Vain

I think I've finally figured out what to do with my hair.

Famous!

The New York times visited my City, toured some of my favorite restaurants, tried some of my favorite hangouts.

Looking at their archives, they apparently show up every two years or so, stay at the same hotel, try a couple new restaurants, go to different events.

They did mention a French restaurant I am sure to be trying in the future, although it is likely my dining partner will be Russian rather than American, as my American friends are unfortunately a bit squeamish and, well, somewhat lacking in refinement.

Relationships

Went over to Bookish Friend's house this afternoon, helped her and Sunglasses and Childish Booksmart Friend make dinner for Bookish's mother. We made cream and mustard chicken with roasted asparagus and chocolate truffles, and we made plans for next year when we're all going to live together.

After dinner, we played a silly video games while lying on the bed and poking each other in the knees.

But the part I really liked best was the snuggling. For the now three years we've been friends, we've grown increasingly comfortable around each other. Sure, it may throw in a bit of complication when you consider that Bookish and Sunglasses are dating (and Crazy Math and Sci-Fi when we're at the University), but no one minds tickle fights and cuddle piles and hugs and pretend flirting. It's a simple relationship, it's a complicated relationship, but most importantly, it's fulfilling.

It's like dating, sort of, except maybe less stressful.

***

I wish Beautiful Music Friend was here more often. She belongs in the pile.

Moutain climbing and other nonsense

Brother and I spent a considerable amount of time looking at things on the internet today. We looked though my delicious bookmarks and stumbled, among other things (including a series of rather hilarious John Cleese computer ads) upon a video I'd nearly forgotten: William Shatner waxing philosophic about Kirk climbing a mountain in some movie or other. In music. Remixed by some clever geek.

Now, most of what Shatner says in the interview sounds pretty ridiculous, but the remix is pure I don't even know what: "Why do I climb the moutain? Because I'm in love."

Dear Star Trek universe, you are ridiculous, and that is why I love you.

Somewhat related, but much lower on the ridiculousness scale, we watched Star Trek: First Contact (the last one of the movies Bro got me for my birthday that I still had to watch). One word: wow.

Jean-Luc Picard is undoubtedly my favorite character of the whole series: he has feelings, he has flaws, he is intelligent, he is wrong sometimes. He is one of the most multidimensional character I have seen, either in Star Trek or in many other movies that boast of more intellectual credentials.

***

I talk about Star Trek rather a lot, but I find it fascinating to watch the series evolve over so many years, from the very first special effects of a model ship in front of a painted planet to the newest, gorgeous computer animation of the starship Enterprise rising from the rings of Saturn, from cardboard computers to glass touchscreens, from terrible acting and over-dramatic camera zooms to, well, decent acting and lens flares.

"There is no money in the future, no countries, no poverty, no hunger. When we discovered we were not alone, we began working to better ourselves."

The Thanksgiving Day Chronicles

10:05 - "The flags are out. Is there a game today?" -Dad (As part of a fundraiser, and even though we don't care much for sports, my parents paid the high school band $100 to put the University Back Home's colors on our front yard every football home game day. Thanksgiving Day is traditionally the big rivalry game between my University and the University Back Home. This year, the game took place in City Back Home) (And, as of 22:42, the University, as usual, won. Huzzah!)

11:11 - According to Dad, today seems like the perfect day to fix the sticky-outy piece of pipe on the stove that's been there for five and a half years. Except that now, instead of being ugly, it's broken. 11:11, how are the potatoes getting cooked?

13:31 - Disaster averted, but Little Brother needs to go back to kindergarten for basic cutting skills. Parchment paper = fail.

16:28 - Turkey's done and spewing molten grease all over the table. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

18:57 - Top half of the turkey: glorious, bottom half: uh, al dente?

***

To my American friends: Happy Thanksgiving! Hope your turkey/tofurkey/turducken was as delicious as ours!
To my non-American friends: Happy Thanksgiving too! I hope your day was fantastic without being Turkey Day!

Breather

Darwin madness is finally over (well, the part where I have to work is over) and I can have time to myself again.

I don't need to attend long planning meetings, make posters (Charles is quite a handsome poster boy, if I do say so myself), print flyers, paint shirts, label bananas, email professors, debate creationists, and hand out eighty pounds of bananas to passers-by.

Nevertheless, it was quite a lot of fun. The day after the early book handout (still managed to snag two copies and argue for two hours with a not very bright fellow), we handed out about a thousand flyers and bananas next to a crowd listening to some fire-and-brimstone sermoner who was giving us dirty looks and, by the look of it, praying very hard for our unfortunate scientific souls. With great success, we held on the next day a two hour series of presentations by several professors and a student who had analyzed the original edition and the "revised" one to some interesting conclusions, followed by the documentary "Flock of Dodos" and more discussions quite late into the night.

I wish On the Origin of Species turned 150 every day.

¡Viva la evolución!

Things I don't understand

Overheard at the Unabridged Sustenance cheese counter this afternoon:

"I'd like to bake this here brie into a sheet of pastry, 'cause I guess it's what people do. What kind of toppings can I put on it?"

Whoever invented the "holiday Brie" with jam, nuts, and pastry, had a very, very twisted sense of humor.

The times are a-changin'

When I arrived home tonight, there was a new table in the dining room. The old one had been moved to my room.

That table has always existed in the middle of the dining room, with the round coffee-pot burn from one careless morning. It has existed since I was little enough to find it gargantuous, to build forts under it, to make up stories about knights around it, to stand up straight and still be able to walk under it.

With the old round table go the old tablecloths, the one Mother and Father got as a wedding present, the one on which a crystal plate broke during a Sunday lunch with relatives, the one Grandmother brought back from Bretagne.

The new table is thick and solid and rectangular and quite big.

Then again, all five of us used to be able to fit around the table that now holds one desktop computer.

How low can you go?

The high: Done with Biochemistry project! Making posters for Darwin! Cooking dinner in the Quad Kitchen!

The low: The Boy.

What's the etymology of the phrase "to levy taxes"?

Childish Booksmart Friend and I have had a long talk, in the way that long talks between friends tend to go. You start with one idea, then drift off to another, to finally digress your way til morning.

I learned that Jewish days go from three star rise at sundown to three star rise at sundown the day after to make sure that you are observing the proper amount of time, that there are two sets of "ten commandments," that all Jewish firstborns need to be bought from a member of the Levi tribe (someone whose last name is Cohen), that a lefthander can performed learned tasks with a right hand but performs self-taught tasks with a left hand, that most people naturally slant their paper when they write, that hydrogen bonds sometimes are more like 3.4 Ångstroms when the hydrogens don't show up in the program (see, I was actually working!), and much much more.

And then it was quite late, so I went home and talked to Beautiful Music friend for some time, and am off to bed for real this time.

PS: GB, someone told me today that there were no or very few snakes in New Zealand (which could be possible), as well as a very large type of insect, name unknown, as long as a hand. Is that true?

Software adventures

I have yet another class project involving complicated software. Unfortunately, this one takes rather a while to complete and the program isn't all that great--not to mention it's impossible to find things.

Fortunately, I've been assigned gyrase, which is one of my favorite proteins, so I suppose getting to know it intimately can't be all that bad.

On a high

Tonight, I attended a student production of Reefer Madness with Fiery Comedian Friend, who has finally come back to the City after a four month long travel stint around Europe.

I'd never actually seen the play, although Crazy Redhead Mathematically-Inclined Friend is fond of singing the Romeo and Juliet song.

As probably intended (it is, after all, a musical about marijuana), the production was very weird, but very enjoyable.

And then I organized some more events for what is now the Anti-Anti-Evolution movement.

UnComfortable.

Next Thursday, on university campuses across the nation (including The University), some idiot will be handing out free copies of a reprint of the first edition of Darwin's Origin of Species with a fifty page introduction attempting to prove it wrong.

A group of students and professors are organizing a protest.

We will be handing out bananas.

One sentence

She was disappointed when she learned the ultra-fast folding technique wasn't actually practical.

***

In my daily internet meanderings, I discovered the One Sentence blog which, as its title indicates, asks you to report a true story in a single sentence. Sort of like haikus, but without the syllable count. Many of them are very poetic, but Hemingway still remains the master:

For sale: Baby shoes, Never worn.

Passive-Agressive

Some time in September, I put up a note in the bathroom about people leaving their hair in the shower. For about a week, the showers stayed clean.

However, the general state of the bathroom has been declining over the past few weeks. This morning, not only did I find the customary giant gobs of hair in the shower but also that the trash can was overflowing and food had been spilled on the floor, leaving a disgusting mess and a nauseating smell.

Tonight, I left a note in each of the stalls. I really hope it does something. You'd think college students would have learned to live in common by now!

Next time, I'm setting up lasers and booby traps.

Sunday afternoon

It's raining.

The smell of warm, damp earth rises from the roadside and fills the car. Through the windows, the mottled brown and green fields spread out into dips and troughs and the occasional bump, punctuated by ramshackle wooden sheds with rusting sheet-metal roofs. Some trees are brown and have started shedding their leaves, others offer a pale yellow-orange, and the majority remain a dusty green. Nothing to rival the splendid colors of the Northeast.

Every once in a while, a familiar metal bird can be seen standing guard in a field, though fewer and fewer are engaged in their rhythmic dance to pump the black gold from the ground. In the air, one of their feathered cousins loops and twirls, long yellow tail flittering in the wind.

The road ahead and back glistens and vanishes in a faint haze of raindrops in the distance.

We could be going anywhere, and it wouldn't matter. Sometimes, Texas seems like a perpetual scenery.

Growing up

Little Sis went to her first dance tonight.

With her first boyfriend.

Got her first kiss.

I feel old.

Crystal ball

I tend to be eerily accurate with my predictions.

There was The First, of course. You could say it was love at first sight, although it wasn't. It was a certainty, a fact: I didn't know his name, I had never had a boyfriend, I never expected to have one, yet I knew that by the end of the year we would be together. I didn't go out of my way to make it happen, but it did. As I knew it would. And, again as I knew it would, it ended.

The Second happened unexpectedly. He remained an uncertainty for some time, during and even after. I hoped, for what reason I do not know, but eventually that passed and I was certain once more.

The Third wasn't so much a certainty as a destiny: he was bound to happen.

He became The Boy.

And, by my current prediction, may very soon be just The Third.

The change may have been gradual, but, as always, a moment of clarity brings the prediction, and life is uncertain no more.

In one way, it was a certainty from the very beginning. By all the laws of logic, it shouldn't last. By all the laws of logic, it shouldn't have happen at all. The problem is, one stroke of good luck jaded me and made me think anything could happen, no matter how impossible or improbable, how far the distance or how disgruntled the parents.

The thing is, life doesn't happen that way. Life isn't a fairy tale, life doesn't always turn out well.

Until this Thursday night, I'd held the doctrine that everything always turned out okay. Procrastination was fine, I knew I'd get the project completed before the due date and do well on it. Getting sick was fine, I knew I'd eventually get better after one or two weeks. Having some accident or other was fine, I knew there was a grown-up who would come and make me safe and take the hurt away. Government papers and banks and forms and taxes were fine, I knew there would always be a knowledgeable grown-up who would take care of it for me. A long-distance relationship was fine, I knew it would keep going forever in the fairytale way.

But in real life, that's not how it happens.

In real life, sometimes you get bad grades, sometimes you don't get better, sometimes you have to get complicated and expensive surgery, sometimes you get in trouble, sometimes you have no money. Sometimes you fight.

In real life, you have to think about the future. Now is fine, but what about then? What about grad school? What about jobs? What about families? I have too much ahead of me to think about spending the rest of my life with one person and having to plan everything around that. I have too much ahead of me to wait forever until, by some miracle, we end up in the same place again. I have too much ahead of me to not explore the world and the people in it.

The bickering gets to me. Playful, pretend-playful, or neither, it's bickering and I can't stand it. I can't stand to be the perpetual cheerleader, to always try to find solutions to problem, to always say "That's OK, do what's in your best interest, I can wait another six months to see you." I can't stand to always have to defend my opinions on such and such, whether about a Halloween costume or cultural differences. I can't stand the long silences sometimes when he needs time to think.

I know him well enough to know he's thinking roughly the same thing.

I'd like to say I got my crying over and done with several weeks ago, but I know that when it does end, I most likely won't be able to help it.

I'm sorry, Boy. While you're doing your thinking, I'm doing mine, too, and this is the conclusion I've come to.

It was great while it lasted, and I don't regret it, any of it, but it feels like it's time we parted ways.

Sure, it may take some time to reach the actual end, but I don't see any way out.

Time to think and explore my new grown-up world.

Saving daylight, writing by candlelight instead

When time comes to move my clocks back an hour, I always wait until Monday morning. I keep my regular schedule all weekend and offer myself the luxury of waking up an hour later to begin the week.

In Texas, the days don't change that much from summer to winter. It doesn't get dark in the afternoon, and mornings are clear by the time most people walk out. However, Texas has splendid sunsets. Earlier sunsets mean that there are still people in the streets to enjoy them. Sunsets in the University are particularly delightful: the white stone reflect the orange light everywhere, enveloping the world in warm colors.

One of my favorite moments of the day when we still lived in Paris was coming home from school on the 17:55 train. There were long stretches of open track where you could see almost the entire Bassin. The skyscrapers of La Défense stood grouped together in the haze to the right, Paris and its streets stretched out in the distance. Best of all, on the hour, right as the train passed the best viewpoint in the valley, the Lady Eiffel would light up and sparkle like diamonds.

It's been six years since I sat on that train and watched the City of Lights shimmer in the night. As winter approaches, I wonder if there is, somewhere on that ever-punctual train, a girl who waits for the hour to turn.

Happy surprises

I spontaneously woke up at 7:00 and went back to sleep as Quirky Roommate, who usually sleeps later than me, jumped out of bed, printed an essay, and ran out the door.

As he was discussing polyploidy, the Evolution professor took a headcount of Star Trek fans and explained that in "The Trouble With Tribbles," the grain quadrotriticale was an actual genetically engineered tetraploid grain (or, at least, the triticale part of it). Proof that Star Trek can have actual science sometimes!

In the laundry room, one of the washing machine had already been paid for and loaded with detergent, but no one was there and the lights were off. Later, as I was moving my loads to the dryer, a girl who had been taking out her clothes told me there were 40 minutes left on both of her dryers and I could have them. I saved $3 on laundry!

The bathroom has been invaded with Drosophila melanogaster ever since someone threw away rotting food in the trash. When they land on the mirror, you can come close enough to them to notice the details like red eyes and brown bodies (some had black bodies.) I've heard of them for years, genetics oblige, but I do believe that this is the closest I've ever come to a fruitfly. It was somewhat like meeting a famous person.

La Bohème is playing next week at the City Opera, and the University Honors Center is offering very cheap tickets for students. I snagged the last one. Whether I can actually make it to the show is another question, hopefully the Ochem lab that day is not too long.

Tonight, while I should have been working on my lab reports, I stumbled across an introductory scuba diving class in the course schedule for next semester. I deliberated taking it next year, when I realized it fit into my planned schedule for next semester. The novelty of taking a class just because hasn't quite worn off, and the utter strangeness of having such classes be offered at all is quite pleasing.

***

On the other hand, it's nearly midnight, I haven't made any significant headway whatsoever on my lab reports, I can't find my infrared spectroscopy data, and I don't care at all.

The gate

There is a small metal gate between two old and convoluted stone buildings that doesn't go anywhere. It's the type of gate that could be the door to a jail cell or a dungeon or a secret passageway. No one really knows what it's for. It opens into a wall that has no reason to be here other than to be between two buildings that don't have entrances on the ground but rather a set of double doors up one and a half flights of stairs and down three quarters of another one, all prettily set between white stone columns and carved railings.

Point is, there is a door in the middle of nowhere that opens into the wall, and there is something inside this wall, like a hallway, but no one knows what it is or where it goes to.

***

A film crew was there today, filming something. All I saw of it was the setting up of lighting, though. It took them a while, and I had to go to class eventually.

If I were a zombie, I would be so much better at this.

Tiny Russian Friend and I have been studying since Wednesday for tomorrow morning's Vertebrate Physiology exam. Today, eight hours straight of going through books and notes and diagrams has me going completely bonkers and quite incoherent, not to mention it made me miss the kickoff of NaBloPoMo, but at least I will do much better than on the last exam.

The brain is on my mind.

After so much studying, we both spontaneously drew and labeled the brain on our sandwich bags when we went to grab dinner. The terrifying part is that there wasn't enough paper to draw as detailed a diagram as we ought to have been able to draw.

Ah well. Que sera sera, and I'll just go rest my various thalamic nuclei for the night.