It feels so good to have a good night's sleep under my belt, to be back in the house, to have made oatmeal for myself for breakfast, to have turned up the heat temporarily to thaw out this freezing building (ssshhh; don't tell Dad), to be waiting on going off with BrandeisGirl to grab lunch and gossip, to see that Obama is getting closer and closer to having the delegates he needs, to have survived my first year of school and to know that it's the right place for me.

It doesn't feel so good to watch the House season finale, to tap my inner plumber to make the upstairs toilet flush, to read bad news about another Kennedy. Raised by a Dad who tears up whenever JFK's name is mentioned, it's hard to not find myself doing the same thing.

Also:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR SUBCONTINENT
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!

Last night: dinner with roommates. Hilarity ensues. Returned to write for a while and then watch Ratatouille with Roommate J and The Guys.

Tonight: exam. Ew.

Tomorrow night: Hooooooome!

Other odds and ends: Freshman "I AM the Humanities" Seminar grades were posted and I am quite, quite, quite happy.
My suitcase is so full it may or may not explode.
I might very well forget my alarm clock in the morning rush to the airport.

Princeton, you have been very good to a poor freshman. Au revoir!

The Weekend of Food began yesterday night when MaleOrganist and walked, umbrellas held high and glasses steaming over, into the "ghetto" to a Mexican restaurant that MaleOrganist described to me once as "the kind of place you can never find unless you're not looking for it." Truer words were never spoken. We got lost in a muddle of row homes (Princeton style) and turned down a side street hoping to turn around and retrace our steps, but instead found the restaurant. It was great, and full of townies. There was one table of Princeton students, but they looked out of place, which was great.
We chatted and stopped in at Starbucks after walking back towards the land of the Rolex store and then we went our separate ways. He is house sitting some friends' apartment over the summer but is living in the apartment below theirs. Why? The three cats. And the giant marijuana bush hidden in the closet with a lamp trained on it. Ah, musicians.
Today was the great Dragging and Lunching Day, which went off without a hitch. Cousin J and Cousin B showed up eerily punctually on the stroke of eleven (military precision or waiting around the corner for twenty minutes? You decide) and CC and RussianRoommate helped to carry my things downstairs and out to their car. After that I took the cousins on one of my expanded and casual tours (practiced with HarvardGirl and BrandeisGirl) before heading to the Triumph Brewing Company for lunch. I ogled the Triumph Burger. Cousin B and Cousin J ogled the tap, and considered bringing back a growler of the good stuff for Uncle J, before discovering that it was not for sale due to the fact that is needed to be consumed an hour after being poured or it would go bad.
They then headed off to Philadelphia (again, exactly when they had planned on doing so) and I called Uncle Hoagie-Free-Zone to tell him they were on their way, bearing eight trash bags, six cardboard boxes, one paper bag, two plastic drawers, one box fan, and one bike. Not bad for nine months of my life.

P.S. CC and Roommate J came through on bedding! CC lent me her spare sheets and I borrowed one of Roommate J's unused blankets (she was off EMTing and we only need blankets for fifteen minutes a night these days anyway).

I am TOTALLY PACKED. Well, the stuff that's going away tomorrow, that is. Victory!
Tonight:
-More studying
-Dinner with MaleOrganist
-NOT reading Babycakes *sob!* At least they have it waiting for me in Midwestern Town Library, as it is not (mysteriously) here anywhere.
-Falling asleep on my bed, completely devoid of bedding.

Oh my goodness! Prince Caspian is in theaters? Where have I been?
The answer, of course, is the Orange Bubble. But still.
This is clearly a mother-daughter movie for when we're both home. Clearly. Narnia belongs to mom.

My interview went really, really well, I thought. Sort of like my audition tour, in fact. We'll see if I get the job, but if I don't I can console myself with the fact that it was probably because I'm a rising sophomore, and not because of anything I did wrong.
Then I got a phone call from my gallivanting parents, letting me know that they are well, have bought a rug, and have been eating mint Ritter Sport chocolates every night. For some mysterious reason, every flavor but the mint is available in the US. I'm thinking some un-importable ingredient? I should research this. Anyway, the mint ones are delicious and I requested enough packs to eat while watching the entire second season of The Wire when they return.
I also made even more headway with packing. I would even dare to say that I am, for Saturday cousin purposes, packed (minus bedding, obviously, and my bathrobe--towels are packed already--which I will be washing and packing hastily Saturday morning before their arrival.
To cap it all off and make a great day even better:
"...if we have learned anything from the significant evolution in the prevailing societal views and official policies toward members of minority races and toward women over the past half-century, it is that even the most familiar and generally accepted of social practices and traditions often mask an unfairness and inequality that frequently is not recognized or appreciated by those not directly harmed by those practices or traditions."--Chief Justice Ronald George
"WOOOOT!", I said to a friend of mine who had been following the decision closely.
"Agreed, dear," he said, "agreed."

This piece of news is hardly a surprise, but is still pretty darn awesome, in my book.
Today was spent studying in the morning and early afternoon, at which point I threw in the towel, read fifty pages of Further Tales of the City, went and picked up my new tour guide hoodie, ate dinner with Roommate J and gossiped, and went on a packing rampage that lasted until now, at which point I turned on the computer and discovered that John Edwards had hopped on the coolest bandwagon in town.
Plans for this evening:
-Shower (I'm covered in dust bunnies from rooting around under my bed for boxes and Nom de Plume paraphernalia)
-More Further Tales of the City
-Perhaps some studying, although I do best when it's light out, for some as yet unknown reason.
-The West Wing? Prime Suspect? Daniel Deronda?
-Panicking about my job interview tomorrow. Aaaah!

Intriguing. And awesome. And sort of troubling too.
My Religion Quiz results:


1. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (100%)
2. Orthodox Quaker (93%)
3. Liberal Quakers (86%)
4. Unitarian Universalism (77%)
5. Reform Judaism (72%)
6. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (69%)
7. Seventh Day Adventist (66%)
8. Eastern Orthodox (63%)
9. Roman Catholic (63%)
10. Neo-Pagan (58%)
11. Bahá'í Faith (57%)
12. Orthodox Judaism (56%)
13. New Age (53%)
14. Secular Humanism (52%)
15. Mahayana Buddhism (52%)
16. Islam (51%)
17. Theravada Buddhism (51%)
18. Sikhism (50%)
19. Taoism (40%)
20. Hinduism (39%)
21. Jainism (39%)
22. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (38%)
23. Scientology (36%)
24. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (33%)
25. New Thought (33%)
26. Nontheist (30%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (29%)

Roommate J, RussianRoommate and I just got back from the Fencing Twins' birthday party, where I knew most of the people there. What an amazing feeling, to have lived somewhere for months and to realize you have, in fact, made social progress.
Today's Dean's Date festivities went off without a hitch. I turned everything in, and then spent the afternoon reading all of More Tales of the City. (I read all of Tales of the City two days ago.) Why oh why oh why have I suddenly discovered a HIGHLY ADDICTIVE heptalogy when I should be studying for Rome final and packing my stuff before Cousin J and Cousin B show up on Saturday to haul it to Uncle Hoagie-Free-Zone's house in Philadelphia (the logistics are very confused, but the fact that I SHOULD be packing is clear)?
More TV/Movie Watching:
Part one of the season finale of House was last night, and I watched it, as always, with HSClassmate. Talk about intense. Anticipation of next week's episode is at an all-time high.
I also just watched the season finale of Brothers & Sisters. Great show. Recommendations abound, even if it is veering dangerously close to soap land with this mysterious sibling plot line. Rachel Griffiths is still awesome, though, and Luke MacFarlane is freaking adorable.
In a rare instance of spontaneous hallway bonding, Roommate J, two guys from downstairs, HaHa's roommate, and I watched Mulan two nights ago, and sang along to all the good parts. It was so much fun, mostly because we were forced to borrow our RA's DVD player and hook it up to the broken one in a dorm we don't even live in in order to watch it on a screen big enough for all of us to see. It was worth it, though, for the looks on the faces of the people in the study room next door when we at last burst out of the room at one fifteen still singing "I'll Make a Man Out of You."
On Sunday I also watched The Bubble (Ha Buah), which was playing in France along with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when Subcontinent, Family, and I were there this summer. We saw Harry Potter and didn't see this, but I remembered the title and that it got good reviews, so I decided to give it a shot. Three Things:
1) For once, the Romeo & Juliet parallels didn't occur to me until after watching it, when I sat down and re-read the reviews it got. They were all there, though: star-crossed lovers, Benvolio and Mercutio characters, the crabby cousin on the other side, death, assumed-death, death, and eventual death. Also, like Romeo and Juliet, you know that it's not going to end well--it's one of those edge-of-your-seat movies that is physically uncomfortable to watch--but hope against hope that you're wrong.
2) I've always felt woefully uneducated about the whole Israel-Palestine conflict, and although I would never go as far as to say this movie cleared some things up for me, it was easy to enter into the plot and not be confused by politics. This was not because the movie was devoid of politics. Quite the opposite. However, it deftly navigated its way through Tel Aviv, checkpoints, and Palestine in a way that allows the viewer to follow along easily.
3) Well-acted. Very well-acted.
3a) Those fake French accents were adorable.

So here I am, with the year rapidly coming to an end. Tomorrow I plan to immerse myself in Rome studying until after dinner, when I'll turn my eye to packing. Maybe then I'll read Further Tales of the City. I don't think I can restrain myself longer than 24 hours.

My taste has been vindicated, with all of the plays I rode into New York to see this school year being nominated for Tonys. Yay! For once, I'm excited to watch the show.
Click here for the New York Times complete list.
More later on the successful completion of final papers/projects, the Mulan viewing, and why Tales of the City, it's myriad sequels, and House may ruin my concentration.
Now, I must shop for a birthday card.

Today was an extremely relaxing day, spent writing a bit, and then reading for pleasure. I read an entire novel--An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge--and then went to the library to get two more. Now I'm watching Spartacus for one of the essay prompts in the Rome class final.
Three Things so far:
1) Tony Curtis' accent is almost as ridiculous here as it was excellent in Some Like It Hot.
2) I much prefer the villains to the heroes. Uh-oh. What could it mean?
3) Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton eat chicken with more acting prowess than 84% of the other actors in the movie.

When I was ten years old, I read The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman. It is the second book in the Sally Lockhart trilogy, and it is my favorite, although it wasn't at first. The first book is The Ruby in the Smoke, a straightforward Victorian mystery. The third is The Tiger in the Well, which although good, disappointed me.
But I'm not writing about the other books.
I just watched the BBC adaptation of The Shadow in the North and I was strongly reminded of the first time I read the book. (The adaptation, by the way, is excellent--much better than the adaptation of The Ruby in the Smoke--and is available in its entirety on YouTube in ten minute increments; more traditional viewers will be able to see it on PBS this summer).
The Shadow in the North was the first book I read with a sex scene. (It was entirely PG, of course, but I was shocked nonetheless.) The Shadow in the North was the first book I read wherein I fell in love with one of the characters. I had read Black Hearts in Battersea, by Joan Aiken, right before the trilogy and had come very close to having a crush on her main character, Simon (who had not even been my favorite character; his friend Dido Twite held that distinction), but Frederick Garland of The Shadow in the North (and The Ruby in the Smoke before it) was head and shoulders above him. He was funny and dashing, a photographer and private detective, and hopelessly in love with Sally Lockhart. The beauty of much of Pullman's writing is in the strong female characters he gives us. This strength often flips the traditional power dynamic between men and women in books, creating male characters who wait in the wings, longing. Frederick Garland was appealing because of the fact that he waited for her. As a reader, I couldn't help myself thinking that I was more worth waiting for than Sally Lockhart, with her pistol and her enormous dog.
The Shadow in the North was the first book that broke my heart. Frederick Garland dies in a fire, right after he and Sally sleep together and she finally agrees to marry him. In Black Hearts in Battersea, my favorite character had apparently died, leaving me shocked and dismayed, only to appear again very much alive on a whaling boat bound for Nantucket. Frederick Garland, though, was dead, irrevocably, and I had not been in love with the feisty Dido Twite, who eventually made it back to London, and Simon.
The adaptation was very, very good--I'll admit to crying--but it left out the part that was truly heartbreaking about the novel.
After Fred dies, Sally realizes that, although a photographer, although a man constantly surrounded by cameras (or something to that effect; I wish I had my book with me to quote directly), not a single photograph remains with him in it.
Perhaps the adaptation was so good because of the richness of the material, as opposed to the penny dreadful upgrade that is The Ruby in the Smoke. No matter the reason, this evening I was carried back to the uncomfortable fold-out couch in our apartment in Paris, where I spent hour after nail-biting--and occasionally blushing--hour reading The Shadow in the North. I remember finishing the book with an upset stomach, convinced that I infinitely preferred The Ruby in the Smoke. It only took me a few years to change my mind.
They are geared towards younger readers. They are quick reads. But I cannot recommend them enough. In a lot of ways, The Shadow in the North was the first real book I read. Pullman has no intention of coddling his readers. He just means to tell the story he has in mind.
It's been nine years. I still miss Frederick Garland.

I started a post of the things I've finished and the things I have yet to do, end of the year wise, but that got too depressing, so I'm writing about our luau instead.
ResidentialCollege and SisterResidentialCollege gave out free towels with the two crests on them, hired a bouncy pirate ship obstacle course and bungee/trampoline hybrid, and brought dinner out on the lawn. It was super-delish, as my dad said a lot when I was little and has stopped saying recently.
Anyway, I was highly productive today, writing the entirety of my Rome paper, which is due tomorrow. Tonight I'll look it over and then hand it in in the morning. Yesterday was not a good writing day, which I found out in the afternoon when I actually tried to do it. The morning was spent walking from store to store and asking for cardboard boxes, carrying them back to the dorm, taping up the boxes of books I already had, and then hauling them over to the post office with the long suffering Roommate J and media mailing them away to Subcontinent's house, where they will be well looked-after until my return. Then Roommate J and I went to M.G., a crazy Asian store in town with an abundance of things no one would ever need, like the notebook I bought for taking notes in Florida, and the cell phone cleaner (seriously) Roommate J got.

Roommate J and I took 105 photos today. It was lawnparties.
It was supposed to rain. Even last night when I checked the weather before going to bed at one, there was a 50% chance of rain and it was going to be 60 degrees. I wake up and it's 75 degrees and sunny. This being Princeton, I'm convinced someone paid someone else off.
The point of lawnparties, I'm convinced, is primarily to see and be seen. Actually listening to the bands is secondary. Fountains of Wayne treated us well and played "Stacy's Mom" almost as soon as we arrived, we had a good time dancing to a Rolling Stones cover band down the street, and then came the fun part, where we walked around for an hour taking advantage of photo ops.
This entire campus is one huge photo op.
Later we met up with StoppardFan and Athena to watch Howie Day lip-sync before retreating to the fountain and taking more photos. 'Twas all very glamorous. 

And now it is reading period.

Classes are over, and now all that is left for me to do is write papers, take exams, and pack up, shamelessly using my relatives for moving and storage whilst my parents gallivant north of the Levant.
Tomorrow we venture forth into lawnparties, where we will hopefully get to hear Fountains of Wayne sing "Stacy's Mom," which, with a few words changed, has been our room's song all year long. In the meantime, though, I am working on papers and nursing my Kentucky Derby upset. There go two dollars of hard-earned (by my parents, at least) cash down the drain. Oh well. At least Mom won. :)

Things I Have Learned This Semester:

Creative Writing Edition
-When you pick a point of view, don't presume to understand how anyone else is saying what they're saying. For example: a story told from Joe's point of view, even in the third person, should not contain lines like, "Margaret sighed longingly." Joe doesn't know whether she's sighing longingly or with exasperation.
-Tension is good. Sexual tension is even better.
-I write sexual tension well.
-I write old people well.
-I write with tenderness for my subjects.
-I write ordinary people well.
-If you can't pull of metaphors, don't. A little bit goes a long way anyway, so don't drown your story in purple prose. Also, you should only sound like Jane Austen when writing a Jane Austen pastiche.
-Pasta is sexy.
(continuation from last semester)-NEVER, NEVER, EVER read graphic material emanating from your professor (be it a novel, and interview, or what have you) and then expect to go to class the next day blush-free. Yeesh. You'd think I'd have learned.

Rome Class Edition
-There are three holes.
-Augustus was more of the Rome model than the I, Claudius model.
-Most emperors were weirdos.
-Customs are, in fact, more relative than we can imagine.
-"Purpose" with a Venezuelan accent becomes "porpoise."
-If Lucan were transplanted to the modern day, he would doubtless be an emo teenager.
-We did not invent sex. (to be honest, I knew this one already, but it bears reinforcing)
-All bad guys in toga movies speak with English accents.
-Tony Curtis just wanted a bath.

Writing Seminar Edition
-Motive, thesis, analysis, conclusion.
-I'm good at workshopping.
-Silence=Death.
-Thoreau, Gandhi, Sharp, and MLK had it right. You can't just sit around.
-In theory, D.C. is the best place to get arrested.
-Oreos with peanut butter are excellent.

Freshman "I AM the Humanities" Seminar Edition
-...
-(I can't even begin to list the things I learned in this class for real)
-How to speak of myself.
-Sometimes, you can tell from first glance how awesome a professor is.
-Sometimes, you're wrong to think that the boy sitting next to you is crush material. (or are you?)
-Seven-person classes ARE the best.
-The English Department basement does not, in fact, have traces of radon.
-St. Augustine wins the Catholic guilt award.
-Fernando Pessoa was brilliant.
-Dante needed to stop thinking and just talk to her!
-An author can write about a cause they care passionately about and still manage to hold it at a distance.
-Wordsworth was incredibly prolific and suffered from constipation. His buddy Coleridge, on the other hand, had chronic diarrhea and could barely squeeze out a line.
-The History Boys can mean different things at different times.
-I am so glad I came here.


I'll leave you with this:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The West
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz