happiness is a warm gun
03.29.04 @ 10:09 a.m.
I thought about writing last night but eventually changed my mind. But then, I had a hard time settling down to focus on anything last night and mostly just watched a lot of TV and compulsively checked the same websites over and over. Not that they changed any, which just made me more restless.
While I do enjoy an empty house to a certain degree, there are times when it's uncomfortable. Mostly at night. Being all alone in the house (as Ena isn't back yet--I expect her tonight) is odd and a tiny bit scary. I don't really care for silence, which is one of the reasons I almost always have music of some sort playing.
Mom and I headed out kind of late, stopping by a fabric store to see if I could find a hook to replace the broken one on my bag. No luck. We also stopped at the library so I could pay my fine (which actually wasn't that important since Mom bought me a copy of Johnny Cash's autobiography rather than risk me running up huge fees by absconding to Eugene with the Cedar Mill Library's copy) and Arco to buy gas and snacks. It's nice spending time with Mom, and we had a fairly pleasant drive apart from insane traffic near Woodburn.
In Eugene, Mom took me grocery shopping and the presence of a car meant buying more than I need or would normally be inclined to buy, partly because Mom was paying and partly because I wasn't going to have to carry it all back to the house. We also had a fast food dinner and I gave her a bunch of math puzzle books that came in a big stack of logic problem books I ordered (which all kind of suck because none of them are the "England's Best" ones, which are not so maddening to solve) and a bunch of packets of instant mashed potatoes to donate to a food drive. My dad keeps buying them for me even though I'm not eating them. But I guess he has no way to know that, does he?
I prepped The Book to pass off to Moni today, which meant pasting a picture of a brain wearing a crown on the back cover (clipped from Communication Arts) and a '60s National Geographic picture of a Hong Kong woman in full regalia, which I labelled as "Ena, Opium Den Proprietress." Because she is, in the story. Once she said that she "Didn't get that Trainspotting was so much about drugs" when she first watched it, and when I told that to Martha, she declared Ena a drug addict, since drugs were so obviously part of her life that she didn't even notice. (Eek, run on sentence.)
I had my first class of the term at 9, and god help me there. It actually sounds fascinating, but I don't know how well I'm going to deal with having to be at school an hour earlier than I'm used to with a three hour interval until my next class. The strong temptation will be to stay in bed until the last minute most mornings and come home after class to shower. That's not the polite thing to do. It'll take will power, but I'm hoping to force myself to stay at school for the three hours and make it my study time.
I was going to chicken out on this class, Chaucer, as it sounds kind of hard. So I registered for another class that was also, conveniently, later in the morning. But after going to class I decided to stick with it and came to the computer lab to look up books and drop the emergency backup English class. This class is starting to sound pretty interesting. The whole first half of the term is taken up with linguistic studies of Middle English, then we'll start reading some of the Canterbury Tales. We're also going to have to learn to pronounce Middle English, because we have an oral exam where we'll have to read a passage out loud. I don't know why that sounds totally cool to me, but it does. Sometimes I can see what draws some people to linguistics. I took a course, once, but did poorly because it was as boring as all hell and I had a hard time understanding what my African GTF was actually saying. We spent a lot of time memorizing morphemes. (Which is actually somewhat helpful, but none the less...) I actually still have my linguistics book, come to think of it. Anyway, we listened to recitations of Chaucer and of "Sir Gowan and the Green Knight" by, uh, a different author by the professor and the dialect differences are interesting. For now, I'll say "Should be fun," and then proceed to bitch about how hard it is for the next ten weeks. Or I'll go all academic and write Middle English dialect here. I don't think that this prof has the potential to fascinate me, though, unlike Mary Jaeger, the Classics prof, or Ben Saunders, my Shakespeare prof from (eegad) a year and a half ago.
And OH MY LORD. One of my optional texts for Folklore of Subcultures (<--Does it not sound COMPLETELY AWESOME?) is about Punk and Neo-Tribal body art. Somewhere in my mind, part of me is bouncing up and down chanting "I'm going to study punk, I'm going to study punk!" in a blissfully happy voice. I'm actually quite excited to go book shopping, even with the prospect of a $70-$100 Psych book this term. Well, it's not too much of a hardship since I didn't bother paying $80 for an economics book last term (and I got a B in the class without it), so there's that money saved.
I should make sure I buy this term's Italian packet before 1, when I have class again, but otherwise I think I'll hold off on the book buying until at least after class so I don't have to haul books hither and yon all over campus. (I accidentally typed "camus" and imagined dragging a UO bookstore bag full of books over the face of a prostrate Camus (author of The Stranger, which I hated SO MUCH.)
[Title: Beatles, White Album]
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
