new york, new york

greetings one and all... to the big city and back... that's the extremely condensed version of my day.

i got up early and did some much needed straightening up around my room today... then jessica drove up from philly and got here around 10:30... we had just planned to go explore the MET (metropolitan museum of art) for the day, but apparently it was quite the day for crazy and/or talkative strangers as well...

stranger story #1: so as we're buying tickets for the NJ transit train to NY, the 11am train pulls up and leaves and we have to wait half an hour for the next one... so we find a spot in the waiting area where it's warm and a guy comes up and hands us fliers and asks "if you were to die today, are you 100% sure where you'd spend eternity?" i tell him yes, and he asks me how, and when i said because i believe Jesus died for my sins and i have a relationship with him, he still continued to chat for 15 minutes making sure i really really know that i'm saved... gave me fliers for rutgers campus christian groups and then went on to ask the same of other people. that's stranger #1... not crazy, just unexpected.

stranger story #2: so after the better part of an hour on the train, jessica and i get to penn station, and we've both been talking about how hungry we are for a bit so we found a soup and sandwich place in penn station to get a quick lunch... we got the last table in the place, and right next to us is a tiny old bag lady, who had finished her lunch, and was sleeping and snapping awake and asking questions about our food at intervals... i felt bad b/c i couldn't really hear her, but jessica could... maybe this is mean, but she reminded me a little of a furby... anyhow, eventually one of the restaurant workers told her she couldn't sleep at a table, she had to leave it for customers and chased her out... i felt bad for her, but i didn't understand her while she was there either (i think i'm slowly going hard of hearing, either that or i'm getting really bad at being able to filter out one input when there's a lot of background noise)... anyhow, that's direct stranger encounter #2 and the day's barely begun.

so, post lunchtime, jess and i meander through the NY subway system to get up to museum mile and into the met... checked out some of the asian art, a lot of european (mostly italian and dutch) paintings, some greek sculptures, a spiffy, photorealism exhibit, the modern art section, and back to some renaissance stuff... after a quick trip through the bookstore (i got a 1/3 original price book on budapest and vienna and how and why their architecture evolved as it did over time... it was fun to flip through, find pictures and go "i was there!" "i was there!", and it was only $5.) =), we headed back downtown towards penn station to get on home

stranger encounter #3: so we get on the lexington ave. line and as we do there's yelling 10 feet down the car we're in... some very unhappy crazy guy cussing out everyone near him... we listened to him for 44 blocks worth of subway, and even as we got out he was yelling who knows what at people for leaving the car! *he* was the kind of crazy that makes you feel unsafe to be anywhere near him... unfortunate

stranger encounter #4: back at penn station, jessica and i catch the train back to new brunswick (station nearest me) and at newark (2nd stop from NYC back down into jersey), 4 people got on and sat in the seats in front of us... when we got off in NB, so did they,... when we headed for the garage i had parked in earlier, so did they... they were only a dozen spaces away from my car, and for the first 5-10 minutes of driving they were directly by us... just ironic that it was like we were all mirroring one another for an hour... probably think more of it just because of out-of-the-ordinary people encounters all day long...

so that's the end of my stranger stories... so jessica and i enjoyed the MET, made it back just fine, went to chili's for dinner, came back to my place and looked at my pictures from the last two months, and now she's gone home.

amanda's car's in the lot here, but her away message says gone for the night... i think her parents were up for the day, i guess she went with them... go figure... anyhow, it was a quality day, and now i have the place to myself and should either get some sleep and get to work before church in the AM, or should get to work now.

oh! here's the other random thought of the day... so i've had a headache last night and since i woke up today... this is the 2nd 2-day headache i've had since i got back to jersey (just 2 weeks ago)... is that bad?

anyhow, either way, that's it... night.

abba's ragamuffin

so, if you keep up with the right margin of this page, you'll notice the top book got taken off my reading list and a new one just added...

took advantage of my self-imposed friday night at home to finish the book i've been reading for the last week: brennan manning's the ragamuffin gospel... seems appropriate to put a brief summary.

from the start, the book is all about "this is a book for ragamuffins... not for people who feel they have their whole life together and figured out"... throughout the main theme is: God's love for everyone is indescribably HUGE... and if you think you have a clear conception of it, that's when you realize just how faulty your measurement of it is... mostly it re-emphasized to me God's love is not a factor of my feelings (thank goodness) or of how good or bad or whatever i am... God's love is huger than huge and constant and always there, even in the void of where you feel nothing.

a paragraph i really liked "it is the ragamuffin who rightly comprehends... she often experiences the "null" -- the felt absence of God.... she lives in the void but knows that the void is completely saturated with love"

that just hit me square on where i'm at right now, and it was good to be reminded that sometimes the "voids" are just as much a valid part of life as the highs and lows.

anyhow, end of book review. =) i'm glad i read it -- kinda interesting that i randomly started it, read a chapter a day, and get to the conclusion on a day i really really needed to hear it.

next book on the list? candide... political satire... colleen and scott both read it on the road trip a couple weeks ago and laughed the whole way through... if i find it even half as funny, it'll be great.

tomorrow jessica comes... we're going to the MET... i'm excited. =)

now really, night =)

how to be a bum

maybe this isn't a "how to" per se, but being a bum is exactly what i've done this afternoon.

had class from 9:50 til 2:30 today, ran errands, then came home...

i've been in a really weird mood all week... some days (like sunday) it's been pretty pronounced, other days i've busied myself with other stuff, laughed a lot, and it's just been vaguely running in the background...

anyhow, i got home like 3:30/3:45ish and found out from colleen what the plans were for where and when for no math night... curled up with a book for a little, then when i checked the computer again, eric was back from his afternoon class and online.. after comparing notes on some astronomy stuff, i threw out the question "am i a horribly antisocial person if i skip a no math night?" his response was "what? why?"... i said by the time the conversation was done that maybe i'd be there, maybe not... all i can put words to it is i felt very not happy at all, but have no idea why i'm so unhappy...

anyhow, having finished chatting w/ eric i curled up in my bed, just to be a bum, but ended up falling asleep until 5:50 (we were all supposed to be at jared's for dinner at 6)... i was waaay to comfortable to move, but also had a headache, so in no time i had dozed off again and next i saw it was 6:45... figuring i'd already missed dinner and seeing as i was still warm and comfortable, i went back to sleep again, and finally when i woke up at 7:30 i decided it was time to get up and move... at the very least i needed something small to eat since all i'd had today was 2 pieces of pizza at pizza seminar this afternoon.

anyhow, i was totally feeling like a bum, and not wanting to deal with people tonight, but i'm actualy kinda glad now that i stayed in... when i went to fix myself some soup an hour ago, amanda was baking cookies... i started to take it back to my room to be out of the way, but she insisted and cleared off a spot at the table for me and we chatted and watched part of an old movie on TV for a bit, and when they were ready we ate her cookies, straight from the oven (yay warm cookies and milk!)

now ron's over and they're going to late dinner and a movie, and i'm still bumming around here

i don't know where my attitude's from lately, i don't know why i'm so frustrated with myself and with people in general, i don't know what's making me unhappy, but at the very least, looking for silver linings to the cloud, it bought me a tiny bit of unexpected quality roommate time, and that's a good thing.

anyhow, now, to go back to sleep? to actually do some homework? to read? to bum around in front of the tv? who knows... but probably not option 2 =P

night

dude, i'm famous =P

lara's top story of the day:

best told copied and pasted from an email i wrote earlier... enjoy

"so kristin (aka rooooooommate) just got back late last
night from 2 weeks in mexico for her j-term... while
there in mexico city she randomly meets this couple
whose last name she recognizes... the conversation
went something like this:

kristin: "brondos... you're not liz's parents are
you?"
david (brondos): "yes... you know her? how?"
kristin: "yeah from valpo"
david: "how'd you meet her?"
kristin: "well, it's a funny story actually... my old
roommate goes to the same church in memphis as your
parents... she was gone liz's first semester but told
me to look out for her since i could speak spanish too
and just because she's a brondos..."
david: (interrupting) "you're lara's roommate?!?!?!"
kristin: "well, yeah"
david: "she went to hungary, and (blah blah blah)"

apparently these people in mexico who i've never met
have an hour's worth of lara stories to tell at the
mention of my name... how most hilarious is that?"

duuuuuuude... the end

proof that dreams are images in your head firing at random

not the best subject line, but it's to the point... when i took psych 101 last year for an elective that was one of the theories of where dreams come from that we learned about... now, check out what i just woke up from dreaming, and if that doesn't just illustrate it perfectly, then i don't know what does.

so i'm somewhere with some people i don't know... i remember having left aunt priscilla's house (pittsburgh) telling her we (don't know who i was with at the time) earlier and telling her we'd be back fine at some point that night

so we go downtown somewhere (definitely not pittsburgh) and to this old warehouse type place where the people i'm with (who apparently i know from somewhere) are part of an organization that runs this crazy place... it's like a 2 story crawl-through maze lit up with blacklights and stuff, really kinda cool and they're showing me around before it gets busy for opening hours... we make it halfway through (certain that when i started out the place was inside), realize it's later than we thought and crawl out of the maze where we're at (and suddenly there's no roof to the place and it's daylight outside)...

so we go back to the entrance because the people i'm with have to work and who's first in line but michelle collins and some kid she's watching (michelle would be in minneapolis; the kid she was watching she called daniel and when i looked at him, it was a younger version of a troublemaking kid i used to have in daycare in memphis)... we chat for a bit, comment that we're both surprised that i'm still in minneapolis (wasn't i in pittsburgh when this started?), look out the top of the roofless building and see clouds doing crazy things and are concerned how long the weather will hold, then the kid can't wait anymore and wants to go play, so michelle rushes off with him and we agree to meet up front...

the sky almost instantly turns black and i run into the ticket area of the entrance, the only part of the building with a roof, but people look at me like i'm crazy... certain we had walked over earlier, i don't give a second thought to the fact that my car is sitting in the entrance area, scott and colleen are there waiting to go (road trip!) and so is mason (budapest semesters friend) and some of his columbia south carolina buddies (they didn't really have faces... i've never visited mason in SC)...

despite the fact that it's warm and going to rain, apparently there's ice to scrape off my car, and so while like 10 people are packed in it, singing along with the radio and bouncing around, i have the scraper out and am attacking the windows with a vengeance (last night it was cold and icy and i had to scrape off my car a few times, with people with me)... as i round the last corner of the car, one of the people (one i know, but won't say who b/c it disturbed me that i attributed this to this person) had been trying to start the car for me, but they had been listening to my radio so long without actually starting the engine that the battery was run down and this person couldn't get it to start... so this person immediately pulls a gun out of their pocket and is like "dude, i'll be back, i know the easy way to get what we need to get this thing going again" and hands another gun to another of the people there... so it's a quasi hostage situation... i make myself busy again with scraping windows (not sure if i'm in pittsburgh? minneapolis? columbia? all at the same time?) from ice, in the rain, concerned that if i go out front to catch up w/ michelle again that i'll get shot or have to bring someone with a gun with me -- i don't like that.

i get restless, and am mad that my road trip is stranded wherever we are so i try to start the car myself , and it starts right up for me... gotta figure out who belongs in my car and who doesn't for the rest of the trip... want to just jet outta there but remember that i need to wait for my friend with the gun, regardless of the fact that they have a gun... so we have like 10 people milling in and about my car

then jared and a friend drive up in a crazy old boat of a car and are like "guys! wait! we have food for the trip!" and start unloading tons and tons... while they hand us like a life-time supply of tuna, and a huge industrial size tub of goldfish crackers, and some other random odds and ends, scott's trying to arrange the people as well as the food in the car and it's not working

i make sure no one is in the driver's seat b/c that's my job, and try to clear off the windshield, but the wipers have gotten completely shredded by the people and i'm trying to figure out how i can get new ones, still concerned i'm going to miss michelle.

so then i pretty much woke up, mid dream, concerned where i was, having seen people from way too many settings at once, still with a gun aimed in my general direction but more concerned about winshield wipers and where to fit all the people, concerned that trying to fix the problems will make me miss another short visit with michelle.

no wonder i was confused when i woke up... but that's pretty impressive detail to still remember a dream in... it's not often that i actually remember them, so do dah for that... but yeah, go figure, my head is a strange and mixed up place... and if that doesn't prove that at least some dreams are just images in your head firing at random, i don't know what does.

dude, this just is not gonna work

subject is another eric quote but i might as well have said it 10 times today

top 3:

(1) lie groups... had our second class today... until i learn a bit more about differential manifolds, i'm gonna feel way behind (and am) in that class... homework due thursday... oops

(2) driving marathon (this is what eric said it for)... mondays and wednesdays we have analysis til 4:10... then eric has band rehearsal starting at 4:30... problem, analysis is on busch campus... band rehearsal is on cook/douglas campus... there are rutgers buses that go between the campuses, but (a) busch and cook/douglas are the farthest apart pair of any of the campuses and (b) the math building is on the farthest end of busch away from c/d... the music building is on the farthest end of c/d away from busch (c) eric asked our analysis prof if we could move class up by 10 minutes since the students all agreed and he can't b/c of his schedule and (d) getting out on time and driving like a maniac, (i'm eric's designated driver, this was agreed upon last semester) we got him to nicholas (the music building) with about 30 seconds to spare... this is soon going to become our twice a week entertainment i guess

(3) i need to get a better attitude with my roommate... we don't talk much... i don't think either of us expects the other to, as long as we both clean up after ourselves and pay our halves of the bills... i don't have anything against her, i just don't understand her, but i often get the feeling she thinks i'm a slob or that i'm an idiot... i'm not sure which... living here for another semester always assuming that one of those two is a hidden motive in whatever she's just mentioned is not gonna work... (a) i have no reason other than my gut feeling to suppose that's the case... really, i should just give her the benefit of the doubt and (b) that'll make me into a mental case double checking everything i do to make sure i'm not being a pain to her... dude, maybe i already am one for even taking the time to type out a paragraph like this. summary: i need to not attribute motives to her that i have no proof are there.

so yeah, homework, driving logistics, and people relations, need to work on all of the above....

in happier news:

(1) i think i actually have an idea what's going on in analysis right now!

(2) it's supposed to snow like a foot in the next 24-36 hours... dude, what a party

(3) people crack me up... quote of the day follows:
{sitting in analysis, jared is sitting next to me, and scott's right in front of me}
goodman (prof): so let's check an example... we can just pick our favorite compact Hausdorff space...
scott: (turns around and whispers) so what's your favorite compact Hausdorff space?
me: dude, absolutely none
{5 second pause}
(simultaneously i whisper, scott turns around and whispers): pizza!!!
(then in reaction to the impeccable timing, in unison again): dude!
jared: (having observed the entire exchange, whispering too): yeah, my favorite compact Hausdorff space is the surface of a pizza, crust included

then it was really hard to not laugh out loud and look like we were all being good, but i think we succeeded... dude, i got great math people =P

oh, in futher exciting news, it looks like jessica's coming up to visit this weekend -- that'll be a party, i'm excited. =)

now, to be productive.... duuuuude... later

and so it goes

dude, what a day

i've been in a weird mood for most all of it... various and sundry reasons, but overall, i think i just woke up in a funk, nothing today really snapped me out of it, and thus i'm still in a funk... perhaps tomorrow i'll be cheerier.

significant events

* this morning at church pastor j announced that when he gets to his 65th birthday (this november) he's retiring... when he finished and his wife talked for a minute, the congregation gave them an ovation... the thing is, he's such a gifted and versatile preacher/pastor that he'll be greatly missed... he's been in the congregation here 27 years... i've just been attending there since september and i'll miss him a lot... but like he said, in light of that, we still have 10 months to rejoice together as the next steps for the congregation are taken... it'll be interesting to be sure.... i'm not sure exactly what the words are to my reaction to this, but yeah, the end.

* small confrontation w/ the roommate... it's even on a seemingly silly topic... we were discussing some bills / other apartment stuff and she throws in "by the way, i get migraines and you light scented candles... can you keep the door shut when you do that?" a perfectly acceptable complaint, and i plan to respect it... the reason it even makes the blog is, 99% of the time when i have candles lit, my door is shut... she complained because last night i left my door open when i went out for an hour; i had just extinguished them when i headed out and my room still smelled like vanilla pecan... fine, fair enough... but why is it ok that she had like 5 scented candles lit in the tv room last night too but my candles aren't ok? just confused by the double standard because if scented candles are the problem, she shouldn't be lighting them for herself too... oh well. i don't think i'll ever understand her really, just try to get along.

* worked on analysis for a bit... figured out 1 problem last night, couldn't get the other one on my own, or working with eric in the office, so i called up jared, we went to his place and he explained all.,.. immediately after that we went to colleen's to work on lie groups... i got next to nothing out of that since colleen and leigh have been discussing it all weekend and i've been elsewhere so they were at a different point than me in reading/working, plus the style they were attacking it with wasn't working for me... good for them, just yeah, i left feeling like i had accomplished nothing in the previous 4 hours, and still in a funk

*following me giving up on lie groups for the evening, eric and i argued for at least half an hour about how to read star maps and where in the sky we saw the meteor last night... not heated, just both convinced we were right and the other was confused... it more or less ended with
eric: "and now i could just make a sweeping sexist comment"
me: "except it won't apply here, so you won't"
eric: "because you don't count as a girl?"
me: "that and because i DO have a good sense of direction"
etc.

it's all a list of little piddly not-a-big-deal things, but i'm tired, and tired of people for the night.

reading, then sleeping off my attitude... night all.

we sure got our money's worth out of that parking fare, little did they expect us to use the garage for an observatory!

above quote courtesy of eric about an hour ago.

so, as evidenced by the last blog, i was tired today and needed some downtime... eric had been hanging with the people and needed some down time... then i decided i needed some caffeine and he was my accomplice... we went to starbucks, but it was quite the popular hangout in the current 10 degree/ -2 windchill weather out there, and we couldn't find seats actually IN the starbucks, so we just headed back for the car, reparked on the roof level of the parking garage, and looked for constellations through the windows/sunroof for the better part of an hour... and listened to billy joel...

aside: billy joel music is the latest phase of the first years in our dept. i bought the 1st two discs of his greatest hits in december when i visited jessica in philly... the last week around we all listened to them lots, and now that we're back scott got me copies of discs 3 and 4 so that's like all any of us listen to lately... fun indeed.

oh! so dude, we're drinking our starbucks and spotting all the stars we know that we could actually see (mostly all the constellations and major stars that border orion such as gemini, auriga, canis major, canis minor, taurus, the pleaides, lepus, castor, pollux, sirius, capella, etc. etc.)... can also find saturn really well in the middle of gemini lately... anyhow, out of nowhere this flaming ball of white light falls out of the sky,.... i've seen one falling star before ever and this was bigger and brighter than even the planets you can see... eric said it's either a really big/close meteor (but it was super huge for that according to him) or a really far away bizarre who knows what... go figure... so i guess i saw my first meteor tonight too and it was a big one. yay for stargazing.

i solved one out of our two analysis problems completely on my own... the other one is tomorrow's job. i give up on homework for now... amanda's (my roommate here) watching TV with ron (her boyfriend)... not a complaint, just an observation: her voice gets really shrill when he's over... it just goes up in pitch a couple notches as soon as he gets here it seems like and while they're laughing at the TV i can't really concentrate on math theorems i don't totally get so i'm off to other stuff... like ragamuffin gospel... that's one quality book.

night all.... for real this time... =P

on being gifted and other such fun

dude, so last night was fun... instead of thursday night, friday's the night this semester for no math nights. chicken parmesan at jared's followed by sheepshead for awhile... it was fun, although i got a little loud and bossy towards the end before i left... not mean bossy, just i need to work on not being carried away/too hyper around my friends here because they're all way too nice and let me get away with it for a bit.

so i left early anyhow because i had to be up super early... the earliest i have to be up any given weekday is 9:50, and that's just a 10 minute drive away to class... today i had to be at church at 9 for an all day spiritual gifts workshop, which was a whole 30 minute drive away... all that adds to up after a fun night, i had to be up and going well over an hour earlier than i normally am on even my earliest mornings... it's been a long day just from that and i'm tired!!!

but yeah, it was good... there were 14 of us around for this workshop... we spent the day going back and forth between large group discussion and video watching and small group discussion (and i finally met the lady in charge of the altar guild team i'm on in my small group -- yay =P)...it was a productive day in self-understanding.

very concise summary... we each have a unique passion/set of spiritual gifts/personality combination, and it's figuring out what those are that will help us each fgure out how we can serve other people with our gifts... for example in talking about what my passion was, the 5-7 most significant events in my life were not events, but people... talking about it in my group and thinking about it more, what i really really enjoy is making people laugh and being able to listen to them/help them however i'm able... so in a way, my "passion" is encouraging or cheering up people.

as far as personality traits, apparently i'm slightly more people oriented than task oriented and slightly more desiring of flexibility than of structure.

the spiritual gifts part was the interesting part... we were supposed to kind of "score ourselves" on various traits of 20+ spiritual gifts referenced in the Bible... my highest score was 15/21, but i had 3 that i had that score for... given no scale is perfect, but part of the system was after we assessed ourselves we were told in the next week to go and ask at least 3 christian friends to fill out a similar evaluation of those same gifts and what aspects of them they see in us... i won't say exactly what i came up with for myself until i hear back from my people, lest they read this before they answer impartially =P

we also talked a lot about other more overarching concepts like how diversity is not division, unity is not conformity, the difference between servility and servanthood, etc. like i said, it was a good and productive day.

now, i have some more stuff to do on my own, like i said above, some of my friends have some stuff to fill out, and a month from now i have a 45 minute meeting with pastor to discuss the whole process and talk about what i plan to do about it. should be good stuff... big thoughts to process/organize in the meantime... will also be interested to see how the people who have it respond to the survey.

in other news, since i was gone to old bridge (town where church is) all day, i've not done any homework at all... i only have two classes that have assigned it so far, but they're the two harder ones in my opinion... (1) analysis (which was my worst subject last semester) and (2) lie groups (which started out above my head the first lecture, the book isn't in yet, but i have 12 problems due on thursday!)... everyone else played basketball this afternoon while i was at church, and then got together for homework about the time i got home to rest for a little... they're making tacos and playing cards tonight, but i think i need to make a nice cup of chai, and get busy and to work for a bit. *hopefully* i'll be brilliant and figure out at least something... if not, at least for analysis, jared promised to be my buddy and explain what i don't understand to me tomorrow afternoon... for lie groups, i'll just have to catch up with leigh, colleen, or maybe even just bug greg on IM if i can't seem to make heads and tails of it... but first i actually have to get to work! dude...

ok, so that's that... more another time... vislat!

back to school

dude, so today was second day of classes... 3 attended, the 4th one i'll have tomorrow and then it's all a trick of remembering which class to go to where on which days and getting the gears in my brain rolling on math again... joy.

what am i up to this semester? analysis 2 (this is the class that drove me nuts last semester), algebra 2 (i'm ok with this), lie groups (i took lie algebras last semester... loosely related but from what little i know about lie groups disjoint), and graph theory (bouncing off the wall with excitement about this)... should be good... and hopefully i'll get to be friends with analysis this semester... who knows.

overall, it's good to be back. i have a lot of fun with the people here and am getting to know a few of them better lately than most of last semester when i was just plain overwhelmed most of the time.

i was thinking tonight when i was coming back from errands, dinner on campus, etc. that i'm just plain lucky... despite how much i complain about workload and stress at times; no matter how much i get frustrated at times, i really am blessed... i mean like i totally get a salary to learn. there's requirements and hurdles along the way but time to catch up with life the universe and everything along the way, and pick up on other things i'm curious about. scott, for example, (one of the other first year math students) is taking a philosophy class this semester... colleen's been active in on-campus christian/catholic fellowship stuff... eric and me have been driving out to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and learning constellations. to be paid to explore the world and stuff i'm interested in is about one of the coolest situations ever to be in, and i really am fortunate to have this job while the opportunity's here.

enough being all flowery/prosaic/whatever.

that's basically the scoop for now;... new classes to attack, feeling good to be back and feel like i have a fresh start of sorts.

saturday should be interesting... the church i go to here has its organization based very much on spiritual gifts and i'm going to a spiritual gifts seminar/workshop there all day this coming saturday... looking forward to it.

saturday after that eric pinky-swore we'd go check out the big planetarium in NYC, perfect since we've been working on learning the constellations... i saw a planetarium show back in memphis over break which is what sparked the idea... actually when he's done practicing horn tonight we're going to go outside with start charts and see how many constellations we can track down since although it's still cold it's not so cold tonight that your nose feels like it's about to fall of within 5 minutes of stepping out the door. (how's that for a looooong sentence?)

at any rate, that's the scoop,... for real this time =P stars, analysis, and ragamuffin gospel, then sleep. later.

analyze this

smswtshnn: explain...
lkp 42 42 42: is that a command?
lkp 42 42 42: dude
smswtshnn: it is a .... request
smswtshnn: i don't know how to spell beseech, or i'd use that word :-P
lkp 42 42 42: dude
lkp 42 42 42: i think it's beseach
smswtshnn: dude, i think you're right
smswtshnn: llama
lkp 42 42 42: no just like everytime i'm in the car since september and am anywhere near another car i like forsee myself crashing into them and dying... and it's getting worse not better
lkp 42 42 42: i think it's because i know so many people who died in car wrecks last semester
lkp 42 42 42: like i was thrilled on the roadtrip
lkp 42 42 42: but certain i was going to crash somewhere on each leg in the back of my head just because it happened to nicole, and alan, and a friend's mom, and and and
lkp 42 42 42: and i'm done
lkp 42 42 42: the end
lkp 42 42 42: and someone totally pulled out on me and i had to slam on the breaks on the way back just now
lkp 42 42 42: which did not help the syndrome
lkp 42 42 42: break=brake
smswtshnn: i see..............
lkp 42 42 42: the thing is i'm not really concerned or freaked out, just like "oh huh, that's a possibility at any time, you never know"
smswtshnn: that's gotta be hard to deal with
smswtshnn: yeah, i know what you mean
lkp 42 42 42: so i'm weird
lkp 42 42 42: you knew that
lkp 42 42 42: the end
smswtshnn: i've had weird psychoses like that in the past, too
smswtshnn: you were okay on the road trip? or not so much...?
lkp 42 42 42: i was fine on the road trip
lkp 42 42 42: i ENJOY driving
smswtshnn: good
lkp 42 42 42: it's how i destress
lkp 42 42 42: but when i'm in the car i forsee myself dying
lkp 42 42 42: when i'm in any other situation less than sitting still playing cards or in the classroom or something i foresee myself dying somehow
lkp 42 42 42: residual dealing w/ last semester
lkp 42 42 42: that's all
lkp 42 42 42: you asked, you got it
smswtshnn: i do that sometimes with buses, whenever i'm walking or biking near one -- i'm convinced it's going to kill me
lkp 42 42 42: dude
smswtshnn: i also have a weird psychotic things with knives
lkp 42 42 42: really, i'm honestly pretty ambivalent, i just forsee myself dying in a lot of situations, and i'm more bothered by the frequency of it than the fact that that's what i'm thinking of
lkp 42 42 42: the end
smswtshnn: whenever i'm holding a sharp one, i visualize myself stabbing the people around me, or just as often stabbing myself
lkp 42 42 42: dude
smswtshnn: (so don't stand by me when i have a knife!)
lkp 42 42 42: yeah, i see it falling and getting my wrist
lkp 42 42 42: i stay away from them
smswtshnn: seriously, i don't like knives, though i'm getting better about it

etc. etc. etc.

i'm so freakin weird... the end

well hey

dude, ok so catch up time...

the last time i wrote substantially i was getting ready for a mega road trip and mega road trip i did... check out the pictures page link in the right margin for the grand synopsis... basically it involved hanging out with colleen's minnesota people for a bit, hanging around valpo for a bit, and hanging around my pittsburgh relatives for a bit with quick visits to a few other spiffy friends on the way... as soon as i got into town i had a visitor too (mason)

pretty insane... as i commented one night to scott and colleen (both of whom travelled with me), i like moving every few years since it gives me license to kinda start over with a new personality of sorts each time... at the time i said that, i commented "and right now i'm definitely being valpo lara... enjoy it while it lasts!"... it's funny b/c they've already met one of my high school friends... now they met extended family, and saw me in the context of valpo people and in the context of budapest semesters people... not that i'm like schizophrenic or anything, but i notice subtle changes in how i act each place... it's like i switch over to the mode that matches most of the people i'm dealing with at the time and the others can just get confused... it's fun to see so many people, also takes a lot of energy -- i've been running on adrenaline all week i think. =P

can't believe i'll be in classes in just 3 days from now (2?... whatever tuesday counts as)... after getting in yesterday afternoon i've just nearly finished unpacking... it's been a bit crazy... part of that was hanging w/ mason and other people when i normally would have been organizing my life, but part is just a LOT of stuff to do... i guess it's good amanda doesn't get back here til tomorrow because i've been keeping weird hours (up chatting w/ mason til 4:30 this morning... still up now at 2 blasting stereo and moving stuff around the place) and had my stuff spread out everywhere as i sort through it all...

speaking of amanda, it's been in the back of my mind for quite some time, but i really have no clue what she thinks of me... not that her opinion would make or break my opinion of myself because i don't think either of us knows the other well at all... i think we do relatively well trying to respect the way each other does things, but i also know that we just come from totally different backgrounds and i think even if we suddenly decided to put in this gigantic effort to get to know each other better it would be a real challenge just because we're so different...

anyhow, i had left her a message wednesday that i would be home friday, hope she had a good break, and that one of my friends needed a place to stay friday and hopefully that's ok... call me if she needed to talk about it... pretty much all i could do from the road 3 states away! anywho, i come home to an answering machine message back that she was around friday morning/afternoon and left before i got home, planning to be back sunday and also would i please keep the heat down low so we don't have a mega electric bill this month...

who knows... sometimes i just get the feeling that she feels like i'm an inane slob... although i thrive on clutter, i thrive on organized clutter and i keep the clutter in my room, and keep the common area pretty free of my stuff... i know i'm not a slob because in my other apartment situations (budapest, valpo, etc.) i cleaned as frequently as my roommates in one case and was the primary cleaner in the other... i don't mean to sound paranoid because i'm not really... i just wish i knew if my guess what right... it's the first time in awhile i've lived with someone that i talk to with such little frequency just by schedules and by habit both ways that i feel some days like i'm walking on glass and i'm not even sure that that's the case.

this is getting way too rambly... moving right along...

so break and driving were great for thinking about things... nicole's been gone already 4.5 months now and she's still on my mind just about every day, if not more often... it's the first time i actually put it in words for myself over break but although she was still one of my closest friends in the past year, i felt a little like we were growing distant (bad word choice for lack of a better one) since i got back from europe... i don't think it was so much a function of that as a function of both of us preparing to part ways and move on to new lives... we definitely did have some spiffy chats over the past year and she was the one person who called me on my birthday while i was home this summer, and we wrote back and forth a bit, but it's completely weird to me that i think i would have reacted extremely differently to her death if we hadn't had the last conversation we did 2 days before she went... that still replays in my head, a LOT... this paragraph doesn't sound that significant or really say what i want it to, except to me, but i've been sorting through a lot of my reaction to nicole's death over break now that i've had time to sit still.

it was also good over break to run into other people like the duncansons or christi mccrory (nee neuf) (stephen duncanson, age 12, died like a week after nicole... christi mccrory's dad died unexpectedly when he crashed a plane he was taking lessons to fly earlier this fall)... in some ways some of the many situations that have been on my mind for months felt a little more rested when i could see and talk to the people affected face to face... not that the hurt/loss is any less for anyone... just a little comfort in actually seeing people.

i still have no idea how i feel exactly about grandma schumann/fischer... thursday, while we were in pittsburgh, i drove colleen and scott up to her nursing home and i visited with her... it was my first time to go see her without mom, so that was really different. i commented after thanksgiving that her mind was noticeably slipping... it's just small things... but things that wouldn't have been the case before... she recognized me, was excited to see me, wanted to see my picture albums from the holidays, had fun comments, and laughed a lot at my jokes, but some things (like she was incredibly excited to hear that scott was from wisconsin, her home state and after talking about wisconsin for a bit, she asked at least twice more where my friends were from and was completely excited again, not remembering she had heard it before, when i said wisconsin again) it's little things like that that make it a little harder... she's the grandparent i've grown to know most as a friend... both my grandpas died when i was 15... that's old enough to have lots of good memories with them, but not quite adult enough mentality to see them as a friend instead of a fun older relative... grandma pudwell's viewpoints make her extremely hard for me to relate to and so i feel like i put up a really weird facade when i'm with her... grandma schumann/fischer though wrote me letters all the time until her strokes... she was always interested (and still is) in all of what i'm up to.... academically, socially, spiritually... isn't critical, but is someone whose opinions i respect a lot... that unique relationship out of the 4 grandparents makes it really hard to see her less and less able to communicate, because even when she does have a sentence or paragraph long thought to communicate, her strokes and being half paralyzed make it really hard for her to express enough words clearly to get the whole thing across... we've gotten good at understanding her over the years as best we can, but it's still a challenge... and hard to see her kinda trapped inside a half frozen body unable to even completely express herself verbally much less do anything much to occupy her time... you think after awhile it would become easier to know how to deal with, and i guess over the past 3.5 years we have acclimated to the situation, as has she, but that doesn't mean its easy... done rambling about that... just having my first visit with *just* me and her got me to thinking... i miss hearing out her full comments and talking with her more at length... i miss getting letters from her when we're not in the same place... and yet she's not gone yet... it's this weird in-between phase that i don't think anyone is fully emotionally equipped to handle...

on the other hand, grandma pudwell just makes me mad sometimes... she tells me how proud she is of me and that i deserve all the things i have going for me, and then she lights into me and lectures me about all sorts of crazy things... the topic of this visit was "lara, if you ever even think of dating someone who is not white, you won't be allowed in my house -- it's for your own good... i'm 78, you should agree with me just because i'm older"... and even though non-argument visits are nice, i never just verbally agree with her if it means saying something i totally don't agree with, so i respectfully gave all kinds of examples where mixed marriages have worked out just fine (dude what would she say if she knew mom (her daughter in law) had a black boyfriend for a little in college??? -- dude...) and she got all upset with me... it also bothers me when she tells me "oh you work so hard, you deserve your nice new car and this and that and blah blah blah"... i dunno why, i guess deserve is one of my little buzz words that sets me ill at ease... i don't think i *deserve* anything i have... i think i'm blessed to have what i do and need to work on being more generous/sharing with what i do have instead of hoarding it... it's good to visit grandma and i do enjoy it, but it's generally a stressful thing to see her because she has this knack for inadvertently pushing my buttons as illustrated above... i dunno...

still going... dude... so yeah, if i plan to wake up in 6 hours i should maybe get some sleep... those are my rambling thoughts on several relationships that have been on my mind lately and got brought up again on the journey back here to jersey... there's much more i could write about... mostly the drive was good for thinking and sorting through stuff...

it's good to be back... i just pray it all gets off to a good running start instead of the avalanche that last semester started with. =P

really, no joke, sleep time... good night to all y'all.

...and i'm back!

dude, so road trip done... much more to write later... currently i've slept 6 hours... shortly after we got back to NJ and unloaded everybody's stuff but mine from the car, mason (of my budapest semester last year fame) came through... we got together w/ my math friends who are back and then stayed up til 4:30 -- he's currently asleep on my living room floor and hopefully sober when he wakes up -- it's been quite the hilarious evening...

anywho, update later... i need to get my act together... whenever mason's up it's lunchtime and then mega errands/moving back into the apartment time... dude... later

wrappin it up

so, unless something highly dramatic and exciting happens before i go, i'm gonna make this my last entry for awhile... clearly i've written plenty more than necessary while i've been home, but whatever =P

it's always interesting to come back because the family's always ready to act like i live here, but i really don't have much left around here, other than that i totally love the city/region... work, school, friends, etc. have all moved away and are around just about as often as me.

brother's doing pretty well for himself but developing some of dad's defensiveness and temper some days... doing all kinds of crazy scouting stuff... i'm glad things are going well for him... he's hardly ever home, and when he is usually he and dad are either talkin shop about the animals or yelling... who knows. mostly, i've had fun with him, but his sometimes know it all attitude and at other times his bossiness get to me... overall, it's been good to hang with him for a couple weeks. =)

mom is the most indecisive person i know lately... she's been talking for 1.5 to 2 years about quitting her job as principal at immanuel b/c she knows it's time for a change... she wrote a resignation letter last month that she's been planning to submit at tomorrow night's school board meeting... but since i've been home she's had me read over the letter and then keeps asking me if she should submit it or not... i finally told her last weekend "mom, you're the one who's been saying you know it's time for a change... you should know in your heart this is the thing to do or it's not really"... so instead she's announcing to her faculty today and to school board tomorrow that (1) she's going to investigate her options for the future and (2) she's requesting they start looking into her replacement... more or less resigning, just not putting a definite time frame on it... who knows. hopefully however this turns out she feels more confident she's where she should be for the time being and is a little less stressed about things. overall, i've enjoyed being w/ mom this break... she's in a really weird phase right now though, with the sorting out what to do with her life and all... some days it seems like she's copying me... trying to dress like me, copying what i order, wanting to use my stuff... i don't think it's necessarily intentional, but she likes to comment "you just seem like you have your life so together and you're not afraid to try new things... i'm proud of that for you, and wish i had more of that for myself"... good to spend time with her too... hoping by next time i see her she's more confident of whatever she feels she should be doing... the end.

dad on the other hand has also been talking for years about quitting... talked about starting up his own business by december and never did... he's waiting for things to even out at work and decide what to do from there... that's his professional life... on a personal level though, he tries my patience as much as ever... over break i've been yelled at for *changing the tv channel when he leaves the room *sleeping past 7 when i have nothing to do all day *things my brother has done or failed to do *studying math instead of biology and a plethora of other equally ridiculous things... sometimes we laugh and tell him he has the eichmann curse (his mom's maiden name... g-ma and g-ma's mom both got weird and picky about strange things as they got older); other times he just makes me feel like crap whether he means to or not... it's been alright dealing with him... over the years i've gotten better about filtering what to take seriously from him... same as many many visits past though (1) i'm super glad to get a break from him -- he's much easier to take long distance, (2) i wish he'd get a hearing aid... and (3) i wish he'd learn to stop yelling and taking every little bit of life so seriously as a personal offense... life would be much more pleasant around here if he'd learn not to yell about trivial stuff... makes it hard to keep my temper in response while i'm here and i really don't like that side of me...

at any rate, that's the synopsis here with the family... good to see them but ready to get back to my own life.... instead of doing that even though, i'm kinda taking a week in no man's land without a real intense schedule to visit all kinds of spiffy people... over the next 9 days, i'm visiting 10 states and lots of family and friends... here's the plot... lest you're bored and forgot what i'm up to

thursday, jan 8:
driving to st. louis, having lunch w/ dave beagley, driving to g-ma pudwell's in manteno, il
friday, jan 9:
hanging out w/ g-ma... probably she'll take me shopping and to see a movie... she called last night and was all excited that she would have me over so she could make chop suey, which she loves but will never make for just herself -- who knows, it'll be a trip
saturday, jan 10:
driving from g-ma's to colleen's (in maple grove, MN) -- pray for clear, safe roads and good weather
sunday, jan 11:
going to mass w/ colleen's family, hanging around w/ colleen and meeting some of her people
monday, jan 12:
driving from maple grove, MN to madison, WI to track down scott, driving w/ scott and colleen down to valpo
tuesday, jan 13:
in valpo... probably will visit dean franson, morning chapel, math colloquium, prof. treanor, prof. gillman, and whoever else i track down
wednesday, jan 14:
driving from valpo to toledo, OH, having lunch @ ihop w/ alliswan ringold... then driving to pittsburgh
thursday, jan 15:
visiting family around pittsburgh... should be fun
friday, jan 16:
driving back to NJ... rumor has it mason (friend from BSM) will possibly be around, so maybe even another mini-get-together... party all around.

anyhow, that's life the universe and everything for the next while... next update most likely not coming until i get back to jersey... catch all y'all on the flip side.

dude

dad: what did you do today?
me: i went to see the pandas
dad: you went to canada?
me: no, i went to see the pandas at the zoo
dad: how on earth did you get to canada?
me: are you listening to yourself?

(later)
dad: no one ever likes to talk to me at home... why do you all hate me?
me: dad, let's review the last 6 hours, shall we?
dad: ok
me: whenever we try to have a discussion either (1) you get up and turn on the tv (2) come home and yell at people for things other people did or (3) respond with rhyming words that make no sense
dad: laughing, i guess that's true... i'm old, i really can't hear you and your brother makes me mad
me: true, but you did all that stuff right?
dad: yeah, i guess i did
me: would you try to talk to someone who acted like that all the time?
dad: oh, i guess not

ready to run

dude, ok, reason #1,428 not to live at home

happily working on the computer here while everyone else is out... dad just got back from his meeting... he's been yelling/cussing at me for the better part of 5 minutes for chores my BROTHER was supposed to do and didn't... has nothing to do with me whatsoever and he won't shut up about it... dude... i quit... ready to pack and be gone.

wish me luck for no cavities in the morning... i'm off to hideout in my room til morning, where the father can't yell unless he's being a super big pain

pandas!

so jessica and i went to see the memphis zoo pandas today -- it was fun... they're both really cute... and since it was in the low 30s today (super cold for around here) we were one of like only half a dozen people at the zoo so no long lines... we watched them for the better part of an hour... the zoo has two yaya and lele (said lala) that came from china this summer... the zoo's doing research on how much they eat and alternate varieties of bamboo the pandas can deal with... nutrition research... i think they get them for like 10 years... it's super cool to get up close and watch them... they look like large alive teddy bears. i enjoyed finally getting to see them. =)

now, mom, dad, and brother are all gone to meetings... i'm home alone and online mostly to keep telemarketers from calling and bugging me. =) dude...

seabiscuit, etc.

dude, there are so many things i'd write about on here if it weren't for potential audience i don't want to discuss such things with... that's vague but whatever.

so jessica and i went to see seabiscuit tonight... she saw it this summer but i never had, and it was still actually in the discount theater... apparently i's not a popular movie night or a popular theater tonight... there were 2 guys working and when we came to buy our tickets one took our $$ and the other ran off to start the movie... we were the first two to come to watch, less than 5 minutes before the film started! i enjoyed it a lot... it was a quality story, and fun to see it on the big screen...afterwards, freezing, we decided a warm snack would be good. (it's in the 30s here... was in the 70s yesterday! dude) so we found a deli neither of us had been to before... but it was bizarrely set up and after waiting for a bit for someone to take our order decided to go to the counter and ask... most everyone else in the place was senior citizen age, but whatever... a nice big bowl of soup and some sweet tea hit the spot after freezing all evening... fun indeed.

just finished getting addresses from people for stops along the way on my drive back to jersey... scott decided that i'm going to pick him up on monday, on my way from MN to valpo instead of on saturday on my way from g-ma's house in IL to MN... this way he gets 2 more days at home but doesn't see colleen's place, so oops... i'm excited about the trip... i'll be exhausted by the end of it but it'll be good to see so many people along the way, and fun to have company instead of talking to myself and singing myself hoarse the whole way like i do when left to my own devices.

this break has been good... now it's down to two days of busier/crunch time before i head on home to jersey again. here it is after midnight and i've been up for like 10 hours... i need to go to sleep again soon so i can show up places on time tomorrow. =P besides reading and lots of movie watching, i've gotten to rest up, get over being sick, take a break from a waaay too long to do list. i've finally started to process exactly what i think of the last few months... no mega conclusions, but just have untangled some thoughts about things that have been bothering me. this is good. in a way, i'm taking january now as a fresh start. leaving the fall and its stresses behind me, and just not worrying about them. trying my best and working on not flipping out about things so much. and hey, i have a punching bag to take my stress out on this time around. =)

academically:
it'll be refreshing to take on analysis again, different book, different prof and not feel overwhelmed by the scores behind me. (not that i didn't like ocone for a prof., just it's all new atmosphere)... it'll be refreshing to start fresh on all my classes without feeling behind from the start from circumstances beyond my control like last go around. it'll be exciting to actually be in a graph theory class (my favorite area of math so far).

socially:
last time i was making this drive i knew nearly no one... exceptions being rahul, sarah, and eric... the first two i almost never see, while eric's been a good friend all fall through... now i have a much wider group of friends and acquiantances to look forward to seeing again.

spiritually & emotionally:
fall semester beat me to within an inch of my life... it seemed from september on nearly every time i turned around there was death or exceedingly bad news staring me in the face, and i've learned from experience that it's not God that moves and turns his back on me, it's me that turns my back on, or puts my fingers in my ears and yells at God. it was an extremely trying time of things... especially now that i've had some good downtime without other things preoccupying my mind, it's been good to come to terms with some of the things that have gone on.
dad doesn't mean to but he has this uncanny ability to make me feel like crap when i'm home long enough... i've gotten good at filtering what amount of what he actually says to take seriously, but now that i've had thinking/processing time away from school, it'll be good to release him again and return to jersey, with a break from his nonsense too

all in all, i'm glad for break, but it's been just long enough, -- i'm ready to go back. =)

plan for tomorrow? there's pandas at the zoo that came from china this summer... dad promised we'd see them as a family this summer and then made excuse after excuse until finally the last week i was in town he had horrible back problems and honestly couldn't go... this break it was excuse after excuse again... jessica really wants to see them too, but her dad's schedule has prevented him coming with, so we're finally both going to see them... it'll be an out of the ordinary excursion for us instead of the usual movie/play/shopping/dinner routine, and we're both looking forward to it, so yay for that. =)

at any rate, i'm not tired but i really need to work on normal sleeping hours again, so i'm going to pretend to get some sleep. night.

my eyes are tired =P

dude, so i slept from 4am til 2pm... i'm officially nocturnal... and i officially need to become diurnal again by wednesday... oops.

just now finished the ramanujan biography i've been reading... super good
it's kinda cool to me when i need a break from actually doing math like i've been all semester to read some math history -- it still has the glimmer of why i love the discipline but it kinda a leisure way to enjoy it. i know i'm not the best at what i do, but i do do my best at it.

that book was super long, and now that it's done i'm in my final stretch of my break... two days left in town (tonight seeing seabiscuit @ the dicount theater w/ jessica, tomorrow going to see the pandas @ the zoo w/ jessica, wednesday dentist appointment, packing, and bible study @ the sohns, thursday i'm outta here)... a lot more running around during daylight hours than the sleeping and reading at leisure while no one else is around that i've been up to for a bit... oops.

at any rate, not much to say -- done w/ a real good book... now that it's 5pm it's time to get my act together and not be running around in my pjs anymore... later

etc etc etc

i'm just babbly today... don't know what's up with that...

so after two long evenings of sitting at the computer sorting through emails from the fall and a bit back into the summer my yahoo account has gone from being 86% full to just 2% full -- i'm impressed indeed!

it's interesting because every time i go back through all this stuff (every 6 months or so), most all the significant events of the past half year come up in some form or another... if i don't have individual emails about them, i've probably hit on them in my notorious mass emails... i have a tendency to stew about things on the surface, but not really think through them (as my valpo roommates would say "process things") until i have some down time to think through them again on my own... that's on thing this break has been good for.... so many things i could write about right now but won't.... it's just a really good thing to have gotten my mind jumpstarted on thinking through some things i need to come to terms with/deal with... enough said.

it's freakin 2am (central... i know the stamp at the bottom of the entry says 3, it's still on eastern) and here i am still online, and about to read 100 more pages in the ramanujan biography.

despite some flaws.
(1) "his expertise lay in combinatorics, a soft of glorified dice-throwing" (i don't like that description =P
(2) blunt phrasing that doesn't flow with the rest (e.g. "by then, certainly, he was not a happy man. happy men do not try to kill themselves.")
(3) an occasional mathematical error (this was written by a journalism professor not a mathematician)
it's on the whole a really well written story... ramanujan was a guy from south india who loved mathematics... to the point that he didn't study in any of his other classes and never could get a degree at any university in india... but he kept working away... submitted some of his results to some english mathematicians and finally one had him come to cambridge to work with him for a couple years... ramanujan, being self-taught in large part, had his own extremely unconventional way of doing things which makes his independent work hard to deal with, but was also exceedingly brilliant and came up with some really striking theorems that people are still working on proving to this day... hardy, the mathematician who sponsored his time in england, was the exact opposite... pushing for reform and rigor in mathematical proofs rather than the "my intuition says so, that's that" take that ramanujan took... complete opposites, so the story of their work together (plus the drama of WWI which was in its prime while ramanujan was actually in england) makes for a good tale. but yeah, 100 more pages to go... we'll see how far i get before it becomes imperative i get some sleep. whatever. night. =P

quote of the day

in response to dad's tv antics (see previous entry) mom's whispered comment "who else do you know who does that?"
me: "who?"
mom: "your grandma pudwell... he's got the eichmann curse... don't tell him"

ha ha =)

song in my head =)

found the lyrics to the song that's been in my head on an old website (.de = denmark?)... but it's not online anymore, just in an old google cache... here they are:

1. For the man and for the woman,
for the body and the soul,
for the mind and for the spirit,
for the love that makes us whole;
for the person and the people,
for the many and the few,
for the tradition and for custom,
for the fresh and for the new.

2. For the friendship, for the suff'ring,
for the pleasure and the grief,
for the learning and the list'ning
for the doubting and belief;
for the sound and for the silence,
for the labour and the pray'r,
for the rock and for the folwer,
for the earth and for the air.

3. For the harmony of nations,
for the sounds of many lands,
for the rhythm, for the chanting,
for the language of the hands;
for the richness of the senses
for the colour and design,
for the weaving of the pattern,
for the circle and the line.

4. In the dancer and the poet,
in the singer and the song,
in the artist and the actor,
on the flute and on the gong,
we will praise you, great Creator,
Light of light and Fire of fire;
make us one and makes us many,
your delight is our desire.

apparently a very obscure song, so where on earth do i know it from? sounds to me like a valpo-esque processional, but my valpo music friends online right now don't recognize it either... oh well mystery solved.

on the other hand, apparently i'm a horrible person. i was reading happily in the family recliner earlier this afternoon when dad came in the room, sat for 5 minutes and then went and turned on the TV without a word and left the room... i went to turn it off (no one was watching it and i was doing quite well with the quiet before) and he got mad at me for doing so... just now, i'm working at the computer listening to a dateline report or something and he came in and changed the channel and left the room again walking through every 15 minutes for about 5 seconds... apparently i'm bad because i changed it back to what i was watching to begin with... i miss having my own space... at least in my apartment in jersey, if you're in the common area first, it's assumed you get priority with it, or you at least ask before turning on the TV when someone else is working or whatever... it's a first come first serve, not dad controls the TV and rearranges everyone else's life... blah. ok, back to work. later.

la de da

have a song stuck in my head... but i can't think of any of the words just a really majestic sounding melody that mom couldn't even place when i hummed it for her... 99% sure it's a church hymnal song, but for the life of me i can't get it -- this is going to bug me all day until i get it... blah. =P

blah blah blah

man, staring at the computer way too long this evening.

what have i been up to? lots and lots of reading... finished that hideous strength a few nights ago and have been ploughing through the man who knew infinity ... it's a biography of ramanujan (famous mathematician from the early 1900s) and i'm learning a lot about him about about hardy (famous english mathematician who worked with him) that i never knew before... it's pretty well written, so yay for that.

been spending more money than i should, but on stuff i need (well, mostly)... last night, i spent christmas money on two movies i've seen a million times before i wanted to have (sweet home alabama & miss congeniality -- man, yeah i am a girl... oops) and the latest POD cd which i've also wanted for quite awhile... durn spiffy... and i did actually pay for them in christmas money out of pocket, so yeah, yay for that... brother actually watched both with me and we split a medium pizza... it was a nice putzing around the house kind of evening.

mom's been obsessed with seeing mona lisa smile, so we finally saw it today, her treat... before that ironically she bought herself a nice dress sweater for christmas programs at her school, and grandma pudwell bought her the exact same sweater for a christmas present, so she went to return one of them and trade it in... meanwhile, i've been lacking on good jeans/khakis/etc., so she went to penneys, i went to sears and got what we needed... i got a pair of jeans to replace the pair that's gaining holes like crazy, a decent not overworn pair of khakis, a new pair of running pants since the current pair is getting old and starting to need patches soon too, and a nice black sweater off the sale rack... good stuff all around.

dad's trying my patience, but i think i'll survive this break without actually yelling at him, although he has a few times at me... sometimes the things he gets mad at me about aren't even worth a response, but he wears my patience and my happiness with being here down to shreds by the end of most every visit... dude... enough said on that.

anyhow, otherwise, besides lots of movies and some shopping lately, i've been working away at saving emails out of my yahoo email account since it's been full to overflowing... i have this thing about saving any email that has remotely any content to it, and twice a year i save them all to floppy disks... it's kinda like when i had lots of penpals around the world i wrote snail mail to... i still have those letters all in a big filing box under my bed here... you just save those kinds of things... this bout of saving things to disk is kinda tiring though... i just went through a whole folder of 41 emails labelled "nicole"... the oldest message was the last mass email nicole sent from when she was getting settled in tampa this july/august, and after that 30+ of them were from responses from friends when i wrote a mass email that she had died, and correspondence with her parents since... bittersweet to go through... had a similar folder for responses i got after stephen duncanson died also this fall... etc., etc., etc.... it's not all sad stuff... there was also a lengthy folder of all the emails all us first year rutgers math grad students wrote over the summer to introduce ourselves before we actually came to campus -- that was actually amusing to read through now that i actually have known them all for months... at any rate, it's just kinda a bizarre way to review the past few months, as if it needs to be done again. =P

ok, the end... time for another chapter of ramanujan, and to sleep.

later.

in america

so in avoidance of the father, i convinced mom to see a movie she had suggested as an alternate to last night's "family fun extravaganza"... independent film only at studio on the square (nicer theater 25 minutes across town from us) called "in america"

honestly, one of the best movies i've seen all year if not the best. maybe because it was about starting over, maybe because it was about dealing with death and tough stuff, maybe because of a lot of things.

it was independent and so it was more lifelike and less flashy than a lot of other movies out right now. story of an irish family who came to the states and started over in NYC with not much to their name (and still had not much at the end), but learned to cope w/ life in general. apparently just before the movie, they had lost a kid to a brain tumor and were starting over across the world from all those memories... the two remaining kids did a respectable job dealing with their feelings in the open, the parents not so much... finally by the end, after loosing a neighor to a similar plight and almost losing another kid, they all kinda came to terms in one way or another... it was just a very hard core -- "this is life -- what do you choose to make of it?" kind of story... the last scene was really good... the one girl maybe 10 years old had been obsessed with her camcorder the whole time... so the last scene has her watching frankie (her brother who had died before the movie) on a video she had taken.... she comments "i'll turn this off now... it's not how i want to see frankie anymore"... focus shifts to her face across the screen while her monologue continues.... then fades to a view of downtown manhattan lit up at night "... do you remember me? what i look like? that's the kind of picture i want in my head of frankie... one that will go on living forever... and next time i talk to him, i'll ask him if he'll please please let go of me now"

just a real honest movie about dealing with the hard stuff in life... i really really liked it and would highly recommend it... really glad mom and me saw it.

now, to finish that hideous strength =)... later =P

close my eyes and count to 10, hope that when i open them everything will be wonderful again

2 weeks with my dad is one week too many. enough said.

happy new year

or something like it.

dude, so since i mostly just have the family around while i'm in town, and occasional get togethers with friends, there wasn't something large and profound to do tonight... dad suggested we should go out to eat and see a movie, only he insisted the movie should be "cold mountain" and got mad and said we were ruining a good suggestion when we told him maybe we should have family discussion about which movie... so whatever, we saw it.

dad thoroughly enjoyed it... brother's comment "it was good, but not one i woulda gone to see on my own"... for mom, it was the first R rated movie she's seen in her life and she said "it was really really weird to be sitting by my children while some rather pornographic stuff was going on on the screen"... for me, i was glad i was cold and had my coat to hide under when mass shooting/killing scenes were going on, which were frequent enough to make me somewhat unhappy... the overall message of the movie was really good, the plot was really good... i'm just not good with graphic details.

so happy 2004... 2003's been a long year.
a year ago right now i was still trying to adjust to american time zones, having just gotten back from a semester in budapest the week before... memphis jenny and i rented a few movies "labyrinth" in particular comes to mind, since we joked "what's better than ringing in the new year with david bowie?" =P... however, i kept falling asleep... we stopped the movie for the official countdown to the new year and instead ended up watching a recorded countdown from somewhere on the west coast from the previous year... laughed our heads off about it, and i went back to sleep. =P

in the meantime, survived undergrad, survived re-aclimating to the states enough to deal... graduated, niagara falls road trip, trip to cancun... worked hard for a summer and moved out of the family's house for good... started over again in NJ... lost nicole, lost stephen, had lots of friends lose lots of people they love, had the most stressful semester of my life and just about went spastic, but here it is break... going back in another 2 weeks, fresh start to attack it all over again.

it's amazing how incredibly much can be lost and gained in a mere 12 months. how much people can change. last spring i would have said that my time in budapest changed me the most of any time period in my life to that point.... now, pretty sure 2003 as a whole has done the same all over again. i don't know if i can even really put it into good words, but it really really has... in some ways i've gotten more tense and picky, in others i've had to learn to roll better with major punches just in order to cope... and the list goes on and on.

hopes/resolutions for 2004? i used to be really big on new years resolutions, and a couple times kept them the whole year through. at this point, however, i think i've come to the conclusion that very very little in life is certain. the most i can ask of myself is to sincerely deal with whatever comes my way to the best of my ability. maybe i'll be a little less loud, maybe i'll worry a little less, maybe i'll learn to like myself a little better more of the time. but all i can ask of myself is to try my hardest and put in my best to whatever i take on.

yeah, i'm vague. so be it. =)

happy new year... i'm off to finish a good book until i fall asleep or until it's done... some things never change.