks ago on the bus back from a weekend at home.  There's another long weekend coming up in a couple weeks.  I'm sitting on a wide, high-up windowsill in the dorm lounge right now, and waiting for structured study to start.  I think I might have failed a chemistry test today, and I'm facing an evil essay whose only grace is its comparative shortness - it's still killing me.  With all that in mind, I should probably take my leave now, lovely reader, much as it grieves me. 
Hoş çakal.