HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!

I'm hooooooooome. Wow. It feels good to be back in Midwestern Town, but a little odd too. I walked in the house and asked, "What's that smell?" Turns out the smell in the house was the house. I guess that must have happened when I came home from Paris in fourth grade too, but then of course it was summer and the windows were open.
Newark is perhaps one of the most simultaneously annoying and comfortable airports ever. It's size is quite manageable, but my flight was also quite delayed, so I became intimately acquainted with the seats in the gate, and just how long you could slide down into them before a)your back broke in half or b) you slid off the edge and onto some poor businessman's suitcase.
Luckily I ran into HSClassmate, herself relocated onto my flight, so we chatted and did our homework. She read a chemistry textbook. I read The Virgin Suicides. At one point we looked at each other and started laughing hysterically. Uplifting reading material, we did not have.
In the car ride home I talked Mom's ear off about my classes. I think she enjoyed that.

This piece of news is the weirdest thing I've seen all day.

I just signed up for NaNoWriMo. God knows why.
Probably for the same reason normal people buy a pint of chocolate ice cream. MIDTERMS.
(The week is chugging along better than expected, but I still should be largely not updating until the weekend.)

p.s. But I know my limits. I took an hour to watch House last night. The blonde one has to go.

Je suis trés, trés stressée, so prepare to not hear from me until at least Thursday.
In the meantime:
Perhaps you can help. I'm looking for a picture of the interweaving H and D (sometimes C) at Chenonceau. This would be incredibly helpful, if anyone has one. Thanks!

Natalie Portman is coming to Princeton to speak. Oh my goodness. Words cannot describe how excited I am right now. Besides being one of my favorite actresses (maybe my absolute favorite, since a little of Mary Louise Parker, another runner-up, goes a long way) she's also smart and an activist.
We can forgive her for going to Harvard.
Yesterday I got my first chance to volunteer again with the same Trenton group I was with for CA. It felt odd to return to the church and I actually felt a little homesick for pre-orientation. Things were so frightening then, but they were also fresh. The kids were adorable, especially one little girl who kept coming up to me and showing me pictures she was drawing. She mumbled, so I never managed to catch her name, but she knows mine, so hopefully she'll attack me again three Fridays from now.
The only down side (and it wasn't, really) was standing in a parking lot in the pouring rain for half an hour while the leaders ran and got the keys to the University vans we would be using. My umbrella from Pylones proved its mettle, and now I can safely say that it's practical as well as cute.
Yesterday ended well with pizza and movie night (I watched V For Vendetta, coincidentally) and then another movie, Hot Fuzz, which was showing on campus for $2. I took Mr. CA Chatterer and DownstairsChatterer with me. Oddly enough, both are from the same town.
Hot Fuzz was great. It's humor was wonderful, and the only downside for me was the violence which, although played for laughs, was excessive and very often gruesome. Still, I think it's a movie Subcontinent would enjoy.
This morning I went on my pain au chocolat run, bought stamps at the post office, and went to the public library's book sale. (It felt as if I were at home. Seriously. Those are precisely the things we often do on a Saturday morning.) I bought three books and then took my English reading and went on a bike ride down to the tow path. The leaves are changing and I took multiple photos and read on my bench for a while.
For English right now I'm reading The Book of Salt by Monique Truong. It's incredibly good. Being, as it is, about a Vietnamese chef working for Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris, there is at least one description of food per page, and reading it is always an exercise in how long I can go without getting up and eating something. The book is amazing though, subtle and beautifully written, and is definitely my favorite thing that we've read so far for class.

DORM IRRITATIONS, PART TWO:
The fact that they changed, over lunch, the mechanisms for flushing the toilets from manuel to automatic. I now feel vaguely as if I am living in an airport.

GO TO THIS SITE. It's easy and free and for a good cause and you'll learn things.
I learned this word: frigorific.
It is possibly my favorite now.

Tom Kenny, Mike Ditka's Chicago chef cooked for us in the dining hall tonight. Now that was Chicago steak. And Chicago chocolate cake.
And absolutely none of it was dorm food, which, here, is alright, but acts as a gentle but insistent laxative for most people. I'm looking forward to Fall Break where food is food, with no side effects.

DORM IRRITATIONS, PART ONE:
When people leave their damp clothes in the washing machines for five hours.

Yes.

THIS IS MADNESS: the Damn-Big-Midwestern-University High P.E. teachers were right.
I went on another jog yesterday.

I think that, at least for today, the dark alley question posed a couple posts ago has been solved.
The Booker Prize was announced.
Although the other alley cats have numerous awards among them, this one is the most recent. The equivalent to celebrity weight-training, if you will.
Tonight I am going to sit at the French table in the dining hall with the Downstairs Chatterer. We'll see if the overwhelming pressure to keep up a conversation over dinner is doubled when carried on in a foreign language. Methinks it will be.
Volleyball playoffs start up this Sunday. I was not aware of their existence before, but I'm excited to see if we can improve on our zero game winning streak and of course provide more commentary on the relative gentlemanliness of the eating clubs. Also, on Saturday we're carving pumpkins. Seriously, I am more excited about this than I have been excited about most things this year. After all, as I told my mother solemnly one autumn growing up, "Halloween is my favorite season."
I've been working on The Play in my favorite study spot for the past hour and a half. It's been satisfying, especially since I have no other work to do at the moment. I anticipated a busy week, but managed to get everything done last night and before. Maybe tonight I'll watch The West Wing. I've noticed my banter tank is running low. Time for a refueling.

Small World Coffee. The sight of my Princeton Chat. You know, the thing all the college pamphlets promise you. They may say, "It's 3 a.m. and you and your hallmates are talking about Descartes," or, "On the green, eavesdropping will yield snatches of Freudian analysis, or a selection of Wilde's epigrams." This had not yet happened to me, until the girls in the awesome quad down the hall invited me to get tea. We went to the cafe and discussed global warming, which fish are the best to eat, etc. 'Twas awesome, and continued over dinner when RussianRoommate, Roommate J and the Downstairs Chatterer joined us. The evening ended with the Downstairs Chatterer's jazz concert, but not before we had been talking about intelligent things for four hours straight. Awesome.
Today. First I finished that French essay, gloriously preemptive, then I got all the roommates to sign a birthday card for Roommate J. Then I sprinted to McCarter Theater and saw Stick Fly, which was a great show. I got the last ticket and had a great seat, but the play, although excellent, was tense and now I feel like I need a massage. Maybe a better review will be forthcoming. But maybe not.
However! I'm looking forward to talking to Subcontinent in about ten minutes.

Whining time: I took a three mile run yesterday and I'm sore. I tried to get up just now to take a typing break and almost fell on the floor.
Methinks I need to ease into running again.

Today I have the weird sensation that it's Sunday instead of Saturday. Tomorrow will come as a nice surprise, but in the meantime I'm benefiting from the feeling by finishing my homework. Yesterday, of course, didn't feel much like a Friday, since I only have one class on Fridays and yesterday it was an exam. (Keep your fingers crossed for me, but I think I did pretty well). After that Roommate J and I went to the public library to get library cards, which are free to residents and university students, and she got an audio book of To Kill a Mockingbird for her excessive weekend driving. (She takes an EMT class on weekends that requires 200 minutes of driving total). I stood and marveled at the movie selection, which was extensive and varied (FOYLE'S WAR!!!), for a public library, but sneered at the lending rules (a dollar for a day rental?!?! It better be a really good movie). I miss my summer movie rental haunt. It is the thing I miss most about home.
Besides Mom, Dad, Subcontinent, and the others. But they know what I mean.
After our library escapade, Roommate J and I walked around campus town (ha!) for a while (as long as we could before running out of buildings) and popped into stores boasting Princeton merchandise. These were disappointments. It looks as if the overpriced U Store truly is the best.
Laundry. I now love doing my laundry. What started as pure hatred grew to budding trust, and now total reliance and affection. Sort of like my own Mr. Darcy.
I'm-Not-From-Canada-Girl and Mr.Chatterer from CA and I got together in INFCGirl's room to try and purchase tickets to a Jon Bon Jovi concert with the All American Rejects. The ticket price we were going for (chicken coop seats with a view of the band's buttocks) were unavailable though, and we decided that paying $120 to get to Newark and see a concert was not something we wanted to do. After all, we could use that money to buy...bagels! Or celery! Or one thing from Banana Republic! Or a fraction of a Rolex! That pretty much is the list of things to buy here. Oh, and books, I guess. Books are good. :)
I ate dinner (read: ate salad and stole pizza) with them and some hallmates at the new and much lauded dining hall before returning to my room and eating the pizza, drinking the rootbeer (hoarded from an RA event--"Sex Jeopardy"--earlier in the week), and watching the movie. This went well until five of SoccerRoommate's soccer friends showed up to laugh really loudly. But that was fine. I was almost done with the movie so I paused it and went off to knit hats for the homeless in the awesome underground cafe. There I ran into a classmate I went to elementary school with, and her sister, a class above us. We chatted and they invited me to Scones, a group that gets together on Friday nights before knitting and does awesome, alcohol-free, things (like playing Mafia, or caroling, or jumping in leaf piles). I'll probably do that next week. When I returned Roommate J was asleep pending getting up at five thirty to head off and EMT.
I silently plugged in my headphones and finished the movie.
I just returned from my pain au chocolat run and am settling in to write my French paper (due on Thursday) the weather cooled down dramatically between Wednesday (85 degrees) and Thursday (65 degrees), so I'm happy and in full fall swing.
Honorable Mention Highlight of the Week:
Coming up with a Harry Potter analogy for our college with RussianRoommate. This included Master Awesome and the door in our room that won't open. Is Voldemort, or perhaps Shirley Tilghman, hiding behind it?
Supreme Highlight of the Week:
Being told I am, "hippie-ish, but sober," by INFCGirl. YES! My life goal is complete.

One little addition: that other biology teacher? The one that leaps around excitedly? Yeah. He has a Nobel Prize.
Just sayin'...

It begs the question. If Joyce Carol Oates, Edmund White, Anne Enright, Colm Toibin, and Bigfoot met in a dark alley, who would win?

It's like the age-old pirates vs. ninjas conundrum.

Hmmm...

Yesterday: use of an electron microscope in bio lab, viewing of an episode of House that I loved unconditionally, downpour and subsequent sprint through the raindrops to get free chocolate croissants for roommates.
Today: lecture by Edmund White, discussion of research vs. making things up (solution: a combination of both, but make it good), scheduling of tomorrow's haircut.
So far, when it comes to hearing authors speak:
Report Card (> means greater than)
Public Speaking Skills
Edmund White > Joyce Carol Oates > Anne Enright >Colm Toibin
Writing Style (personal preference)
Colm Toibin > Joyce Carol Oates and Edmund White (tie) > Anne Enright
Humor when Speaking
Colm Toibin and Edmund White (tie) > Anne Enright > Joyce Carol Oates
Thought Provocation
Joyce Carol Oates >>>>>>>> all of those other people. Although I would be less likely to take her advice about writing than theirs. She just had so many things to say that flabbergasted me.

In French today we started watching Le Retour de Martin Guerre. I felt extensively prepped by Mom, but I'm enjoying it even more during this, the second, viewing. It's like watching The Usual Suspects or Memento twice. (Or a lot of other movies, for that matter.)
Last night I went to a lecture entitled, "The Beginning of the End of the Patriarchy?" which is an awesome title in and of itself. What made it even better was its relevance to my play, since the talk was given by Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop. I thought that some of the things he said about patriarchy were sort of simplistic, but for the most part I really liked his speech and he seemed like a really nice person.
Then came our last volleyball game. Sigh. We lost, again. But we had a good time and worked up a sweat. (It was 80 degrees at sunset. Gross.) I jammed my pinkie on a brilliant spike, though. Ouch.
Feel free to leave soothing comments. :)

This weekend rocked, sometimes literally.
The most important reason for this was the fact that it was Parents' Weekend, which meant (duh) that my parents were in town. On my way to class Friday morning I encountered them in the Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital (obviously not the real name of the building. Whoever comes up with the real one gets a gold star). That was pretty cool in and of itself. After my classes were done we met and went to dinner at the Todd'sBar of the east and thence to Across the Universe (my treat, as was ice cream afterwards, which made be feel like a real person). It was a good movie, with great cameos by the likes of Joe Cocker, Eddie Izzard, Bono, and Selma Hayek. The treatment of the Beatles songs was great, I thought, but then again I'm sort of a fly by night Beatles fan.
I went from there to a quick game of charades with the crew at one of the literary magazines I'm working on and then back to a restful night at the parents' hotel. (One of many over-air-conditioned and sterile conference centers in the area).
The next day we ate a reminiscent brunch in the dining hall where a) I eat every day b) my parents met. Then we headed up to New York to, hopefully, see a show of some sort. We settled on Gone Missing, a production put together by the Civilians ensemble and based on interviews they conducted with New Yorkers. The theme of the play was, obviously, lost things: lost love, lost car keys, lost shoes, lost wits, etc. It was off-Broadway (in Greenwich Village) and awesome. We ate dinner beforehand at an Italian restaurant which was playing Frank Sinatra as we walked in. I kept looking over my shoulder for Tony Soprano.
Today we had a leisurely meal at the local bakery (after much harping on the length of last week's bike ride on my part) and took a drive in the country (which took a while to find, making my parents feel old). We nearly got lost (well, we did get lost, but it was very nearly permanent, seeing as we only had 1/8 of a tank of gas and we were driving on the last unpaved road in New Jersey).
It was hard to say goodbye, but I was comforted by the fact that now I could do my homework and unpack my three new pairs of earrings (from the excellent store Nova Ice).
Hopefully it'll be a good week.
For many, and not just me.

First bio lab write-up. Blech.
On the other hand, I have discovered every writer's dream. Click here for pure awesome.
House tonight! Get excited!

Well.
I now know that, had I any reason to join an eating club, it would NOT BE QUADRANGLE. (Very nice alums notwithstanding). Colonial was nice to us when we played them. Quad made fun of us. Boo. Could be they were threatened, though. We almost won this time.

I'm still alive.
Eating chocolate.
Revising madly.
Life is good.

I have another volleyball game tonight, and my first critique of my writing this afternoon. I finally feel like I'm doing things, since my dominant emotion is nervousness. Yay!
This morning in English we watched a clip of the best movie ever (well, probably not, but at least it's my favorite) Some Like It Hot. I finished Blonde yesterday after a three-hour enforced reading extravaganza in and outside the library, so the itch to watch Some Like It Hot has been extreme (not seven years, but extreme).
Yesterday evening we had enforced group discussions about plagiarism, and I continue to be simultaneously shocked at how dumb some people can be and paranoid about the unintentional variety. As a creative writer (and what is creative writing but plagiarized life?) I've always (since birth? maybe) been afraid of people "copying off me," to use the elementary school term. In high school when the teacher would ask if anyone would like to share their paper ideas so that the rest of the class could be inspired I never would because I wanted to be brilliant, the only person to have thought of that one thing. With stories it's worse. There are so many ways to write about one specific thing, yet the person who originally came up with the topic always feels very protective of it. In my creative writing class we're all telling our life stories (in novel or memoir form), which you'd think would exempt us from overlap. But no. All little kids do the same things, think the same things. And all freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, remember it the same way. Oy.
That's why I've decided to start my story (my novel, no memoirs for me) later in life. We'll see what everyone else thinks of that in, oh, about forty minutes.
Drumroll, please.