The Wide-Eyed Wanderer

I spent this weekend at the forest-encircled home of one of my most wonderful friends. Every year she has this BIG old shindig, with loads of people, and we all camp on her family's land for one night, sit around a fire, play guitars on the porch, meet new cool people, and otherwise enjoy ourselves. Good, clean fun. The friendy groups can be summarized into three main categories: Pagans, From Her College People, and From Her Old Town People. And it's cool, because you meet all sorts of people with whom you'd never generally associate.
So imagine my surprise when, along with one of the Pagans, in walks in Matthew Blue-eyes from my high school! I know there aren't many of my high school co-alums here, and so this news is less shocking, but Matt left us in my junior year, pretty much never to be seen again, and seeing him was really, REALLY out of left field.
You know that feeling when you look at somebody and they look SO familiar, but you're too nervous to say anything? If it had been anywhere but Rites or this party, I wouldn't have said anything. I would've stared at him out of the corner of my eye, and gone home thinking about the guy who looked unnervingly like Matt.
But I didn't, and when he looked at me and I looked at him, both of our eyes were like cross-sections of hard-boiled ostrich egg, only eyes. So we hugged, reminisced a bit, shared the 'where's your life at' conversation, and went back to our vegetarian pasta bake. Surreal.
And now I have a neurologist appointment. Somehow they shoehorned me in during the month that he supposedly takes off for vacation. Wish me happy brains!

So I finally got a hold of my neurologist's head nurse. I got some answers: the reason I never got called with my brain test results is that they don't usually call anyone with test results. And my results? Exactly the same as they were three years ago.
The same, complete with unusual activity in the twitchy part of my brain, which means more medication for the forseeable future. So I finally got a hold of someone, and it turns out that it really didn't help. Still fucked up. Bring on the pills.
I just... I hoped so hard, I kind of thought that it was already reality. Turns out hoping really doesn't fix everything.

Got the last of my grades back, and I haven't failed anything! I didn't really think I was going to, but I wasn't about to get too cocky and jinx myself. But in the class I was most worried about, I got an A-. Weird! And next year, I'm going to be on the other side of the desk. I'm trying to wrap my head around this, and it's not working, so for now I'm living in the short-term. Get ready for this weekend (Oh Jesus), then get ready for next week (which cannot come fast enough- just send me to the pagans, please!). I keep thinking about the details of Rites; mostly I'm pondering my costume for one event. They encourage animal spirits, and a Primordial Cave of Dreams. This sounds a bit silly. But the animal spirit thing has me thinking, and I've been thinking ever since finals ended. What to wear? (Oh, now I sound like a ditz. But it's spiritual, really!)
Then the summer, possibly a bit of globetrotting before I settle down in my new strange land. I cannot wait to be back in China... It's the job bit that has me spooked.

Woohooooo!
*flaildance*

It is officially Too Cold.
My snot freezes inside my nose when I go outside. My scarf gets ice on it from the water in my breath where it's wrapped around my mouth and nose. There was ice on the INside of my window this morning. Even the snow's texture changes when it's like this.
The upside is that I feel completely legitimate when I curse the weather. Putting on all the necessary layers is sort of a group ritual before and after every class. I am no longer the only person who looks like a marshmallow. And in any case, I'd rather it be -17 than 17, I think. Rough on the heating bills, though. But this weekend, I'm going home.
To play Star Trek.
Yes, I am a nerd. (But a happy one!)

I'm knitting a vulva!
It's all fuzzy and cuddly- woohoo!

First Vicky (who's actually going back today), and next Dad and Mo, who are arriving tomorrow. So I'm entering the frantic "must clean, wash dishes, sweep floor and what IS that under your desk" state of being. I'm going to spend the entire day scrubbing, laundering, and putting stuff away in mysterious places that I'll never remember again.
I joined a choir, and we're going to sound lovely. The girl standing next to me had an incredible voice, and she knew how to sightread and everything... and I don't. I'm such a n00b in chorusy stuff. But the chorus teacher said that was okay, and I'm really excited about what we're doing, so what could be better than blind enthusiasm and no experience?
Well, aside from the obvious.
I've got something I love just about every day of the week. Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays are all gay stuff, Thursdays are clay (hooray!), and Fridays have Chinese tea parties. This semester is chock-full of extracurriculars, and I've already got so much stuff going on... mostly because Vicky's moving to Burlington. To a house only a few blocks away, and she's got a job and it's all happened in just the last 48 hours and I'm still a it bowled over by so much, so fast.
Whew.
And the first thing I said when I heard that Heath Ledger died was, "But he's too beautiful to die!"
Does that make me a bad person?

So I haven't updated in a month... this might be a record!
I went to Ecuador, and it was just plain neat-o but I really have no idea what to say about it. It kind of sucked, but there were good parts in there too. But if you want my honest advice, I'm going to say that one should really just avoid Ecuador unless you really like being damp and sort of smelly and/or out of breath from elevation and tediously high and cold mountains. And being filthy.
The scenery's incredible though. Insanely large mountains, drippy green rainforests, hot springs, little windy roads and waterfalls all over the place. Then once you pass the tree line everything turns beige and gray and tannish-green, and at least where I was there were large numbers of cows. I got to milk a cow one day, but I was rather bad at it. My host 'mother' could milk a cow like no other, though chances are she's been milking since she was nine, like her children. And then later a calf started sucking on my fingers, as calves are wont to do, until I had cow-slobber (a truly viscous substance) all over my hand. Very cute and very slimy to wash off in the river. Actually, I'm not sure if the river was any cleaner than the cow slobber, just less goopy.
We had to share rooms for most of the trip, which really wasn't a problem. For all but the last two nights I managed to pair up with the studious (read: sober) members of the group, and so got plenty of uninterrupted sleep. Our professor got us up at 6am each morning, and after a long day of whatever the heck he thought would be educational we were all fast asleep by 11, if not by 8.
Back at school, and really nothing's happened. Went to class, came back, did big piles of research because my Ecuador class isn't done until we hand in our 8-10 pg research paper. Oy.
But Vicky's coming Northwards, so that's a good thing. Happy MLK day everybody!

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck...
I finished my finals.
I'm exhausted. I feel dead, or like a squeezed-out rolled-up tube of toothpaste.
Take shit, apply to fan.
Rinse and repeat, until finals are over.
This week has sucked.

I am such a geek. But I'm a happy geek!
I had my 800字 Chinese final today- memorize an essay you wrote earlier in the year, and then write it down from your smart little brain. That's your final. Erm, that is, that's my final. I think I did well! I remembered most of it, and even noticed several places where I was writing the corrections that she'd made on my initial copy, and only had to make up about a seventh of it. Yay!
So then I took my notes next door to the GLBTQA building, to type up my Religion of China essays- two of them. One I'd already mostly written, the other not really written but extensively note-taken. And now I'm done! Hooray!
So I went out of there dancing and skipping, literally, because I only had two more essays and one exam, and none of them are today. I handed it in to my professor's Big Yellow Envelope, picked up my last essay, and called my dad to share the joy.
That's when I realized how high I was... on sheer nerves. I swear, I could feel myself relaxing as I talked to him, and I could hardly talk from the sheer "Whew!" of it all.
So yes. Two essays down, two exams. Two more essays, one more exam. One per day. I can do this.