This week went by fast, probably because I was so tired. I went to bed earlier but I have started waking up during the 5 o clock hour and then staying in bed until 6 something and not going back to sleep. No good. I take naps daily but they don’t seem to make much of difference. Tea works sometimes but I am wary of getting antsy.

It rained a lot today. My feet got wet twice. I complained about it in UC152 and Ayesha offered to lend me a pair of rain boots. But not just rain boots…rain cowboy boots. They are quite fantastic although I have no idea how to walk in heels and it is painful.

In other news, in an effort to install Compiz for fun (and after I found Beryl slow and buggy) I ended up messing up both my the fglrx driver and X. Oops! I got everything worked after a long time trying out random things at the terminal and searching for troubleshooting tips on Windows.

tags: e/n, navi

Switching into a class two and half weeks late means a lot of reading in a short period of time. This weekend I have 213 pages worth of Charles S. Perice: Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance to read in order to be sufficiently caught up. Luckily I do not have too much reading for my other classes. (But still some. Sigh.)

Peter’s health is improving a lot. I think he is over the hump. I don’t think that I am going to get sick. Everything worked out.

People who are coming to visit soon: Maya (next weekend), Katie (March 1, maybe), Mummy (March 10-11).

tags: e/n, family, friends

I want to go to Katie’s house and see her cheap guitar and hang out, but I have this feeling she has gone to church.

I have started to realized I like reading movie, restuarant and CD reviews. These things usually have too many different sides for one person to judge them “correctly” but so many people try, and if one combines a lot of different reviews some intelligent actually comes out of it. It’s funny how different two different movie reviewers can feel about a movie, really it’s not how good a movie critic the person is but how they are. I have a theory that secretly movie critics all either want to be movie stars or directors or producers, but reviewing is easier and more accessible for them. Or maybe they just like critiqueing stuff and whatever.

tags: e/n

I went to Chrissy’s house today, it was nice to see her since she hasn’t been around since school started. Our main project was making ice cream. The only problem is that her ice cream maker needs to be in the freezer for about 5 hours prior to making the ice cream. Oops. We went ahead and made the ice cream and then stuck it in the freezer along with the maker. We played Monopoly (Baltimore Edition), Mastermind, and all these dumb computer games; Ms. Pac-man, Rat Poker, Finty Flush, etc. It still wasn’t frozen so we had lunch. Lunch was a bowl (and in Chrissy’s house the bowls are around the size of an ashtray) of yogurt. That’s it. I was kind of miffed, usually we at least have something substantial there like chicken soup or macaroni and cheese.

Chrissy’s still bent on running, we watched the Internationl Track and Field Championship. Those people are fast. Then we watched dumb Disney movies (oh, the joy of cable!) like Principal-something-something-holiday. In between we watched MTV 2. Wow. I haven’t heard any of the music they play on it, I am so behind. Some of those music videos are scary. The ice cream got cold enough to eat, so we ate some in front of the TV.

Later, Chrissy decided she needed to “make brownies.” Chrissy and Jenny (her sister, going to be a senior next year) didn’t usually ride the bus home with me from school since they were at indoor track/cross country/track, but in between seasons they did, and almost every afternoon they talked about making brownies. I thought it was a little weird to make brownies almost every other day, but hey, to them it must seem like they had a lot more free time. So, when Chrissy said she was going to make brownies, I was expecting some nice warm squares of chocolate cake-iness. Chrissy got out the mix and added water.

Me: Don’t you need a pan for the brownies?
Chrissy: Hahha!!! Natalia, you are so funny. That is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard!!
Me: No really, to put in the oven. Do you use a pan or something?Chrissy: You are the funniest!! Wait, I have to tell Mom this!! (goes to tell her mom in the living room) Mom, can you believe what Natalia asked? She asked if we needed a PAN for the BROWNIES!!!

At this point I was a little worried. What was so funny about what I was saying? They made me sound like I was crazy.

Chrissy: You think we COOK the brownies?
Me: Um..yeah..brownies..
Chrissy: You actually COOK brownies at your house?
Me: Uh…At this point Jenny helpfully did a terrible impersonation of my mom’s accent.Me: You mean, you just eat the mix?
Edith (Chrissy’s mom): (in her talking-patiently-to-a-four-year-old voice) Natalia, you know they make cookie dough ice cream because they realized people just like to eat the cookie dough! So of course we don’t cook our brownies.
Me: Well, they didn’t have to make such a big thing of it.

tags: dia-log, e/n

“Gunn High School alum Stephan Jenkins and his band, Third Eye Blind, bust right out of the gate and hit the top of the charts with ‘Semi-Charmed Life’”

My mom went to Gunn!!!!!

tags: e/n, family, music

Summer school was fun, today. It’s one of the first days we haven’t watched any movies. Incredible, no? Instead we had a speaker on STDs who was actually kind of interesting. She had a good sense of humour and we played Jeopardy on STDs with her. Then in the afternoon we added finishing touches to our heroin brochure. Jesse and I figured out how to print on both sides of the paper. It was all going well until Robert, the juvenile delinquet, figured out we had purposely left his name off of the front of the pamphlet because he hadn’t done any work. Really. He disappeared while we were doing it. He got really mad and added his name in, but we got a copy without his name there. I was ready to give into him but Jesse refused to hand in a copy with his name there.After summer school was kind of a letdown. I went to photography camp. All the girls seemed the same, they all went to private schools and wore the same clothes and acted in the same way. Also, no one knew how to load the film into a camera or rewind it. I’m not sure if the teacher is good or bad yet, but she sent us out on our own to take a roll of pictures. We could go anywhere as long as we stayed on the campus of the Landon School, which is this huge private all boys school where the camp is located. That would be really great, except this was my first time there, and I didn’t know anywhere especially that I wanted to go, so I mostly wandered around the building where our classroom was. The campus was not the perfect place for taking pictures. I took pictures of the street signs and the trash can, the path leading up to the building. There was a limit to what I could take pictures of. I came back in twenty minutes, with forty minutes left in our roaming time and 5 pictures left on my camera. No need to waste good film on Landon. I sat in the classroom for forty minutes, and then she showed us the dark room. It was stupid.

After summer school and camp right after each other, I decided to skip Japanese. I am too tired/have a short concentration span.

tags: e/n