Seasonal Birthdays

The Culinary: So much seasonal baking going on! Three birthdays this week (Susa and Sam on Monday, Margaret today). These are pumpkin cupcakes Margaret, Cat and I made. There was also an apple cake a week or so ago, an icebox cake and currently chocolate pumpkin cheesecake bars and a LOT of pumpkin puree (one pumpkin worth, to be exact), not-yet-toasted seeds and some stir-fry. Also, Margaret's brother and his girlfriend came, and they are teaching us to make bread. yum.









General: I got a new skirt this week, and helped carve a pumpkin. Also, Susa's mom sent her Halloween candy, so now we are all dying from too much sugar. The pumkin below was done by Dylan, who is a PC in one of the toasters. Also finally fixed my bike :), with help from Eames, who I took L&T with and is part of the bike co-op. It had so many things wrong with it. First the tube was flat in the back one. Which he had already tried to replace before but it had popped. And then upon trying to pump up the front one turned out that my tire was so frayed that it wouldn't hold in the front tube which then nearly popped. But now it functions, is a bit cleaner (not perfect but at least ride-able).

Dream: I had a dream and in it...Adrienne and Chris were studying on Adrienne's bed and I was on mine, and Angela came in and we fought about work study forms. (I don't know why, probably because I haven't filled mine out and she's the authority figure here)
And then I went to a college with a lot of kids from my high-school, and we were at the beginning of sophomore year and excited to be choosing were to live in terms of dorms, and all ended up on the same side of one building, by a big cozy dining area with wood paneling that looked a tiny bit like Manor. Meera and NiNi and her siblings were in it mostly.
And then Anna from Paris did this..dance? on a horse, with a whip. And the morning was Islamic themed, but I couldn't tell the difference and other people were upset. And my family was there and the food was cold.
But this is the best part:
I was reading an autobiography. I was reading the words and it was in English but translated.
The woman writing it was raised by a male gay couple in Luxenberg at a time when it was weak (either in power, or it was in strife). I knew they were Jewish because they made her wear a yamakah, it was green and she didn't find it comfortable. They were divorced now, but she was telling a story of their youth, when they were young professors, how they would take the maple-tree pods and put them on apples in the fall, giving them wings. There was a photo in the book, endless yellow leaves and endless apples.
http://icons-ecast.wunderground.com/data/wximagenew/p/polishprincess/5.jpg

When I woke up I realized apples and maple seed pods are not from the same season, which upset me because I wanted to go out the give apples wings.

Family Sunday

My family came on Sunday. I showed them all the cute spots on campus. It was a really nice, sunny day. I showed them Blithewood and took them down from there closer to the Hudson. And then to the Community garden to show Sima how things grow (he's gotten confused: he used to think everything grows on trees, including ravioli, and then he decided everything was machine made, and now he just doubts everything), but most of the plants have been cleared away, but there are still strawberries and mint and squash. I took them to Stargon, even though I knew that Папа would climb it, but it's so cool it was worth my teenage embarrassment. We went to a diner for lunch, which was my idea and a bad idea, since none of us can actually much deep fried food. And then we sat on the swings.
They told me to go to the American Symphony Orchestra concert with my friends and left.

and now I miss them because I realize even more now how cute my brothers are, how nice and caring my parents are and just mergenshpeilbot, mloop and strob-garrrr.

the concert was really good, though Botstein looked kinda stiff when he conducted. Hannah Rosette and I were let in because we are students, but a bunch of people had to leave due to lack of seats. We got standing spots in the VERY back at the VERY top. The first piece was by a Bard student, Conor Brown, which was pretty invigorating (David Krakauer clarinet solo), and the second by Rachmaninoff, which was a bit boring at times. We left during the intermission and missed a Beethoven.

Friday of my hell week.

Friday I had my last exam. I really didn't want my Friday just to be an exam. I took a nap for an hour, ate, and then went with Margaret and Hannah to Montgomery Place.
We ate an apple between the three of us, it was so sweet. (St. Augustine, you stole pears incorrectly, which is why you felt bad later. You take one and savor it and it is splendid).
We smelled the roses and picked sage inside a little garden. We admired a frog in a pond in another little notch in the estate. Then we came out to the sprawl of landscape that flowed into the Hudson and watched the sun creep behind the Catskills. We held colorful leaves to the sun and looked at the light streaming through.

We took a different way back than the way we had gone. After going up and down the river that ended in a lake and started in a waterfall trying to find a place to dryly walk hop across, we took off our shoes and socks and waded through. The first five seconds it was cold and then we couldn't feel our feet and it was fine.
Once we were back at the dorm we kept going on the intertia of our initial craziness. We ran to the Green Onion (Bards food store) and got some potatoes and tomatoes and eggs. We took apples and milk and bread from Klien and then made soup (potatoes, tomatoes, bullion cubes, caramelized onion in olive oil, yellow split peas) and a weird stirfry (egg, garlic, salt, white rice) and ate it with bread and cheddar cheese. We were so full. And chai-tea with milk and sugar.
yes. so satisfying.
Then we watched The Boondock Saints. Lots of guns and Irish accents and badassness. Pretty funny, but Hannah didn't like the violence, I would tell her when the bloody parts were over and she could watch it again. Margaret had seen it before and I had seen the sequel which just referenced the first one and thus I had understood nothing.

and That was the Friday of my hell week.

dream? I had a dream in which I recounted to Yulka a dream I had had the night before, in which people with magic powers were trying to kill me. it was scary. I remember a field and wire and a cave and a vague Harry Potter reference.

Walk It Off, then Buckle In Tight.

Friday I took an hour and a half long walk with Andres, starting at about 11:30.
First we bumped into Donnie, who, when drunk, thinks we are both really really cool people, and is apparently happy every time I say hi to him because I remember who he is (such a flattering drunk, though he's usually sweet anyway. He's usually pretty composed, as he explained to Sam, who had met him for the first time), but then he was smoking someones girly cigarette, something like...menthol and strawberry flavored. After about 6 hugs each from him, we walked off campus, off were there was no light except for what was reflecting from the clouds, silhouetting the trees. The road merged with the horizon into gray. It was a relief just to know that I was off campus. I came back and talked briefly with Hannah and Will. Briefly was probably actually another hour and half.
At that time in the morning, everything slows down and becomes hazy, the yellow light in the common room buzzing and I feel removed from myself, unsatisfied with being attached to an earthbound body and conversations seem empty (like a dried up well). But it's a good feeling.

Yesterday I was super productive. Because I have art history midterm tuesday, fysem paper due Wednesday, calc midterm thursday and psych exam friday. So I have to be super productive. But I decided ahead of time how much work I would do and that I would stop working at 10 so that I would actually have a Saturday.
Angela got a bunch of us to go to some Asian/Latin food/dance thing. The food was mostly gone when we came. And there was very little dancing. But we took a LOT of fortune cookies, and stood outside under a lamp opening them (and adding "in bed" to the end). And then we watched "Whip It" which Margaret brought from home, us being teenage girls.

Today has been less productive. But I will do work! work work work. Go over my practice math midterm and finish flashcards for art history. and read three more chapters in St. Augustine.

the campus smells like camp fire, probably from leaves being burned. so good.

Right now I just feel rushed and still lingering on the feeling from Friday.

Botstein is Currently at Hannaford.

As I have been yelled across the hallway by Hannah, who got it from by text Rosette, who was driven with Margaret by Angela to Hannaford in the first place.

Fall Break (secretly its just Canadian Thanksgiving)

Mama was laughing at me because I started hording unpublishables and putting them into a suitcase. Lentils, oatmeal, brown rice, honey, nuts... The suitcase was 50 lbs. Its pathetic.
But so good.

It was Val's birthday so I stayed at her house from Sat-Sun. A lot of people came down. Katya from Brown, Eloosha from Yale and Kostya all the way from McGill...and then Yulka and Leonid are in the area anyway, and the rest not in college yet. played charades and set and taboo and talked and cuddled :)


Yosef took over my room. So I kicked him out, but I guess
for the two weeks of winter break. I get to live with Sima or in the basement. He also got a guitar as a late birthday present. So now he has three instruments (piano, sax and guitar). That's another thing I brought with me: some notes. And a couple books. And warm clothing. And regular clothing. So much stuff. And I rested.

We walked around North End on Monday and on Tuesday I watched Sima do gymnastics before going to Jack's house to get driven back to Bard.

Easy Come, Easy Go (where the wind blows matters to me)

loop bus from Bard to Poughkeepsie, train from there to Grand Central, walk from there to Port Authority, wait for the bus. The bus comes an hour late because Peter Pan sucks, and then arrive an additional hour later because of traffic. So end up at South Station at 2am.
but home!

Wearing the handwarmers Мама got me :)

http://xkcd.com/802/

because its xkcd. and it has a map of the internet that includes the Russian segment of life journal where my mom resides.

Yesterday we all crowded in Weis Cinema to watch Botstein (our pres.)
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/361087/october-05-2010/leon-botstein
Their personalities don't really work together. Also, Botstein was clearly aware that we were watching, which is why he used smoking as an example. He's a character.

I took a nap today and had a dream were I had transferred to UMass Amherst. I was exhausted, my parents were visiting, I had a ton of work to do, Rosette and Jeff were cuddling on the bed across from me, because for some reason instead of having rooms we all lived in a large hallway. I really wanted to cry. I was also thinking in my dream of the dream I had last night, which was also bugging me (the dream included some party and running around on top of a car and taking some hallucinogenic drug that looked like food-dyed coconut shreds, but I woke up before it really kicked in. I was running from something, but I feel like it could almost have been some metaphorical stress). I was also worried about losing some scholarship (worth 20,000) that I had gotten from UMass, because I hadn't gone there directly.

Interpretation: I talked to Timmy recently, and he's applying to colleges now, Will mentioned a sophomore in his class who was transferring to UMass, plus that was the final two places I was deciding between were Bard and UMass Amherst. Drugs are normal in my dreams, so nothing there. And I'm tired and worry about money and about the Rosette-Jeff thing. There.

I'm a bit sick. It hurts to swallow. fun fun.
But I'm going home soon! I need it. <3

Lipton Rasberry Iced Tea is the last thing I drank.

The Symposium (that we have to go to for FYSEM) was really bad today. They could have just given us the title (World Canons) and not added anything, since they basically repeated the same thing as the title: there are other canons. We know, not that novel an idea. Yes all the books we are reading are by dead white men. Yes those are not the only books in the world.

I finally got my swipe key! I lost it like...7 weeks ago! Adrienne has been an angel! And I found my ID in my bag that was at Security, WOOT! successful day.

Saturday we watched Casa Blanca. But we have a really intimidatingly long list of movies. This is the first page & a half.
I hung up my marker, and keep on having to add more paper.

Also, we have a new dorm-mate. It was really random, he just came in and Ethan was like "this is my new roommate" to Margaret and Susa. Not sure when he's moving in, but I knew what he looked like before I had any reason to. Tall, skinny, pale with dark hair. I called him B-boy in my mind because he has a "B" tattooed on his right arm. But now he has a normal name (Jake).I think he's cool, personally. But then again, I haven't actually talked to him? So can't say for sure. Hopefully he isn't here just because he wants to be closer to Tewks, misusing our dorm.

Last Thursday I went dancing Argentinian Tango. It is not at all like the standard ballroom tango I know, but it was fun anyway. I danced with a girl who also did ballroom (she was assisting in teaching). And in the end we danced a bit of Cha-Cha :)

I just had a 2nd dinner with Chris, Luca and Maximilien at DTR, which is a very strange people combo. We talked about architecture for a bit. And I took some of Max's pudding in exchange for cracker jacks. First dinner with Margaret and Donnie, who I had not talked to in a while, but he had been wearing a koala hat yesterday. Can't question a guy who wears a koala hat.

and clearly my brain is dieing off and I should go sleep.

"You cruel, heartless..." etc. etc. etc.

It is Saturday!
Still one day left to the weekend!
And I get to go back home next week, which is exciting :)
for now i get to read the Aeneid, which isn't as exciting.

I just came back from making cookies with Margaret and Cat.
And last night I ended up smoking hookah (apricot tobacco).
Went to bed at 3:30 am. Woke up around 11. sanity.

Also, I was curious as to the whole "syncing" process, how long it took, and looked it up. Apparently an urban legend. Good to know.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-women-who-live-together-menstruate-together

What else...I darned my tall sock today. Such an eventful day.

short list friday.

There lice going around for a while. None in my dorm, but in a lot of the other dorms on this side of campus. Paranoia.

schedule for the day:
went to bed at 2 am. Woke up at 9, went to class. Came back, fell asleep at 12:30 in the afternoon, woke up at 5:30, went down and helped make lasagna, ate lasagna, called home, watched Community*, walked to Stargon and then had tea.
So I slept for 12 hours today.

*Five of us sitting on my bed watching Community. yes.
Last time it was Margaret and Cat. This time Jack and Hannah joined us.
partay

Rosette came back from the city (she was at a "Fun" concert). Two of her Long Island friends are over. They just came back upstairs from smoking hookah at the entrance of our dorm.
http://stash.norml.org/bard-tops-cannabis-college-list
Out of the list, these are some of the school I applied to (so 4/10 school I applied to made the list...)

(last year’s ranking in parenthesis)

1. Bard College, NY (2)

3. University of Vermont, Burlington (3)

9. Eugene Lang College, NY (new)

13. Skidmore College, NY (14)

Though I think they were just smoking tobacco.
But now they are def. going downstairs with a joint so yeah.

also: last night I drew a spaghetti squash still-life. massively exciting.