"Mark Twain: Writer. Contemporary Thinker. Plot Device."

Today starts the seven days of the Ludi Cereri, leading up to the Cerelia on the eighth day. These were days of games and festivities celebrating Ceres/Demeter, goddess of the grain and the harvest.

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This was a rather rough morning for me, as the only time I could arrange to meet with my English professor to discuss my latest writing piece, the one on my one glorious day as a door-to-door environmentalist, was at 9:15 this morning. Due to a late night last night and a rough start this morning I found myself arriving at her office sans breakfast. And while she loved the piece (points for me!) by the time the meeting was over I was forced to sprint over to Demerritt Hall for Bio, stopping only to fetch a pop-tart and a Minute Maid cranapple raspberry juice from the vending machine. I felt very Japanese, getting my first meal this way.

Problem: Minute Maid cranapple raspberry juice is like, pure sugar. So are Pop Tarts. I immediately got all sugar-jittery, combined with sleep deprivation, so I was falling asleep but then my hand or my leg would start to shake so bad I'd wake myself up. I'm sure I looked very comical.

Thank god I managed to scarf down something more substantial at HoCo before sprinting over to PLTL...

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And it was raining today. Then it was sleeting. Then it was flat-out snowing.

It's April.

Damn it, stupid weather machine's on the fritz again...

"I want a giant terrestrial land squid. Best. Pet. Ever."

Today is the Megalesia of Cybele in Phrygia and Rome, commemorating the arrival of the goddess to her Roman temple. I don't know how it was celebrated, particularly.

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If anyone asks, it's not snowing.

No, it isn't. I refuse to believe it could be snowing in April, after 70-degree weather last week. That's just ludicrous.

...Let me wallow in my delusions!!!

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So I think that the professors here have psychic powers that let them know when a person's social life starts to pick up, so that they know when to start assigning extra homework. I've been swamped.

In other news, I made an appointment to talk to my advisor on Friday after Latin, so I can figure out my schedule for next year. I know I need to take Organic Chemistry (blech) and probably Precalculus (double blech), but beyond that I'm uncertain. With those two monsters, I think I need a real break, something like Art. I think I have some creative-ish core credit I need to fulfill. Then... something else. One other class. I bet they make me take a Bio class or something, but I really don't want two mathy classes AND two sciency ones. Because I would die.

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So Ryter met Loquatia today. This was in part because Ryter wanted to meet her and in part because she's doing this RA thing where they want her to strike up a conversation with someone new. Dinner was about ten times more talkative than it usually is with just me and Loquatia-- I think we ran out of stuff to discuss a couple months ago.

Anyway, yeah, we trekked through the snow-- WHICH ISN'T THERE-- over to JP's, ate, talked, etc, then Loquatia went off to Swing and Ryter and I walked back to his place. I realized a little too late that we were totally walking right past Stoke, and I really should have just gone and picked up those sour pickles Mistake was randomly craving and dropped them off at her door, but oh well, I didn't. Anyway, yes, we went back to his place, hung out and talked about religion and other such Big Important Subjects and then I returned here in plenty of time to finish that stupid English essay which is totally like 13 pages.

Ryter liked Loquatia well enough, though he,like so many before him, fell into the "misreading of the facial signals" trap. Loquatia doesn't tend to express on her face what she feels, and she usually looks upset. Mistake did the same thing when she first met her. Heck, I thought she didn't like me for the first three months or so.

Loquatia said that Ryter was "nice" but mostly what she pointed out was that we seem to have a lot in common (we do), and he seems to like me (I hope so, at this point). The word "cute" was used a lot about the two of us, which I should probably resent more than I do. She also asked me if he was a goth at some point (he sort of was), which goes to show you that either it's waaaay more obvious than I thought and I'm just dense or she's very perceptive. And she thought he seemed nervous. He probably was. I dunno.

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Phylum presentations continued in Bio lab, before we got to play with bugs, and the first presenters brought candy, per tradition. Theirs was really cool, though.
Remember those Creepy Crawly sets where you pour the gooey plastic into a bug mold and get a squishy fake bug? Well, they had taken one of those molds, of a scorpion, and made chocolate scorpions-- except because their project was on an intestinal worm, there was totally a gummy worm inside.

I was mildly disturbed, but it was pretty creative.

Though I have to say, the best lab was presented by Incredibly Hot Guy (I'm still going to call him that, mostly because I've called him that before and he hasn't become Got Plastic Surgery And Is No Longer Incredibly Hot Guy, sorry if it's weird) and Flirts With TAs. Theirs was only mildly related to their subject but it was filled with random funny pictures, like Incredibly Hot Guy asleep with a dream bubble with a picture of the professor in it. For the "Reproduction" slide it was the two of them in the shower in their boxers. We were cracking up. Of course, that was an excellent time for Incredibly Hot Guy to remind everyone of his interest in the ladies by making the word "vagina" spin on the screen a couple times.

Ah, college.

More high schools should be infiltrated by zombies.

Hmm... wow. Absolutely nothing happened today. At all.

How anticlimactic.

Well, I mean, yeah, it snowed, like blizzard snowed, but I was inside and didn't have anywhere to go anyway, so the only times I left the house were to shovel the driveway so Daddy could get in and then to go get firewood once Daddy got home. But other than that I basically spent the day sitting on the couch. Exciting, no?

Ah, spring break.

How I Live My Life

I have a good sense of self control and hate to show weakness. I'm laid back and chill, but sometimes I care too much about what others think. I tend to have one best friend I hang with, as opposed to many acquaintances. I have one big dream in my life, and I never lose sight of it.

How Do You Live Your Life?

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit."

Classes weren't canceled for the snow, today, but they were cancelled when it turned to rain and the streets became rivers of slush. So I had to go to Chemistry, but luckily for me Latin was canceled (luckily because I had forgotten to do my homework. I've not exactly been "focused on schoolwork" this week, in case you couldn't tell).

So I spent the afternoon hanging out and watching an old Wishbone episode Mistake found for me, and I ate dinner with some of Loquatia's friends, including this one girl Loquatia knows from... tennis? I think, anyway. Not sure. But Comisa (which is going to be her name, I see her enough that she probably needs one, and that means "friendly," by the way), who reminds me vaguely of both Mistake and a girl I know from high school, invited both of us to watch movies in Englehardt; I admit, I totally didn't go because I was thinking that I wanted to talk to Writer Guy.

In the end, he couldn't talk long, but it was okay because Mistake called and we went to see The Holiday, which is a good movie, and, in my opinion, more my thing that V for Vendetta, which is what Comisa and Loquatia saw.

However, the night brought cold and now the streets are solid ice, under which lurks very deep puddles. Fun.

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So... I don't know why I'm nervous. If there was ever a date to not be nervous about, this is it. At this point he knows about my interest in serial killers, my obsession with X-men and with classical myth; he knows about my weird religious beliefs and that I'm a libertarian and I believe in Atlantis but not Roswell because I don't think the government's that competent. He's read my writing, which reveals more about me than I usually care to show. He knows about my suicide attempt and that I'm kind of antisocial and that I haven't really dated much, or even made that many friends since I came to college. He figured out my greatest weakness, my biggest flaw, almost immediately (then again, I do sort of wear that one on my sleeve).

Heck, he managed to compliment the one Facebook picture that I really think is me at my ultimate worst, the one I sooooo want the girl who Comisa reminds me of to take down because I look 20 lbs heavier than I was, and I was 25 lbs heavier then than I am now, and my hair's a morning-after-prom mess and I have bags under my eyes that you could pack a mule with because the girl kept Mistake up talking and the two of them kept me up until six in the freakin' morning. Yeah, he complimented that one.

So basically this kid knows every single skeleton in my closet except the unfortunate duck-squishing incident of '91, which I'm sure will come up sooner or later, and he asked me out after knowing most of it and I haven't managed to scare him off yet so honestly, I shouldn't be nervous, because I think this is one of the few people in the world who won't get scared off no matter how honest and blunt I am.

Shrewd thinks that his calm acceptance of my oddities is a sign that he is, in fact, completely insane, and I should prepare myself accordingly by bringing a mace. No, not mace. A mace. As in, large and unwieldy medieval weaponry.

Can you tell that neither of us has been out dating much? I can.

I Am a German Shepherd Puppy

Intelligent, quick witted, and a bit aggressive. I've got the jaw power to take a bite out of anyone I choose.

What Breed of Puppy Are You?

"This is really a lovely day. Congratulations!"

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. It was very happy for us at UNH, because a massive snowstorm resulted in curtailed operations-- so dining services are open but classes aren't. Nice.

Downside: all those forgetful guys must have had a hell of a time getting last-minute V-Day gifts.

Alas, I woke up at 6 AM, showered, and got dressed before I learned that classes were canceled, so I was unable to return to bed. Still, it was for the best, because it meant I could sneak around leaving pink carnations for Libentra and Deandron, hanging from their doors. Loquatia also got a lovely pink carnation.

The more problematic journey was to go over to Stoke and deliver carnations to Mistake and Closer, as the snow was coming down fairly hard and it was COLD. But Loquatia and I bundled up and made the trek, depositing a flower at Closer's door and handing another to Mistake herself. The last flower I didn't have a person to give to, as I had bought six flowers and I only have five friends, so it was given to Closer's roommate. Hopefully he was suitably embarrassed and/or confused.

IN exchange for the flower I received a little clay ladybug from Mistake. He's very cute. We ate breakfast together at Stillings, sat around and talked (about politics-- Closer fell asleep), ate lunch, then Loquatia and I headed home. Later in the afternoon, Deandron wandered by, and stopped. "Did you and [Mistake] conspire to put a flower on my door?" he demanded.

He looked so incredibly bewildered, all plans to let him wonder went out the window. "That was me," I replied, grinning.

"Okay, good," he replied, "because I couldn't figure it out, and I've been asking all around to try to figure out who left it for me, and then one of my roommates said 'maybe it was your Stoke friend' [Mistake] and I said, 'no, she wouldn't trek all the way over here in the snow' [probably true], and then I thought, 'but wait, [Basiorana] and [Mistake] are like the same person, so it must have been her.' But you really got me good, I was going crazy for like six hours there. I was about ready to like, commit suicide because I couldn't figure out who had sent it to me..."

Deandron is not good at problem-solving.

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Loquatia got a candy-gram, from Cute Chem Major, which does not confirm but could support my theory that he liiiiiiikes her. This is both cute and depressing at the same time because I don't think she wants a relationship of any sort. SHe's a little confused by the whole thing... Still, it's sweet. They delivered it to the room and everything.

I did not get a candy-gram from anybody. But I got to see the total bewilderment on Deandron's face as he tried to figure out who was responsible for his carnation, which is just as good, for different reasons. I think that V-Day should be redesigned from a holiday of romantic mushiness to one where we attempt to confuse and embarrass members of the opposite sex. Oh, wait...

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We ate dinner with the whole floor-- I wasn't going to be able to go but all my conflicting activities were canceled. Stillings had a chocolate fountain for Valentine's Day, but as Mistake says, "chocolate fountains are better in concept than in execution," so it's just as well that we went to Philbrook. I guess scheduling a hall dinner for Valentine's Day is a good way to help out the people that would otherwise be eating alone, but at the same time, it was kind of depressing to sit there and have nothing to say and nothing to talk about and be reminded that I have almost no social skills.

I've never had a Valentine, besides my mom. I've never had someone to reprimand for forgetting the day... It's hard to see people all happy lovey-dovey and remember that your life is nothing like that.

My Five Variable Love Profile

Propensity for Monogamy: My propensity for monogamy is medium. In general, I prefer to have only one love interest. But it's hard for me to stay devoted for too long! There's too much eye candy to keep me from wandering. Experience Level: My experience level is low. (Duh.) I've either had only one relationship.. Or all of my relationships have been very similar. I still have a lot to learn... and a lot to try! Dominance: My dominance is low. This doesn't mean I'm a doormat, just balanced. I know a relationship is not about getting your way. And I would give my sweetie a lot of freedom. Cynicism: My cynicism is medium. I'd like to believe in true and everlasting love... But I've definitely been burned enough to know better. I'm still an optimist, but I am also a realist. Independence: My independence is low. This doesn't mean I'm dependent in relationships... It does mean that I don't have any problem sharing my life. In my opinion, the best part of being in love is being together.

Take The Five Variable Love Test

"Sweet Memories are the Paradise of the Mind"

Today is a dies ater, which means it's bad luck to start anything new. It's also the festival of Juno Februa, who is really the same Juno as yesterday except yesterday she was the Queen of Heaven and Savior Mother, and today she's the mother of Mars/Ares. Just a different aspect of her. Anyway, today was celebrated by putting roasted spelt and salt on the door sill.

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Today Latin was canceled, which was exciting, and then at three I met up with Mistake and Closer to hang out all afternoon. Mistake showed me where to drop off my RA application and we went to Brooks, and then went back to her dorm and hung out and listened to the soundtrack of our childhood-- Who else remembers "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls, "C'est La Vie" by B*witched and "I Saw the Sign" by Ace of Base?

Mistake's ex boyfriend and current best friend (she collects them. Best friends, not ex boyfriends, though the latter is also possible) came up to visit, as he has a college interview at a nearby school tomorrow morning. He's staying the night in her dorm room, thanks to her lack of roommate. Closer may or may not spend the night in there with them, sleeping in the chair. He arrived just as it was starting to snow, and we went to eat dinner and then afterwards went to my dorm to get my mug for cocoa and some salsa I wanted to get rid of. AS we headed back to Stoke, the snow was starting to pick up and we threw snowballs and Mistake made a snow angel.

Mistake went and retrieved her camera, and we wandered around campus, avoiding the poor, confused skunk that was wandering about in the drifts because of the weird weather. We took pictures and played in the snow, and then we made a snowman on T-Hall lawn-- well, it started out as a snowman, but then I broke the head apart by packing too hard and rather than replace it, we gave it cat ears and a face and called it a Wildcat; then we took pictures with it and once we returned, wet and cold, to Mistake's dorm, she sent a picture in to the local news station and they showed it on the 11:00 news later that night.

Before the news, we watched Psych and ate popcorn; then we sat around and talked for a while after. I naturally had to call my mom and let her know what channel to watch, lest she miss the proof that college kids are quite talented snowman builders.

On the way back home at 12:30 AM there were kids riding dining hall trays down the hill by the library and having snowball fights in front of Hubbard Hall.

I love the snow.

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Actually, right now I'm kinda more loving the fact that at dinner tonight, I was totally checked out by not one, but two guys. First there was this guy who kept staring at me all through the meal-- well, either me or Closer, and if he was staring at Closer that's mildly creepy, whereas if he was staring at me it's still creepy but it makes me feel better so it's okay creepiness. The first time I caught him staring at me out of the corner of my eye I turned a little, like I was glancing around the room, and he blinked his eyes back to the people he was talking to, and it was about ten minutes before I noticed him again... so I decided I wasn't going to turn, and see how long he stared.

It was a pretty long time. I was kind of wondering when I was going to be able to look around the room again. He went back to talking with his dinner partners eventually, but I swear, like, five minutes later I noticed him looking at me again...

Then we were walking out to bring our trays to the dish room, and a totally different guy glanced at me walking by, glanced away, looked back, and then slid his eyes down the full length of my body. It was, as my sister decided when I told her of it later, "like... hardcore checked out." Again, definitely kinda creepy, but at the same time, in a twisted, odd, my-self-esteem-sucks kind of way, it really cheered me up.

If there was another possible reason for them looking at me, I really don't want to hear it, I'm basking here.

The only problem was I totally wanted to mention it to Mistake, because I actually find it pretty funny, too-- another advantage of being young/naive is that when people blatantly check you out, it's still funny and not just annoying-- but I couldn't think of a way to say it that didn't sound like I was completely full of myself, and Mistake's friend doesn't know me well enough to understand that I have "obnoxiously low" self esteem and this is kinda exciting for me.

Oh well. We're going to the mall tomorrow, I'll mention it then.