How is April over? OMG.
Mood:  a-ok
(Yes, I just put OMG in the entry title. I've swallowed my pride. This blog is naught but a narcissistic procrastination device and I can use AIM-speak if I so desire, dammit).

So what have I been up to this Reading Week? Well, how can we put this...not reading. I have been working very hard on lab, and it's getting somewhere at last. This should be the last group project I ever do at Yale, which is cause for celebration in itself.

I almost wrote a Spring Fling entry like last year's, but I didn't. I had a wonderful time. I had been grumbling about the impending rain, but when the rain actually started falling during Ben Folds' set, it was beautiful. Then Ludacris came on, making fun of Yalies. Right away he asked how many of us had gotten drunk for the first time today, and he kept acting surprised that we knew his lyrics. By the end I feel that we changed his opinion of the Ivy League for the better. We're not all collar-popping prepsters and pretentious indie-nerds. Well, we may be, but that doesn't mean we don't know the Ho song. Then Tracy and Laura and I went and got more beer and Thai food and made fun of the universe together.

My procrastination skills have doubled since Finals and I last did battle. I've been hanging out on AIM. I've been running in the beautiful weather. I've been waiting for the new Bleach episode even though it's just lame filler for the forseeable future. I've been talking to my suitemates for hours about the least consequential of topics. I've been theater-hopping, library-hopping, bar-hopping, web-surfing, forum-lurking, all-around work-shirking. It's fantastic. Take that, Finals, I'm having FUN! I am HAPPY. I pwn you!

Speaking of happy, I had a divine asiago cheese bagel this morning at ABP. It was sooo good. I had not been eating that much for few days and decided I needed some soul nourishment, and it was like eating a cloud of baked joy. The cheese had somehow permeated the pores of the bagel and it was so soft and flavorful and tasty like woah. Then I found out it was only 360 calories and cost 94 cents. God exists, and, She is not vegan.

Finals schedule:
May 2: Spanish
May 4: Inca Culture and Society
May 8: Great Discoveries
May 9: Lab is due.
May 10-15: May Training in the pretty woods.
May 16: Homeward bound!

Obligatory real world content: I bet this would have been something to see.

For those to whom I have not yet bragged, I got full funding to go to Peru. So loaded right now. I love my life.

Buzzed and Cheered
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: AND singing! -- Old Crow Medicine Show, "Wagon Wheel"
There are few things in life that can fill the heart with pure unadulterated delight. A beautiful TUIB concert is one of those things. Especially one that involves lots of dancing and rocking out to the best encore I think I've ever seen...and Dan wearing a ridiculous Alabama jacket...and Anny acting like she's five...and Austin/Evan/Paul drinking waaaaaay too much whisky...and banjo-man PHIL being the greatest person ever. He's some kind of god. I heart them with all my love.

Spring Fling is tomorrow. Unlike last year, there won't be bulldogs running all over Old Campus. In fact, if the forecast is correct, nothing will be happening on Old Campus. Ben Folds and Ludacris (strange bedfellows if ever there were) will be playing in the hockey rink instead. Bummer.

I've been drinking on Monday night for the second time this month. I'm not quite sure what this means.

I rocked my oral exam today. My Spanish teacher loves me. I deserved that beer and cheese.

Happy Earth Day!
Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.
- Rachel Carson

The biggest problem in the world could have been solved when it was small.
- Lao-tzu

De Nuevo, La Primavera
?Es demasiado buscar el amor?
En la estacion pintada, todo parece posible.
La esperanza, el sentimiento, el fuego viviendo...
ellos regresan.

El hielo se va, y se va,
hasta que el corazon esta desnudo,
rojo y humano.
El arbol tiene una flor;
la alma tiene una luz.

Si no viene nada, no importa.
Lo magico es la abertura.

To quote the irrefutable Dr. Spalding:
Lab is awful. Just awful. It's like being bitten to death by ducks.

There's a huge inflatable dog on the lawn and other stories
Mood:  chillin'
1. Nothing is certain except death, taxes, and that it will be sunny on Bulldog Days. The prefrosh are everywhere. You can tell who they are because they call all the acronymed buildings by their full names. I had no idea where Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall was until I realized it was SSS. They also tend not to look where they're walking because they are gawking at the architecture, and they are impressed by our magnetic proxy key cards. One of them asked if the 25-foot tall bulldog balloon on Old Campus was always there. Um, remind me again how you got in here??

2. I overheard some strange things today. Someone asked their companion what a pterodactyl was. This made me very sad. I also thought I heard someone say, "This pasta tastes like strings of skin." Ew.

3. Easter has made me realize that black jelly beans are kind of a cult candy. Most people don't really like them, but then there are those (like myself) who count them among their absolute favorite things. If anyone who is reading this has a lot of leftover black jellybeans they don't want, let me know.

4. I have a cold again. I just don't understand life. Maybe it's too much sugar.

5. My blog is totally ashamed of the fact that it's really a LiveJournal with an ego problem. Note to "blog": Just because you include a link about the real world every once in a while does not make you a blog. Blogs are for news analysis and commentary, not showing off your fingernails. Referencing other blogs does not make you a blog, either. Nice try.

6. Further proof that Japanese television is superior to American television can be found here.

HAPPY EASTER!

Sobering precedents
Mood:  spacey
This kind of story is exactly what I like to wake up to on Saturday morning. Where do they get this stuff? Oh yeah, r.e.a.l.i.t.y.

Michael Kinsley discusses the brief history of the U.S. and Iran.

When the United States should use its military strength to achieve worthy goals abroad is an important question. But based on this record, it seems a bit theoretical. It's like asking whether Donald Trump should use his superpowers to cure AIDS. Or what George W. Bush should say when he wins the Nobel Prize in physics. A more pressing question is: Can't anyone here play this game?

Incidentally, I happen to think that Bush should win a prize for his theory of relativity, which states that if you spin the truth fast enough it comes out backwards.

Annoyance Addendum
I was walking up the stairs in LC when I saw a little plastic easter egg. Thinking it probably contained candy, I picked it up and opened it. Inside was a little scroll of paper. This is what it said:

ROMANS 6:4-6
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in oder that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too many live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

::blink::

::blink::

Mood:  irritated
I thought I would be productive this afternoon and go up to the lab to work. Even though that meant a 15-minute walk in the rain carrying my computer, I was feeling pretty chipper and could handle it. However, I got up to lab and realized my ID wouldn't let me into the building. Surprised, since it had always worked in the past, I tried three or four more times, to no avail. I considered the possibility that this had to do with the fact that my card was damaged (it's been bent for a year and has been getting progressively more defective; it doesn't work in several dining halls now), so I decided to go to the ID card center to get a new one. I kind of took a detour (read: got lost), and was determined not to get angry that I was carrying my computer on my now sweaty back in the rain, and I had just blow-dried my hair.

I decided I would try to see it as a meditative walk. I began to forget my annoyance when I saw several young cherry trees blooming, illuminating the rain-streaked street. I was almost happy.







I arrived at the ID center a little wet, but content and ready to get my new ID, which I had needed to do anyway. I stood there for a minute staring at the automatic door, waiting for it to open, but it didn't. Now I was annoyed. An automatic door not opening for you is like the ultimate insult. I checked the hours on the door...that was not the problem. Then I remembered: it's Good Friday! Gaaahhhhh. As if it wasn't already a depressing and useless holiday, it just made me waste 30 minutes of my life. And it messed up my hair.

Now the question bothering me is whether I couldn't get into lab because it too was closed, or because my ID has a problem. I'll be wondering all weekend I suppose.

::sigh::