Through the Looking Glass

My first legitimate college paper for my first history class was done via my first academic all-nighter in the lounge outside my first dorm room and I ate nearly an entire package of Oreos by myself. I was also pretty damn sure I was going to fail my upcoming Chem 110 exam, and then there was also exploratory abdominal surgery to look forward to over winter break.

Good news was that I didn't fail my exam, surgery went fine, and I later went on to graduate with a BA in chemistry.

During my sophomore year I wrote a blog post titled Definition. In that moment I not only felt beautiful, but looked it. At least to me. As someone who had played over a decade of competitive sports having a positive body image was, sometimes, difficult to manifest. I later read this same post aloud in front of a room full of my peers - while wearing that same flannel shirt - during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. I did some tabling for NEDAW, too, as one of my good friends used to have an eating disorder. All of those involved worked hard that week putting up sticky notes with positive messages on bathroom mirrors, showing how out of proportion a life-size Barbie is, having an open mic night, and much, much more.

The bottom line is that women, men, people in general come in all sizes and shapes. There are those who fight constantly to look in the mirror and find one good thing in a sea of negativity.

Which makes it frustrating beyond words when Fat Shaming Week actually becomes a thing.

I'd like to be kidding. Unfortunately, I'm not.

To the men at Return of Kings fat shaming is not only acceptable, but something that must be done. In a recent post about the success of their week, cultural blogger and RoK creator Roosh writes: "Fat shaming is less about bullying individual fat people than reaffirming the fact that obesity culture is not okay in America, and attempts to brainwash people of that fiction must be immediately be destroyed with logic, science, and schoolyard insults."

It's things like this that not only make me lose a little more faith in humanity, but also drive home the importance of To Write Love on Her Arms, NEDAW, and other social movements.

As a woman and a person, I wasn't put on this Earth to be someone's object. My body is my own and, like one of my recent Twitter updates - found here - it has been to hell and back in the past two months. If a man isn't as fond of my wide hips and love handles as I am, that's fine. Nobody wears my skin but me, which is why there's absolutely no justification for anyone to make me feel ashamed of it.

RoK wants to change the cultural mindset of America. My advice is to start with their own.

Personal Infringement

Manager: "S is going to be my agent for when I publish my book."

Me: "Your bartending book?"

Manager: "Yeah. She's going to be my agent. She's going to organize my book signings and tell me where to go and everything."

Me: "It's....not that simple...."

Ever have those moments when you just want to reach over the bar, grab somebody by the front of the shirt, and say, "That's my dream, back the hell off!"? I understand that more than one person can dream - and dream big - but, it just makes a knot in the middle of my chest because being an author is something that I've wanted since I was six. It's not on my bucket list. It is, but not because it would be cool to do, but because it's something that I've been working toward for years. If you take that initial dream of a six-year-old and come up through to twenty-two, that's a lot of time spent reading, writing, and thinking of how damn cool it would be to see my book and my name on a shelf at Waldenbooks.

Which, I'm pretty sure I just dated myself gloriously.

I've spent nearly eight years working on one manuscript - that's almost finished - and over the past two and a half years, I've finished two others. I'm on page 197 of 362 in terms of editing and retyping Sage, and the sheer amount of work and heart put into finishing one novel, let alone two, makes this much, much more than a simple bucket list endeavor.

This could be quite petty of me. Jealously is not a good look on anybody, but I can't help but think, in the ensuing conversation earlier, that some people just don't get it. She wants to write her book in her spare time, well, fantastic. But it takes work. And then it takes querying.

I did feel slightly bad because the smile kind of faded when I went into how much work it is to query and then try to get an agent, and that the agent is responsible for dealing with publishers, and, oh, yeah, agents are kind of picky and will only take a small percentage of new writers.

That was probably petty. But it's the truth. I've got a stack of rejection letters to prove it.

I guess what bugs me the most is the natural assumption that it's easy. That once you've written the book, agents and publishers will fall all over you to take it and print it. But that's not the way it works. Her thinking that it's easy, that it'll be a great way to make millions, just sort of cheapens it.

And that is something I have a problem with.

In any event, I'll wish her good luck, periodically ask how the writing's coming, and hope that one day maybe the pair of us are in the same bookstore, looking at our work on the shelf.  

An Unhealthy Combination of FUBAR and SNAFU

[Kind of exciting news, especially if you're actually on campus with me - the first issue of martini and this article will be in there. I know it's rehashing something I've probably hashed to death, but, I wanted you to read what the rest of campus is going to read, because, well....it's a little more general and not so biased. Sort of. Anyway, until I hear whether or not I'm actually going to be moving, this is probably the last of this whole damn thing you'll be reading.

I wanted to share this with you. Then I'll find something fun to share with you, too.]

I’d like to think it takes a lot for me to get sufficiently and significantly pissed off. That being said, under no circumstances do I allow someone to walk all over me, but I’m not going to flip at the smallest thing, either. I’m pretty even-keeled. And over the course of my three years at this institution, I really haven’t much to say regarding how things are run, or even the policies. Ironic, considering I wrote for martini, the most opinionated publication on campus, and probably within a thirty-mile radius, too. I don’t normally, in a lot of cases, openly criticize our campus, either. Only when they’ve made a fairly big oopsie, do I really feel the need to say something.

At this time, it is entirely appropriate for me to say, to Res Ed, of all places, you need to get your shit together when dealing with students.

The first thing to keep in mind, whether dealing with someone who’s recently returned from being abroad or whether they’ve no plans to live anywhere but sunny Geneva for four years, is to remember that they are, first and foremost, a person. A living, breathing human who deserves to be treated as such, and not simply as a building name and a room number. I understand that we’re considered “residents” but, I do have a name, and I do have feelings.

Right now, I’m feeling incredibly frustrated and, honestly, disgusted.

Namely because you’ve given me a room, allowed me to move into it, and then, for some unknown reason, our buddy the fire marshal has deemed the space unlivable. Now, I’m not an idiot – I get there are certain regulations and codes the fire marshal has to follow, but what I don’t understand, and what nobody’s really answered for me yet, is why the room I’m currently occupying (writing this article, to be honest) was used regularly only a couple of years ago, used a bit last semester, previously okayed by the fire marshal, and suddenly, with only a change of tenant, has become a big freakin’ issue.

I’d be a little more understanding of this whole clusterfuck, if someone could actually tell me what was wrong with room and, maybe, how we could fix it. Like if someone in JPR has an extension cord, they simply remove the cord. Someone in Odell’s has curtains, they remove the curtains. These are violations that have a set rule to follow. This? This is pure asshattery on someone’s part because I’ve no idea why in hell I’ve got to move from a place that was offered to me by Res Ed (once cleared through the fire marshal to be active as a room again), which I took, moved in, and have been living here since last Tuesday, and in that time, nobody’s given me a damn answer.

Hell, Res Ed’s gung ho to move me outta here without telling me why I need to move, other than repeating over and over “the fire marshal.”

The fire marshal is a man who looks for infractions in the regulations and rules set down by the fire code. The regulation can tell me there’s something to fix; the man has to tell me the regulation I’m breaking.

So far, communication sucks.

Then again, that seems to be a growing trait on this campus.

What really frustrates me is that when you have an issue in your housing, Res Ed encourages you to go to your RA or to your Area Coordinator, or to their office because they want to help you. They want to provide you with an environment in which you can study and achieve what you want to achieve. They want to look to help you in small ways, to start at the bottom of the action ladder and work their way up; to avoid drastic action for as long as possible because they want you to see if you can stick it out with your roommate and make things work. If you have roommate issues, you’re going to through this whole process before they’ll commit to moving you to a different location. It’s almost like you have to fight to move from a situation that you’re not benefitting from, that’s hurting you.

In this case, we’re bypassing the whole damn ladder and starting right in with the drastic action that should, usually, be avoided. The truly frightening thing about this whole mess? Well, let me put it this way. When the fire marshal does his first rounds at the beginning of each semester, if you have something that infringes on the rules – say, an extension cord – you get a letter on your desk or your bed that informs you of your violation and then gives you a certain amount of days to make it go away. That or he just takes your extension cord. If you don’t remove the infraction, or fix it, in the certain number of days, you get fined and then, well, you’d damn well better get rid of whatever’s upset him. Or, rather, upset the regulation.

There wasn’t a paper on my desk or my bed, and there was nothing in my email, either, about any infraction that the room – including how it was laid out – or the stuff in it, was in violation of any fire code. Or any part of the fire code, as the thing is quite massive. Again, that’s a massive breakdown of communication right there. I’m living in a space suddenly deemed unlivable, but with no idea why it’s unlivable. I haven’t got ESP, I don’t have a direct link to the fire marshal’s brain, and I can’t tell what the hell goes on in the administration on a daily basis, and, quite frankly, I don’t want to. I have enough to deal with being a student.

And you don’t need a degree to realize you can’t fix something when you don’t know or understand how it’s broken to begin with.

Moving someone is a last resort, not a first option, no matter who they are, what grade level, and whether they live in the little room under the stairs or a forced triple in Jackson. And that, by the way, is just absolutely insane.

So, if Res Ed really has my well-being as a student and as a resident – and maybe as a person, too, as that’s also important – at the forefront of their actions, they’ll leave me the hell alone in the room they offered to me and let me continue to function as I’m currently functioning both socially and academically. That would be in my best interests.

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.

At Home in Heathrow

[I wrote this Friday night (I think) and it was the first time that I was, well, more or less aware that I was going to be living in an airport for a couple of days. Now that I have internet access, be prepared for, well, a series tentatively titled At Home in Heathrow. I have a sick sense of humor, don't I? So, this was actually written Saturday before I was supposed to get on the plane to come home. My how plans have changed.]

I know the time stamp on this sucker is going to read something different, but I’m currently sitting on the fun side of airport security waiting until I can board my flight home.

So, yes, I’ve been living at Heathrow since yesterday at about six-thirty at night. It’s been….real.

Let me back up. Yesterday morning I get a call at about nine-something (woke me up, I’ll be honest, I was sleeping in) and it’s the International Officer asking me if I’ve looked outside. Out the window there’s at least a good couple inches of snow on the ground. Not much by New York standards, but definitely more than the UK can handle. She then proceeds to tell me that because of the weather, the bus company isn’t sure if they can successfully get us there on time if we leave in the morning. So there’s going to be a bus leaving at one in the afternoon.

Cue Louise’s temporary panic because there’s nothing in my room that’s packed. There’s part of my desk done, but other than that? Nadda.

Anyway, she tells me she’s going to call back when she finds out what time the bus is leaving and then she’ll want to know if I’m going to be on it.

Holy. Shit.

This is not how I wanted to leave the country in a state of semi-panic.

So, I get up, get around and take a shower, and then start to power pack my room. She calls me back around ten and tells me the bus is going to leave at two, and if I’m going to be on it. There might not, because of the snow, be another way to get to London if I’m not on this bus.

Hence, Louise needs to be on the bus.

Do not ask me how I managed to pack an entire room in the time available, including the three bags I had with me, and they are all stuffed. It’s ridiculous.

This was, however, not how I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to be rushing around and leaving like this. I wanted to take my time packing, saying goodbye, and maybe having a snowball fight with Jess and Jen before I had to leave. It didn’t happen. I didn’t get to hug Math, or say goodbye to some of the other internationals because they weren’t available, and I was in a time crunch. It wasn’t ideal. But what can you do? They were the circumstances presented, and, quite honestly, I want to go home.

Looking at pictures on my camera of the people I’ve left behind is not the right thing to do at the moment. Though the ones we have when we found a space to claim as ours for the night in the airport? Those are priceless. And Heathrow provided blankets, too. So I have this horribly ugly brown fleece blanket with me that someone gave me at about one-something this morning, along with a bottle of water that I didn’t drink.

Luggage was an issue. Not only was my suitcase overweight (power-packing in three hours? Yeah, that’s gonna happen) and, apparently, my backpack that I took with me on the plane in the cabin was too large and too heavy. Therefore, I had to check that.

That did not make me a happy camper. Especially because I have my Newcastle Brown Ale glass from the Rose and Crown Hotel in that backpack and the stuff that Jess and Jen gave me for my birthday, all breakable. And I was going to have that with me to, well, not break it, and now it’s in with the rest of the luggage. However, I was a good person and wrapped it in clothes before putting it in there, so it should be okay.

Hopefully.

On the bright side of that, when I did self-service check-in, I changed my seat. Was supposed to be in the middle on the side, but now I’ve got a window seat. Which makes things better. Not great, but better.

I won’t tell you how much I’ve shelled out to be able to get my overweight suitcase and extra bag on that plane, but it can’t very well sit in Heathrow, can it? And I can’t really repack it because, well, where the hell am I gonna put that stuff? Exactly. At this point, I will do what I need to in order to get home.

Now I’m currently sitting outside a T.G.I. Friday’s and a Jo Malone, listening to Nate play his guitar and thinking that I might have been in this airport too damn long.

There are some truly hilarious pictures from last night, sleeping on the second floor of departures, and, honestly, I slept really well for about five hours on the floor. I will be submitting that photo to This Week in Photos on the colleges website because, well, it’s priceless. Come study abroad and get stuck in airports! Spend the night with your fellow students in a public, co-ed sleepover experience!

Bright side of life, here, people. Bright side of life.

I’m still torn. On the one hand, I want to go home because I haven’t seen my mother in weeks and my sister, father, and Smidget in months. I wanna have filter coffee in my kitchen with my sister, and I want to wake up in the morning because Mads is standing by the side of the bed just staring at me, maybe poking me to see if I’m real and I’ll move over and crawl into bed with me. I’ve missed that. I’ve missed her and her three-foot tall barely containable endless energy.

And if I have to listen to one more security announcement, I’m going to freak out and curse in languages I don’t even know.

What’s making this more bearable? The venti-sized Starbucks peppermint mocha that I’m consuming while I’m writing this and the fact that, yeah, I’ve gotten really used to running on not a lot of sleep over the past couple of weeks. That, and I’m predicting when I get on the plane, I’m going to be asleep before we’re even off the ground.

Shit. The pack of gum I bought specifically to help my ears pop? That’s in my backpack which is now a checked bag. Damn it. I’m going to need to bum some gum off someone if I’m going to make it through take-off without a ton of pain. Sometimes my ears won’t pop.

Again, bright side – I figured out my calling card last night. I couldn’t call the 800 number straight away, I had to call the international connection (for free) and then have them connect me through to AT&T, then I could use the card. Simple once you figure it out, a little complicated and a hell of a lot of frustration when you don’t know what you’re doing.

My laptop sports a Mind the Gap sticker from London on the lid. Perched at a jaunty, angle, of course, and hopefully a conversation starter if I’m in the library and someone’s wondering.

I should probably start thinking about articles to submit to the study abroad journal back home, but I think I have other things to worry about at the moment.

My teeth feel incredibly fuzzy. Brush my teeth, you suggest? The toothbrush and toothpaste are in the backpack, along with most of the pills. It’s been absolutely lovely. What can you do, though?

Yup. I’m going to get on that plane and probably be asleep before we even take off. Me and my window seat that I changed when I checked in. Still makes me smile when I think about that. I like window seats. Not only do I get to look, I get something to lean against.

Let’s talk about re-entry. As in, re-entry to America and American society. It’s going to be an issue. I’ve spent three months getting used to this system, this way of life (and driving on the left side of the road, thank you very much) and maybe it’s a good thing I’m not going to be able to drive until roughly next week because my license expired. Dad has to take me down to DMV sometime next week so I can renew it, and then I’ll be able to drive. Hopefully, I will have assimilated enough to be comfortable driving again and not feel like I’m going the wrong way.

Right. I’m almost out of battery on my laptop and I don’t feel like digging out my plug and my adapter, and…I will see you on the other side of the Atlantic.

Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Things Louise is Tired Of

Self-explanatory title. I'm a little....peeved, at the moment.

- Dealing with people. Specifically the ones I live with.

- Feeling like a foreigner.

- Being told it's just British humor and to get over it. [It's not - in some cases, it's incredibly offensive, you asshat]

- Hearing the phrase This isn't America, or This is my country, or Things are different here. [No shit, Sherlock, but cut me some slack, I've done damn well to adapt]

- Dishes. And people who don't do them, and expect other people to do exactly as they are told in relation to said dishes.

- The double standard that seems to have cropped up from the previous.

- Having it insinuated every time I'm shaving my legs with my electric razor I'm doing something else [Get. Over. Yourself. It wasn't funny the first time, it's still not funny three months later.]

- Painfully thin walls.

- Being the bigger, better person because that's how my parents raised me [they did it amazingly, too, because 9.8 times out of 10 I'll be the bigger person.]

- Feeling hurt that my ex got married. Really, I'm sick of feeling this way.

- This damn country. Love it, but I'm ready to go home. Now.

- Being proverbially stuck.

- Not having a car.

- Things not staying open past seven. [Seriously. WTF?]

- Trying to make nice when no one else seems to want to.

- Trying to blend in.

- Crying and itching because I'm so frustrated I could scream.

- Having nowhere to go when things get too much.

- Being left out when other people take people to the store or town.

- Feeling bad when I ask but, well, nobody asks me.

- Listening to someone have a conversation in Welsh when I only speak English.

- Being left out in general.

- Feeling this shitty because I can't win with these people.

- Having every conversation I have with a certain someone end up incredibly sarcastic two exchanges in.

- Not wanting to go into the kitchen or another communal space because I don't want to have to make nice with people because I'm still hurting or they're still pissed off.

- Missing things; home, family, etc.

- Fighting with my toilet to flush and dealing with a shower that doesn't drain, filling nearly to the door in a little under three minutes.

- Being disrespected.

Things I Learned in High School

[In no particular order.]

- Taking independent study band sucks.

- Especially when you take it so you can take ACE US History, and normally this wouldn't be a big deal, only the ACE history book is so damned dry you'd expect it to light itself spontaneously on fire.

- Even though you have friends that you could tell anything to, there are some things that you simply can't tell them.

- When your math teacher and your sophomore English teacher are married to each other, it's a little difficult to get away with writing in a composition book in class because she knows it's the novel.

- It's okay to have the same teachers for multiple classes multiple years.

- Unless you sit there in AP English wondering why she couldn't have retired before you got there.

- Trumpet plungers were not meant to be thrown at the wall for entertainment, unless of course they were, and yours truly still has the record for the longest distance from the wall and Andrew has the record for how many times in a row he could get it to stick.

- Of course I have a band lesson this period, and not just because I want to miss class.

- It's okay to "kill" people if you're going to process them in Forensics class soon after.

- Though it's not very helpful when the dead body keeps squirming because he doesn't like bugs.

- How to hawk baked goods in the crowds on vintage weekend outside the bars because they were the easiest people to get to part with their pocket change.

- FYEX (First Year Experience) had to be the more worthless "class" ever.

- One of the trumpets falling off the risers every year during the first week of school.

- "A wooden clarinet is the orgasm of clarinets."

- Being Raggedy Ann for Halloween my senior year and lifeguarding IAC's still wearing my red, hand-made yarn wig.

- Powderpuff Football. Only we forgot most of the time to go for the flags as it was simpler to flat-out tackle people.

- Scuba diving in the pool.

- The massive bruise on the inside of my thigh from the giant's ladder in Lifetime Sports

- Jesse's face when he found out I'd sprained my ankle playing indoor soccer in the middle of basketball season.

- Though, the above didn't really matter because it's not like I played in the games, anyway.

- Having whooping cough as a sophomore and continuing on with life like I wasn't trying to hack up a lung simply by walking from class to class.

- My love of films can probably stem from film analysis sophomore year.

- I can write flash fiction; it might not come out very good or make much sense, but I can do it.

- I vowed never to take any more business classes ever after sophomore year.

- Though we made the family "dream" of having an ice cream boat kind of come true that year, with the magnets to prove it.

- My classmates weren't as unobservant as I once thought.

- Humming the Vonage theme song in public yields a lot of interesting looks from boys in leather jackets.

- Music Club trips to NYC were, in some ways, the highlight of the year.

- Riding three hours to Buffalo on a school bus was an interesting experience, especially for my rear end.

- I got really good at getting on the bus in the morning, leaning against the window, and falling back asleep for the twenty minutes it took to get to town.

- I cemented how easy it was to live out of a Jansport backpack on a daily basis, in an academic sense.

- It's a bad idea to let your friend fake-bleed you at the Freshman Humanities Renaissance Fair in the courtyard because it somehow leads to higher-ups thinking that you and two other girls have been cutting yourselves.

- In order to get out of there as soon as possible, showing said higher ups the slightly oozing patch of psoriasis you've digged open on your ankle will do the trick nicely.

- You might think you have things under control, but until you break out completely and totally in itchy bits that may or may not leave scars because of something that you have no genetic control over, you find out just how much you really have to keep your head high to live with things.

- I found out that, sometimes, when you really love someone, you let them go to make sure you don't hurt them.

- The above, however, does not ensure that they will be there when you return at a time convenient for you.

- Eating school food made me the fan of tacos that I am today.

- I think I wasn't too far into my sophomore year when I realized that I didn't want to be one of the popular girls; I just wanted to be me, whoever that was going to develop into.

- How not to sugarcoat things.

- Sunday in the Park with George is a truly awful musical when you're eighteen and there's such shows like Avenue Q and Monty Python's Spamalot to be seen instead.

- I don't like rye bread, and while it might look similar to wheat, it sure as shit isn't.

- Never had the urge to drink illegally while in high school.

- High school is a different ball game that takes a bit to get used to, and it doesn't help when you're about as down as you could get when you get in there.

- I learned how to temporarily shut up and go with the flow because that's what it took to do a good job on a job that needed to get done.

- You can be a bit busted if you know how to sit there and superglue yourself back together while paying attention in math.

- How not to give a damn about certain things.

- How to make my mom understand that being in the nineties in calculus might not be something that I achieve, and how to settle for high eighties when I'm still trying my best.

- How to play alto saxophone because who ever heard of a clarinet in jazz band?

- The opening to Colt 45 while tooling around the nation's capital for senior trip.

- That it's kind of cool to think about double calculus as double potions, but it's nowhere near as cool.

- I can't stand Ernest Hemingway.

- How cool having a sister is, and how much we do, despite our age difference, have in common.

- Going to Open House still in a uniform and cleats is perfectly acceptable.

- Trying to get to first base in softball to listen to your dad give you advice and tell you bad jokes to make you giggle.

- There are things in life more important than soccer.

- The new basketball uniform shorts were the most comfortable things in the world.

- Riding on the bus with the baseball team wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

- Riding the bus, period, wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.

- How to feel like you're stretched in fifty different directions, but still together enough to get everything finished that you need to, and well enough that nobody thinks twice about it.

- There's only so many times that you can say, "Eh, tomorrow" because your tomorrows start to run out.

- What it feels like to finish something significant.

- Writing a senior thesis in five weeks absolutely sucks.

- Being yourself, no matter how crazy and unconventional that might be, is so much easier and so much more worth it than trying to be anyone else.

- I'm about as bad at economics as I am at math.

- I like dressing up and looking decidedly female every now and then.

- Coffee is not only lovely, but also a necessity.

- Going to Europe and then returning and having the opening night and subsequent three performances of the school play when you have no voice makes life very, very interesting.

- Graduation is one of those things that always seems like it'll never get there, and then when it's looming, you wonder where the time's gone.

- A locker only holds so much stuff before it decides it won't shut, open, or even move.

- The instructions, "Put in your combination and then continue to turn like a doorknob" would have been really helpful that first time standing by 477 and wondering how to get into it.

- I don't think I was ever late to English my first year because my locker was right across the hall from the English room.

- I took one art class, and that was more than enough for my four years in that building.

- Sadly, cafeteria food doesn't get much better when you hit high school.

- Cafeteria's came with vending machines.

- Get there early enough so that you have a parking space.

- Doesn't matter what kind of car you drive, just as long as you have one to drive.

- How I ever passed my Earth Science regents is beyond me because there were eight seniors in a class of sophomores, and most of us, since it was the end of the day, slept through most of it.

- AP Calculus, AP Economics, and AP English was going to be the death of me my senior year.

- New York State Regents are, for a lack of a better phrase, the shitty things on the face of the Earth.

- The SAT's are just as bad as everyone says they are.

- Giving blood is fun. What's not so fun is passing out and scaring the living bejeezus out of your two best guy friends when you fall out of your chair.

- Playing softball after giving blood is always advisable - when half the team has done it, what else can you do?

- Things weren't always easy. Do the best you could, and hope for the rest to sort itself out.

- NYSSMA is a great excuse to miss school, though they'll flay you alive when you have whooping cough and are trying not to hack up a lung while you play classical music.

- When in NYC, one must visit in a Starbucks. That is nonnegotiable.

- I was the band geek, the writer, the athlete, and the chick with enough brains to graduate tenth out of ninety-seven. It hasn't always been easy, but if you stick to what you know and follow your instincts, the end result is pretty good.

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.