Talking to thin air

Wow, this weekend was long. Friday night the Roommate, Fortitude, the Tower, the Juggler, and I all played Bananagrams and Dominion for about four hours before the Roommate and I pleaded exhaustion and kicked them out. It was really fun, though; more fun than watching Sherlock or Merlin together, I think, so I wonder if we're going to watch any movies at all this year.

Then, Saturday, I spent pretty much the whole day doing readings for this week. I literally read seven articles on Saturday, I think, and another four on Sunday morning; I haven't been this efficient in quite a while. It was awesome to just be finishing everything.

Saturday night we went ice skating, which we've been meaning to do for a long time. It was really fun, but also quite painful, because I fell down three times. The first two times I knocked my funny bone, once on each arm, and then the third time I got the wind knocked out of me a little and started to feel faint. At that point, I decided I'd had enough and the Roommate and I quit; everyone else stopped ten or fifteen minutes later, and since we'd already been on the rink for about two and a half hours, it was fine.

Sunday morning, the Roommate and I met with the Emperor, which was interesting. She showed up late after having "not made it" to church, and then left half an hour later to go to the lab. She told us about her life, and then asked what we'd been doing; I got a few minutes through ... something, I don't even remember, when all of a sudden she just had to up and go. She clearly didn't care about the Roommate's life at all, and only marginally about mine. I don't know why we even try, but I guess she's a friend?

Then Sunday afternoon, I spent a long time hanging out with Other Me, who was having a rough weekend, even though she seems to be doing better over all.

Sunday night, all of us except the Roommate went over to the engineering and physics building for an astronomy lab, where Fortitude and the Juggler got us into one of the astronomy lab sections for the evening. We went up to the roof and looked through telescopes and saw constellations and Jupiter and Mars, and learned how to use a star chart. It was awesome.

Phew. It was fun, but long, and now I am covered in bruises and tired. Also, I did nothing on my thesis, which I had been intending to work on; so now this week is going to be exciting.

The Roommate and I taught at Splash yesterday that went pretty well. We obviously didn't get the 700 students that the sword-making class got, but we didn't want that, either. We had several students say that our class was their favorite, which was nice, even if it was probably because it wasn't all "class"—we drank a lot of tea, too. But it was still nice.

The first session went all right—I didn't talk very much, and the Roommate talked too much, and we had a few rowdy students who were annoying. The second session, I attempted to talk more but apparently failed and the Roommate succeeded at talking less, which meant we had a little too much time for tea-drinking. The second crowd was really quiet, too, and much younger than the first crowd. Our third session went the best, though I got a little technical when I added in a bit about the evolutionary history of the tea plant; but the kids were just the right age, around 9th grade, for what we had planned. So all in all, a success, and I definitely want to teach at Spark in the spring if I can.

After we got back to camus, we had a game night with the Juggler, Fortitude, and the Tower. It was really fun, and I hope we get to do it again some time.

I slept absurdly well last night, which was great, and I woke up shortly before 9. \o/ Yay for sleeping in!

On a slightly less happy note, I am now so far behind on my NaNo that I am actually a little worried I won't finish. I want to write 4,000 words a day until Thanksgiving, and then I will feel a little better. I confess it isn't nearly as much fun to write this story as I thought it was going to be, so I want to find a way to change it. Maybe I will just ditch the first 20,000 thousand words and start over with the story line.

MUCH NEWS!!!!!!!

Thursday, I went to choir with the Roommate and sang.  Yes, sang.  Hard to believe, because not only can I not sing, but also we were singing religious songs.  God is great, huh?  But it was fun, if more than a little awkward because most of the people there had the mass songs, at least, memorized.  I might go back, I might not.

Also on Thursday, Other Me and I saw Nate from my language processing class last spring, and he was really obnoxious, as usual.  He's one of those weird people who is not a jerk but is still obnoxious—he always corrects you if you say something that he doesn't think is 100% accurate, and puts in his own opinion.  He isn't mean, precisely, but he's very patronizing—he always sounds like he's going to teach you the right way to whatever it is that you're talking about.  Perhaps I will steal him and put him in a book.

Last night, the Roommate and I had a whole list of social engagements.  A list!  I am never doing that many social things in one night again.

First I went to a talk on the healthcare bill and whether it was constitutional or not, for our Constitution Day.  (Apparently, there's some type of federal funding for universities that mandates that universities that receive that funding hold a Constitution Day, where they talk about the Constitution.  Who knew?  Pretty cool.  They gave me a pocket Constitution, too.)  It was interesting, but mostly because the lawyers who were discussing the bill had been teacher-student in law school, so they kept arguing back and forth.

Then, the Roommate and I had dinner with the Magician, Fortitude, and one of their friends.  He was pretty nice, but really quiet, so there were some awkward moments at the dinner table. :P

Then, the Roommate and I went to BOP (opera productions), which was actually a lot better than I thought it would be.  Other Me was helping to organize it, and there were some pretty cool songs—not only Stars from Les Misérables and Think of Me from Phantom (though that one wasn't very good), but also some interesting foreign-language songs.  (Papageno/Papagena or something like that was hilarious.)  On the other hand, nearly all of the songs involved women pining after their lost men, which was annoying; and even Papagena/Papageno started off with (guy) "Are you really mine?"  (girl)  "Yes I'm really yours".  Honestly, haven't we progressed a bit past that by now?  If it were "Are you really mine?"/"Yes, you're really mine" that wouldn't be problematic (though it does sound a bit funny).

After that, the Roommate and I went back to our dorm and played Dominion with several people down the hall (E and Ke).  The Roommate didn't play, obviously, but she seemed minorly interested in learning, which was a first step. (I WILL CONVERT THE WORLD!!!!!!)

And then, finally, the Roommate, the Magician, Fortitude, their friend, and I all went to watch Twister.  None of us have big rooms this year, so we went adventuring to the engineering building, where we got a lecture hall and watched the movie.  Unfortunately, the bulb in the projector needs to be replaced or fixed or something, because it had this giant green spot in the middle of the bulb; but, for Twister, that mostly managed to make the tornadoes look even more menacing, like the whole movie was occurring at twilight or something.  It was pretty awesome, though next time we're going to bring blankets because it was cold.

Edit:  And this morning, I made the huge mistake of talking to Fortitude about the genetics class, which I now kind of want to take.  But I think I will not—I want to stay sane this term, and I don't want the course to convince me I should go in to genetics, because I really hate that kind of lab work.