Astronauts

On this evening, an astronaut came to speak with us. This was almost as awesome as when D.E. Shaw gave us free t-shirts.

It was really neat, but she kind of kept going on and on and on, and then Teresa started asking her all of these questions about how you go to the bathroom in space, and Lady Astro gave really long answers, and I tried really really hard not to fall asleep, and this may have been the lecture where I sat next to Bing, and he would drift off (and by drift off, I mean his head would fall into his lap as he crumpled into sleep) and then I'd elbow him.

Anyways, that was that lecture. I feel like there's meant to be more detail than that, but, well, ehhhh.

Instead, I will use this post to discuss mentorship awesomeness.

Every so often, Bashir would actually show up in mentorship, as opposed to going to W20 and moaning about how he didn't have anything to do, or sleeping on the couch, or making his phone do this really annoying beeping thing which I disabled midway through my second mentorship week when he wasn't paying attention.

On one particular day, Bashir wanted to hear about New Jersey. I believe this was triggered by the time he spiked his hair up for the WTP dance and I said he shouldn't try to be DJ Ronnie D from Jersey Shore (I just googled the cast of characters to see which one had the spiky hair, I have never watched the show). I drew him a map of the East coast, then did a squiggly line and dropped California on the other side of the board, indicating all relevant portions of the U.S. When Bashir asked about everyone else, I drew Arizona and Colorado in, then dropped dots for Andy and Dawson indicating their respective Mid-Western states.

Bashir then took over and taught Didge and me a lesson on Lebanese history, geography and politics, which I promptly forgot almost all of, aside from that there is some major division between North and South Lebanon, and there are beaches on one side and mountains on the other, and whichever North/South side Bashir lives in thinks the fighting is stupid because it scares the tourists.

Didge said something about Australia, but I forget what. 'Twas quite fun.

On a different mentorship day, I was feeling rather stressed out. This is not that surprising, as my emotions tend to always be in either "really, really happy" or "completely and utterly freaked out," although I often manage to freak out and be happy at the same time, but that's completely irrelevant to this point.

I was in a state of panic over RSI-related work, college-related work, and Dawson-and-Rube-related issues (those boys have caused me way, way too much emotional stress). I also wasn't eating or sleeping properly, because I kept forgetting to and my mind was really busy, and Didge, who had spent the last week teaming up with Ash and refusing to leave lunch until I'd had cold-healing soup, was not pleased.

Our plan of action was for us to go get office supplies so that I could organize my research materials and feel better about that, and then come back to the Undergraduate Chateau and let me talk or sleep, depending on which would help more.

So, we took the art budget supplied by our mentor (twenty bucks) and walked ourselves down to the student union, which turned out to be mostly a really souped up Barne's and Noble's, including a random barbershop in the back.

I'm still not really sure what's up with that, but we went downstairs for school supplies and textbooks, passing on our way an absolutely ginormous bin of extremely fuzzy and fluffy pillows.

We each pulled out a large blue pillow (the blue ones are always the best), then spent twenty minutes walking around the store looking for file folders, which we eventually found in rainbow, and dry-erase markers, which were also rainbow.

We returned the pillows, and I made an impulse purchase of purple earbuds and a paperback copy of Tess of the D'ubervilles.

Then we went back to the Undergraduate Chateau, and I ranted for two hours, interrupted by him telling me really adorable stories about his girlfriend, and then I went back to the dorm and he went to W20 to work more.

Then we saw the astronaut.

I should probably put those in a more chronological order, but, meh.

Not happening.

Rocky Horror Picture Show

The shopping for this took place immediately following the 2nd Milestone presentations. I gave some cash to Sadie and had her shop for me, as I had to work.

Dawson gave his money to Arthur and sent him. He realized only later that this would likely end up in something a tad more scandalous than his original intent. Apparently, though, when it comes to Rocky Horror, scandalous is what you're going for.

I know I went on some trip on this day, because I clearly recall coming back and being really, really exhausted, and then having to change in about 10 minutes flat, and having nothing to wear, and ending up wearing this long shirt that was "totally not revealing" along with sneakers, because sneakers are comfy. I maintain that Arthur worse sneakers, so they were fine, but I've been told that the fact that Arthur was wearing pink tights and an extremely short miniskirt negates this.

I borrowed tall socks from Minette and a belt from Kaylee, loaned my not-even-that-short-but-at-least-belonging-to-someone-with-a-vagina shorts to Dawson (who got a really, really weird stain on them, actually), and had at least three guys try on my one pair of pathetically low heels, in hopes that they could find something that fit (those they fit declared them rather horrifically uncomfortable).

We headed out, I fought to stay awake. I was that behind on sleep. We walked all the way there with relatively few odd events, aside from me walking briskly in the front along with James and Hassan because we looked less scary to whoever we walked past than did Ululani and Arthur, who were leaning more in the "going all out" direction, and Arthur's skirt rather inconveniently blowing up and scaring the bejeezus out of an innocent passerby (although I really could have done with out the spandex demonstration).

We got to the theater. There weren't enough seats, so I sat in the aisle and alternated between leaning on Zsa and Teresa, both of whom thought the show was very, very weird. Morrison was the audience favorite and got to get married. I fell asleep about twenty minutes in, and when counselor Hannah and tutor Kaylee decided it would be just cruel to make me stay any longer when I was clearly very ill (read: wanted an excuse to take a cab back), we left.

Most of the Rickoids we walked past were out cold. Apparently movies about transvestites are not our favorite kind of entertainment.

We prefer Truth or Dare.

Oh, and before I forget: Hi, Bart.

The Degree of Neglect

That you have been experiencing is pathetically large. Much of it stems from the fact that I got rather ill on the 11th (the day we're pretending it is right now), and the rest stems from a lot of interesting occasions related to the opposite gender that I will not transcribe here because my RSI blogs are not precisely anonymous.

Regardless, I apologize, and I will try to make it up to you as soon as I can.

On July 11th, I slept until noon. I was up late as well, and I suppose I could relate that in my account, but there wasn't much to relate, aside from the fact that Rube and two of his friends had visited the evening before to play frisbee, and that they'd wanted more people than just me, so I'd called Dawson, who was with Gabriel, and we spent like ten minutes about a hundred yards apart, waving at each other without the other one seeing, on the phone going "I'm doing jumping jacks." "I can't see you" "Seriously, I'm right here!" while Rube and friends looked confused.

We eventually rounded up a larger group of people, but then those PROMYS jerks proceeded to kick our butts, which was somewhat bad. Apparently Rube's whole long distance running and good hand-eye coordination thing makes him good at frisbee. How very frustrating.

Anyways, back to the 11th. I got up at noon, and then my wonderful family came to visit about an hour later. My sisters (Shelby in particular) were very appreciative of the ball pit, which is understandable, considering that it is completely and utterly awesome. Eventually the family left, and I went to W20 with a backpack full of papers and settled down to read.

About a half an hour later, I felt like complete crap, so I walked back to Simmons to recuperate. I was so hot after the walk that I lay down on the couch on the first floor and refused to move. My tylenol, however, was upstairs. It was an extremely unfortunate situation.

At some point, Teresa came over and asked if I wanted her to buy me some medicine. I said that I had some upstairs, I just hurt too much to move, so I gave her my key and she went up to get them.

However, Teresa is an international student, and she didn't know the names of pills, so she brought down my entire bag. Unfortunately, the entire bag consisted of a giant pink plastic Victoria's Secret monstrosity, because it was the only thing my mother could find in the house that was opaque and large enough to put food in as well. Larry, who was on the couch opposite me, took one look at the bag and began to laugh. Teresa left, I rolled over and ignored Larry, and then I thought about how to get the bag upstairs without either moving or letting too many people see it.

A few minutes later, someone shoved their hands over my eyes. They felt squishy, warm, and biggish, and there is a limited number of people who would do such a thing to me, so I growled "Nicholas" in an angry voice. The hands immediately went away.

It wasn't Nicholas.

"Oh my god, I'm sorry, I thought you were someone else," said the boy, who was, I think, one of the MITES.

"Yeah, I figured."

"Sorry."

I shrugged.

"This is really awkward."

"Yeah."

"Like, really awkward."

"Yeah." Suddenly, I had an idea. "Hey, do you want to redeem your awkwardness?"

"Depends what I have to do."

"Can you bring this bag to my room for me?"

"Okay."

So, I gave him the bag and my key, and away he went.

Larry rolled over to look at me. "Did you seriously just give him your room key?"

"Yes?"

"You trust him?"

I shrugged. "I guess so."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"You don't know him!"

"I dunno, I just trust people. Maybe it's stupid, but I do."

"Oh."

Larry and I looked at each other, then turned to look at the elevator, then we both began to laugh somewhat hysterically.

We were still laughing when, fifteen minutes later, the boy returned, my key in his hand, apologizing for how long the elevator took.

I continued to lie on the couch and moan for quite some time. At some point, I called Dawson to beg for food, who called Ululani and got him to bring me a bagel. I got first Nell, then Bing to sit on my legs and keep them warm, and when Dawson showed up I got use of his towel as a blanket, and Maxwell brought my my ipod, and the moral of the story is that if one moans about how crappy they feel for long enough, people will do nice things.

Yay!

Independence Day

Fireworks are truly amazing. And the ones here? Definitely worth the 20 hour wait.

Saturday night, at one in the morning, I took my quilt and a soft blanket, a backpack full of study materials I didn't touch, and a change of clothes for the morning, and walked to the Esplanade. I think probably thirty or forty of the Rickoids walked down at that time, which is a pretty decent percentage. I walked with Dawson, who I've befriended, Donny, who was, for once, not surgically attached to his girlfriend, and Hassan, whose girlfriend I have stalked.

Donny continued with his forced Indian accent, Hassan encouraged me to pursue my patent because it just sounds really cool, and I made fun of Dawson for being from hicksville and having helicopter parents. At some point, Anders popped out of nowhere, which he does rather frequently. Although he'd told me, when I asked, that he was planning on going back to the dorm and sleeping, and he looked damn exhausted, he had apparently changed his mind.

Fortunately, he put up with me when I got sleepy and started singing You! Me! Dancing! to myself, and if he made fun of me when I tripped up the stairs, I can't remember it, so that's all good. When we arrived, the silly people who didn't travel with their own blankets taped down their tarps, and I settled down comfortably between Anders and Dawson.

Anders left an hour or so later, but Teresa took his spot so I was still somewhat warm, and the few hours after that was spent playing truth or dare (I had to slap Ululani's ass, and then I later got my cheek kissed (it was VERY ROMANTIC), but, for the most part, the game was pretty tame. Example, brought to you by Norman and Iditri: "Truth" "Describe a sexual fantasy." "I've never had one." "That's lame." "I haven't!" (guess which is which!)), which is kind of weird to do with that many people.

At some point, as it was beginning to get light again, Dawson went back, but left me his sweatshirt so I'd have a pillow, and I got Zsa to come over and keep me warm, so she and I bundled up and went to sleep.

I was, at that point, approximately 3:30 am. I woke up at 6:30. It was not good.