Rust Bucket

My legs hurt, but I feel better than I have in a long time. I'm going to need to spend time - preferably while I read a hundred and something pages of Lear tonight - with my legs upright against a wall to drain the lactic acid from slightly abused muscles. My ass hurts. I've drank more water in the past two hours than I have all day.

I blame - and thank - all of this on my pal, Rust Bucket.

Let me back up before you guys think I'm more nutzo than normal. Remember all those commercials New Balance put out about people getting back together with running? How it shouldn't be difficult to have a relationship with running, and that getting it back is a good thing? Well, I don't have a relationship with running. I have one with Rust Bucket.

Rust Bucket is my bicycle, appropriately named because the thing is a bit old. I mean a good ten or eleven years, and we got him fairly new - maybe a year or two old - at a yard sale one summer when I was in middle school. So RB has been with me a while and of course made the move to college. He's a sturdy little shit, despite the startling amount of iron oxide (rust) on him, and he and I have gone on many an adventure, both here at college and at home.

RB and I haven't gone for a ride in the past four months. It's been the middle of winter; the tires needed some air (and actually wound up getting replaced yesterday), but none of that seemed to matter because rather than doing this damn formal lab report on Co(III) complexes, we took advantage of the nice weather and went for a 7.8 mile ride.

Yeah. My lower body is going to hate me in the morning.

For as much pain as rolling out of bed is going to be tomorrow, it was worth it. Really worth it. It feels really good to have gone for a ride.

Though maybe next time we'll start a little smaller.

For All This Life

I've been on this earth twenty-two years. In those subsequent years, the toughest things I've had to do have been walking away from a great relationship with a wonderful person because I was going away to college, getting stuck in an airport for a single night due to a sudden monsoon in Philadelphia, having unexplained belly pain resulting in surgery my first semester of college, leaving my mother in an airport twice, only this time it was her that was leaving and me that was staying (not that it helped), calling my mother a few weeks later to tell her I wasn't coming home and didn't know when I could even think about getting on a plane and getting across the Atlantic, and the following five days of living in the Virgin Atlantic terminal at Heathrow Airport.

It's a toss up of whether all of the previous - collectively - trumps the past four months.

It's been difficult. That could be the understatement of 2011, truthfully, if sitting in my professor's office and, after going over the last exam and talking about where to go from there, fighting on three separate occasions not to cry is any indication. I've done really well since the first month of the semester to not let the center of my brain hijack the rest of it, which is the sort of scientific way of saying I haven't let myself panic as badly as I used to. It's probably not good for my heart, either, the amount of caffeine I ingest on a regular basis.

I don't want to use the word overwhelmed but that's really what it boils down to. Between what's going on up here - no need to insert the laundry list of stuff as that's already been done - and what's going on at home, it's difficult to get the distance required. 45 miles doesn't feel like 45 miles. Even if it were 3,000 I don't think it would work. Sometimes there's just not enough space on the planet to get the distance that feel necessary.

It's also difficult to not let the distance you need hurt the people who need you.

Yeah, that's one I'm still trying to wrap my head around and there are days when I'm successful and days when, well, I'm a giant fail at it. Lately, it seems that my failure days outnumber my non-failure days. It's a struggle, more often than not, to find my motivation and my Focus (slippery little bastard), and to do all I need to do when the only thing I really want to do is curl up in my amazingly comfortable dorm bed and block out the outside world and sleep for a solid eight hours. My beloved sister insists I can sleep when I'm dead, which I think has taken root in the back of my head because it's ten past midnight and I'm working on homework. I'm hoping - more or less planning, actually - to be in bed by three. Which means I have some things to get done right the hell now.

The bright side is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There's the fact that spring semester is going to be glorious. There's also the fact that I will be returning to Wales two weeks after graduation for three weeks. Yup, I was accepted into the summer program, and will be returning to a place that grew to be a second (third, maybe?) home.

But there's a lot to do between now and then. A lot to do. Still, there are days when you sit there, think, get a little lost in your head and wonder can I do this? Am I good enough to do this? Have I gotten in over my head? The next thought you think is the true kicker.

Is it really worth it?

There are days when I go cross-eyed looking at my own reflection in the mirror really wondering if the ends justify the means. I've been assured by numerous people they do indeed, but here, right here in this hot as hell corner room, you wonder. You really, really wonder.

Sitting here introspecting isn't getting my lesson plans done. And you know how much I love those damn things.

Focus Meets Train

I made a Facebook status sometime last week that detailed the fact that my Focus, my beloved Murfee, had more or less eaten too many cookies, rolled down the back hill, and was subsequently hit by a train as it passed by the house.

That should give you an accurate picture of how my semester has been going. Between two education seminars, four classes, a minimum of 20 hours community service (which, honestly, is actually 45, due to where I'm living), and three labs a week, I'm impressed that I'm still upright, mildly functioning, and haven't given myself a massive heart attack due to my caffeine consumption. I am, however, out of my meals provided by the Colleges courtesy of my meal plan, which isn't a big deal as I have a house with a kitchen, and thank sweet baby J that I have a coffee maker otherwise life would be more difficult than it already is on some days.

There is, however, a light at the end of the tunnel. That light is next semester's schedule - which I've already registered for - and it is glorious. No class on Mondays and I'm done on Fridays by 10:00 am. Essentially a four-day weekend my senior spring. Which brings me back to this happy fact:

I registered for my last semester of undergraduate classes.

Which prompted a whole string of thoughts, most of them involving four-letter words and something that sounded very similar to I don't give a shit what this semester turns out like as long as I pass everything with the minimum grade required to have it count for my major.

It's kind of sad, really, as I started off the semester really hoping that I'd be able to pull of a solid 3.0. At this point in my life, the more realistic goal, however hard it is to swallow, is that I'll be very lucky if the hard work that I'm putting in this semester results in the minimum grade required to have all this shit count for my degree. It's not like I'm slacking, but having three chemistry courses all over 300 level is, well, not only time-consuming but soul-sucking in a way that you haven't really got a concept of until you actually get there.

I'll be amazed if I have any sanity left at the end of the semester. That's when I'm assuring myself that I'll be able to sleep, while my sister assures me that I can sleep when I'm dead. That's true, too, but I'm hoping to hold out on that for another couple of years, at the very least.

In other news, I was at a Ben Folds concert this past weekend and it was absolutely epic. Truly one of the highlights of my senior year and I'm really glad that I went. He's an amazing musician - and a piano player that words can't adequately describe - and it was an awesome experience.

The fact that my 22nd birthday is coming up in 11 days hasn't really registered, either, because it's not like I'm going to spend it relaxing. I'm most likely going to spend all of Black Friday - my birthday - working on my curriculum project: lesson plans, assessment criteria, rubrics, the whole nine yards and whatnot. It's going to be painful on multiple levels, but it absolutely has to get done because there's only so many weeks of class left.

It's not supposed to go this fast.

So, now that I need to prepare myself for my analytical class (don't get me started), I'm going to spend the next few hours of my life trying not to freak out about the fact that I flat-out forgot I have a lab write-up (thankfully not a formal) due today and the mother of all formal labs due tomorrow. (But maybe we can convince her to change that to Wednesday.) Couple that with an exam tomorrow evening, auditions for the winter and spring shows on Wednesday (with a prepared monologue, too) and this week is going to be fairly busy, culminating in another exam next Sunday and a project for Econ on the Tuesday before break. With all of that is who-knows-what coming down the pipes in the education courses and, really, people are wondering why I drink the amount of caffeine that I do? How else do you expect me to get through a week where my hours of work have bypassed the hours in a week?

But that's more or less what I've been dealing with for three months.

So damn difficult to think through that it's almost over. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Here's hoping it's not an oncoming train.

Things to Know XXI

- If I can hear your music through your headphones like you weren't wearing them at all, your music is too loud.

- When the above happens, it makes me want to growl.

- If I'm growling at something, that's not a very productive start to my day.

- My fellow classmate - Do not patronize me about what I did or did not do in response to a slightly irate email by one of our other classmates, and then proceed to make it look like you're "winning" what's actually not a competition, and please remember I was here until 1:45 in the morning, like you were, only I'd started at 9:00 instead.

- Today is not a day to mess with me, thanks so much.

- But, in all seriousness, turn the damn music down or I'll put on YouTube and blast country through my speakers!

- I can't seem to find my Focus.

- Saga coffee is downright disturbing - and one hell of a jolt.

- This is the point in my junior year where I just get sick of dealing with people.

- Luckily, when I was in high school, I phased out of beating up the jackasses when I hit this stage.

- Which, honestly, I really only did that in middle school.

- And, again honestly, I never actually punched anyone.

- Yup. I am going to go YouTube it up.

- My philosophy on that last one is that if you've got your headphones in to the degree in which I can hear lyrics clearly, you can obviously not hear a damn thing coming from my direction and therefore won't mind at all.

- And if you do mind, well, frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

- I have over 3,000 messages in the deleted folder in my webmail.

- I find that rather interesting.

- No idea what's going to happen in terms of the labs that I have no idea how to do for chemistry.

- They might be a lost cause.

- At this point in my life, I'm okay with that.

- I have eight lesson plans, a written assessment plan, and to tweak my introduction all by 7:30 tomorrow morning.

- Thank [Insert Diety/Whatever You Worship (if anything) Here] that tomorrow is my last education class because it's been driving me up the effing wall all semester.

- I have no phone service in the basement. Which kind of sucks.

- Right. Time to dig out my microscope now that I'm more or less done ranting (for the moment) and get something accomplished so I can feel a bit better about myself.

- At least the screamo song to my left is done.

Integrity

I write for the alternative student newspaper at my campus. That's no secret. I'm also layout editor for it, and a general ear when someone needs to vent in a way that we can't necessarily print. That and I keep my editor from going completely batshit on our publishing weeks, and she returns the favor.

Believe it or not, I bring a lot of who I am as a person to that role. I can't not, in a way.

I am an honest (blunt, at times) person who strives to do the right thing, even if it hurts and thinks that people should know the truth, even if it's the unpopular opinion. For someone to call into question my abilities as a writer - as a journalist - though it's my chosen field, calling me out on my fact-checking, and denoting a lack of "interviewing and investigation" and flat-out accusing me of lies? You right there are not only criticizing my ability as a writer, but you're criticizing my integrity as a person.

I have not, did not, and never will print anything that is not the truth. Information can come from different sources, and the source I used, while it might not have been the one some people would have liked, it was reliable information and, as far as I can (I haven't sat down and run my number's against our fellow newspaper's), the damn information that was printed there.

If we had felt the source of the information was sketchy, we would have done more "digging." But we didn't. We trust our source, and I stand by the information I printed to be true. To have the audacity to call into question my integrity as a person - albeit indirectly through this - it's the same as walking up to me, and saying, "Molly Louise, you're a liar."

That my friends does not fly with me.

I'm not infallible. I know there are things in my article that were ambiguous. There were details about minor things I did not put in there, and I'm woman enough to know I'll eat my words next issue with a follow-up article. It happens. However, the main point of this weeks' article - asinine concerts, asking for a ridiculous amount of moment for said concerts when they have, in the past, not even broken even, and instead caused a significant deficit - will remain unchanged.

As with all of my writing, I'm not going to give you flowery bullshit. I'm going to tell you the point, and I'm going to be blunt about it. If people have any questions, they're more than welcome to actually come to me and talk about it. Talk about what they didn't like. A student government hoping to set standards on journalism? Well hell, why don't you just attempt to censor us.

I will not apologize for something that needed to be said. For something that was said. For information from a valid, reliable source that was used, and my decision to keep my integrity and allow that person, who came to me in confidence, to remain anonymous like he requested.

Questioning my writing questions my integrity. This is not something to take lightly. While some may choose to take the low road, sling a little mud and get a little dirty, I will remain classy. Again, you might not like the result, but you poke me like this, there's a good chance I'll punch ya. That you must always expect.

Round Two

One of the good things about writing and doing layout for the campus's alternative publication is that, well, other than controlling what goes on the front page and maybe doing the horoscopes on the back, is that you have the opportunity to inform the campus. How else can you get semi-important to important (and stuff that's by no stretch of the imagination important at all) to nearly everyone on campus, staff and faculty included? We have a lot of readership on the campus (more than The Herald) and, well, a lot of the time we come jam-packed with a sense of humor, even if it's slightly cynical.

Which is why I'm very happy I took the time and figured out how to write a semi-neutral article detailing the issues and lack of communication between the students and some of the departments on campus. My own battle at the moment? Still with Residential Education. The fire marshal makes round two to my room tomorrow, along with a person from campus security, and someone else on behalf of Student Activities.

If this wasn't important, I'd be a little worried about fitting all those people in this small but lovable room. As it is, we'll be crammed in here and, honestly, if there's a violation, I can't fix it if I don't know about it.

Namely, don't just tell me I can't live here, give me the concrete reasons why. Give me a legitimate reason that you're going to uproot my social and academic center of stability and attempt to move me - possibly into someplace smaller - because this whole we don't have to give you a reason for why we say you have to do something stopped being a valid form of communication with me past the age of eight. As a legal adult who can not only buy cigarettes (not that I smoke) and lottery tickets, as well as legally drink? You owe me a little bit more than it's unlivable.

As a full-time, living-on-campus student paying a near-ridiculous amount of money for this education, you damn well better have a legitimate reason for upsetting my apple cart.

It's a good thing I have a handle on everything else, otherwise I'd be more of a spaz than I already am on a regular basis. As it is, to get out of this place for a bit, I'm going to go sit in the living room with my knitting and just practice my Shakespeare lines. Then I'm going to go to bed and tomorrow, I'm going to do what I normally do and get up and go to class. Then come back here, be invaded by a bunch of people who don't know me, don't know my situation and background, and don't know that I've already gone through this frustration once in the past month. Heathrow, anyone? That was fighting to get home, and now I'm fighting to keep the home that I've made on campus.

There is something seriously wrong with this picture.

On the bright side, at least they respected my request to be present when the man comes back. It only took about four emails.

So. For right now, I still live where I live and do what I do. Right now, that's enough.

Irony. Oh, the Effing Irony

Thank. God. It's. Friday.

That was my first thought after I turned on the coffee pot this morning before getting in the shower. Starbucks cinnamon coffee in a travel mug to warm my hands while walking to my first class of three? Absolutely amazing. The rest of my classes today - great. Even the one where physical chemistry II is a synonym for quantum mechanics was great, and my two geoscience courses? They're going to be a nice change of pace. I have my first line of my Shakespeare monologue memorized, and, as Hatch says, if you do a line a day, you'll have that thing memorized in no time.

Academically speaking, life is groovy. As I have a potential goal for after graduation, this, right now, puts me on a great track. I feel confident and I do the reading, and it makes sense - even the chemistry - and it just works.

What's not working so well right now is this complete and total asshattery that's between me and Residential Education. Which, incidentally, also involves the room I moved into upon arrival on campus three days ago.

Let me say, right now, for the record, and as I have said many times to many people of varying importance in the past day and a half, I absolutely love this little room. I was a little leery of it when I first saw it, but after I moved in, got settled, got unpacked, and made it my own - as I have this habit of making home wherever I go - I've made home in this little room in this wonderfully awesome old house.

The Fire Marshall, on the other hand, has deemed this room that was offered to me, that I have moved into, and that I have been living in since I arrived, unlivable.

There is so much wrong with that previous statement in terms of details and cases and things that happened last semester - including someone living in a room that's apparently unlivable - that it just blows my mind.

I feel a little like I'm living on borrowed time. That I'm going to settle further into my routine, into my campus and collegiate life where I'm at, and then they're going to, if they continue like this, uproot me and move me somewhere where I get to start the whole process over again. There are a few things that I've learned while trying to make nice with people, and trying to understand how one thing can work one day, and the next it simply can't function the way it should with nothing broke.

The only good news to come out of this - along with immediately helpfulness and a let's see what we can do to fix this, or make this less frustrating and painful for you attitude from Student Affairs - is that the Fire Marshall and someone else is going to come back on Monday and reevaluate the room. Sadly, I won't be here when they do. Which means, they won't be able to ask the student that lives, works, and generally lives in the space what she feels, how she likes it, and what options she has.

Reminds me of a bunch of aging men trying to decide in Congress what to do in regards to a young woman's body and her decision of what do with it. Last I checked, they didn't have the means to grow another human inside of them and continue to help the species flourish and have never had to have a gynecology appointment. Quack, quack, anyone?

That, however, is a matter for another time.

Ironically, my academics I'm fine with - I have a handle on those. The other side of the coin? Living and socialization? With the exception of this absolute clusterfuck, I'm good.

Maybe someone should ask the student living there what's best for her in terms of keeping her on an even keel so that she can continue to do her studies and achieve what she can hope to achieve. I am, after all, a full-time student paying full-time student fees. Work with me a little bit.

Moving

I told you I had an odd sense of humor. As in the title of this post, and the fact that I've now moved from Heathrow to a hotel not far from the Bond Street Underground station in the borough of Westminster.

And believe me, it's a nicer hotel than I would have chosen had I been the one to choose originally. Namely, this one would have been classified as a little out of my price range.

The last time you heard from me, I was sitting on the fun side of security at Heathrow, waiting to get on a flight to JFK. As I'm not posting the joys of being home, it's safe to assume that I'm still in London. That assumption would be correct.

It's been an interesting few days, to say the least. If you've been following me on Twitter, you'll see some of what I've been posting [including the one from the reporter at CNN who wants me to email him, and I still need to do that, too] and the responses.

Despite all the good thoughts, karma, prayers and whatnot, if it continues to snow - and stick - there is the possibility that we won't fly out on Wednesday and we'll be spending Christmas in London has an HWS family.

An HWS family in which they're happy to have me back.

I'd been "Tom Hanks-ing" it from Friday until late this afternoon, sleeping on the second floor of Virgin Atlantic departures since then. Except for Saturday night on the floor by some exchange bureau near check-in point F or G. I woke up during the night, mostly because I was really freaking cold, and sat up, looked around, and thought why are there so many people covered in tin foil? Then figured that if I was having that thought, oddly reminding me of when my sister was sleeping in the tent with the dog at the lake and saw my aunt in her nightdress, wandering around, I needed to lay back down and go to sleep. Which I did.

It was really difficult to keep track of days, because, eventually, they blended together. It didn't so much happen that first morning, but Sunday into Monday it really started to.

Saturday was the day I fought with the airline to get my bags back. I had checked my backpack - not only was it too large, apparently, to be in the cabin, but it was too heavy, too - and there was also my suitcase, too. The suitcase wasn't an issue. The backpack was the issue because it had my meds in it. Not the Align, the important one, but the other stuff that I needed to supplement it. And the longer I go without my meds, the more things get....interesting.

It took multiple trips to Arrivals (where the baggage was supposed to be, as it was still on the plane at the time) and upon the fourth trip downstairs to try and find out when my bags were coming off the plane, only then did the Virgin Atlantic representative actually ask if there was anything she could do for me, if there was anything she could get me. I told her no, I just needed my bags (because, yeah, making my own dosages with something that wasn't even close to being the UK equivalent was not going to happen) and she actually was the first one all day to take my bag information off from my passport, and also my mobile number in hopes that when she knew when the plane was being unloaded, she would let me know. I assumed this was going to be true.

Despite having my mobile number, they didn't call me. However, the moment I hit the departures floor, she immediately remembered me, pulled aside another rep, and sent me with her to Arrivals to fetch my bag. The suitcase was on a trolley, and the backpack was on top of that. First thing I did after returning to my spot in the second floor of Departures, was to crack open my bag, ingest my meds, and then check to make sure the breakable stuff I had wrapped in clothes and in the bottom hadn't broken. It was intact, but the entire right side of the bag was wet. Like it had been dropped in snow.

Not a big deal, but, well....makes things in there not smell great.

So, now it was Sunday and after some phoning home, we decided that it would be best for me to stay at the airport and maybe hope to get on a standby list. Then the news came in that there was a rescheduled flight that we had seats on for Wednesday. I have a printed e-ticket, and a guaranteed ticket on this flight. But we wanted to see if maybe there was a way for me to get something earlier.

Which, ultimately, didn't work. So I wound up spending another night on the floor of the airport.

And, as there is a mirror above the desk, I'm looking at the circles under my eyes that somehow keep growing. Not great.

Monday turned out to be a bust, and then information trickled in from the homefront that it was best for me to find the hotel everyone had been living at while I had been living at Heathrow, and it was made that I was to find that and check myself in.

Feeling like a bag lady, I trotted down the elevator and then out into the cold, slightly snowy London air and headed for Arrivals. That would take me down to the Heathrow Express - the train that gets you to London Paddington in fifteen minutes. And they weren't charging for it because of all the snow had done to travelers. From Paddington it was down to the Underground and then, one transfer later, I was at the corner of Bond Street and Oxford Street (I think) and wondering where exactly to go next. After a bit of wandering (which is more or less what I'm famous for, really) I found the hotel.

Not too long later I was in a room with an actual bed, a shower, and thinking that it was proverbial heaven, truthfully.

It's weird. I have internet access (free, too!), a bed to sleep in tonight as opposed to the floor, and I was able to take a shower and find some different clothes to wear. Though what I'm going to wear to bed tonight is a completely different story as most of the rest of my clothes are packed in space bags with the air sucked out. And unless someone wants me to give myself a slight hernia by sucking that much air through a straw, I'm not opening them.

The most important part of this is that I've seen both sides to this story. I've seen the I don't have anywhere to go, and the airport is now home until they figure out how to get me to where I need to go and I've also seen the I have the opportunity to get out of this place for a while, get a shower, sleep in a bed, and generally wander around London until we're supposed to fly. I know which side most would prefer - it's the side I'm currently on. But I've seen both. Done both. And that's been one of those experiences most people should really have.

It's truly how the other half lives.

I'm in London until Wednesday, at the earliest. I'm back with the rest of my student cohorts, and we're planning on seeing a show tomorrow night. Something to pass the time. To keep ourselves occupied and see some of London that we haven't seen before.

And I just found something to sleep in, which just made my night, really. It's the little things right now, like being connected to the internet and being able to call back home. It's things like that right now that make a difference. A big difference, really.

I understand that I'm lucky. I'm in a hotel when I could be spending another night at Heathrow under a blanket on a foam mat on the floor in some corner with my luggage. As it is, I'm going to crawl into a bed and sleep like I'm dead, probably, and hope the bags under my eyes don't get any larger or I'm going to be giving a raccoon a run for his money.

I would love to be home right now, layin' on the couch with the dog or curled up in my own icebox of a room (backside of the house, gets a little chilly in the winter) and wondering if I'm going to be making Christmas cookies with the Smidget, but I'm not. I'm in London - Borough of Westminster, to be exact - and if things go right-side up, I'm leaving on Wednesday to actually head home. If they go pear-shaped, then we're looking at spending Christmas on this side of the Atlantic with some of the alums that we can find in this country.

Bright side of life. Make the most of what you've got when you've got it. Right now, while this might not be ideal, it's better than what it had been, and better than what some still have. That's always a good thing to keep in mind.

Dumbstruck

With the exception of some pieces of fiction, you really haven't heard much from me lately. I can't decide if you guys are missing the snark yet or rolling in the silence. Either way, that temporary peace might have just been shattered.

There's this great organization called Host UK. What happens is if you're a student from another country, you can fill out an application, tell them where you're studying, what you're interested in, and how much you'd be willing to spend on travel, and they put you up with one of their hosts for the weekend. Your host feeds you, gives you a place to stay, and usually sort of shows you around the UK town they live in.

I spent this past weekend in Bath, England. My host was over sixty, and had lost her husband little over a year ago. But that was okay, because she seemed really enthusiastic about hosting and she' had done this plenty of times before. And I didn't think it was a big deal that she was about fifteen minutes late to pick me up, because, and I was looking right at it, traffic was chaotic. I can understand that. That's fine. And our first little trip out to a place called Wells to see the abbey and bishop's palace, that was cool, too. The church was absolutely awesome (if you're still stalking around my Photobucket, I'm working on it, though that seems to be Louise's Famous Last Words, but you know me) and that was a really nice way to start the weekend off. I'd been on a train for three hours, then sat in a car for another half an hour, got out and wandered around an abbey, and then back into the car and we drove to her house, where I would be staying. I had my own bathroom - down the hall toward the kitchen - and I had my own room. And it was nearly the size of my one at home in New York, so it was pretty big. It was really nice. She has a lot to offer these kids that come stay with her - which, from my understanding, are a lot of Chinese students because they come over to England for university a lot of the time.

Cottage pie for dinner followed by a sort of apple cake thing that had been warmed in the oven, and we watched a little TV and talked about what was going to happen the next day. The woman is over sixty. Walking is not her strong point, and you know damn well I'm prepared to hike all over the place if it means I can see all that I can see and do all I can do. So she was just going to drop me off in the middle of Bath, by the abbey and the Roman Baths, and I would catch the two hour tour that was leaving from there. I'd see all sorts of things.

Honestly, it reminded me of when we went to Toronto for class in the spring. Most of Toronto's speakers involved wandering around and looking at social housing, mixed housing, and that sort of thing. In Bath? You looked at Georgian architecture and talked about the heavy Roman influence and how the place had been a spa for the rich and maybe not-so-famous. The Circus was a great piece of architecture (a circle with three roads coming in all equally spaced apart, really a thing of beauty) and the Royal Crescent was nice, too. It's a crescent-shaped building. And, of course, the Roman Baths because that's what made the place famous to begin with. And really, once you've seen all of that, you've really seen Bath.

I wandered through the Roman Baths. They still function - they've actually opened a new spa right behind the Roman Baths that uses the natural hot spring water that bubbles up - but you can't swim in them because, well, the water's green from algae. There's no roof on the thing, so the sunlight hits the water, and the algae grows.

Another interesting point is that the sheets of lead that surround the pool? They're still there, and still watertight. I heard that and I immediately thought of something along the lines of lead poisoning, anyone? But apparently not. And no, it's not much warmer by the water than outside the building.

Right next to the Roman Baths is Bath Abbey. It's a fraction of the size of the Norman church that used to stand there, but it's still impressive. Along the sides of the front door is a Jacob's Ladder, in which there are angels ascending to heaven. I felt really bad for the bottom angels, because they were missing their heads - most likely due to erosion - but everything else was pretty much intact on the outside.

In Bath Abbey, you can go on what's called the Tower Tour. You get to go up into the tower and see the back of the clock face and see the bells. You learn about how they ring them - because, yes, they still have bell ringers, and it's not as easy as it sounds if you want the real deal - and we were actually in the bell room when the clock struck two. The only reason that we weren't deafened was because the mechanical parts hit the bell with a hammer, it doesn't swing like a bell ringer is doing it. If we had been in the room when they - especially the tenner bell - were swinging, you'd kiss your hearing goodbye.

As my host was coming to pick me up at half four (four-thirty), that didn't really leave me a lot of time to find lunch and then get to where she was picking me up, after seeing everything that I had wanted to.

I thought it very appropriate to work on Murphy and Me while in a Irish pub sipping on a pint of Caffrey's and waiting for my BBQ chicken melt. The chips were excellent, the melt not so much, and the beer was, as usual, good.

Once again with my map and on foot, I hoofed it to the William Herschel Museum - and was not very impressed with it, I'll tell you that, and I don't really care that the guy did live in that house - and then was craving something sweet for some reason. Which meant that I found a pub (because I didn't have time to walk all the way back to the Ben and Jerry's by the abbey) and saw that they had Sticky Toffee Pudding.

Heaven in a bowl.

I don't normally eat butterscotch (my dad likes butterscotch pudding, but I won't touch the stuff) but I am a huge fan of Sticky Toffee Pudding, specifically with custard. You have to be careful with that first couple of mouthfuls because you'll burn yourself pretty spectacularly, but after that it's bliss.

I had curry for the first time on Saturday night. It was good (I'm still not a big fan of curry, despite what I told her because, on occasion, a Sagittarius can be tactful) and after watching more DVR'd Rugby than you should probably watch in one sitting (though when Scotland plays, they have bagpipes and music by The Proclaimers) and then she wanted to watch something about America in the fifties and sixties. Something about the American Dream.

And that's kind of where the night went to hell in a handbag.

I'm sitting here struggling how to word this. How to start this.

Yes, I'm a scientist. A chemist, more specifically. I know that the creation of the atomic bomb was a great development in complete science terms. Forget everything but the science. If you look at just that, it was a great advancement. And I like advancements in science; maybe one day science will find a cure for cancer, and that would be awesome.

Now go back and factor everything else about the end of World War II into the equation with that science, and the fallout - literal and figurative - from dropping Fat Man and Little Boy. The understatement of the century would be to say it wasn't good. Thousands of people died, and even more are, in some cases, still suffering the after-affects of that this day. Their parents or grandparents had radiation sickness. Buildings were leveled, people died. Without getting too much into the politics, it was a very bad thing. Understatement? You betcha.

I'm sitting in this armchair and I'm hopin' that we can get off this topic and move on because it's not the greatest, and it's not one of America's finer moments, when my host goes, "That's the best thing that America could have ever done, drop those bombs on Japan."

I was speechless. Absolutely speechless.

It was also a struggle not to say anything because what exactly was I supposed to say to the woman who had taken me into her house for the weekend, fed me, gave me someplace to sleep, and had drove me into town? So, and this was by no means easy, I kept my mouth shut and hoped she wouldn't say anything else along those lines. Mostly because I was so infuriated that she had such a disregard for human life and the lasting effects of something of that magnitude, but also because, wouldn't you think something like that might offend someone?

I was still pretty mad by the time we hit the sixties in the program. And they got talking about homosexuality, how there was a beach in California that was known as the Queer Beach, and this guy was talking about a sort of pseudo-affair thing that he'd had, and the next thing I know she's pressed he fast forward button (she'd recorded the program) with a, "Too much talk about homosexuality."

Still sittin' in my armchair, grindin' my back teeth together.

Then she starts to speak about the dissolution of marriages and how homosexuality undermines what's a natural marriage. How it leads to depression in both the parents and the children. Basically, how pushing homosexuality has destroyed natural families.

I was downright livid by the time she pushed play, but also trying to figure out what exactly I should do. Again, I was in this conundrum of, do I say something? If I do, what do I say? How do I say it? Or is this another occasion to just keep my mouth shut?

Actually, what I really wanted was out of there. I honestly didn't want to be in the house anymore. If she had been closer to the city of Bath, closer to other places to stay, I would have packed my belongings in the night and left because I did not want to be there anymore. And I debated getting up and leaving the room. Then I thought if I did that, she'd want to know why I'd done it, and I didn't really want to talk about it.

Mostly because I didn't want to offend the person that had opened their home to me for the weekend.

It was a struggle for me to enjoy the rest of my time there. There wasn't much left, truthfully, and even though I went with her to her church - St. Mary's - and I was respectful of the service (because I do have manners and I know how to behave) I just really wanted out. I wanted to be as far away from this woman as I could possibly be. I just wanted to get on the train and go back to Wales and, honestly, never see her or hear her again.

At one point I was counting minutes.

Bath is a nice city. There's not really much to do other than shopping, but there's some pretty neat pubs and shops and architecture to look at. And now, honestly, I'm struggling to not let the last half of my interactions with this woman color the entire trip for me. It's difficult.

Gimme a week and ask me what I think of Bath. By that point I might not be so pissed off.

Flat Back Lookin' Up

I found Narnia last night!

Just kidding. Still haven't found it, though the wardrobe seems to be shrinking in size, rather than getting bigger. Also, just kidding, though there is less space now that my package - parcel, excuse me - has arrived from home. Which means that I have more clothes and more outfits to add to my rotation. I was getting pretty crafty in switching things up, though, mathematically, there's only so much rearranging of a set number of outfits that you can do in a week.

Anyway. These past couple of weeks of being all day in a school have really dredged up some, well, interesting (if nothing else) memories from my own days of high school. I'm in a primary school, so you'd think I'd be remembering elementary, yes? Well, not so much. Nothing overly exciting happened back then, really. I mean, there was kindergarten graduation (that same spring, while I graduated kindergarten, my sister graduated high school), I started playing soccer, and I generally formed the impression that I'm not really head over heels about math.

Fourteen years later I still don't like math. But, since I've done my required two semesters for my major - as well as my required two semesters of physics, which I'm on the fence about most days - it doesn't really bug me anymore.

What's sort of eating away at my brain are the memories that are dredging themselves up from high school. Most notably from junior and senior year when you more or less figure out quite a few things. Or try to, at least. I figured out junior year that I'm not a big fan of pre-calculus, but that I did miss having Spanish in my schedule. Also figured out that while I do enjoy American history, having to take band independently was not as fun as it sounds (and you should have heard the concerts - one lost first/second clarinet comin' up) and physics was at times the bane of my existence.

Which I just realized I repeated my experience last year in college.

What I figured out senior year is that it is possible to make yourself go more or less batshit crazy within the first month of school; that half-assed taking independent Spanish isn't what you think it is (and procrastinating on Immersion again is still not a good idea); and both calculus and economics suck while taking the last regents (literally) of the year - and your high school career - and thinking you are going to scrape by with a 67 (but really get a 98 and wonder which body orifice you pulled that out of) is just ballistic.

I could probably do a series titled What I Learned in High School and not all of it would be academic. Because, seriously, who really learns anything about economics when you're trying to do calculus at the same time? It's like an overload for your brain.

And for the record, though I took AP/ACE calculus, I did not take the AP test. I wasn't sure I was going to do well on it, and therefore didn't want to pay $86 to get a 2. And wound up taking it again in college for my major. Funny how those things work.

I think back to senior year - which is what I really remember best in terms of, well, almost everything - and remember the multiple days of wanting nothing more than to whack my head against the desk, running on five hours of sleep, taking a science class with the sophomores, and the ever-loving Spanish phrase, Como se dice.... which means, How do you say.... and then you insert one long English sentence in there and call it good. Oh, and actually attending band practice was a plus.

Why am I going through a backlog of memories? Might have something to do with the notice I got from the CGE staff about registration. Yes, you might be abroad and yes, you might be traveling that week, but do remember that you need to register with the rest of your classmates during your day even when you're on the other side of the Atlantic.

Which means email conversations with both my advisers (my teaching certificate professor will let me know what's going on when I get back to campus in January, because that's how we roll as a program) because my copy of my major declaration sheet is currently in the box of stuff that crawled out of my desk at the end of last year that resides under my bed. Great place for it. The upside to all of this is that my adviser has a copy and it was crafted around the idea that I was going abroad this term (the one we're currently in). 'Tis wonderful.

I'm probably going to be the only junior in an intro geoscience class. Ah, well, when you think about it, been there, done that.

Bad Road

I'm an honest person. A very honest, very open, empathic personality.

Occasionally it comes back to bite me in the ass. Hard.

This past week has been quite rough on your favorite (I know, I'm assuming a lot here) Sagittarius. It's a combination of lots of little things - and some not so little things - and everyone has a tipping point. It fluctuates a little (not wildly, otherwise that would mean some pretty big issues) and I tipped over it yesterday. Yesterday night, in fact (which, if you read that and you're slightly confused, yesterday night is also synonymous with the phrase 'last night') and it wasn't pretty. It's never pretty when someone who's usually completely with it completely freaks out and dissolves into tears for an hour while on the phone with her mother. At eleven, no less. On a Thursday.

And I'd be lying through my teeth if I said that everything was back to where it should be. For the most part, it is.

I have a legitimate to-do list in which I write things down, give them a number (not for ordering purposes, just because things should be numbered - it's a quirk), and cross them off when I'm done with them. I've used my planner more this year than I have ever in my life, including high school where they gave us one at the beginning of the year. Then again, it also doubled as our hall passes, and they greatly frowned upon you if you had no pass in the hall or came to class without your planner. I have a planner. I write things in it. I used red ink for the important things - major due dates, major events, things like that. Regular homework (you can find my physics homework in black ink) is a different color and not all capped. And my to-do list is folded in half (both pages - we hit page two earlier this week) is under the binder clip holding the front pages, the weeks already gone by, together so when I open it it's on the current week. It's hectic, messy, and largely reflective of the girl that keeps it.

Girl here is deliberate. I don't feel very much like a young woman - a young, twenty-year-old woman - one her own at college and striking it out on her own feet at her own pace and time. I don't feel much like that at the moment, even though today is, as my mother told me yesterday night it would be, amidst my tears, better. I'm frustrated, overwhelmed, and the part of me that's never quit anything in my life no matter how badly it's going is trying to silence the part of me that keeps screaming, You can't do this!! Silencing that voice is like trying to silence that voice in the back of your head that says, your tummy doesn't feel well today. Where's those pants, the big ones...and the sweatshirt and t-shirt, because your love handles look exceptionally large today, too.... Those voices live together, and when one starts clamoring, the others aren't far behind and before you know it, your self-esteem drops through the floorboards and the pints of Ben and Jerry's at Wegman's start lookin' real good.

I've already had my pint for the week. Wednesday. Em and I really need a RENT night, so I biked to Weggie's, got three pints (the cashier, a guy about my age, just more or less looked at me, asked me how I was, and then looked at the amount of ice cream. I merely replied it was a 'rough week') and then went back to the house where she lives (she lives in a theme house) and we walked to the corner of Jackson (that feels like a second home to her, dare I say like the one in Townsend does) and proceeded to bask in each other's company and the music, story, and love of RENT. Thank you, Jonathan Larson. And thank you, Ben and Jerry.

I'm going to point out that we laughed ourselves silly when Collins first appeared, after getting mugged, and burst into the loft with a cheery, "Merry Christmas, bitches!" around a cigar. We backed it up three times, at least. Same with Mark's first twitch-dancing in Tango Maureen.

Now fast-forward to Thursday. The paper proposal went fine (I changed my entire topic from poverty to education, and should mention that we have been denied access to schools in Toronto, cited as, 'invasive' and therefore most of my 'research' is going to come from any and all random conversations I have with people on the streets) but the test - the retaking of the second exam - started off good.

And rapidly went downhill like a freakin' landslide of monumental proportions. Village-leveling, even.

It's frustration. It's frustration and self-doubt, those two things that constantly follow you everywhere and that you can't seem to get rid of. It's not that I don't know the material. I can tell you what's going to happen, what you should do, and I can do it on the homework just fine. Put me in a room with a test and I, for lack of a better way to phrase it, freak the fuck out. I don't know why. I just do. And, yesterday started off great - rolling along through the multiple choice, doing just fine and dandy - and then that first question that you're not sure of pops up. Then you start to doubt if you know it well enough, because the next one seems a little trippy. From there, everything snowballs ridiculously, and there's really nothing you can do about it, but sit there, swear silently in your head, try not to look at the cute guy further on down the row that you've somehow developed a ridiculous crush on, and before you know it, it's been three hours and you and another girl are the only ones left. And by that point, I was so frustrated that I wanted to cry, my calculator had died, and I wanted nothing more than for the floor to open up and swallow me whole. Test and everything.

Which led to the call home and freaking out, with much crying and sniffling, and I need to wash my one long-sleeved shirt before I wear it in public again, and Mama being Mama.

It's one thing to tell someone that you have enough faith in them for them to get the help that they need, and quite another to finally tell yourself that you can't go on the way you're going and that you need assistance. What we figured is that because the housing for next year, due to the fact that I'm going abroad is a little up in the air, that's been eating at me, in the back of my mind. I don't want to end up living somewhere in which I don't know my roommate, if I have one, or if I sign with someone in a quad, don't know the people I'm living with. That being said, there's also the frustration of not knowing what to do in order to actually meet these people going abroad in the spring, and the whole housing process in general. It's not like last year when I was looking for a single, and ran up two more floors and kind of scoped out, after the fact, where my room was and even looked at it because I knocked on the door of the girl living there. I knew what I was doing, what options I had. I don't know any of that, at the moment. And that's something that's probably been bugging me.

Another big, big issue is the freaking out about the tests. That's most likely not something the CTL (Center for Teaching and Learning, of which I'm not going back if I don't have to, simple as that - I thought it was maybe just multiple choice tests, and walked out of there feeling less intelligent than I was and like I hadn't accomplished anything) can fix, but probably anxiety related. And the way to fix that is to see someone at the Counseling Center.

Which, naturally, brings up a lot of internal conflicts.

The first, of course, being, I've got no problem telling someone who needs that extra person to talk to see someone. When it comes to yourself? You really have to tamp down every misconception you have, and a good part of your pride, too, because you need the help. I'm not going crazy in any aspect of my life other than the fact that there is something wrong when I sit down to a test. Some part of me that simply panics and goes blank, and gets frustrated. Something that I haven't been able to fix on my own, but that I need assistance with. So I have an appointment. It was really hard to do, but this can't go on. This disconnect between knowing the material - liking it, too - and shitty test scores can't go on. It's not good for my stress level - which is probably why my face looks like Louise a la middle school, again, and I'm really impressed that I haven't seriously started itching because of my psoriasis - and something that just keeps weighing you down no matter how you try to fix it on your own.

I'm not going to lie because there's part of me that's twitching sporadically at the thought of having an appointment at the Counseling Center, but if it's going to make things better (thinking and comparing back to surgery because nobody's really sure what's going on in there), then you hold your tears, let go of your pride a little, and reach out because it's what you need.

My very wise friend, who was lying face-down on the quad as I walked out of class earlier, told me, You can keep going on your own because you've always done it, alone. Or you don't have to do it alone.

It was hard. It was really hard to walk in there, and tell the secretary that you think you need to talk to someone because this whole freaking out about tests is not good. And that's that. Mama said last night that there was help available, and that all I had to do was reach out a little. People are willing to help; you just have to swallow enough times and allow them to. It's not saying that you can't do it on your own, it's just that you don't have to do it on your own.

Things are in a sort of fragile equilibrium at the moment. Taking little bites over a longer period of time (Mama) will help space everything out, and that way, when it comes time when everything is due, there is no freaking out. It's sound advice. Difficult for a recovering procrastinator, but sound advice.

Right now? Decompression is much needed. Which is why I'm going to spend the time until my appointment with Residential Education to talk about my housing for next spring working on some of my writing. Which, as usual, comes back at the most inopportune moments (not that I'm really complaining) and I've really made some headway with working on the beginning/editing slowly Sage, which is really due for an update. That, and maybe I'll get around to making more changes with The Crossing. And speaking of that, there's good news to come out of this whole emotional hurricane - I know where I'm going in the composition book. I know where things are heading from this last set of page-break stars. And I'm really excited for that.

Things are a little difficult. What's important to remember through everything is that there are people who love you, and care about you. And want you to do well, and look at the bigger picture when the details get overwhelming. Look at the bigger picture of coming home, going back to work, and seeing a smile on a little face. Normalcy in a way that's intimately familiar, and makes sense on a bone-deep level. See the bigger picture of what's in the Fall, and the adventures just waiting to happen, the new friendships waiting to blossom, and the chance to wander in a completely new place. It's entirely possible to drown in the details when living in the bigger picture, and you can't throw yourself a safety line. Or if you can, you're damn talented. I'm not that talented.

So now there's a bit of a plan, the repeated mantra of You can do this, and the reminder that there's a place that's always behind you. It ain't easy, but that's just life.

And this...well, this was a reminder. At exactly the right time, from someone who always knows what I need and when I need it.

"Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 'Pooh?' he whispered.

'Yes, Piglet?'

'Nothing,' said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. 'I just wanted to be sure of you.'"

—
A.A. Milne

How It Goes

Last year, a month or so before my sister's birthday, she sent me a link to an L.L. Bean bag that she really, really wanted. Because I know when to take a hint, and because I'm a good sister, I got her the bag as a birthday gift, and kept the travel coffee mug that I had originally gotten her to engrave with the name of the college that we went to for myself, and actually, this year, I use it regularly. Anyway, I opened my campus mailbox on day and found that I had a package, from Heather, and it was a cloth-covered mead notebook with a ribbon for a place holder. Inside the front cover was a simple note that read:

Molly Louise
Just because. You know how it goes.
By the way - I ADORE my new bag!! [There is a smiley face made from the exclamation points.] It Rocks.
See you soon.
LOVE YOU!
Heather

I taped that note inside the front cover so that whenever I opened it, I would see it, read it, and know that my sister is always with me. As for the notebook itself - I debated having it for a poetry book, and instead, actually, because it seemed fitting, settled on using it for a journal. I don't remember to empty my head every day; there are some things that need to rattle around for a little more, ferment a little better before they get dumped out. There are occasions when I update regularly [much like the blog, if you could see that comparison] and there are times when I forget that it's there. There is a side of me in those pages that is deeper, and a little more personal than the blog that I'm currently typing [and you're currently reading]. And that's the way it should be.

However, there are times when I bare as much of myself as possible [not in that sense, thank you very much] and give people a little more depth to me that I might otherwise not let you see. Then again, that's probably just me.

I actually got this idea from Connie, over at The Young and the Relentless, which was inspired by her Connie Diaries, which are snippets of her younger days from (I'm assuming) her diary.

I've given you snippets about what happened in Philadelphia last summer, but I haven't actually given you the whole story. And, as a prelude to a post that's still rattling around in my head that might take a little while to actually hash out, I wanted to share with you something more personal, and slightly out of the archive. So, instead of me telling you what happened in Philly, and making it all nice and pretty and snarky in places, I'm going to give you the "original" version. Which, for the most part, is nice and pretty and snarky in all the right places naturally. But you get the idea.

And maybe kickstart a new series in the process. No idea about that, though, because I don't censor my language as much in the journal as I do on here, mostly because I should be [except on occasions like this] the only person who reads said journal] and I try to keep the blog as family-friendly [teenie-bopper-and-up-friendly] as possible. I try, which isn't the same as succeeding, but I do try and for the most part, haven't failed epically yet. Yay! Points for the home team.

Oh, and anybody playing with the idea of keeping a journal or a diary? Do it. Find yourself a comfortable place to write things [I'm talking about the book or notebook, and if you're like me and can't write on a blank, lineless page without slanting, then get one with lines, there's no shame] because it's a marvelous thing to have to track your emotional and personal trials, tribulations, and growth. Also, those vacation memories you have, the stories that don't necessarily correspond to the pictures, this is how you remember them. Sometimes I wish I had done a better job of writing about things while I was in Hawaii, New Zealand, and Australia, but, I was twelve at the time and it didn't seem like that big a deal. And who knows? Twenty years from now, if I ever have kids [or grandkids, which is a really scary thought] they can read about the adventures [the good ones and the no-so-good ones] that I had when I was their age [or a little older]. Might even be a trip down Memory Lane worth strolling someday.

The Point: Keep some sort of journal or diary. Trust me, it's a good thing.

So, [trying to get back on topic here and failing miserably, as usual] here's the low-down on Philly, and maybe the start of something a little different and a little special. Just because, well, you know how it goes.

This was written the following morning from when I was actually supposed to fly home. Names of the airports that I should have been flying into have changed ['cause, you know, I'm slightly paranoid] but everything else has been left the same as the original entry. And I think that's all the stage-setting that you'll need.The name of my job has been abbreviated. And that, I believe, is the last service message that you should need. And yes, usually the morning after a stressful, oh-my-goodness-am-I-ever-going-to-get-home-I-just-wanna-see-my-mama-and-sleep-in-my-own-bed night is brighter and a little better. It also opens a period of time for reflection. Or sufficient ranting. You pick.

August 1, 2009 8:11 am, Philadelphia, PA

As you can see I never made it home. There's a reason.

The woman at the service counter never took my name and put it on the Ipthama list. So that wasn't an option. I go back to the Epthama gate and they keep moving that back. Now, instead of leaving at 8:50, they leave at 11:15. And I'm not guaranteed a seat. After all the people with seats have sat, she starts calling [names] mine. She not only butchers it, she doesn't say the entire thing. So I go and tell her this, and she says go. There were 2 people ahead of me, and they sat and the flight attendant looks at me and says, "Sorry sweetie, I'm out of seats." I get off the plane and they realize that someone got on who wasn't supposed to. I was not about to pull someone, already sitting, off a plane. I have more...no idea what I have but I couldn't. I wouldn't feel right. Even though I just wanted to go home.

I got a distress form from the airport, took a shuttle to a Holiday Inn, stood around some more in line, and got a room.

So, now I'm writing from the 10th floor of a Holiday Inn in Philly. I probably look like shit, I'm most likely not awake, and I'm hungry. My flight now leaves for Ipthama, at 12:15 this afternoon. I don't know how long I'll be in the air, don't know when I'll land, and I definitely don't know if I'm going to work tonight. My mom has to call C.W. and tell them I'm still in Philly.

And since my stomach is making noises, I'm going to feed it. And I don't care if it's white bread.

Still no idea WTF my luggage is.

Did I mention that I can throw a stone and hit the stadium of the Philadelphia Phillies?

Stupid

I feel sufficiently stupid today. It's not a pleasant feeling.

And really, nobody in their right mind likes to feel stupid. It's just something that happens, usually (hopefully) through no fault of our own devices. It's a crappy place to be, really, because your self-esteem and self-worth drops right through the floor. I'm not even going to attempt to say that I am impervious to this sensation because that would be a flat-out lie, and I try to do this thing where I don't lie to myself, or to others. (See previous post for the defining characteristic of this Sagittarius being that she has foot-in-mouth syndrome almost every time she says something.)

The reason that I feel stupid? Microsoft Excel.

I can do numerous things in Word. Mostly, I use it to type, and occasionally, before I had a crash-course in Microsoft Publisher during my sophomore year of high school in an advertising and marketing class (Never. Again.) used it to do some pretty cool things by way of making posters and other things of that nature.

Excel? I'm about as clueless as they come and I'm not ashamed to admit it. There just hasn't been that much need for me to know how to use the little squares and things, and do calculations, and other stuff, and yeah, I'm going to say that I have no idea what I'm doing.

At this point in my life, I have stumbled, bumbled, bumped, jumped, and BS-ed my way through enough of Excel for me to make some graphs, do some tables, and understand a little about calculating things in there. I understand that the Econ department is a regular slave to the Excel gods, but do I look like an Economist to you? Nope. Probably because I don't have the patience to sit there and number-crunch all damn day. Which isn't saying that that's all that Economists do, but it's a fair share of it, to some degree. They have to - My Two Cities professor (the Economist) gets absolutely giddy over mass amounts of numbers.

I don't have an issue with numbers, but trying to format them into Excel is driving me up. The. Freaking. Wall.

And worse, it's making me feel stupid. Not to mention frustrated as hell. Especially because my hunch is that a majority of my lab grade - especially in Chemistry - is dependent on this information and the analysis provided by a damn computer program, and how well I can operate it.

Granted, I'm better now than I was say, this morning, but it's still a long way from where I need to be. I feel behind and incompetent, and I am really not a fan of feeling this way.

So, Louise. Get off your duff and get some help with this. Learn this.

And, oh inner critic of mine, would you suggest that I find the time to devote to learning the wonders of Microsoft Excel? Maybe between the time that I come back from teaching and then going to class, while I eat my breakfast? Or maybe when I'm just sitting around on my rear end because I don't have anything else to do. I've got plenty of time on my hands, right? Plenty of time and space to play with? Sure. And that's why I want to fall asleep halfway through my first lecture before my caffeine has a chance to kick in, isn't it? Why when I leave the room in the morning I don't have a chance to come back until at least after 5 on good days, and not until 11 on bad ones. Or ones more stuffed than usually.

That explosion right there is frustration, pure and simple. I feel better for having just unloaded that. Is the inadequate feeling still hanging around? Yeah, but it's a little muted now. Is there some hope in the picture? Always. And just by looking at what I've managed to accomplish with the physics lab in the time that I've spent, knowing sort of what I'm doing? That's better. And when you're struggling with something, better is really all that you can hope for, in some cases, and what you strive for in others.

Life is lived by experiences, and with experience comes knowledge. So, in my case, you gotta screw up and fall flat a couple of times before you learn to balance. Until the next curve comes and then you readjust. And you go along and keep readjusting, and wait until you think you've figured something out, and then wham - You're flat on your ass looking up. Then the cycle starts over again.

Once you understand this you're golden.

Things to Know IX

Giving up something for Lent is generally painful. Giving up coffee is somewhat masochistic.

I would like to thank the moron who parked in the Jackson lot, who lives in Potter, and thinks that he really needs to have a never-ending car alarm that goes off at 4 in the morning for 45 minutes. Thank you. I love to be up that early on a regular basis.

My sister sent me a card in our usual funny (lewd) card exchange along with some photos of Mads and the instructions not to cry.

Didn't follow the above instructions.

I have a new follower on Twitter and a new follow here, so, welcome officially to the slight insanity. Hope you brought a helmet.

Drinks are not meant to be ingested through the nasal cavities.

Just missed my mouth and poured tea all over my hand but missed my pants.

I am no Shaun White.

The human ribcage is not meant as a landing pad for snowboarding excursions.

My cat is bigger than my professor's little yippy dog.

My dog would consider said dog as a "snack."

I wore a dress on Saturday to a semi-formal event, left the hair down, and felt like a young woman with confidence - even when walking in high heels.

Louise can't dance....It's more of a flail, really.

The topic of ice cream came up at the dinner table on Saturday - then pints of Ben and Jerry's - then if you could down an entire one by yourself.

I am woman enough to eat an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's in one go. And I'm okay with this.

I also gave up ice cream for Lent.

I am Microsoft Excel Stupid. I find no shame in this.

For the first time (ever, I think) I will be reading aloud to an audience of people that I don't know, and who probably don't know me, but will have to see probably on a regular basis, things of my own creating for Open Mic Night.

I'm rather terrified of the previous statement.

If I'm feeling daring, I will ask the Fizziks Boy if he's going to the Open Mic.

If the previous happens, I may have a heart attack at age twenty. Or at least actually grow an ulcer.

I'm really bad at remembering to take my OTC stuff on the weekends at a fairly normal time (i.e. before midnight).

Ragtime is still currently kicking my ass to next week and back. Along with Bonfire of the Vanities and The Land of the Lost Souls: My Life on the Streets will join in the proverbial kicking as well.

I have a physics exam tomorrow in which I am allowed one 3x5 notecard with which to write anything that I want. Physics information would be useful.

I am incredibly tired at the moment, and tonight we are watching movies with a Spanish flavor for BIDS, and if there are not subtitles, then I am most likely going to wind up snoring. Which would be rather embarrassing.

Merely Mortal

In this day and age the media is dominated by futuristic movies like Star Trek, The Book of Eli, and that truly nawful 2012. On the other hand, media and pop culture is also dominated by something a little darker, a little edgier. Vampires. I believe that most audiences like the ideal that vampires give us - namely, living forever. Becoming immortal. And while there are other ways to become immortal (like being a great writer, for example - Poe, Tolkien, F. Scott Fitzgerald), we, as a society really like vampires because they are a way to cheat death.

This, however much we like to dream about, simply cannot happen.

"Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold and die." Neil Kleinbaum wrote this line as dialogue for John Keating in Dead Poets Society and it's the same line that has been running my head all day. Or variations of it.

A death in the family is never easy, including one so sudden. The life partner of my grandmother by marriage passed away this morning, and the rest of my day has been filled with tears, memories, and gathering in support.

And, it's quite ironic because I'm usually sitting behind my laptop, composed and with some sort of inkling as to where my posts are going, and I quite frankly can't seem to make much sense of this. I think what's really shaken me so much today isn't so much the death aspect (though, trust me, I'm still working on getting a handle on that since it's an inevitable part of life) but what do you do when you see your father cry? Fathers are heralded as the foundation of a family (traditionally, though I know a few different cases that can blow that out of the water) and my father is a man who is not easily rattled. The house could quite possibly cave in, but as long as everybody was fine and safe, he'd look at it and go, "At least we've got a wood supply." I think I truly can't articulate how difficult this was for me because my mind can't wrap itself around this. And I've been trying all day.

I think I'll leave it at that because I've been trying to form something relatively coherent all day, and I'm still failing miserably, and the only thing that I can think to end on is that when something like this happens, we are forcibly reminded of our own mortality, and the question that we ask ourselves at the end of our years: What have I done with my life?

When you're twenty, in college, going abroad, and trying to figure everything out, you get blindsided with: What exactly am I doing?

And you realize, you're still trying to figure it out. And you will continue to try and figure it out until you confuse yourself and finally say to hell with it and just live.

Spring Semester Ahoy!

[I am well aware that I have used the phrase "Ahoy" in two posts now, and I know that you'll forgive me.]

So, after an e-mail yesterday that quite frankly scared the crap out of me in terms of my schedule (they took one of my classes from a two day a week meeting and went to three a week) and thinking I was screwed because of my labs, I have for you my complete schedule for Spring 2010. However, this does not include the placement that I have to do for my education seminar, because I don't know where I'm going yet. Other than that, feel free to comment on how much I'm going to be running from one end of campus to the other on a daily basis.

Monday:
Chem 280 10:10 - 11:05
Stagecraft 11:15 - 12:10
2 Cities 12:20 - 1:15
Chem Lab 1:30 - 5:00

Tuesday:
Education Seminar 7:30 - 8:30
Physics II 10:20 - 11:45
Ice Skating 11:55 - 1:20
Physics Lab 6:00 - 9:30

Wednesday:
Chem 280 10:10 - 11:05
Stagecraft 11:15 - 12:10
2 Cities 12:20 - 1:15
Stagecraft Lab 1:30 - 5:00

Thursday:
Physics II 10:20 - 11:45
Ice Skating 11:55 - 1:20
2 Cities 3:00 - 3:55

Friday:
Chem 280 10:10 - 11:05
Stagecraft 11:15 - 12:10

And this is where you say, Louise, you're absolutely nuts. And don't forget to wear your walkin' shoes.

Split Directives

Quite honestly, if I want to have any inkling of what's going on in the outside world, I'm going to either turn on CNN or pick up the newspaper. I am probably not going to turn to a blog by a college student that offers me bits and pieces in secondhand form.

Now, I'm not knocking my fellow collegiate bloggers. Really, I'm not. And I'm all for collaboration. I mean, just look at TTB. That's a wonderful collaboration between me and my sister. [And if my cousin sweet talks us a little bit and updates a little more often, we might let him have a slice of the proverbial pie - bad pun fully and completely intended]

A personal blog - and I define person in this case as something that has your name to it, that is instinctively and inherently yours - should be about you, because you feel that your life is either so wonderful that everybody needs to pay attention, or so dreadfully boring and mundane that people are going to get laughs when you share that you almost fell down the stairs while trying to ogle the guy on the third floor and didn't really watch where you were going. Which, is a completely hypothetical situation because the guy that I like doesn't live in the same building as me.

A personal blog really shouldn't regurgitate news unless it is something you really feel passionate about or that has some immediate impact on your life.

And, hot damn, if I had my name scrawled across the top of the page, I'd love to have my own staff of writers to go along with it.

But, in a way, that would defeat the purpose of it being a personal blog. And it would be kind of creepy, because, honestly, they would probably have to live with me to understand the sort of shit that happens in my day, because while it's probably normal and completely uninteresting to you people, I find it somewhat hilarious some days, simply because that's the way that I am.

I guess the point I'm attempting to badly articulate [it's late, I'm procrastinating on my lab report] is that if it's going to be a collaboration, give it a collaborative name, at least. Give it a name that doesn't single anybody out, even if you are the administrator [seriously, who does that unless you're actually getting paid to maintain it, and then yeah, it makes sense - which, by the way, where's somebody handing me a paycheck for writing a certain amount of times per week?] so that it gives a feeling of unity. It's all well and good to be at the top of the proverbial food chain, but really....If you put your name on it, you might as well just own up to it.

Which, by no means, is insinuating that I'm the queen of blogging.

I have neither hit a hundred posts nor been at this for a year, but I think that my writing speaks for itself. I write well, I keep it real and down-to-earth [do you expect me to be anywhere else, really? It's finals, people] and you can find a number of different types of writing if you look through the older posts - memories, family, embarrassing moments, bits of fiction [from my novel or otherwise] including a mini-series creation-thing that was spawned because I might as well have married Murphy because I keep getting all his luck. Not quite the same as marrying for money [which I don't think I could do if I tried because, frankly my dear, I just don't give a damn about that kind of stuff] but it's pretty easy to see where good ol' Murph and I stand.

Which reminds me that my Focus now shares the same name. Coincidence? I think not.

The point with what you can find on my blog is simple. You can find me. You can find Molly Louise in each and every one of those posts, and I don't have to cite where I found them since they come from myself. These are little extensions of myself. Including the title. Which, if some of you aren't familiar with your astrological sign (Zodiac), then you might be a little confused.

My birthday is November 25. My astrological sign is a Sagittarius - a centaur. A centaur is a half-man, half-horse...thing [I'm at a loss for how to describe it after that] and is usually depicted in mid-stride with a bow. The Sagittarius has its own constellation in the sky [just like Scorpio and the Big Dipper (well aware the latter one is not an astrological sign, but damn, wouldn't that be cool if it was?)] and, personality wise, people who are under the Sagittarius are said to have certain traits.

One of them is "wandering feet."

I love to travel. Absolutely adore it. That's partly why I'm complete ecstatic to be going to Wales next Fall, and why I was absolutely giddy over the summer with traveling to Massachusetts. I like being in new places and exploring them. Coming from a tourist town, you'd think I wouldn't be all that happy to be doing the tourist-thing, but I really do have a penchant for looking out of the window of plane, bus or car [haven't ridden by train yet, but never fear, I will rectify that sometime soon, hopefully] and wondering Where the hell am I? It's a good feeling. Which I am now going to modify with this: That feeling is absolutely fabulous as long as you have even an inkling of where your destination is. Being completely lost, while that's probably an adrenaline rush of sorts, is not conducive for happy traveling. Neither is being stuck in the Philadelphia airport for twenty-one hours, but I digress at this point, as usual.

The Wandering Sagittarius - That's me. And in this blog so aptly named, you will find bits and pieces [occasionally whole chunks] of me. I don't have a team of writers of writers at my disposal, I'm definitely not getting paid for this, and I'm not doing this for fame and fortune.

And let me point this out right now.

I do not write for fame and fortune.

I write because I love to, and I share because I want to bring other people the joy that writing brings me. My dream is not to be a bestselling author because of the royalty fees, but because I want to walk into a bookstore [specifically a Barnes&Noble], grab myself some Starbucks coffee, and wander through the shelves until I can find my book sitting on the shelf. That is what I want. Anything after that is extraneous.

I write with my sister over at TTB because we both like to write, and we like to share one part of all that ties our family together - baking. Love and baking.

The Wandering Sagittarius [the blog] exists to give a perspective. A unique, college-stressed, science-major perspective on life, love, family, and anything and everything in between. Occasionally the lines get crossed, blurred, and suddenly sometimes disappear. In the end, everything turns out, sometimes not nicely, exactly, but that's life.

So, with something this attached to me, you're not going to hear news from CNN unless it impacts the person currently tapping away on the keyboard while she should be doing her formal chem lab report. And because I'm kind of computer stupid in a way, if I want you to take a look at something, I'll hand you a link to direct your attention.

Bottom line. Group effort = Group name. Even if you're the one in "charge" and you did "most of the work" it's still a group. You still collaborated. Give credit where credit is due, but please, don't name it after yourself if you get regular advice and other things from other sources. That's just tacky. And by regular I mean you have a list of contributors and they have dashes next to their name with what they provide your blog with.

But, Louise. Your sister appears regularly in your blog. Yeah, but she has her own [which I appear in, as well] but that's from her point of view and with her unique writing style. Mine is from my point of view, and my unique writing style. Occasionally, we blend and write things together. Or, she'll write something and I'll write something in return.

And yes, I'm well aware that this way of doing things does not work for everyone. Everyone has their own ideas on how to run a blog, and how they want it laid out, and what they want in it, but...think for a minute.

Original grass to chew or regurgitated cud to suck on?

Moments of Brilliance

Yep. We all have 'em. Unfortunately for me, sometimes my "Moments of Brilliance" aren't quite as....poetic...as they should be.

Take Monday for example.

I took my bike to my last class for the day, and when I got out of class, it was doing a funky rain/snow combination. And, silly, brilliant me, forgets that my brakes don't work when they get wet.

Which is why I was more or less careening around the corner of the library, muttering a litany of "shitshitshitshit" and hint to the guy simply standing there, there really was no need to stare from the moment you noticed me putting my left foot down in the grass to try and slow myself down until I had vanished from your sight around the side of the building. Good to know I provide such wonderful entertainment, free of charge.

By the way, the mustache and hairdo combo this guy was sporting....yikes. But we'll save that for another day.

The 19th Year: Rewind

Um...so, I'm not sure how many of you valued readers and followers out there are aware, but I turn twenty in two days. Yes, twenty, as much as my sister would like to ignore that (I won't tell you how old she'll be, she might get mad at me for that - but the answer is in this blog somewhere, and I know you people can do math) because to her I'll always be her little sister, big-eyed and small in the front seat of mom's car as we drive to Barnes and Noble.

So, I thought I would take the opportunity and share a little bit of what my nineteenth year on this planet has been like.

At three in the morning on November 25, 2008, my friends barged into my dorm room, decorated in the near-dark while I was still in bed, and at least let me climb out of it before they silly stringed me and my half o the room, also throwing silver star confetti into the air. (If my computer weren't asking for me to upload a flash player, I'd put the video here for you to see. You'll just have to make due with a photo or two.)





Julie baked the cupcakes, and they all decorated the windows of my room in spectacular fashion. Yes, there is no "h" in birthday, and there's a thing about visiting Seneca Castle because I was under the impression that there was a legitimate castle in Seneca Castle and then realized it was false advertising.

The rest of the day, once I'd drank enough sparkling apple cider and eaten cupcakes to be properly sugar high, and eventually gone back to sleep, entailed a calculus review thing that I attended, and then it was time to pack up and wait for dad to come get me.

Pretty sure we celebrated my birthday along with celebrating Thanksgiving, which was cool, since we've done it before. Sometimes (like next year, I've looked at it) it actually falls on Thanksgiving, which just means turkey instead of pizza and pie instead of cake (but there's also usually one floating around.)

Here's not one of my bright moments. Before he was my boyfriend, and, now, more importantly, my ex, he was my best friend. Personally, I would love to know who simply goes to dinner about forty minutes from home, but hey, that's none of my business. So, when I get a call from them - "Can we come visit?" - there was just...I couldn't say no. Let me be more specific - I couldn't say no to him. Which, came back to bite me in the ass like it always does because while I thought I had a lid on this, I clearly didn't. They didn't stay long, him and the new girlfriend (eventually fiance - and please, let's not talk about that) yet the effects were a little more than I had bargained for.

It took the reprise of "I'll Cover You" from RENT after "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" Rehearsal for me to sit there on the floor of the auditorium and simply start to bawl my eyes out. There were only three other people there, and I must have sat there and cried for a good forty minutes. Then my friends that were there, bundled me back to my room and from there to Wegman's to get pints of cookie dough ice cream, because that was really the only thing that you could do in that situation. And she stayed with me, through my pint and a half of ice cream (one of my other friends had bought Hagen-Daaz, wondering if it was as good or better than Ben and Jerry's) and drinking our way through bottles of Izze soda. Yeah, so...not one of my better days.

I think the next order of business, the next big thing, was the trip to NYC that I planned.



Well, that my sister and I had planned. Early that semester I had applied for, and been accepted into this career services thing through my colleges called "A Day of Publishing in NYC." It's about as self-explanatory as it looks, no joke. We visited some of the big publishing houses in the industry - McGraw-Hill - they were very amazing to us. One of them is a college alum, and after posing for pictures with him, we heard about how he'd gotten from college to where he was. He explained it was networking. Let me point out right now that the weather outside had been absolutely horrible - a combination snow/rain, downright damn cold, and I was running late. When Heather and I finally found the building, and I got my visitors pass - complete with horrible picture of me in my hat and looking thoroughly bedraggled and like every inch the country child in the big city that I was - I actually shared the elevator with one of the McGraw-Hill Top Dogs. Didn't know it at the time. And of course we're on the fifty-something floor, which means the view out of the floor-length windows of the city skyline is absolutely gorgeous and I'm really tempted to go stand by the window and simply gawk (which, I didn't) and I did my best not to notice that I was wearing my hospital bracelet around my wrist.

Yes, the Day of Publishing was the day before my Surgery.

Not to mention that yes, while I'm wearing my good brown pants with the red pinstripes in them, and my red sweater, I'm also wearing my Converse because when my mother hems pants, she damn well makes sure you won't be walkin' on the bottoms, especially if you're her slightly vertically challenged youngest child.

Which, no joke, the woman (who's also someone very important in the company) and kind of in charge of this whole affair, on their end, notices. And this is the type of woman that if she were to take a "What Animal Are You?" quiz on Facebook it would come back barracuda every time. Somehow, I think she liked me. I think it was the Converse.

From there, it was to Conde Nast.

But the most important one, that was RandomHouse. Now, when I heard that we would be going to RandomHouse, I literally started salivating. I've sent RandomHouse a copy of my coverletter. It's most likely lost in the slush pile that is a commercial publishing house, but a girl can hope, right? And I prepared, too. I took copies of my cover letter with me, and, actually, in the end, it really didn't matter. They guy from the fiction department told me to mail a letter again. And he didn't say that he'd look at it. Which, is understandable, but you'd think you'd at least humor the person in front of you by looking at it. But hey, maybe that's the publishing industry.

On the plus side, I now know what it's like on that side of the letter. I think I'll stick to my side.

Right. So, after having some communication issues about shuttle times back to the hotel, Heather and I finally made it out of the city and back into the Sunfire and headed back toward upstate. That was quite the ride back - we encountered snow and horrible wind up in the Poconos (but you could really see the lights from the ski resort, and the chair lifts, which was cool) and of course I couldn't have anything to eat after midnight, which cut down on the fact that you wanted to fall asleep in the front seat and couldn't even have chocolate to keep yourself awake at one in the morning.

Rolling right into that was the first time in my life that I've ever surgery. I remember laying there in the day surgery ward, and mom was sittin' next to me, holdin' my hand because I was scared. I knew it was supposed to find out what was wrong with me, to see what was making me have pain that I wasn't supposed to have, but how calm can you be when you know someone's going to slice you open and look at your insides?

One of the last things I remember was when they put the first half of the sedative in my IV line, and things kind of blanked out for a minute, and I came to again after they'd somehow gotten me onto the table. And I remember looking up and looking at this guy, who I think was the doctor - I think - and saying, because I could hear Matchbox Twenty playing in the background, "That's Matchbox Twenty" and then the next thing that I remember was that I was waking up a little bit when some of the nurses rolled me on my side and my belly kind of hurt.

I have three scars. Two on the sides, rather near my hips, and one in my belly button where they literally sliced it in two.

I missed the first time that my niece went tubing because I couldn't do anything but walk short distances and sit. I still had internal stitches, by my belly button, and still wasn't allowed to lift anything heavy. Two weeks out of surgery I moved back into my dorm room. Heather had to come with us because I couldn't lift anything. Walking back and forth to class that first week was all that I really could do, and I had to be careful not to slip.

Course at that time, it's the middle of hockey season, so, the Saturday night that first week, two of my good friends and I decided to go to a hockey game. And we're taking the short cut by the BPOE Elks club, down the snowy path, and one of them is in front of me, to catch me, and the other has a death grip on my arm.

Well, we missed the game. It was played at earlier that day at 4, and we arrived in what would be at timely manner for the 7 p.m. game. So, while we were there, we stayed and ice skated. Now, at that point, I had never ice skated in my life. And we did it, me included, with the stipulation that A) We wouldn't tell my mother because I still wasn't allowed do anything but walk, eat, sleep, and go to class and B) That they wouldn't let go of me.

And when we hit the ice and my first thought was, I'm not sick anymore.



Which, didn't actually hold true for as long as I wanted it.

The boyfriend in February.

I brought my best friend from college home for Easter. She met most of my crazy, large, happy family and while I think she was a little shell-shocked at first, I'm pretty sure she had fun.

I pulled two all-nighters for my first year of college. The first was for Relay for Life; Freddy came back for that, and after it was done in the morning, we all went for breakfast at a place downtown. It was awesome. The second was when I was procrastinating on my final history paper. (The second probably wasn't an all-nighter, but close enough.)

I started my own blog, which you fabulous people are currently reading.

There was another medical procedure in my future, um, but this was a little less in its recovery time and more important in its preparation, instead. I never want to turn 50, plain and simple, if I have to do this again. And if I never taste anything lemon-lime flavored again in my life it will be too soon. On the bright side, I got to have lunch afterward, brought home doughnuts, and then crashed in my bed once I got home. Because I had been under conscious sedation - basically you're so out of it but still awake - they don't want you to drive for twenty-four hours. And by drive, they generally assume you'll be driving a car. But, lucky me, that afternoon was my safety procedures meeting at my job. And I work on a dinner boat. And I found out then that I'm the lucky one that gets to drive it, should the captain become incapacitated. So here I am, up in the pilot house, literally hands on the wheel, and going to myself, I can't drive a car but I'm expected to park this 200 plus passenger boat without breaking it? My next thought of course, was, Please Greg, don't let me crash your baby. I don't have the money to cover the insurance. But everything turned out okay. And Greg did most of the actual parking of said boat.

I think of my earlier posts this year, back when I started blogging, was about some of my favorite cruises that far into the season. We were only a week or two in, dealing mostly with high school cruises - senior class dinners (both college and high school) and all-night parties. But one Sunday we had a group from Canada, who had played a concert the night before in Corning. Thinking back, I think I can label this one as my favorite cruise from last summer. They were a Welsh choir (which makes me entirely happy, considering where I'm going in less than a year) and they were just absolutely amazing. Sunday dinner has entertainment, but when our music took a break, the choir started. Of course, we're right in the middle of serving dinner, and next thing you know, this choir who, when they first came on board, started either playing the spoons with their soup spoon and dinner spoon or made hats out of their napkins, starts singing the best version of "Sloop John B" that I have ever heard.

My summer passed kind of quick, and in the middle of July my best friend Em, from Massachusetts, says to me, "We're staying in Martha's Vineyard for two weeks, do you want to come out for one of them?"

Hell. Yes.

So, I get the time off from work, buy my plane tickets after much debate how exactly to get there by myself, and before you know it, mom's driving me to the local airport at an ungodly hour of the morning so I can get on a 5:40 flight to Philadelphia to get my other flight to take me to Boston.

I love to travel. I do. There's just this feeling I get in my chest when I leave the place that I've always been to go explore somewhere new. And when we were taxiing down the runway, it was...it was awesome. Except for the part where I got stuck in Philadelphia for 21 hours on the way back. And ended up getting a flight into Ithaca, instead, while my luggage went to Elmira, and I landed at 1:20, got home at 3 after eating dinner, and went to work at 4. It was great, it was one of the most fun experiences, to be out there in the Vineyard, and to see the island, and go to the beach, get smashed by the waves, and generally just have a blast.




I think this picture explains everything.

Here's another not so fun part of my nineteenth year. I spend two weeks in pre-season soccer, and a few days before the last weekend (school starts on the following Monday) I have this interesting conversation with one of my teammates about the level of play and fitness. Of which, while my heart is undoubtedly there, my body simply isn't. After an almost excruciating talk with the coach, it's decided that I will not play soccer this season, for the first time in fourteen years, and will instead take the season off and work on my fitness, hoping to rejoin the team in January. As soccer has been my life for fourteen straight years, this was not pleasant to handle. My mother, bless her, drove 45 minutes to be here with me that same night because I was not handling it well. And, considering I had a few days to go before I could kind of vanish into the proverbial background, I was not there all-together yet. Despite my first inclination, meals weren't difficult - the team had sort of been informed, and nobody really said anything about it. They went to practice, and I - I took a cycling class and biked all over town, interspersed with running. When school started, I played a little bit with the men's club team, and generally did homework and other things. I still went to games and cheered for the girls, my friends, and it was okay.

Then came the emails where the coaching staff needed to know how many were going to Brazil.

Honestly, I hadn't played that season. I hadn't even been asked to be on the JV sideline, I hadn't been asked to do anything further with the fundraising, and, quite simply, it was more stress than I probably needed. When I really thought about it, I realized that I would gladly trade one week in Brazil for an entire semester somewhere else, specifically somewhere in the UK/continental Europe. Soccer at that level, was simply not an option for me anymore, as painful as it is to recognize and accept. It doesn't mean that I still don't play - I just play for fun, like I've always done. Now it just has a different kind of connotation.

And, now that I have the option of hindsight, I can see that everything worked out in the end. I tried out for the campus production, Eurydice, got cut from that, and then tried out for the community theater show. I made that. I got to be part of the first performance in the new community center's black box theater. I made new friends, had new experiences, and learned something a little different. You might think I'm trying to convince myself that I'm okay, and maybe I am. But this is the direction that I've veered into, and it's working. And intramural soccer is coming up, so I'll have something else to do, too.

It's no secret that I'm in the teaching program. And, actually, I taught my very first lesson last Thursday, November 19th. I taught covalent bonding to 28 impressionable Regents chemistry students, who, were very well-behaved at the time. I was incredibly nervous, but it turned out quite well, in the end. And, I think, they got it. Which is enough to make anybody happy.

This past Sunday (yesterday, actually) my family had my birthday party because we're traveling to my cousin's for Thanksgiving and it was the best day to do it. Which, among the hilarity that ensues whenever we have a family get together, what I come away with, most memorably (other than my niece helping me open my presents) is

"I was so pissed I needed a torch to find my crumpet in the telly." (Which, if you know some phrases/words in British, you should find this quite entertaining)

Which brings me to now. November 23. In two days, at 10:25 p.m., I will turn 20 years old. In a sort of honor to that, I'll do a quick run-down of my favorite memories from my 19th year, in case there was so much text in this one that your head was swimming three paragraphs in (and there may be more photographs, too!):



+My friends bought me the 12-scooper from Friendly's after my no-dairy week when the doctor's were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. They then assisted me in eating it.

+A crazy trip to NYC with my sister - and a badass road mix CD from my brother-in-law that, every time we hear certain songs, think of that trip specifically

-Surgery

+Ice skating for the first time

+Almost making Dean's list first semester of first year

-The trip to Greece (NY) to get sets, also in which Steve tipped his car

+The hilarity that was "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown"

+Reconnecting with friends while seeing Star Trek for the first time (the new one)

+Traveling to see my best friend and getting stuck somewhere on my own for the first time

+Legitly keeping a journal



+Watching Madaline in the Lake

-The idea that an exboyfriend of mine would be working with me over the summer

+Getting up 5 days a week and working out at 6 in the morning

I think this video, and this song, embodies the idea that life is a journey, a hard one, sometimes, but a journey nonetheless and that, despite what it might try to throw at you, it's still the only place that you'd rather be.

Well, as per usual, I don't really know what the hell I'm doing in terms of trying to put something here, so I'll just put the link. And damn it, Heather, you need to at least listen to it! It's my birthday, humor me. "I'm Alive" - Kenny Chesney, ft Dave Matthews

And here is where I freely admit my love of country music. There, I said it. It should have been obvious, but yes, it's now in print.

So...now that we've recapped the 19th year - here's to this new one coming up, and to the next twenty, whatever they may bring.

[I would like to thank everyone in my life and those from whom I borrowed the pictures from (Facebook, most likely) and thanks to my family for simply being as amazing as you are. Thank you.]