ariadne_3

07:51 pm: Before traveling:
Mom:  Sam, you can't possibly go through that many books.  We are going to (fill in destination) and you will be to busy to read anything.  You can take two.
Sam:  But I brought a hundredth of the amount of clothing of Jaimie/Zoe, and my suitcase still weights a hundredth as much as theirs do.
Mom:  I don't care, you can't bring them. 

But she's wrong.  There is so much travel time, random times waiting in lines, etc., in which to read.  And of course, by day three, I have finished both books, plus the weird poetry book Zoe inevitably brings (and I don't understand a word of), Jaimie's trash romance novel, have been told off by my mother for trying to steal whatever she brought, and am not quite desperate enough to read Alyx's lemony snicket or Dad's book on vector calculus in hyperspace (which he reads for pleasure, God help us.)

And so now that I'm traveling by myself to India and my mother has no say in what I bring, I am stupid enough to bring only three novels, which I finished in a week and a half, and have been desperately drooling over the book stands which--when I get close--have nothing in English.  But I found a Walden Books, I'm not even kidding, and they had all of these classics *in English.*  I got a pile of stuff from some of my favorite  classics authors for like $3 each.  Kafka--which I have been dying to read since Jeanne showed us those passages,  James Joyce (oh I love i love i love) and a bunch of others.  I thought about giving Dostoevsky another try, but then I remembered just how much I wanted to strangle myself after reading Notes from Underground, and decided against it.  Maybe another time...

01:51 pm: Why is it frigid in lab?

11:50 am: I wasn't too keen on meeting the Cambridge exchange students last year, even after Teejana and Ashley got immediately and completely sucked into their lives.  They were only there for the year, so didn't seem like much of a point to me.  I'd met Dev at Teej's birthday party--and she's got this incredible social grace that made so much of an impression on me that I wrote a whole thing in my diary about it.  Ste I met on the roof of Phi Sig, at which time his accent was so thick I couldn't understand him, got kind of bored, and proceeded to forget that he existed.  But Dev and Ste were in every one of my classes, which is weird because I'm one of the few (two?) ChemEs to have switched into ChemE rather than started with it, so I'm taking the classes a little out of order.  (Lots of people will switch into the easier majors--Econ, Management, etc., but switching form Econ to ChemE as I did is doable but almost unheard of.)  And the two of them just turned my world upside down.  We were up psetting till probably 3-4a.m. every day ,and then had class again at 10, ate every meal together.  And then when we weren't working, the three of us were always together.  The North End, trips to Rhode Island and New Jersey, skiing, parties... Our social circles, CME +MIT just melted together--and so when the three of us weren't alone together, we were together anyway.  They went with us on spring break instead of with the other CMEs, and their names cover my diary and poetry.  They became so much a part of my life in that year that MIT feels weirdly quiet without them. 
Anyway, Mirat took Anna and I as her dates to the Student House formal last night after Shabbat dinner with Alona, and Student house is where Dev and Ste had stayed.  I spent so much time there last year, spent so many nights sleeping on Dev's floor, ate so many meals in that kitchen.  I had a complete blast; I love formals and dressing up and seeing Mirat/Anna and that Student House culture.  When I got back to the apartment, the combination of being in Student House and my roommate Ashley being in England with her boyfriend--one of the CMEs in their circle--made me miss them so much.  I talked to Ste on the phone this morning for a few hours, using this aggravating mixture of Skype and a phone card.  I know Ste's going to fly to Boston to see our graduation and Dev is trying to make arrangements to come on Spring Break with us but I'm thinking that for Hanukkah I'm going to ask my parents for some money to put towards a plane ticket to England sometime sooner than that.  To get the three of us on the same continent at the same time.  Travel is so unbelievably expensive.  I actually could scrape together the rest of the money if I do a little more animation teaching than I anticipated--which the woman who runs to program would like me to do anyway--as they pay well and I like the work.  

04:05 am: Flattered
Some guy in my sf class came to me after class today--I've never talked to him before--and told me he was terrified of getting his story critiqued and would I look at it for him and help him figure out causal chain and character goal and stuff?  I thought that was pretty cool.  It's pretty good writing, too. 

There are some students in that class who are brutal, and while a lot of the feedback is well thought out and insightful, a lot of it isn't constructive at all.  So glad I went through Odyssey first, or I probably would have decided that this critique stuff was not for me. 

02:23 am: Diwali, other adventures
Meghana's entire family was in Boston today, and Meghana's mother made this Indian food for their family, family friends, Meghana's friends, Meghan's sister's friends.... all in our apartment.   We hung lights around the living room and everything; it was adorable.  I learned to cook poori.  A bit like having Thanksgiving with someone else's family.  Wonderful, although it made me homesick.  I've decided that I love eating with my hands.

There's a new club called Church that we went to tonight in a large group of people I love spending time with.  Church on Sunday-(ha), Mirat's idea.  And just a really busy weekend.  I'm sort of not sure how we managed to fit so much activity into such a short time frame.  The Best Friend from home was in town on Friday with her roommates and so I took Meghana to meet her.  Got dressed up in classy black dresses and went out with Maryann.  Saw Anna and Julia.  Did a roommate + Mirat brunch at Zaftigs, a Jewish brunch place that did this omelet with goat cheese and also chocolate French toast and I want to go back very badly.   Was truly intoxicated at the club we were at last night for the first time since... I think since that night at Odyssey. 

02:29 am: Back to the Dungeons of 66
I just got this message:  "You have been logged on for 9 hours and 45 minutes and will be logged off automatically in 15 minutes.  Save your work."

And... yeah... it's been 9 hours and 45 minutes we've been in the basement of 66 trying to optimize production of these stupid monomers that I've learned to hate.  Tim and Michelle and I are incoherent exhausted but this ICE project just won't die.  Oh falling asleep over the keyboard.  Not good. 

This weekend was so phenomenal though. 

12:13 am: must have human contact 

10:25 pm: I've made friends with them.  The MethA cells, that is.  They're really nice.  They call me The Great Provider of MethA Media, and they watch me work under the fume hood from their little glass encasement. 

I've started to name them.  Todd and Abigail and Donald and Sanrita and Jacob and Emily and Madison and Michael and Emma and Joshua and Andrew and Christa and Daniel and Ashley and Olivia and William and Grace and Tyler and Brandon and Anna and Natalie and Chloe and Victoria and Christian and Dylan and Jonathan and Zachary and Brandon and Juan and Ryan and Tyler and Alexander and John and Jessica and James and Hannah and Brianna and Travis and Javier and Daisy and Sabrina and Gracie and Cheyenne and Miranda and Dalton and Alixis and Brady and George and Jillian and Nicholas and Natalia and Giana and Ricardo and Caitlyn and Brittany and Karen and Naomi and Crystal and Fernando and Shawn and Omar and Preston and Grant and Alan and Brady and Dalton and Alexis and Brady and Grant and Shane and Skylar and Cassidy and Jillian and Ana and Sophie and Alexia and Summer and Tiffany and Ashyln and Crystal and Cristian and Josiah and Gage and Peter and Derek and Edgar and Mario and Peyton and Colby and Jonah and Rylee and Erika and Jordyn and Chemsea and Veronica and Charlotte and Ruby and Abby and Karina and Reagan and Jamie and Jayla and Erick and Eli and Jasmine and Carly and Marco and MItchell and Donavan.  I got to the 5.3238881*10^8th cell, and then I just named the rest Bobby. 

08:07 pm: Filtering MethA Media 8 hours and counting
Alone.  By my self.  In the subbasement.  For 8 hours, 5 of them continuous.. 

And I'm bored. 

And alone.

And going insane. 

06:32 pm: My car
Yesterday I found that the front windshield of my car had been smashed with one of those glass beer bottles.  The window did that shatter-but-still-intact thing, and whoever did it left a huge handful of pennies and nickels on the car, on top of the broken beer glass (??)  Liberty Mutual will cover the damage, but I'm wondering if I need to find a safer place to keep the car.  I suppose that having driven the car in the city for two and a half years, I should be glad that's the worst it's been through.  A bit weird that of all the cars in that lot, mine was the only one touched.  It's amongst the most innocuous looking cars, my silver Camry amongst a whole bunch of BMWs and few Lexuses and some other really very pricey and much (much) newer models.  And a lot of much shittier ones, too, but still...  Just random chance I guess.

: ( 

12:37 pm: ChemE.
Can I get my steak at a thermal conductivity of .5 W/mK?

12:25 am: My Microsoft Word documents talk to me.  I opened my short story and it said something to the effect of

"You stupid whore.  I'm supposed to be a novel."

What the fuck??  Microsoft Word documents are not supposed to talk. 


Okay, more important:
JoAnn keeps e-mailing me about the Odfellow dinner on Saturday night and I keep writing back to say that I won't be there, since I'll back in Boston by then.  I can't tell if my e-mails are ending up in her spam box and that's why she isn't getting them, or is everyone else getting multiple generic (" Our fearless leader has asked that I coordinate an Odfellows dinner," etc.) with their name?

And while I'm being disorganized, does anyone know which hotel we're actually staying at??  I can't find the thread with this rather vital information. 

11:23 pm: Gwen is sprawled out over our futon in the living room with a textbook over her face. 

Me:  "That doesn't look like studying"
Gwen:  "I'm absorbing it"

11:46 pm: Kerry!!!!
My cousin Sam is a Theta Chi, so I went with my Little, Kerry, and the other AXO '10s to see him tonight.  Such good news.

My Little is gonna get a Little!!!!!!!!!  The excitement.... I'M SO EXCITED.   We're contemplating gifts for mystery week.  We have really pretty freshwater pearls set aside that we just need to string--probably for the last day, to go with the lavalier--and I'm thinking about quilting my old Alpha Chi t-shirts.  I'm not sure when I'd find the time to do that, but I might bring the fabric up to NH this weekend.  The possibilities are endless.

Why I couldn't focus on a lecture on lumped capacitance today:

I couldn't stop thinking in ten word sentences--thanks Todd.

God it's like one of Jeanne's games.  Between Todd and Becky posting a giant Darth Vadar... all we need now are peanut M&Ms and cheeseburgers and Krista's/Erica's beer collection (alcoholics... cough cough.)

04:06 am: 66, home sweet home
Tim and I finished this friday's ICE report 10 minutes ago.  Dear god... 4 am and I just got back to the apt.  And there were still people in the basement of building 66 (chemE computer lab) when we left.  But it's okay because this report is so fucking sexy.  27 pages of flawless Jacobian and numerical answers that make Real World sense.  It's a miracle.  We were running around and shrieking when the last error message went away.   And now I really need sleep.  I don't think I can articulate quite how much I need sleep.  

03:09 am: Odd Memories
My dad taught me to write batch files in 4th grade.  I think that was the first "programming" I ever did, even before BASIC. 

I had a bitch of a teacher in 4th grade.  You would think I'd have forgotten by now, but I think it's one of those memories that is stuck with me pretty permanently.  She used to make this kid Theodore ("Teddy") cry every day, and we all hated her.  

Anyway.  We got those new computers in 4th grade, the ones with DOS and a basic 8 (16?) color graphical user interface (Windows?).  And when you turned on the computer a batch file called up a menu, from which you could choose a "word processor," a few games, a program that taught you to type, some other stuff.

I got really upset with this teacher at one point, and went into the batch file and switched the menu around so that the options didn't match up with the programs that ran.  She was pissed.  Really, really angry.  Some guy came in and switched them back, and she told him that she thought I had done it.  I was kind of a geek then--me and my best friend at that time, David.  Like we played with Regedt regularly sort of geeky, though I think that must have been a year later.  I don't think I will ever forget this.  The guy took one look at me, and I was a damn tiny 4th grader, and was like, I really don't think so, with sarcasm that even I didn't have trouble picking up on at that age. 

And this is why I'm at MIT.

(The 6:04 am addendum.  Ugh.  Still fucking psetting.  I don't understand why no matter how much I get done on the weekend, my Tuesday night/Wed morning ends up like this....  I haven't pulled full nights like this since freshman year.)

12:49 am: Lesbians/BloodStained Clovers and MATLAB
Okay I just wrote the first thousand words of a lesbian story for Haldeman's class.  And I put a blood stained clover in it, in a place no one would ever notice it.  Which means I laughed to myself and no one else noticed.   Damn I should have written it while at Odyssey, to go along with the mermaids and robot burying gays and calise/shana and orgies and (others?)  Except I don't think he'll let me use it as my final story because it isn't hard SF, and he *hates* speculative fiction that isn't hard SF. 

Oh god I love MATLAB.  MATLAB just balanced these zillion equations for me, which would have taken me hours to do by hand.  Oh I love you MATLAB.  I love you I love you I love you I love you. 


Long live the blood stained clovers.

07:42 pm: Alright Erica. Mine are up, where are yours, biatch? (Gwen, looking sexy)

03:05 pm: Flower for Algenon

06:03 pm: Sketches from my notebook: Me and my roommates (Meghana and Ash)