Plum Creek

Ok, I want to go live on the prairie. In Minnesota, specifically, in exactly the year in which Laura was 7. Everything delights her so much. Well "everything" is 1) the natural world, which mainly consists of Plum Creek and 2) increasing material acquisition. That chapter when they move out of the dug-out to the new house is so rapturous- the real hinges and the glass windows and the two stories and the new stove and all. And pretty much all I remembered about this book from the first few times I read it was the amazing button string that they make for Carrie- Ma had been saving buttons since she was a little girl, and her mother before her had saved buttons as well, and they all went into the making of the amazing Christmas button string. I guess there's not really any way to go back to the world of no readily available consumer goods, unless I moved to southeast Asia or something. But in any case it seems sort of contrived to inflict poverty on yourself just so you will be more excited about increasing wealth. And it's not really a question of poverty anyway, but of living in a world almost empty but for the waving prairie grass, so that you would really have the chance to see a stick of candy for the first time, or nor know what a party was until you were first invited to one at the age of 8, or be delighted with a new dress because the sum total of dresses that you'd seen in your life was pretty small. Oh course, increasing material wealth is not generally considered to be the most noble goal in life anyway, or the best way to achieve happiness, but all I'm saying is it seems pretty good for Laura and Mary.
Actually I just came to the part where their whole crop is eaten by grasshoppers and they can't pay for the amazing new house, but hardships just heighten the satisfaction of success.

Items of interest

1) Jack got his driver's license today, just barely- apparently he was "palming the wheel."
2) My suspicions were true- now that I turned in my Hatjig paper the things that were fascinating as procrastination are very boring as real entertainment.
3) Greg e-mailed me a picture of Beyer as an early birthday present, and every time my mouse approaches that message the picture flashes up in creepy almost-subliminal fashion.
4) My mother just got a call from the Mathematics Association of America, informing her that she won her election as the national "first vice-president." Jack wanted to know why they had never had one before, but apparently the title is just differentiated from the "second vice-president."
5) I remembered that I really like watching tennis.
6) I can't watch any more CMT, it's too awful. How can they call that country? Emerson Drive I'm finding especially obnoxious.
7) My cats will not sit in a sink.
8) Well I ain't going to work tomorrow, and I may not work next day. No I ain't going to work tomorrow, for it be a wet rainy day.
9) Actually it's not rainy, those are just the words of the song. It's humid and hazy; the mountains look disgusting through the yellow-y soup.
10) I'm reading On the Banks of Plum Creek. Good old Laura and Mary. I want to go live in their dugout and spend all day playing with the reeds in the creek. Just as long as no one tries to go around the bend to the watering hole, as they have been strictly forbidden to do.
11) I see that Latvia has just had a presidential election. I tried to read about it, but due to weird-consonant overload I was unable to do so. I just hope someone is looking out for the interests of Latvian butter. Is Gita still over there? She'll straighten them out if they try to mess with that butter. Almost like ice cream. Unsalted.

WHO finally finished her paper, albeit at a very low level of quality, a mere 9 days after it probably should have been turned in?

Me, that's who.

psuedo-deep ponderation

What if you had to include parenthetical citations with everything you said? How much of what we say is made up when we pretend it comes from reputable sources, and how much do we pretend we've made up when it's really something we read? When's the last time someone really said something original? I don't mean in an original way, or referring to some superficially unique situation, but involving some actual new perception about the nature of the universe. Do really influential ideas, the kind we don't usually realize we have, originate with any one person? Did someone, one day, say "You know, I bet that the human person is divided into a body and a soul" or "Hey, I think the world is based on a dualistic system of good and evil" or "I really don't think that there's such a thing as good and evil" or "There is a value to personal freedom"? I mean, people have said those things of course, but was there ever a point at which the idea was truly original? And do those things usually arise in large groups simultaneously, due to similar circumstances, or was there a first person?

anthropological research

Is this not a cutting board?
Yes this is a cutting board.
Is it not both short and long?
Yes it is both short and long.
Short and long, cutting board-
Oh my pretty, oh my pretty,
oh my pretty cutting board!

Junx

1) Man, I be writtin' dis paper, and it is not proceeding in a timely manner, 'cause I don't be knowin' nuthin. Like, how you gonna be translatin' спас в силах?
2) I'm jealous of Greg's awesome-sounding Trans-siberian railroad journey.
3) I just saw Bon Jovi on CMT. Something is wrong with this.
4) Your mom's face is a mandorla.
5) A very loud group of schoolchildren are walking by under my window. I disapprove. Off with their heads. Let them eat cake. Should be seen and not heard. Now there are sirens. Peace and quiet, that's all I want, just peace and quiet, you'd think it wouldn't be too much to ask for people to have medical/conflagrant/criminal emergencies at a more respectful volume. Arg and humph. Bah humbug.

reply from Life cereal

Susanna:

We're glad to know you and several of your friends enjoy Life Cereal every morning in the dining hall at your college.

One of the brightest spots in our work week is receiving comments like yours. We have ways of measuring success, but none of them are as satisfying as hearing directly from you. Please be assured that we will always do our best to produce high-quality products that you will enjoy.

We appreciate your interest in our product, Susanna, and thank for taking the time to contact us.

Geri
Quaker Consumer Response

Is there a mention of my poetical genius, not to mention offers to supply me with unlimited amounts of cereal? No, no there is not. To be fair, the message they received I don't believe included the original spacing, so it all just looks odd and ungrammatical.

Spent 9 hours today babysitting a 20-month old child. He's about the sweetest child alive but is lacking in language skills, making for a sort of silent day. Well actually I talked to him a lot. And sang him Eagles songs. He didn't seem to notice. I want to be as totally engrossed as he is by walking around a house in circles picking things up and putting them in my mouth, shaking them, and throwing them on the ground again. He thought it was all soooooo hilarious. He also found lying on his back chewing on his toes to be rather engrossing. I would say "oh, those were the days," but I don't think any child but him has ever been that happy. Unfortunatly it's partly because of developmental disorders.

Also, let it be noted that I resent Ms. Mayer's suggestion that the quanitity of my posts corresponds to some dirth of quality. I've got it all.

extraño a mis niñas

Ay, hoy hablé por teléfono con Dulce, Paulina, y Aline, y dicieron que me iban a extrañar en el verano, porqué no puedo venir en navidad, etc. Soy estoy segura que esto es totalment verdad- el año pasado me sentía un poco como estaba 'en medio,' y no realmente quiero pasar otro verano en Querétaro, pero sí lo extraño a veces. Y las quiero a las niñitas. Pau me dijo que ella leyó un libro sobre la tzaritsa Anastacia, y ya sabe todo de Rusia. Me quiere visitar, y quería saber si hace frío en Siberia. Le dije que sí. Tambien, ya no puede hablar español- es muy triste.

I love haiku

I don't like papers
And I don't like to write them;
Mini Wheats I like.


There are all new destractions here- my room at school had been pretty picked over. But right now I'm sitting in front of a wall full of photo albums and children's books and old trophies and whatnot, plus the kitchen's mere feet away- this is not working out well. I'm writing about one sentence an hour.

Gross ingratitude

I still have not heard from the makers of Life Cereal regarding the brilliant haiku that I sent them, free of charge.

Sabbath observances

Went to fairly amazing Eastern Rite Roman Catholic church today. Basically it's the Eastern liturgy but in communion with Rome. The actual Eastern Orthodox Churches are highly offended by the existance of such an entity, I think. This particular congregation met in an elementary school gym, so the basketball hoops contributed interestingly to the general ambiance, but they brought in some portable icons and things. It was about 2 hours of constant chanting. Even the gospel reading was chanted/sung/whatever you say- sort of between those things. A cantor stood at the back-- he had a very odd and irritating voice-- and let the congregational segments. It was cool hearing things I'd read about and talked about with Hatjig and things I'd sung in Russian Choir. My favorite part of the liturgy is just before communion is served when the priest chants "The holy gifts are for the holy!" [pause where presumably people are thinking to themselves "snap, that disqualifies me"] and then the congregation sings "Only one is holy!" and takes communion anyway.

Every time I try to write this damn paper I find some other book or article I was supposed to read first. Here is an example sentence from the oozhasny thing I'm reading now: "Whether we think of it as religious symbol or life-giving, cosmic element, it passes across the threshold between phenomenon and noumenon."

Another fairly dull post that no one reads

I ate blue crabs today, at May's, a most excellent establishment boasting perhaps the best cole slaw of my experience. Man, I love blue crabs. Their amazingness cannot even be described. They're so fun to eat, they're so vkusniye, the restaurants where one eats them are automatically so cool, with the big rolls of paper to put down on the tables and the collections of mallets and picks and implements of destruction (though the better you are the fewer tools you need), and trash cans by the tables and everything smelling of Old Bay and never quite clean. I also walked around downtown in the evening and went to the new Ben and Jerry's, where I got "surf and turf" phish food, with the fudge shaped like cows and fish. And I watched Woody Allen's "Love and Death," which is a very funny parody of Russian novels. The rest of the day I mainly spent eating the mutilated cupcake tops and sitting around. Writing paper now. This blog posting is getting out of control. This is what comes of having no one to talk to. What will I do in summer school when I just can't communicate at all?

Another Brilliant item from "Korea Today"

The sound and cultured traits in language life which pervade the whole society are attributable to the wise guidance of Kim Jong Il. All sorts of uncivilized languages and dialects, the legacy of the old society, gave way and the cultured language of the nation becomes rich in compliance with the requirement of the socialist way of life.

Heat and Headstones

It is truly hot here. Hot like you open the car door and the heat from the parking lot pavement burns up and you and the heat from the metal of the car burns at you from the side and the humidity just wraps it all around you. The heat from the actual sun seems irrelevant. It's very familiar and summery- in general, I'm still in the honeymoon stage with Frederick Maryland. It's just a lot less work here than being at school. For most of the day I'm not expected to talk to anyone and I don't worry about whether anyone else is talking to me. And then no one thinks it's weird when I randomly break into song all the time, and in fact the people around me (my family- I haven't seen anyone else) know the same songs and sing along.

I went running at 10:00 this morning, which was way too late considering the heat that I have described. It's not that hot yet, really, it's just over 90, but it's crossed the line between warmth and heat, and you remember what the long summer will be like. But anyway, I ran to Mt. Olivet Cemetary, where I so often have run before- the route takes me through most of downtown Frederick, then there's the very interesting and quiet break of the cemetary itself, and then it's back through the bustling metropolis to get home. It's about 2.5 miles around the circumference of the cemetary I think- it sort of seems like an endless field of graves. It's very interesting what people put on the stones- at the enterence are the older graves, all worn, mournful-looking angels and very few words (usually just names but sometimes something like "resting in the Lord") and the occasional union soldier. The graves get more recent as you go futher in, and they become that unattractive polished stone with the edges artificially roughly hewn. Here the imagery and text are much more focused on this world than the next- people have pictures of their farms, their tractors, their yappy-looking little dogs, the Frederick Keys Baseball diamond, themselves- often in full color. When there are angels they are gaudy or fairy-like. There are sometimes heart-breakingly-awful poems. Couples' graves almost always say "together forever." Lots of these graves only have a birthdate and are not yet filled. I wonder if people go visit their own graves- clearly they've thought a lot about them. It reminds me of when my grandparents, when they were driving through Mississippi one time, went to see the plots they'd bought for themselves, and my grandfather made my grandmother take pictures of him popping up from behind the gravestone and such. Anyway, when the path is circling back toward the entrance you pass a long stretch of unidentified Confederate soldiers, tiny little stones like teeth sticking up. Some historical group put up new stones in front of them a few years ago, since you couldn't read the old ones anymore. They just have the ranks on them, and someone goes by and puts up fresh Confederate flags every once in a while. I think it's overflow from Gettysburg.

Still haven't started work on my paper. Tonight.

Edit: I forgot to mention the super-creepy section on the cemetary called "Babyland." Also, I just looked at the weather in Middlebury and I see that it's pleasantly cool there. I bet it will get hot just when I get there. Also, I am now officially at a loss for things to do. Saving up for the excitement when my grandfather and Mary come next week. Oojas.

marsupials

So, yesterday when I was at the grocerary store with my relations when I saw the most awesome cupcake-paper things ever, with superman on them. They were seriously awesome. So I decided to make the platonic form of birthday-party cupcakes, with this paper things and funfetti cake mix and gross store-bought white frosting and sprinkles. And this morning, after a few hours of working in the yard (if anyone ever needs huge amounts of sod that have encroached on his or her sidewark removed, I am the one to call), I decided it would be a good relaxing indoor activity to make these cupcakes. And I was so excited about them until I was taking them out of the pan and my mother walked in the room and asked, "So where are the superman paper things?" (except maybe she remembered the real name for them) and I said, "Right there, on top of the prunes," and then it dawned on me that I had forgotten to put said paper things in the pan. So not only did I not have cupcakes with awesome paper around them but the cupcakes stuck to the pan and I am left with lots of cupcake tops and then a bowl of cupcake crumbs. It is very, very tragic.

Coming home was so much different this year. Last year I seem to remember being very sad to be leaving and having it be very weird to be home. This year I'm just sort of relieved. I've been home a few more times since then, so the culture shock of going from school to home is less, and then much of it has to do with the nature of my departure, I'm sure: last year I left early in finals week, and I left all my friends still at Middlebury. This year there was no one to watch me leave, I just packed up the car by myself and left; and then I had just spent a week dealing with the business of leaving, everyone else packing and me packing and finals and papers saying goodbye to people. So I was ready to be gone. And leaving to your friends happily waving at you is a lot different from spending the morning having someone tell you how you failed to keep people from excluding her and she's miserable and she can't be friends with you anymore, and then rushing madly to pack between the hugs you keep being given as your father thinks about how we're going to miss an important skit performance at home due to your failure to be packed and ready. By the way, I'm pretty sure I left a couple of things sitting on the grass outside of Coffrin. I reminds me of the time I left a load of my laundry in the drier and gradually realized that I was missing half my clothes.

Дома

So, I'm at home. Hope that all of you reading this are as well, though I don't know how you'd be reading it otherwise, so maybe I mean that I hope that everyone I'm thinking of as I write it is also home (or in Texas) safely.

I wish that I had had witnesses to the amazing in-controlness of my father's car after being loaded with my stuff. After spending the past week totally surrounded by huge numbers of bags and packages and boxes and trash and random junk, in the hallway and in rooms and in cars and sitting out on campus, and in barns and in basements, it seemed like a certifiable miracle that I just calmly put all my stuff in a car and it fit easily in the trunk and them one layer of stuff on the back seat. It makes me feel like I forgot something, actually.

Got back to Frederick just in time (as in literally 10 minutes before) my brother performed his final skit for his high school drama class. We achieved this feat, making it home in a mere 7 hours and 30 minutes, by not stopping for any meals and speeding. Anyway, Jack was very funny and impressive in his role as Harold Hill, warning the citizenry of River City about the dangers of the pool table. I was pretty glad we only got there for the second half of the evening though- high schoolers in general apparently do not have very good taste in choosing monologues to perform, plus none of them were as cool as Jack, plus sitting in my high school auditorium is not my favorite thing to do.

Ate eggs and bacon and toast with strawberry jam for dinner. Eating in a kitchen is so pleasant. And the eggs weren't from a bag, and I didn't have to jostle for position at the toaster, and the plate was not a bold solid color. Later I ate cereal in front of the tv, that most homelike of activities. The Russian news were on. It was some lame segment about clothing design.

I would be going to sleep right now, but I can't find where I packed my toothbrush and such. I'm spending tomorrow throwing away everything I own. My dresser in my room is so full of clothes I can't open it. This is ridiculous. Clothes are evil and must be packed.

I feel like I should be making some reflective post about the year, but I'm too tired and distracted by the horrible quantities of my material possessions. But I think it was a good one. The year, I mean. I think I was surrounded by miserable people a lot of the time, so I feel sort of bad making a positive assessment. But it was good, anyway, in terms of actual education my best ever, and if it was not all fun and relaxed or even happy I was still so much more comfortable and in control of my life than I was freshman year.

There's a cat sitting on my bed purring, and it's just the level of warmth and humidity here that the night is comfortable and enveloping rather than sticky, and even if my floor is covered with bags I can never unpack I am going to rejoice in being home.

awesomeness of varying degrees

1) I slept on the shelf over Aiko's door last night, on the sheep. AWESOME!

2) Aiko's stuff is sitting out in the hall awaiting her 4:00 am departure. NOT AWESOME!

3) Both sides of the compound are in total disarray and you can't walk around in them and everything you need is packed. NOT AWESOME

4) I'm going home Wednesday morning. FAIRLY AWESOME!

4) Hatjig told me today, very seriously, about a video she saw on 'mytube.' AWESOME!

5) It was about the Ten Invisible Monks of Mt. Athos. They're probably still there, but no one can see them, so who knows. TOTALLY AWESOME!

oh snap, the coolness never ends

Chronogram:

A phrase, sentence, or inscription, in which certain letters (usually distinguished by size or otherwise from the rest) express by their numerical values a date or epoch.
‘Thus, in 1666, when a day of national humiliation was appointed in the expectation of an engagement between the English and Dutch navies, a pamphlet issued in reference to the fast-day, instead of bearing the imprint of the year after the usual fashion, had this seasonable sentence at the bottom of the title-page: ‘LorD haVe MerCIe Vpon Vs’. It will be seen that the total sum of the figures represented by the numeral letters (printed in capitals) gives the requisite date 1666’ (Athenæum No. 2868).

1621 BURTON Anat. Mel. II. ii. iv. (1676) 179/2 He may..make..Anagrams, Chronograms, Acrosticks upon his friends names. 1623 R. TISDALE (title), Pax Vobis. A Congratulatorie Poem..and some other Chronograms. 1640 SHIRLEY Humorous Court. II. ii, Now you can make chronograms. 1711 ADDISON Spect. No. 601 6. 1781 HARRIS Philol. Enquiries (1841) 520 Chronograms..were not confined to initial letters..the numeral letters, in whatever part of the word they stood, were distinguished from other letters by being written in capitals. 1882 J. HILTON Chronograms I. Pref. 5 The word Chronogram is said to have been first used in some verses addressed to the King of Poland in 1575. Ibid. Pref. 8 It is essential to a good chronogram that every numerical letter in the sentence must be counted.

abandonment

I was about to make a very cheery post about how I had just learned the awesome word 'chronocrator,' 'lord of time,' from my good friend the Oxford English Dictionary. "What a stable, dependable friend in the OED," I was just thinking to myself, "Even if everyone else changes or leaves or isn't allowed to speak to you all summer, the OED will remain." But then I realized that it was not so- soon the language pledge will snatch her from me. I really like English- why am I abandoning it? Woe, woe is me.

Track

Sitting here in the computer lab on the first floor of Bi Hall, listening to internet radio and playing computer games with the notes for the paper I'm supposed to be writing on the table, I am realizing why I need to keep running track when I come back senior year. I have too much time and I'm grumpy from not running and I don't see enough people. This sucks. How am I going to do this for an entire year? Because I think that making myself run in Siberia in the winter every day will be sort of impossible, and anyway running alone is not the same thing.

rodent sighting

I just saw a large weasel walking around outside the main entrance to Bi Hall as I left it. It was not as frighening as, say, a squirrel, but it was not quite what I expected to great me when I went out the door. Wait, weasels are those fat white mangy things, right? I hope I have the right rodent. Oh, I just did a Google image search- I actually mean a possum. I am not accustomed to think for this many hours straight, my mind is not working.

Revelation

I think I finally figured out the point of icons and how they are related to Eastern asceticism. It sort of justifies the 8 million hours I have spent on this independent study. And justifies the practice of assigning papers. And kind of makes me feel silly for not figuring this out before. Pavel Evdokimov, if you had only learned the concept of connecting your ideas with meaningful logical transitions, this could have happened so long ago. I don't think the sense of how pleased I am at the moment is coming throught here.
Okay, now I just have to write a paper of indeturminate length about this. But maybe it will never get written. But that would be okay, because this whole process has still had a point.

Procrastination

Microsoft Word: Tools> Letters and Mailings> Mail Merge

Insert clever title involving buying a ticket to Moscow

What, you may ask, is the meaning of the title of this blog post? Does it signify that you had your computer generate a random set of words, as you could not think of a title? Does it, in fact, refer to the fact that you read in the newspaper about some titan of international business and manufacture taking the monumental step of purchasing a ticket for transportation to the capital of the former USSR? Is it some incomprehensible political joke about the deteriorating state of our nation's relationship with the Rooskis? No, no, it is none of these. It signifies nothing less than that I, S.M.M. Merrill, am officially registered for transportation to the nucleus of the vast Russian state.

It only involved 8000 man-hours to achieve. And 8x10^8 reply-alls with the loons accompanying me. So highlights of our e-mail exchanges (mail merges, one might say):

Ivan-
"Woah this is the most action my inbox has seen since that abroad meeting was switched via e-mail like 8 times in the course of three days. Streakers in BiHall too. No candy though. It was good to have a distraction I guess but I think they're franticness only increased mine. They were gone realllllly fast though except for the one that slowed down when runnning through the movable shelving that I was about to move grr.. "

"my passort just arrived today. Its like three times longer than the old one because they've devoted extra pages to american pride-inducing images of cowboys toiling under the sunsets with patriotic quotes scrawled accross them. Pretty amazing and well worth the wait guys."

Edik:
"also i really will cry if you're not at alcoholic potluck."

"also if anyone knows a whole lot about women in the period 1050-1400, that would be cool. i have a paper. "

"lso we can all go to the grille for nachos.

love nachos"

Alya:
"So if you die, make sure that you have a doctor notify the travel agency.
Okay I just spent a long time on the russian embassy website and decided that a phone call to the fisheries committee could probably clear up any problems."

"My mom is currently trying to set up my flight through a temporarily blind-from-eye-surgery travel agent who I believe to be completely incompetent, so let's please agree on something so I don't have to deal with the crazy woman. This is the latest excerpt from our correspondence:

"I'm having eye surgery so will be out of the office a couple of days. I hope to be in Friday but don't know if I'll be able to see well enough to be useful!"

Ahhh "

Natalie:
"can we fly jetblue?! I'm totally willing to pay an extra $100 if it means I can watch TV and have cookies."

"I just don't want to arrive in moscow by myself. actually I'm pretty sure I never ever want to be anywhere in russia by myself."

Me:
"The whole process of buying the plane ticket was greatly enhanced by Abby running around next door yelling about the things she was packing and narrating her every move (What?! This book! This has English! I can't have this in summer school! Agh, I just fell!)"

Varia

1) Sad message from mi mama:
"Did I tell you that my meeting in D.C. went so late that I missed the 5:30
train, so I missed Jack's band concert, and seeing him get the John Philip
Sousa Award, and my car was apparently towed from the parking lot near the
train station, and I had to walk home with my suitcase, and now I don't know
where my car is?"

Yes, I pretty much think of Jack as John Philip Sousa.

2) Actually I don't have anything else interesting to say.

3) If it's raining again tomorrow, and the accursed Thunderdragons are once again confined to the indoors all morning, rendering them wild barbarians incapable of human interaction, I may send them all the way of Zachery Bean.

oddness

Series of e-mails I just exchanged with Terry Aldrich, XC coach:

On May 14, 2007, at 10:07 AM, Aldrich, Terry wrote:

Susanna
SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD,
Nicole jus told me you would be away all fall next year. I'm gong
to miss
you.
ter

On 5/14/07 1:01 PM, "Susanna Merrill" wrote:

Yes, I'll be trying to introduce the concept of running to the
Siberians. If I don't get eaten by a bear or wolf in the process,
I'll see you in 15 months! Good luck next season.
Susanna


SUSANNA,
Did you know Siberia is known for phenomenal fishing! It's also a little
cool there in the winter :)
Ter


Did he not notice that I didn't run this season? I'm confused.

Names

Jinty Money-Coutts
Studied Russian history
and had a cool name.

I like fake names too.
There's this guy in Judge Parker
called Landy Gentry.

If I did more work
And did not write these haikus
I might pass exams.

Query

When Denis Komarov is working on campus for the Russian summer school, will he still wear those awesome suits? Is his suit-wearing independent of weather? I very much hope so.

Brilliant Haiku, by me

Breakfast perfection-
A bowl of Life cereal
and two-percent milk.

laziness

As per objection by my cousin that this blog is read by people who don't see me every day and who are interested in things that most of the very few people reading saw themselves, such as my Russian Choir concert, I hereby post this description. But I was too lazy to write one, so it's cut and pasted from an e-mail I already wrote.

Russian choir concert was tonight. It was very entertaining. I wanted to keep my costume- it was so fun to wear. Before the concert we were all gathered in the bowels of Mead Chapel in the organ practicing room, practicing and such; the preconcert preparation involved sketchily drinking imitation Polish vodka (provided by K-Moss) from unmatching plastic cups, or in mine and Lyonya's cases, the bottles, as we ran out of cups. At some point Sergei came bursting in with some pairs of boots and stood around yelling in Spanish. He spent most of the concert pointing to members of the choir from his seat and whispering to his wife. He did lead the audience participation most admirably in the Cossack song for which it was required. Members of the choir introduced each song- my favorites were Lyonya's, which he did in a super-exaggerated Russian accent which actually sounded more Scottish, and Ivan's, which was just indescribably cute- he was trying to be very extroverted and bold, with hilarious effect. The last song was the Soviet Nat'l Anthem, in honor of Victory Day. I sort of expected some sort of trouble from Sergei, and he did indeed remain seated for a while when K-Moss asked everyone to stand, but at very little prodding from his wife eventually stood. Tatiana, on the other hand, started yelling that she wasn't going to stand up, she had stood for this damn song enough times when she was a little girl, she didn't understand why everyone else was standing, etc. But then she, too, stood up eventually and even sang along (she was the only one). Oh, and Big E was there.

p.s.

I just want to add that the second I finished the last entry I realized that I had left my Russian Choir costume in Atwater, and Atwater had closed, and I was late to my meeting with Hatjig, which consisted of my pretending to have thought about the paper I'm supposed to be writing since the last time we met. And this attempt led to saying whatever came to mind, which generally made no sense, so Hatjig was forced to go on long, winding monologues to try to make whatever I had just said sound relevent.

let me tell you a story

This morning, as I set out cheerily from my dorm, I had several simple, concrete goals: to eat breakfast, to return my track uniform, to pick up a check for babysitting for Nicole, to mail and letter and deposit the check at the mail center, and to pick up my study abroad packet from Sunderland. Here is what actually occured:
1) I go to Atwater, letter and track bag in hand; I eat
2) I leave Atwater, sans track bag
3) I return to Atwater and retrieve track bag
4) I walk to the Athletic Center, attempt unsuccessfully to find a human being at the equipment room to take my uniform, I leave it on the counter
5) I leave the Athletic Center and walk to the mail center; I mail the letter and check my mail, which included a graduation invitation from Jack
6) I attempt to cash my check
7) I realize that I have not picked up said check
8) I return to the Athletic Center and pick up the check
9) I return to the mail center, attempt to cash the check again, realize that I have no pen with which to endorse it
10) I give up
11) I wait around in Sunderland for Julie Good to get my study abroad packet from her car
12) I return to my room, sadder, not really any wiser, but more aware of my crippling incompetence.

I did not shoot no deputy

Here are some random things that I have to say. They are all about as boring as the rest of this blog has been.

I'm not nearly as worried about finals and papers and whatnot as I should be. In fact, I'm not worried about them at all, nor am I working to do well on them. I'm just sitting around being lethargic. And I'm not counting down to the end of the school year, as I have every other year of my life, either. I think maybe the knowledge that I will be right back for frantic Russian study is making the end of the year seek sort of fake. I don't even know when my exams are.

I think I really scared little Wyatt at the preschool today when the Superman Shiny Silver Jet was flying over Egypt and I suggested we see the pyramids and I then explained what they were. I guess it is rather creepy.

I'm NOT running the 4x800 on Saturday, so I do NOT have to go to practice for the rest of the week. Yay. No more racing for a very long time- I guess I'll see whether I miss it. It's possible that I'm done forever- I don't know.

Two hour Русский Хор practice tonight. It became very apparent that I know none of the music and am a very bad singer. Oh well. Too bad everyone I know will be there. I was especially alarmed to see that Maria Hatjigeorgiou had the concert date written on her calendar- I had a bad feeling that this will all turn into a post-concert lecture about Orthodox liturgy. Speaking of Hatjig, I was rather freaked out by her description yesterday of the final paper I am to be writing, as it involves all sorts of things I don't really know anything about. I was even more alarmed by her lengthy suggestions of research topics in Russia, as they are totally unfeasable. And I didn't really know what she was talking about. So that's good. I don't think she understands that Siberia is in the middle of nowhere rather than an easy train ride away from St. Petersburg museums.

After Russian Choir we went to Proctor, where I was alarmed to see some winged insect crawl out of my salad. When I drew my choir-members' attention to it everyone was a mixture of amuzed and grossed out except for Anya, the wife of the Russian TA, who immediately said, "О, это добрый" and scooped it up and carried it outside. It was very sweet, I thought.

Murder Most Foul!!

The voice of Justice cries out!! The blood of Virgil stains the land, begging for YOU to recongnize his true killer! Really, it's terribly important to him. For serious.
http://www.virgilmurder.org/

famous relations

My cousin Brett was on the Today show modeling a suit recently:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18427346/

Incidentally, I think it's a lie that they were "just regular guys they picked off the street."

News Flash!!!!!!!

Successful Oratorical Contesters Perform
on Army Day

The successful participants in the national oratorical contest held to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the heroic Korean People’s Army performed at the People’s Palace of Culture on April 24.
The performance was appreciated by Kim Ki Nam, secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, leading officials of the working people’s organizations and working people and youths and students in Pyongyang.
Seven orators including O Sang Chol, a staff member of the Sariwon Railway Branch of the Pyongyang Railway Bureau, performed under the titles “Long live the great Songun politics!” “Care”, “Dawn of the great prosperous and powerful nation”, “Our home”, “Step of father”, “Era and family” and “Banner of victory”.
They said that the army and people of the DPRK have keenly realized that Songun politics which helped the DPRK turn into a country with invincible military power which no aggressor dare to provoke serves as an all-powerful treasured sword for protecting the socialist motherland and the destiny of the nation.
Recalling that President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il put a definite end to the century-old history of being a weak nation and provided an eternal groundwork for achieving its prosperity, they added that the President and the leader liberated the country from the yoke of the Japanese imperialists and turned the DPRK into a socialist power under the uplifted banner of Songun.
The orators stressed that the sky of the country will always remain blue as long as the banner of victory of Songun flutters high.
http://www.kcckp.net/en/news/index.php?5

I'm huntin' the man that first thought up...

Easter Island Time. That's what I just switched the setting on the blog to. Also, I infinitely doubt that anyone has any idea what song I'm refering to in the title, because I just realized that it's from a record no one would ever had heard. Ok, over and out.

Here is what I really think

Yo' mama tryinna be bad

General Looniness

I just packed a suitcase for Russia, due to general stress about where all my suff is going over the next year and a half, inability to do actual academic work, and some third motivation that I can't think of but will leave here because I don't feel like changing the sentence structure. Florescent orange wind pants and purple plaid pajama pants were rejected by Abby and Laurel as inappropriate to the gloomy landscape to which I go. But they'll never take away the mittens with neon fireworks/flowers/unidentified color bursts, I can promise you that. There must be a line, a point of personal integrity, that nothing can cross.

I went to a dinner for the graduating seniors of the religion department today. It involved a ridiculous ceremony in which the professors dressed up as the Roman pantheon with some Indian philosophers thrown in. Academic inside jokes flowed freely. What have I gotten myself into? Is this the world into which I strive to enter? Oh, academia, cruel and demanding mother, is this looniness the price one must pay for having a really easy job?

Russian class continues to spiral out of control. I don't even know how to begin to describe it, but if class had not gotten out 10 minutes early today I would have dissolved into a puddle on the floor.

Why I am a Religion Major

As Bodhidharma sat in zazen meditation while facing a wall, Hui-k'o, his would-be successor who eventually became the Second Patriarch, stood out in the snow and cut off his arm. He said, "Your disciple's mind is not yet at peace. I beg you, my teacher, please bring peace to my mind." Bodhidharma said, "Bring me your mind, and I will bring peace to it for you."

The successor said, "I have looked for my mind, but it is not graspable." Bodhidharma said, "There, I have brought peace to your mind for you."

Why I should not take up a career as a political prisoner

I am pretty much the most whiny, self-pitying sick person ever. If I were in a situation requiring patient bearing of physical discomfort, such as a beseiged city, concentration camp, deserted island, or the middle ages in general, I would be one of those people who turn into a snarling, selfish witch. I was sort of getting there by the end of my shift with the Thunderdragons.

Also: in Russia, instead of having 'bouncers,' restaurants and clubs have Face Control. They write it in English- do they think they picked up the term from us? It would be so much more insulting to be turned away by Face Control than by a bouncer.