burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

People came and stayed lengthy amounts of time. A couple of my friends showed up, and a good number of my brother’s friends showed up (the latter being a surprise to all). Food was good. My mother has started telling people who ask about my quirky plans (bartending and massage school) “it’s all fodder for the novel” (tm Britta) so now people ask me if i really am writing a novel. *sighs*

[Edit: So, in looking through craigslist, i keep seeing positions i think i would be qualified for posted by PSG. Now, i'm registered with them, so shouldn't i be getting calls about these? I e-mail the woman tonight and get an AutoReply saying she's out of the office June 6-13. Now, shouldn't i have been told about that? Grr.]

The best gift of the day was probably my Firefly DVDs arriving. Including the cards that came by mail, i’ve gotten $305, so that was pretty hot, too (and made me feel better about the state of my bank account). Plus Tim&Carla got me a nice bouquet of flowers, and Heather gave me a nice bookmark (flat metal, moon, says “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. -Edith Wharton”) and also gave me the best card. It says “Congratulations, graduate! Don’t let anything stop you! Reach for the stars!” on the front and has a chipmunk stretching up; then inside it says ( Read more... )

The Poussaints’ gift [to me; my brother got an ipod shuffle] came in a Tiffany’s box, which with the ribbon obscuring the logo i wouldn’t have realized prior to opening had my mother not explained it to me. (Tiffany’s has a signature color? Total news to me.) I thought it was a joke, because Tiffany’s is anathema second only to DeBeers (DeBeers wins with the “make six months salary last forever” diamond commercials, but Tiffany’s is a close second with the obnoxious Audrey Hepburn movie) but then i opened it. And okay i searched the online catalog and as Tiffany’s necklaces go, this was actually sanely priced [this, for example, is attractive and classy, but not a sane price] but... i’m not Tina. It’s the one that has a lowercase letter as a pendant. Heather has one, and hers actually looks nice, but a lowercase (script) “e” just looks like a little loopy thing (see). I would have much preferred a check for the cost of the necklace, and if Tiffany’s will give me anything without a receipt it would be store credit which is of course of no help to me.

In other news:

Online shopping, i think the closest to what i want is push-up bras, but from trying on bras and looking at the models in the online catalogs, i think one problem is that bras just aren’t made the way i want them to fit. I want them to literally cup the bottom half of my boob -- starting where it stops being chest and starts being boob. I feel like that’s how i used to wear sports bras (back in like 7th grade when i used to wear bras) but trying to wear real bras that way doesn’t seem to work, and from what i can glean from catalog pictures it’s not how they’re intended to work. Not wearing a bra doesn’t hurt, so i think i’m just gonna wear camisoles under my see-through-y shirts.

Continuing my trend, i was underwhelmed by Saved!. I mean, it’s not a bad movie, but i remember it getting raves and it’s just not that awesome.

Go discuss “Restless” over in Kate’s journal.

So, Wednesday i left for Virginia. Pretty uneventful. Yay for etickets 'cause i get to just swipe my credit card in an express terminal and it gives me my boarding pass(es). Sarah had said "the airport is tiny and it won't be hard to find each other." She wasn't wrong about the latter, but i wouldn't exactly call Roanoke tiny, though it's certainly smaller than Logan, JFK, and Dulles. The lecture at Mary Baldwin that we were ostensibly all going to got cancelled last-minute, so Jan enjoyed some hours of alone time and the three of us LJ friends hung out. (And yeah, it was, interesting, explaining LJ to Jan for about half the ride from Roanoke to Staunton.)

We ate at the Pampered Palate, which was nowhere near as high class as the name sounds -- which was good since, duh, we're poor -- and had good food. Later we went to the Daily Grind. They had ice cream (?) in assorted flavors, including "rose petals and champagne," which was so tempting, but i really wasn't hungry, so i refrained.

We spent about 4 hours together (me, Sarah, Ari) and there were so many lulls in the conversation, which was too bad because they're both wonderful people. I tend to think i suck at initiating conversation, but i'm not used to being around people who are so much more introverted than i am, since most of my friends are so talkative. (And also because i'm honestly much more talkative than i'm used to thinking of myself as. Sidenote: I was talking to Ari later in the week about people who do the kind of "I'm going to talk about me, right now, nonstop" thing and how i dislike it because there isn't space for me to engage in the conversation, and she suggested that people who are really shy might prefer having those kinds of people around because then they -- the shy people -- don't feel an obligation to contribute to the conversation, which was interesting and something i had never thought of before.) Ari commented at one point during the evening that i was like my LJ in realtime, all "Hey, look, that's interesting," which was definitely true. She i eventually ended up in something of a sustained discussion about fandom, which kind of left Sarah out because she has less fannish involvement than we do. Le sigh.

Jan took me and Sarah back to Hollins, and Thursday morning around 10am Sarah took me for a tour of campus. It looked grey and precipitating, but that turned out to be snow, and there were patches of snow already on the ground. I was happy. It's a lovely campus. Even their newer buildings are all brickish. Sarah's building at least has wide halls and high ceilings and nice carpet. Both Hollins and Mary Baldwin i felt like i was in a public restroom in the restrooms because they don't have cubicles like we do, so they have attached to the wall soap dispensers and paper towel dispensers. I was, however, pleased to see that they do the themed, differentiated by class, name tags on the doors of the dorm rooms. Oh, and their beds look like they could actually comfortably fit two people, unlike the Smith beds.

We ate lunch on campus (her dining hall has primary color stoneware), and i didn't have to pay, which was exciting. Sarah was gonna drop me at the library during her Medieval Lit exam, but i was crashing, so i just napped in her room. I did read the March 22 Christian Century, though. My Inklings prof had a one-page piece on the Festival of the Annunciation and Good Friday falling on the same day (March 25) and from the first two paragraphs it was such a her article.

Sarah's dad took us out to dinner at Wildflour that night. They serve Better Than Sex Cake, which i opted out of because it's chocolate cake with chocolate icing and maple icing and nuts and chocolate chips. (I restrained myself from saying anything along the lines of "Think i'll keep my sex vanilla.") I did have a so rich and so yummy chocolate mint parfait brownie.

That night i met Kyrie (who gave Sarah The Brother's Keeper, which looks interesting but has an its/it's typo on the back cover, which is tragic) and Bonnie (who's a History major but says she thinks she was meant to be an English major, like girls who were really meant to be boys -- ♥ the tranny analogy) and then we went over to Jan's. We walked her crazy puppy (who gnawed off his leash) and then browsed her books. (She'd had to go out, so we spent a good chunk of time over there without her.) The cover flap of Luke Timothy Johnson's creed book begins with saying how Christians recite the creed every church service, and i thought, "Catholics != Christians" (though no, i don't actually think in logic symbols). Lord's Prayer yes, Creed no. When i asked Jan, she said Lutherans and Episcopalians do. Episcopalians are Catholic Lite, and Lutherans were the first sect after the Roman Catholic Church schism, so i guess that makes sense. The conflation of Catholic and Christian is one of my hot buttons, though, so the author was really not winning any points with me. I also flipped through a prayer book Sarah said was really good. Looking at the table of contents i skipped to the Radical Prayer chapter at the end. It says you should repent on behalf of your own nation and then expand and repent for other nations. Okay, i get repenting of your complicity in the evils of world, but i was really confused by this whole "repent on behalf of all the nations" thing. I forgot to ask Jan about it. Maybe i'll e-mail her.

Back at the dorm that night i felt kinda like i was back at Smith with the loud crazy people, including boys, in the hall outside. Apparently a lot of people were starting their Spring Break early. I was reminded of some weekend nights back at Smith. I kicked Sarah out around midnight so i could sleep around midnight. I felt bad, but she said the study room was probably quieter than her room with the noisy people. Then i had insomnia, so i felt extra bad kicking her out.

Friday i joined Sarah for her Independent Study meeting with Jan and totally dominated the historicity discussion. Meep. Then i went to Sarah's art history lecture, which was cool. The first half was on the Sistine Chapel. The professor talked a lot about the heroic overmuscular way that Michelangelo's figures were depicted, and she talked a lot about his love of the human body. There was, however, no mention of the fact that the female figures appear to be just male figures with female bits added on, even though we actually looked at the Libyan Sybil and the original drawing thereof, which makes it so obvious. (Can we tell the lecture i went to last year is my only academic interaction with Michelangelo?) In the images we saw in this lecture, though, the women's breasts actually look accurate. And i keep wondering, why do men always get depicted in classic sclupture and painting with stumpy dicks? Oh, and the prof talked about the panel in which God reaches out a finger to bring Adam to life and said that while Michelangelo's figures are often depicted in movement, this Adam looks very languid and echoes classical river god depictions and i think that was the panel that she talked about in reference to the Mass installing a new Pope wherein there's a prayer or a hymn or something that asks God to reach out with the finger of his right hand and fill you with manly vigor.

Sarah's friend Rachel (whom i didn't meet) lent her a really nice air mattress for my usage, but i broke the valve on it trying to deflate it while we were packing up, so i'll be paying her back. I lose. I got along with Jan and with Sarah's dad (oh banter on the way back to Staunton), though, so that's two in the win column.

Sarah's dad dropped me off with Ari, and i got to eat dinner at Mary Baldwin without paying (yay!). The part we sat at was like a fancy restaurant the way the tables were (though the section we ate brunch in the following day was more basic hardwood). And i had 3 glasses of strawberry-banana kiwi juice which was yummy and which i now miss. Ari's crazy friends and all the sexual innuendo involved in the dinner conversation made me feel like i was back at Smith. Later we went over to Zoe and Roxanne's to pick up the fold-out bed they were lending me, and we hung out and watched them play Xenosaga for a while until i couldn't take any more video game (The plot was interesting, but the fighting is omgsoboring.) and we went back to Ari's room. She crashed, so i caught up on LJ comments, then crazy!Megan came back. She and her friend watched SVU and i ended up kinda watching with them. (Was it gay night or something? Both episodes. "Don't look at me, I just know stuff.") Monk was next, and i keep hearing good things about this show, but the first few minutes were so unappealling, so i went outside (cushioned benches in the hallway!) and read some homework. Another of Megan's friends arrived and they continued being loud. I was so boggled. Yes it was obscenely early, and i wouldn't argue that one has to move one's entire life just because roomie is sleeping, but the complete oblivion was so foreign to me. One of the women on the hall told me there was a lounge at the end of the hall, so i moved down there and later in the night Ari woke up and found me and we talked until about 6am.

Mostly about Jossverse and meta and fandom and such. How Firefly is a character-driven ensemble show (and how Kaylee chooses to be static) and how final season BtVS felt kinda schizophrenic in part because the relational hierarchy usually discernible was no longer discernible. We also discussed BtVS and Angel as shows as a whole and the nature of the seasons and Ari argued that BtVS knew what it was trying to do while Angel seemed to be figuring out what it wanted to do each season. I made the analogy that BtVS is like making cakes of different flavors and Angel is like having a bakery of options. There was no cookie dough involved, but apparently i'm fond of baked goods metaphors, because on Wednesday we talked about defining heresy and how heresy is perverting the orthodox beliefs versus having totally different beliefs and i made the analogy of putting arsenic in pies versus choosing to make cake. Oh, and we talked about deceit and free will in Angel seasons 4 and 5. And later we talked about church, but the fannish discussion was more interesting (to me anyway) 'cause the church stuff was more just exchanging personal stories.

Oh, and earlier that night i flipped through Ari's Disruptive Divas and read the Melisse Lafrance article on Tori Amos' "Cruficy," and part of me was wtf-ing, and part of me was thinking, "I'm going to grow up and be doing this" (and having mixed feelings about that).

Saturday we got up in time to have brunch, and i got back to Roanoke and flew back to Logan no problem. My dad's receipt for parking in Logan said 21 minutes. Impressive. I watched SNL with the fam when i got back. Loved the Chris Parnell-Ashton Kutcher bit during Weekend Update. I told my dad about it on the drive back to Smith today (he had gone to bed by that point) and he said there are a bunch of kids at our public high school who play around with gender roles in a joking manner and it made me happy that it was a safe space for them to do so. And i was reminded of the two guys doing "Dirty Dancing" during Class Act.

Apparently i can't stop talking about Closer. *pokes antheia (and sexonastick if she's seen it)*

So yeah, that was my break. It's good to be back. So much sex at dinner. Yay for traumatizing the Cat. ;) Homework what? Parties in my future, Kate got Wonderfalls, etc. Not to mention catching up on LJ. I did get stuff accomplished over the Break, though.
Summary: I appreciate The Scarlet Letter more on second reading. Hester is interesting. I still don't like Wuthering Heights, but it's easier to follow the relationships having read it once before.

Got positive feedback on all 3 ficathon pieces i wrote. And people (okay, by "people" i mean queenzulu) want me to write more of some of the stories. Haven't read any of the ficathon stories myself, or even responded to the feedback left on my own.

One of the reasons i didn't feel like visiting the high school over Break was that i'm sick of the grad school question. I have now gotten rejected from all of my PhD programs except for the one i really want to attend. I applied in December. Just tell me already so i can make alternate plans or not.

( gratuitous internetage )

It's possible that my time would be better spent copying down interesting passages from stuff i've read recently for my own future reference since all of like 5 people comment on my LJ, but hey, the journal's really for me first and foremost -- though obviously not entirely since this does get edited with the awareness of audience and all that.

( Wednesday-Saturday )

lasultrix says, "There's no such language as Irish Gaelic. There's a language called Scots Gaelic, but the branch of the Gaelic languages spoken in Ireland is just called Irish."