acentos. . .

Today I started reading How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez.

The room next door to me in the communal student house I live in was never fully moved out of by its previous occupant, so my other neighbor/former roommate and I have been taking his stuff down to his new basement room over the past few days. He has a lot of stuff.

We both took a 'book tax,' if you will -- she borrowed his copy of Dexter and I borrowed this book. My Spanish teacher recommended it (after rolling her eyes and declaring The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao a "sensacionalista" representation of the Dominican Republic. Junot Diaz, who teaches at MIT, apparently responded to her telling him this by saying, "You throw your shit, I'll throw mine.")

So far I find it. . . interesting? Well-written and readable, certainly. But a great deal of the book is about the four sisters' relationships with various men, which is . . . not something I find myself particularly able to identify with. . .wrinkly face of wryness.

inserting page breaks

I feel like such a grown-up blogger, inserting page breaks and all.

Still trying to improve the readability of this blog. . .logistically if not content-wise.

I guess part of my problem is that some of the blogs I enjoy reading (such as this one) are not really in compliance with all the recommendations that are out there for blog design. What this blog has that other blogs don't is a compelling story of someone's life and what they are learning about being a human being in real time. (In the aforementioned blog, it helps that she is learning about life as an exchange student in New Delhi. Man, it would be cool to go to India. Or anywhere. Moving on.) That said, it's a little hard to translate from "what would I enjoy reading" to "what would other people enjoy reading."

ze mouse & ze spirits

I met with my thesis adviser on Wednesday. After telling her a little bit about my life right now, she told me this: When a mouse is confronted by a cat, it desperately wants to either run away or attack the cat. These are the only two options that make sense. However, the urge to do both is so powerful that instead of doing either, the mouse sits down and washes its face.

My thesis adviser is a very wise person.

---

So yesterday I did exactly three.5 productive things:

I wrote three pages for a paper and finished preparing figures for said paper

(0.5 item) I turned in the paper

I reserved my cap and gown for graduation (HOLY SHIT I'M GRADUATING AAAAAH)

I embarked on my quest for movie enrichment, starting with Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away.

unreasonably distressing

as an addendum to the last post: Beacon Street fire. I was woken up from a nap by sirens and the sounds of helicopters this afternoon. It kind of freaked me out. I hope no pets were injured -- I trust the news to tell me about the conditions of people, but not necessarily animals, who were in the building.

Apparently this building is a condominium and therefore didn't have to have sprinklers. I find this moderately irritating because my single has no less than four sprinklers -- one over my loft, one under my loft, one over the bookcase by the loft, and one over the desk half doorway. My possessions are in far more danger of being annihilated by water than flames, so far as I can tell. . .

progress toward sanity

Well, that might be a bit of an optimistic overstatement, but let's just keep hoping for now.

It is 80 degrees outside, and it it nearly 10 PM. I am awed.

Two things:

One. I discovered the swiss miss design blog this weekend. I'm pretty far behind the curve for awesome design blogs, but it pretty much rocks my socks off.

Two. I have this one friend. He is kind of an ass. Sometimes I read things he posts on my (and other people's) Facebook wall and I think, How do ass genes like his get perpetuated in the general population? You would think that such genes would be bad for survival, since they encourage people to punch you in the face and do other things to you that have poor effects on your health.

Then I listen to the recordings he has posted of himself playing guitar and I think, Ah. Yes. This is how.

Moral of story: The arts were invented by jerkwads who otherwise could not reproduce. (Maybe.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has also has really good taste in music. Woot.

still struggling along

as duly noted.

thoughts of the week

In all honesty, this week hasn't brought too many thoughts besides the following: "UNNNNNNNGGGGHGHH AARRRRRRGGGGHHHH PANIC" and "I'm tired. enh. Why am I so tired. . . ? The fact that I am tired worries me."

But. . .

But this weekend. . . yesterday and today I wore a skirt or shorts; it was 70 degrees Fahrenheit and pretty damn gorgeous. Life seems better, even though nothing has changed. (I also took an 8.8 mile walk yesterday, which was the turning point between "I feel miserable" to "gee, I feel pretty good.") I have already walked four or five miles today, and I am planning on going out again.

Now I smell like sweat. This should be horrible. I should be embarrassed. But I realized that I smell different in warm weather than in cold weather, and I have not smelled like warm-weather sweat for seven months. It is novel, in fact. [EDIT: I forgot this is what I smell like when I burn, even slightly. Ain't life bizarre?]

[Edit #2: Walked a total of 24 miles this weekend. Boo-yah me. The longest portion walked consecutively of that -- 9.3 miles -- is pictured above. . . man I love Boston.]

Thanks to my blog binge on swissmiss this weekend, I found a number of things to think about, which perhaps will follow in a different blog post.

But from the week, sort of:

percolation attempt number two

I have a happy, interesting blog entry in the works, with lots of fascinating websites and works in progress and those sorts of things.

That entry is currently not getting written, because I have been pretty bitter, tired, and unhappy all week. I am unfortunately upset with a couple of specific people, but I'm also panicked about deadlines, amount of work, grades, personal attractiveness, weight gain, and overall future happiness.

peeps ahoy!

YES.

Peeps show. Spectacular dioramas featuring PEEPS.

---

I am pretty well completely panicked. Just thought I'd share.

shoes and other thoughts

The last week has brought a bounty of shoes. Maybe I have too many pairs; I have 12, three of which are primarily for walking, including one pair that I will throw away as soon as I have a replacement. (O, Roos, you have served me well. So many miles have a walked in thee. The necessity of the replacement unfortunately became quite apparent after my 6.7 mile walk today -- ouch, blisters.)

The first pair is from H&M (predictably enough). I now have a black pair of heels (which need some repair work, erk) and brown pair.

The second pair is. . . wearable boots! By which I mean comfortable boots! Not only are they comfortable, they're real leather! Not only are they comfortable and real leather, they're cute! O happy day! (Ignore the blue socks, dammit. I wanted to be comfortable but not horrifically schlumpy today. . .which led to a button-up shirt. . . which led to a skirt. . . which led to knee-highs. Gah.)

---

I don't watch very many movies. I can't pin down a precise reason, except maybe that I am usually uncomfortable watching violence or sex (unless there's a compelling reason for it to be onscreen) or bad comedy, which means that most current movies are just out.

But I don't like being

Tokyo, by +joanjimenez

This video makes me really happy. I feel like it might be dreadfully boring if you haven't been to Tokyo, but if you have, you recognize those streets, those buildings, those vending machines.

(sorry, have not figured out how to embed video content yet. . .)

tokyo jams

Home on spring break. It is delightful, a touch boring, a lot refreshing, and nerve-wracking, since I have, as usual, quite a bit of work to do.

---

This week I did something I had been planning for a while -- I gave myself some social insurance by crafting a "socially acceptable" list of bouncy music for my iPod, as well as a shorter, but still "acceptable" list of "that one mood music." (It's raining, or maybe the sun is shining, but you're quiet inside and wondering;) The creation of these lists makes life easier for me (after all, when I am in a contemplative mood I don't want to suffer the indignity of digging through my iPod album lists to find music that supports this frame of mind), but it also provided social insurance.

Re: The driving-back-to-Tokyo iPod debacle: Never again.

However, as I dug through the tracks I have accumulated, I realized I needed to gather together another group of songs -- the Tokyo music. I have an unfortunate tendency to completely annihilate a song when I first acquire it -- i.e. I listen to it on loop 20 times or so until I absolutely cannot stand to hear it any more. The upside is, the first time I discovered a piece of music has a definite time and place in my brain. Most of these songs surrender up crisp-centered, wavery-edged memories almost instantaneously, if not of a time and a place, of the feeling of being in Tokyo.

So: the list. Judge me not.

the devil, mr. woland, and floating heads

A blog entry from a couple days ago that I never got around to posting. . .

日本語で書けます！凱がありました！！！！
(translation: I CAN WRITE IN JAPANESE! I HAVE TRIUMPHED!!!!)
(translation part two: After two hours of fighting with the stupidity that is the Windows Language Bar, it will once again allow me to switch back and forth between Japanese and English, allowing me to do my Japanese homework. If you should experience similar problems -- i.e. the Language Bar won't pop up on your desktop or display that you have different languages installed -- try setting your default language to Japanese rather than English. This doesn't actually make any part of your system switch to Japanese. Makes no sense, but there you go.)

---

And now, to begin.

I. The Devil and Mr. Woland.

AIYAIYAI

During the first sermon that I went to at Tokyo Union Church last summer, the pastor said, "God has called us to love the city--"

-- the combination of the weather and certain music on my iPod makes my memory extremely selective. I remember my first sight of Boston proper -- staring down the handsome faces of the Commonwealth Avenue brownstones -- the magnolias dripping pink and white -- freshman year, wandering around Cambridge near the old warehouse building that now houses the MIT Museum before and after the first studio, smelling fake chocolate and mint from the nearby factory -- sophomore year, coming into Boston with the rest of the girls in the third studio, totally exhausted, laughing as the people who took the bus were delayed further and further as we strode out across the bridge; that spring melting into the long summer, getting sunburned as I wandered down Shawmut Street and took pictures, the tanginess of a salmon sandwich eaten at a window seat in the buttery; walking down to the waterfront by the ICA and later with Alyssa, getting soaked through to the skin while we stood pressed against the wall of the Chanel store -- junior year, the night walks, down Boylston at all hours -- camping with Marilyn in the women's lounge during spring break, slowly and solemnly playing chess with the enormous plastic pieces a the children's museum -- now.

I love Boston.

It is not my home -- and I will not be here in ten years -- but I think this is the place that I have, at the very least, started to become an adult -- and I will remember spring in Boston in my store of beautiful things-to-hold --

-- and I hope, I hope hungrily, that I will love another city as much.

the other part: one more

Chigau and erai (exalted, high, distinguished): 違う vs. 偉い.

also: 彼 and　席 and　度 . . . (kare, seki, and do) mean respectively "he," "seat," and "time" (as in iti-do simasu -- I did it one time.)

I CANNOT KEEP THEM STRAIGHT AND NEVER HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DO SO.

the road radical

達 and 違: Not the same, but they look the same to me . . . the first is
"tachi," a pluralizing suffix; the second is "chigau," or "to make a mistake."

I have a test today. . .

where do the dead stories go

Embarrassingly enough, after writing that last post I crashed and slept for 10 hours.

I have a lab notebook entry to finish, but I have been working pretty hard for the last three days, so instead I am going to post the end of a story that we wrote as a class for Japanese. It is probably pretty horrendously ungrammatical, but here we go. [EDIT: Yup. I still haven't had the guts to go through and make all the suggested changes by my teacher, partially because I find it very difficult to read her handwriting.]

internal conflict

Problem #1: I have a lot of work that needs to be done by tomorrow.
Problem #2, which keeps me from dealing from problem #1: I am really tired, so it is hard to focus.
Problem #3, which keeps me from dealing from problem #2: It is GORGEOUS outside. 60 degrees. Not a cloud in the sky. It would be a pity to waste such a day by sleeping.
Problem #n, which keeps me from dealing with problem #3: See problem #1. . .
(problem letter b: I am kind of lonely, which is not conducive to fixing ANY of these things.)

I think my inability to type is probably going to decide this issue.

I am working on a longer and (I think) more interesting entry.

I leave the reader with this screenshot.

YES I SWEAR I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON MY THESIS. SEE?? SEE THE EVIDENCE???

Yours tiredly.

in the world of autocad 2010

where you can't figure out any of the menus. . . most useful commands ever:

1. chprop -- allows you to change the properties of an object, such as its layer assignment

2. shademode -- allows you to flip back and forth between "realistic" shading and "2d wireframe" shading to check for holes and solidness

with all due respect

I fucking hate rain.

---

I am in a state of scatter-brained panic currently.

Things I am thinking about:

1. Thesis. I need to find photos of the inside of the Logan Christian Church, pre- and post-1960. I know they exist, because I've seen them. I just have to figure out who to call to beg for them. Everything else is AutoCAD and Daysim, which is just matter of pounding it out.

2. Neurobiology test on Wednesday. I'm wondering if studying needs to be any deeper than memorizing the equation sheet and the toxin sheet -- that was pretty much the way to do the problem sets.

3. Japanese. ARGH WHY DID YOU MAKE MY LANGUAGE BAR INACCESSIBLE, WINDOWS? Apparently the service pack 2 makes it become invisible, which makes it a bitch and a half to type anything in Japanese. Which is bad when you have a story to write (as I do.)

Then there's my new kanji study regimen, which consists of substituting practicing kanji for sleeping in boring portions of 7.02 and 7.29.

4. Next year. I need to fill it up. I want to go to Europe. I NEED MORE OPTIONS. I NEED A JOB. Ugh.

5. Applying for stuff.

6. Gondoliers poster. I'm trying to find pictures of happy people on the Albrecht Durer sketch website I mentioned before.

7. Portfolio. WHY ISN'T IT DONE.

8. Rain.

Fucking rain.

A friend once told me

that she looked at the work from different classes as a series of fires, and herself as a firefighter.

The thing is, she said, you just have to work on throwing water on the fire that's burning the most ferociously right now. You can never put them all out at the same time, so you have to concentrate on not letting any given fire get too out of control.

This thought arrives after getting my computer infected with a package of viruses yesterday from the 7.02 lab pictures, as well as trying to get baking done last night for various commitments so I could exercise this afternoon, and thesis, and Japanese. . .

I was working dammit

and I needed to take a break.

GIRAFFE
arggggghhhhh why does spending $35 on a cool have to be irresponsible
arrrrrrrrrrrrrgh resist resist.

abysmal

I am a terrible person, and I have a raging case of senioritis, and I am dizzy because my body doesn't appreciate only getting four hours of weird sleep.


I am registered for thesis as 12 units. This means it should be 12 hours of work a week. So far this week I have done 4.5 hours, and it was all last nights.


I hereby resolve to live up to my units.

Stay tuned for updates on what I've been using them to do so far.

I am really am doomed

This came out of my mouth today in Spanish:

"They're like giant weasels,"

when I actually meant, "They're like giant sea weasels."

This was unfortunately in English, and was quite as moronic as it sounds.

puppies.

Fashionable canines. Dogs through the years as featured in Vogue magazine.

puppy puppy puppy.