BEDUS Day 23: Reflections from a Computer

Being away these past couple days has made me realize that I could do with a vacation. Not that going to SF was a vacation by any means, but it was 3 days without a computer, where the little time I actually had to go on the internet was spent checking, and not being able to comfortably reply to, emails on the tiny screen of my phone. Which was no fun. So I didn't do it very often. And I felt very liberated.

I came out of SF very exhausted. It's no fun (well, a little exciting, but you can't really call it "fun") having to wake up before some of your colleagues go to sleep to make flights, having to be 110% alert in a time zone that is not your own, and having to ask questions on topics you've only peripherally encountered and answer questions you haven't ever really thought about. It was a great experience, though, and now that I've recuperated a little, I can say that I've learned a lot from the multiple-interview day and have gotten to know some great people.

In addition, the accommodations were fantastic. We stayed at the Sir Francis Drake hotel, complete with a man dressed as Drake himself tagging our luggage to be brought up to our rooms and a giant red statue of the honorary knight/pirate in the lobby flanked by various colored liqueurs. The style seemed pretty Elizabethan with a modern twist and I rather enjoyed the details.

For the most part, I've come out of my trip eager to learn more science and excited for graduate school wherever I go; I just wish I would have gotten more time to explore the city. I think San Francisco is a really cool city and I've never spent enough time there to really be satisfied. I'm still finding out new things about Los Angeles, even though I've lived there for most of my life, and I know there will always be things to explore, but I feel like most every time I go to SF, I'm only there for a few days, most of which is tied up in whatever activity brought me there in the first place. SF is a very culturally rich city and since I'm a big art fan, I'd just like to walk around more (on second thought, maybe just the flat parts...)

Point being: I need a vacation.

BEDUS Day 22: A blog in haikus

Interviews over.
They asked some tricky questions.
Body exhausted.

All day, brain at max.
Want to explore SF more.
But now brain at zero.

At 7:15
Flight back to school taking off
Get up in six hours.

Phone still only source
Of Internet. More thoughts when
I can think again.

In general, great
First experience. Reflections
Tomorrow. Good night.

BEDUS Day 21: How Strawberries Make You Fat

Spoiler Alert: It's the pesticides.

I'm in San Francisco and whenever I'm here, I remember why, despite the overcast skies and stop and go traffic, I really do find this city fascinating. For one, the people are incredibly laid back for being caught in such traffic all the time and more than that, the buildings are so unique. Only here have I ever seen so many different colored houses all in a row, in a way that doesn't scream out of place. In addition, there's an old-worldly feel about the city, especially in the hotel I'm staying at, the Sir Francis Drake hotel.

Tomorrow's a long day and, as I don't have Internet here in the hotel, and my thumbs are aching from typing on my phone, I'll cut this entry short. More reflections later. Time to study.

BEDUS Day 20: Jet Planes

In 9 hours, I will be on a plane to San Francisco. I've felt weird the entire semester, as if I have already left school because this is not a thing I do. By thing, I mean travel outside of campus, struggle with packing light enough for a 3-day trip, clean my room...

But this is the first of 9 trips I'm making this semester around the country and I'm both excited and nervous. I don't quite know what to expect, and it's kind of important that I keep my wits about me because whatever decision I make is going to impact the next 4-5 years/the rest of my life. Oh...the pressure.

So at 3:30 AM, Kelsey's going to bring me to the airport.

The nerves are hitting about now.

Time to LOOK UP PAPERS.

ADLKFJA;OITPAP

BEDUS Day 19: Vaudeville and Dinosaurs

Forgive the language here, but I am super tired. It's been a long week, I'm kinda stressing out about interviews and classes and the future in general, and I'm glad that for once (probably the only time ever) I was able to come out of the Cabaret feeling like there was hope and humor in humanity.

Usually, Cabaret plays are done by drama students who like to focus on the macabre or the darker side of human nature, the lost, the lonely, and the depraved. I've seen plays where everyone dies, where many are killed, where the dead come back to life, and where the found become lost and the lost remain lost. Today, however, we explored the psyche of a man who expressed himself in his childhood room through the quintessential American entertainment of vaudeville. He sang Kermit's song about rainbows through a typewriter puppet, lip synced to a song where the singers couldn't dance, had and ended an affair with an inflatable dolphin, made fire with a fan and tissue paper shavings, and led us on a journey through the stars and planets, to Dinosaur Farm planet, among others. It was laugh-out-loud funny while still suggesting something deeper about the way that this balding man was still reliving his childhood, performance by performance. The stage was set up in a way I had never seen before, in a very traditional actor on one side, audience on the other setup (usually, it's done in a round, I think, but then, the actors have never had to move so far horizontally before).

All in all, it's been a rough week, with bursts of wonderful. Cabaret was one today. Having dinner and drinks with my best friends tonight was another. I miss having them around all the time and living in different suites just isn't the same.

Tomorrow, cleaning, reading, and packing for San Francisco. EXCITED.

BEDUS Day 18: Now That I'm On a Syllabus...

Freshman year, I took an English class called "Reading and Writing the Modern Essay." I wasn't particularly interested in taking any English classes before I got to college because I had been slightly brainwashed by the overwhelming opposition to language classes in Science Bowl. This was actually contradictory to many of the things that I had believed about myself prior to joining the group, including the fact that I was going to become either a journalist or a writer. Anyway, because of this serious harping on how the humanities were destroying the integrity of the world, I elected to shop classes outside the English department. And then people started emailing me (the only time, I might add, which led to much grief later) about preregistering for English classes and, after reading many, many, overwhelmingly positive reviews, I decided to go for it (though I was slightly wary about the types of people who might be giving positive reviews to these sorts of classes).

I didn't get my first choice, or should I say, I didn't get what I thought at the time should be my first choice. I say this because after our first class, I was sold on my professor's quirky wit and tendency to treat rules as guidelines. Andrew's rules were more like Olympic gymnasts, or Gumby: supremely bendy. And though the name "Reading and Writing the Modern Essay" sounds like the most pedantic class you'll ever take, it has remained, four years later, the class that has changed my elective learning trajectory. I was also sold when, as a treat for our first workshop day, he brought lunch. For everyone. Yeah. Pretty much awesome.

So this morning, when I wake up to the dreariest of skies with the foul taste of dry in my mouth, my email bings and oh hey, I'm on Andrew's syllabus for his section this semester. WHAT?!?

Readings (all in the course packet, except as noted): 

 Atwood, excerpt from “Writing the Male Character”

 Scott Russell Sanders, “Father Within”

Jonathan Ames, “Ron Gospodarski”

 Auster, “Portrait of an Invisible Man”  (pp. 3-60 of Collected Prose)

Lukeman, A Dash of Style, ch. 4: “The Colon (The Magician)”

 Bök, Eunoia, cont.

Orwell, “Why I Write” (in Facing Unpleasant Facts)

Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”

Edgar Allan Poe, excerpt from “The Philosophy of Composition”

Angela She (JE ’12; Engl 120 F08), “Portrait of a Man in a Tan Coat” <-- LOOK IT'S ME!!!

Hody Nemes (SY ’13; Engl 120 F10), “A Cartoon of a Man”

 E-Lynn Yap (TD ’14; Engl 120 S11), “First Impressions”

HeyO. That's surreal. I wonder if professors who assign themselves as reading get the same surreal feeling that I'm getting right now. The only thing left to do is to go find this course packet and like...nuzzle it or something.

BEDUS Day 17: Maps

The week is only half over, but it feels like it's been two weeks, or three! In reality, I haven't done too much this week, right? Let's see: had a total of 4 class sessions and only 1 dance rehearsal. Granted, I've read a good lot of pages this week and, oh yeah, 7 hours in lab so far. It feels like it's been a full week. My body is tired and I am still waiting for stuff to rotovap down. Ohhhhh....ethyl acetate. Why there is so much of you??

In addition, Kelsey is sick, so I have been charged to stay away until he gets better. GET BETTER!

~~

I'm back in my room now just chilling out. And I just remembered that it's Wednesday and that means Treasures of Yale day. We went to see the Sterling Map Collection (which has some insane number of maps and globes and stuff, over 14,000 of which are digitized) and we had some great analysis of a Oaxacan deerhide map and some beautiful European sea charts. I have super low quality pictures on my phone which does not pick up color like it should, but seeing the maps and hearing Dean Miller (who's got such a passion for them) speak was wonderful. It was like analyzing art and it makes me wonder what "twenty-first century art" will be in three hundred years.

BEDUS Day 16: Don't you be touching my sword! Actually, you can touch it; it's ok.

As I expected, I've hit a point in BEDUS where I am so tired that I can barely open my eyes yet I still have so many emails to send that I feel like my fingers are about to fall off. It's like those journal entries that I used to write when I knew I had to write in my journal, but really just wanted to go read a book (oh lo the days before the internet). However, I do want to blog, so here it is:

My day consisted of a lota lab, a little chem club dinner, some Phoenix dancing, MY SWORD #1 ARRIVING, and oh yeah, did I mention the sword? I'm thinking about doing a sword dance later this semester, so I got one. Yeah. That should be fun to choreograph. The one that came is the retractable Tai Chi sword that I'll probably use to choreograph during spring break or something so airport security doesn't confiscate it. Maybe I'll do a sword/ribbon duo. Ideas, ideas...

Also, I tried to open an ampule today in lab and failed. I was just too scared to get triflic anhydride on me, and wouldn't you be? It's got ten tons of packaging around it because of its danger factor and even though I knew I just had to hold it and go for it, I got Jenn to do it for me anyways. Note to self: stop being such a scaredy-cat. Go try with some DMSO or just whack it off with a knife. That will go over well. But seriously: gotta learn how to open an ampule before hitting grad school. Side project.

And now more seriously, gotta go nap. All this excitement of receiving mail over the past couple of days have got me amped up and tomorrow is going to be another tough lab day. Well, not tough. Just gotta work fast and clean faster. Mmmm...goodnight!

BEDUS Day 15: Year of the Dragon

Dear Blog,

Today marks the first day of the new lunar year, the year of the dragon. The year of the dragon is seen as the luckiest in Chinese tradition and so far, I can say that the year has been going pretty well. Though the weather outside has been, depending on who you talk to, either Gothically romantic or dismally dreary (I prefer to think of it as the former), I have been rather warm in my new long sleeved t-shirts and fuzzy hats, and have been lucky to be in the company of wonderful people. In addition, I am lucky to have understanding advisers and professors, and the most supportive family a girl could ask for. I do not want for food or shelter, and instead have a surplus of both. I am intellectually, socially, and creatively stimulated on a daily basis, and never find myself bored.

I can honestly say that this is the start of a great year.

Today's blog is short because I'm in the middle of reading about Mexican maps and listening to Ministry of Magic.

Until tomorrow,
Angela 

BEDUS Day 14: Chinese New Year's Eve Dinner!

As a testament to how quickly the time passes, it's been two weeks since I've begun my endeavor to blog every day until spring break. Today is the eve of Chinese New Year and to celebrate, Kelsey and I got takeout to try to get in all the food groups that are required to have a great year.

We've got a seafood curry noodle soup with fish and tofu (from the dining hall), for surplus in the coming year (we even left over a little fish cake!). We've got pork and duck in the buns and chicken in the dumplings. And we've got little round ma tuan's. Mmmm...yumyumyum.

Let it be known that Kelsey and I don't eat out often, but the beginning of the year is often full of celebration times. The food turned out to be much tastier than expected, as well.

Happy Chinese New Year and let's get ready for school tomorrow.

BEDUS Day 13: SNOW!

I am currently sitting on the couch wrapped in my periodic table blanket, drinking hot chocolate, and wearing Kelsey's marching band SAX hat because it makes me feel cozy. Cause it snowed all morning and the outside looks like it's coated in fluffy marshmallow whipped cream.

The side of the head belongs to him.

I haven't gotten to reading The Fault in Our Stars yet because I've been reading a bunch of other things that I need to read (like folktales and information about maps!), but I'm super excited to read it. Likely, it will be  spring break before I get a chance to read anything that doesn't have to with chemistry or children (though it can be argued that The Fault in Our Stars is young adult lit, but we actually have a surprising large amount of reading pagewise for the Literature for Young People class I'm taking...) so I will definitely be reviewing it sometime or another. 

I realize that the end of last night's blog was a bit scattered because by the time I finished it, it was well past 1:30 AM, I had just had my brain melted by Black Hawk Down, and the conversation in the common room had taken a very political turn which just made me want to go to sleep. I am much more rested today, having spent most of my time reading folktales and analysis of tricksters. I'm now going to spend some time reading about maps. Yay.

It's been a while since I've written a daily theme, I know (which is why I'm glad I'm not taking the class) but I haven't been quite inspired to do the creative writings these days even though I love blogging every day. I've been pretty busy figuring out my class schedule, figuring out my traveling schedule, and, in general, enjoying life. My first trip will be to San Francisco next weekend, which I'm super excited about, and I find myself surprised that I'm at this point in my semester. January 30 seemed so far away during winter break, but it's 2 weeks into Spring semester already and I feel like almost no time has passed at all. It's finally feeling like winter with all the snow that's fallen today and it always takes me 5 extra minutes to get ready in the morning with all the layers I have to put on, but I feel more than ever that I'm grasping at the last bits of college life. I'm not ready to let go. It seems like just yesterday that I was high strung and neurotic about Science Bowl and about classes and couldn't let myself relax even though I had already gotten into college, but now, I'm content just sitting on the couch with my boyfriend, blogging when I could/should (you decide!) be reading, and getting distracted by Youtube videos.

Ok signing off now. Got lots of emails to send that should have been sent a while ago. Wah!

BEDUS Day 12: Speaking Up and Reunion Dinners

I was a pretty shy kid. This is not really weird to people who have known me a really, really long time, but eventually, I learned that you just have to go for things if you want people to take you seriously. However, I do tend to hold back until I feel confident enough to assert myself (this may take weeks or months depending on the situation). Usually, I start to feel confident when I am no longer the newbie on the squad (Science Bowl, past jobs, etc.), but in class, I won't ever not be the newbie, since we're all in the same class. The point of this whole thing is that I finally got the courage to say something in my grad class today (which has so far intimidated the heck out of me because...grad students!). And it was awesome.

I learned that first year grad students are only a year older than me, despite our differences in looks (some of them seem quite a bit older and some of them probably are quite a bit older) and know only a bit more than I do. They've taken Synthetic Methods already, and I haven't, but I've got a bit of intuition worth sharing, I think. The only thing I'm not well-versed in is the terminology. What's the opposite of cycloaddition? Uhhh, is it backwards cycloaddition? Or cyclosubtraction? (It's actually retrocycloaddition, or reverse cycloaddition, which is dubious to me because the term "addition" is in the word...) So I learned some of that today and had a grand old time.

~~

I also had a reunion dinner with people in my freshman year Chinese class. Adam, Alex, Frank, Jack, Juliana, Ray, and Liang LaoShi. The dinner conversation oscillated between slightly awkward and very informative and was great because many of us hadn't kept in touch for a while. It was also quite scary to realize that it had been four years since we had been in class together, had laughed together, had made movies together. We look the same, and we talk the same, but we've grown up.

~~

And then my suite watched Black Hawk Down. War movies. GAH.

~~
Oh yeah. THIS

BEDUS Day 11: Meeting Celebrities

CELEBRITY #1:

Today, I got up at 7:30 AM to go have breakfast with Melanie Sanford. Melanie Sanford is basically a chemistry rock star. She graduated from Yale in 1996, got her PhD at Caltech, and now works at the University of Michigan working, among other things, to functionalize C-H bonds. She's the kind of person professors compare you to when writing your letters of recommendation. "On a scale from 1 to Melanie Sanford..." Oh yeah, and did I mention she won a McArthur Genius Award in 2011? That makes her pretty much, what's the word, a GENIUS.

I'm definitely not a morning person, but the brisk 16 degree gusts definitely helped wake me up as I walked over to breakfast. (Earmuffs, please!) However, even as my fingers were not quite warmed up from my jaunt over, my brain woke up straight away when Melanie started talking. She was so approachable and full of energy and enthusiasm and told story upon story of her undergrad life, marveling at how things don't change as much as people say they do. So many of her experiences mirrored ours and we gossiped about professors and courses and the fact that she was on the gymnastics team while here. She was definitely more inspiring than I was prepared for at 8 AM, and I was buzzed from meeting her even two hours later (after which I promptly took a much needed nap).

~~

CELEBRITY #2:

JE had a Master's Tea (where our Master invites a cool person to come and drink tea, or in my case, cider, with us and chat about life) featuring Andy Sandberg, JE '06, a producer in New York best known for his work on the revival of Broadway classic, Hair. I had gone to see Hair with Chris last winter (January 2011) and was pretty blown away by the colors and all the hair and all the...well... only slightly veiled nakedness. I fell in love with Claude a little bit and my favorite song was by far "Manchester, England" (not an obvious choice, I know, but I loved it). Also, going up on stage and dancing with the cast was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. So of course, I had to go to the Andy Sandberg Master's Tea.

Now I'll be honest: I think the work Andy's done is amazing and it takes a lot of cojones to go into the theater business right out of college (and awesomeness to get your own wikipedia page), but the Master's Tea fell flat a little bit for me because the girl in front of me had kind of a big head and half of her head was blocking half of Andy's head so my eyes adjusted and everything got weirdly spaced. It's like when you hold a toilet paper roll next to your open hand and look through the toilet paper roll with one eye while keeping the other eye open and it looks like your hand has a hole in it. Well, it looked like that girl's head had a hole in it so I could see Andy, but I couldn't concentrate terribly well. Also, his theater stories had an inside joke quality to them that I wasn't terribly fond of. I think it might have gone better had Melanie not been so awesome this morning.

~~

CELEBRITYS #3-?

I know I should always take advantage of opportunities as they come and I'm trying harder to, I really am! So today, when the call went out for the Fellow's Dinner, I said, oh why not? A bunch of graduate students and some of my classmates and I? Sounds like fun. There will be a better dinner than in the dining hall, so I signed up. And...they weren't graduate fellows. They were Fellow fellows, like, people who had been fellows for about 40 years fellows. And they were very animated, wonderful people with whom I had great conversations and shared pretty good wine. I met a chemist and his wife, a musician and her husband, a professor of Islamic culture, and other wonderful human beings. Definitely going to be looking into more Fellows Dinners in the future.

~~
I think the theme of this blog post is to go out and do things. Meet people, even if it's inconvenient or cuts into your you-time. More often than not, it'll be so worth it.

BEDUS Day 10: Words I'd Like to Use More Often

I'm taking this class called Treasures of Yale where we basically go around to different archives, museums, and libraries and look at the cool things that we've collected over the years. Last week, we looked at illuminated Arthurian manuscripts which are so much more impressive in person and absolutely gorgeous, and this week, we looked at a bunch of original printings of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I don't know much about Walt Whitman (even less before I took this class), and I had never really been drawn to his "mentor" Ralph Waldo Emerson, but I found it really cool that he spent his entire life revising the already published Leaves of Grass so that there were many different versions. Even the 1855 first edition had different printings from when type broke and he had to replace it or where he stopped in the middle of the printing to fix things.

We got to see 5 of the 1855 edition, all with different covers (one in paperback!), as well as many later editions, and a lot of the Whitman fans were hardcore physically affected by being in their proximity (I'll probably be like then we go to the Peabody Natural History Museum). We also read a lot of opinion pieces on the business of compiling archives and databases and how browsing databases could never replace the thrill of going through archives of material. Although I did find the discussion interesting, one of the things I took away from reading these pieces was a list of words I would like to incorporate more often into my writing. They're not particularly fancy words, and none of them are especially arcane, but they're just words that I feel like would beef up my paragraphs. So here's the list of 10:

• cacophony
• funnel (as a verb)
• pigeonhole
• inchoate
• cascading
• peculiarity
• dovetail
• jagged
• grotesque
• marshal

Of course, it's not so much the words as they way they are strung together and I've read a couple of phrases that I thought were well put together. However, I find that the words above have a very sonorous quality to them. Say them and the sound almost reflects what they mean.

Alright, time to sleep. More on life tomorrow!

BEDUS Day 9: I'm on Fire!

Today, I got a Kindle Fire in the mail courtesy of some good family friends of ours. Besides feeling super excited because the Kindle Fire is an awesome piece of tablet, I am a bit overcome with the generosity of those around me. I've never really had money to throw about, which has always caused a bit of disconnect with some of those around me at school. That's not to say I've missed out on anything (in fact, I have been quite lucky to have lived quite a wonderful life full of wonderful toys thus far), but I would have never particularly felt the need to get myself a tablet/iPad because it's one of those things that's a luxury, not a necessity. That being said, my first impressions of this thing is that IT'S REALLY FREAKING AWESOME. OK so it must be noted that it's neither a Kindle nor an iPad. It's 7 inches, black, sleek, with a matte back that I absolutely love since even though I gravitate towards smooth and shiny things, I am very afraid to scratch them in any way.

I'm pretty enamored by the way it reads because that's what I feel like I am going to use the Fire to do: read books, papers, news, etc. The screen is really clear and the font, font size, line spacing, and color are all adjustable so you can adjust to your comfort. It's quite intuitive, though when you read books and want to leave the book, it takes a little practice to be able to push right at the right spot to get the menu screen to come up. It's got great color, which makes reading scientific papers a joy because, what's a figure without color right? And to my surprise, the sound system is really good, and it's quite easy to import your music into Amazon Cloud.

What's not so easy is to get documents into Amazon Cloud. Basically, you have to email them into your Amazon inbox and then it takes a bit for the to actually download onto the Fire. It's not that much trouble, and if I was traveling, it's not like I would have internet to download stuff straight onto the tablet anyways, but it just means I have to be on my game and put all my documents onto the tablet before going off on a trip. I've already been experimenting with the relative ease of reading PDFs and it's a pretty good deal.

Another gripe that people have is the limitations of the Amazon App Store. There are a bunch of ways to get around this by downloading apps that let you download apps, but to be honest, this does not bother me too much. I'm not too interested in gaming on my tablet because touch screens never really do what you want them to do, and I've always found a paper calendar works much better than an electronic calendar. I do appreciate the weather app and the Pandora app, and the Tumblr app (and I really wish that there was a Blogger app), but I do have Blogger on my phone, so I think that will suffice for traveling purposes.

Woah I just realized that you can make notes in your books and look up definitions to things. THAT'S AWESOME.

Finally, there's this thing about customization. Do I wish I could change the gray bookcase background? Yeah, kinda. Is it a make or break? Not really. I do actually like the lock-screen background pictures, but I could see how some people would want to customize those too.

Oh yeah, and the people whining about the on/off switch being on the bottom? What. Ever.

In general, I find the Kindle Fire a great tablet and know that I am super lucky to have one. And I know that I'm going to be happy not lugging my laptop around campus just to read things. :D

BEDUS Day 8: Snow!

Kelsey and I went out to dinner tonight to celebrate some things belated and recent, and ended up going to Thai Taste, our favorite Thai restaurant in the area. We've been there quite a number of times (the first time we ate out together was at Thai Taste, though let it be known, it was not a date), and though we've explored other Thai restaurants around here, it remains the best one we've tried.

Tonight, we had yellow curry (we almost always get curry, but rarely yellow curry, which is interesting because I love yellow curry. I think I don't get yellow curry too often because it has baby corns, which I don't really like...) and drunken noodle (I don't like drunken noodle as much as pad thai, but I also don't like the pad thai at Thai Taste as much as the pad thai at Win's Thai 2 back home, so whenever I get pad thai at Thai Taste, I can't help but be sad that it's not from Win's Thai 2.) and, because we're being fancy today, siam rolls (which Kelsey calls spring rolls because they are). We demolished everything in about 15 minutes because we were hungry hungry hippos.

This blog isn't really an insightful one because pretty much all I did today was tidy up my room and eat and read, but the fact that Kelsey is awesome at chemistry kinda deserves a props and a food entry since I really can't associate Kelsey with anything other than good food. :D

--

OH YEAH. IT'S SNOWING. Feels like winter.

BEDUS Day 7: Lazy Sundays

It's been a pretty lazy Sunday, just curled up in my room, sleeping, watching Once Upon a Time, looking over some organic chemistry things that I probably won't remember tomorrow, and relaxing my muscles into happiness. It's a rather good thing that tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day because I don't think I could do school tomorrow (even though it has only been one week!). This shopping period has been especially hard on me and I need to just collect myself and think for a while.

Daily Theme 3:


Describe a sacred place. It need not be, although it can be, a place designed sacred by custom and purpose, and you may or may not view it as sacred yourself.


The Cracks on the Wall


It's been a long time since I visited, but as I push through the low branches and clamber without my usual grace over the fallen tree stumps, the smell of green rushes over me and tickles the old memories that I have somehow allowed myself to bury in the back of my mind. A few rays of sunlight peek through the clouds; the wet leaves beneath my feet squish and squelch as I finally make it to our wall.

It probably used to be a shed or a church or something but now, it's just a lone stone wall in a clearing, the last one that has stood strong over the years. Back in 2008, the last time Andrew and I visited, we carved our names in the wall in a little corner so that if anyone else found this spot, they would know that we had found it first. But that was three years ago. Times have changed. The rain and wind has worn down our meager efforts and a few vines have grown along the bottom of the wall, their leaves almost obscuring Andy's name.

I run my fingers over the smooth stone and touch my forehead to the cool rock. I remember the first time we stumbled upon the clearing, during one of our hikes off the beaten path. I remember how we had come here whenever we needed to get away from school or jobs or family. I remember our picnics; we would sit, just sit, letting the sounds of the forest flow over us. It was so peaceful, so different than anything in the city. And soon, we would be leaving it all behind.

"Look, Clara. Isn't it beautiful?"

I turned to see Andy with our daughter strapped to his front. She's burbling like she always is when she's being bounced around, and kicks her tiny baby feet in delight.

"See where Mommy is? That's where I kissed her for the first time. And where I told her I loved her. And where I asked her to marry me. And where we decided to move to a bigger place since you're not always going to be so portable. But don't worry, one day, when you're old enough, we'll bring you back here and you can carve your name into the wall next to ours. Though if you bring any boys 'round this way, I'll probably have to beat them up."

I smile and take Clara, kneeling next to the wall where our names are still visible. She giggles and tugs at my hair and I take her hand in mine. We trace the names together. Andy + Meg. And Clara. 

BEDUS Day 6: Picture Day and Typhoon Relief (Daily Theme 2!)

Today, I took my picture for the senior class yearbook and as I was tilting my head in the opposite direction of my body, I realized that this may well be the last yearbook picture I ever take. Sure, I'll have my cap and gown picture after grad school, but I'll never have the "candid" school photo in front of the blue background that I won't be able to use for a passport picture ever again. I know that some people hate picture day, and really any kind of ceremony, but I've never been one of those people. I like to relish the specialness of things because I really am too sentimental for my own good. So I won't lie: the thought of this being my last formal picture in my last semester in college gave me pause. It also made the fact of my senior year in college so much more real and when it was over, it did make me a little sad. So will I be spending absurd amounts of money on these pictures in two weeks time? Probably.

I also danced for a Typhoon Relief Concert and ohmygoodness my body hurts so much. I've never done ribbon cold before, and I definitely should have practiced yesterday because at this moment, I can barely move my arms and neck. Even getting back to my room was a struggle and trying to eat was especially painful. But I'm in a nice comfy spot now, earphones in, avoiding the raging party currently going on in my common room. The ribbon dance I did inspired me to take on another daily theme, so here we go.

Daily Theme 2

Adopt a roving point of view and make a moving picture. You will need to decide how to establish the point of view. What does moving allow you to see that standing still doesn’t? What does it keep you from seeing?


The Stage


Shakespeare once said that the world is a stage, but for five minutes, the stage is my world. I can feel the grains of the wood beneath my feet as I step forwards, backwards, the lights hot against my face, obscuring my vision. The crowd is only a blur in front of me; they tell you to focus on one person during your performance, to make eye contact and to not let go, but when you're flowing across your world, trying to connect with every stranger in the sea of people, it's hard to recognize even your best friend. So I let my ribbons lead me instead.

People don't realize the dancing is as much of an act as acting. The face is incredibly important. A look in the wrong place can lead to a break in character. So when I dance in an ensemble, I see only through my peripheral vision. Flashes of chiffon jackets, moments of silk fans, the twirl of a ponytail that disappears in the next moment as I do my turn. For those few minutes, you must appear connected to the ensemble, but realize that it is impossible to actually see anyone if you are to appear as connected as you want the audience to think. As you fly across the stage, you envision the spot where you are to land, but to look at said spot shatters the illusion of whimsy, and as such, your eyes stare unblinkingly into nothing, past the audience, into the wings, too focused on the moment and unfocused on actually seeing anything.

When I dance a ribbon solo, however, I let my ribbons take over. The audience loves the ribbons as they are graceful, yet powerful, and as I spin across the stage, I cannot help but be enamored by them as well. They billow and swirl and in an instant, all I see is red, flowing, romantic, vibrant red. For five minutes, as I dance across my world, they are my sky, my earth, and my air. They follow me. And I follow them.



Note: I realize, after writing this, that what I wrote may not exactly follow the prompt, but hey, inspiration hits where it will. And...I'm not in the class. So there you go.

BEDUS Day 5: CuddleSandwichFishlings

At the moment, I am sitting in a low-lit common room with Kelsey. We have come back from reWilding, a Cabaret play billed as "Enter a haunting, a hidden woodland community of memories and mysteries, strange humor, complicated beauty, private stories, and live music." but turned out to be a really weird compilation of homoerotic tension and hidden hillbilly narratives. Again, Cabaret, you have tricked me into thinking I was going to see one thing, but totally changed it up on me. I will say, however, that the hanging doors and the set in general was amazing as usual. A picture in low light:

Yes, that is a baritone and a bunch of chairs hanging from the ceiling.

I ended the night in the company of many of my best friends, Alyssa, Steelsen, Maria, Chelsea, Dana, and of course, Kelsey, just sitting around and talking as friends do, and I am hit with a sense of nostalgia; I don't want this night to end.

BEDUS Day 4: Daily Theme - Rain

My friend Chelsea is taking a class called Daily Themes where you have to write a 300 word piece every weekday. This is a class I've wanted to take for a long time, but have never gotten around to doing it, partly because I've been super busy, partly because I always miss the deadline to apply, and partly because I fear that my creative juices will run out when I need them most. (It always happens sometime mid-semester and I feel as if my chops for pulling words out of thin air have utterly abandoned me.) However, as I am doing BEDUS, I have decided to challenge myself with some of the prompts, as Chelsea lives down the hall from me and has agreed to pass them down to me. Obviously, I don't have her midnight deadline and I can choose to omit whatever doesn't necessarily please me, or when I have something especially awesome or rant-y to say, I just won't do one. At the same time, I know I won't have the same feedback she gets, but because I know my world is about to get super sciencey, this is a way for me to keep my creative writing self in check (as I mentioned in yesterday's entry). Plus, I won't have to worry if some of my entries are too out there. :)

Prompt 1: Set a scene in which something will happen – or in which something has happened. But don’t say what has happened or what will: allow that to be implied as part of the scene you evoke. The type of scene, actual or imagined, is up to you. From what point of view is it seen? Who sees it? What are the limits of that point of view?

The sky rumbles, almost imperceptibly, as I lie snug under my warm covers. It can't be morning yet; it's still too dark. Where is the sun? The blue of the sky that has greeted me each day since I've gotten back to school? A whisper of a breeze that would have made the leaves flutter now only captures the bare branches in its gust, clicking them against each other, clacking them against the rooftops. I open my eyes a little more and beside me, I see clear green numbers. 9:08. Too early for me right now, though I know somewhere, not too far outside my room, the world has already begun the day.

A lone, burnt orange leaf falls from a tree outside, the last one, and joins his brothers on the pavement below. They're saturated with mist or dew, which collects into pea-sized droplets and reflects the grayness above. It's still a cool white-gray, not dark enough yet, but full of promise. Perhaps by mid-afternoon, when the sky has darkened more, and the nimbostratus clouds have rolled in from the east, when the thunder starts to crackle and the protective pet-owners begin shuttling their cats and dogs and chickens into their homes, perhaps then I will venture out in my red and green plaid rubber boots, my coat securely buttoned to my chin. But I may just wrap myself in a warm blanket, a cup of something warm in my hands and a book in my lap and wait.

Outside, the sky unexpectedly brightens, not with warm sun, just that bright harsh white of the Gothic stories of old, the romance of worn stone belied by the drafts that no doubt ran through the corridors of cold castles. Then, just as quickly, it's dark again, and outside my window, I hear a squeal of indignation. Just some advice: always travel with your umbrella on a cloudy day, friends. 

BEDUS Day 3: BAT-RING

Many things happened today and it was a day full of ups and downs, and once again, I realized that stuff actually happens in my life and I feel stuff that happens in my life. Eventually, I reconciled everything that's happening around me and I went to the mall and I got this:

It makes me feel a little epic and to be honest, quite awesome. Bat-ring definitely deserves an up and up.

In general, every time I talk to my advisers, I feel better about life. I feel better about liking the things that I like and don't feel as useless doing the things that I do. I don't feel weird about wearing colorful scarves and nail polish and awesome bat rings and funky boots and hats and dancing and living life. I am reminded of my enthusiasm for life that I feel I will need to keep strong in grad school, and I feel part of the only way I can do that is by preserving the me that I express in my cool shirts and boots and nail polish and lipstick and rings (though of course, some of these things will have to be tempered in lab since it's rather hard to wear gloves with rings...) I have not forgotten my duties, of course, but I am suddenly freed by my need to be stone-faced serious about everything important to me. I believe I can live vivaciously and have an awesome career as a serious scientist, so why not.

Bat-ring, you have tempered the troubled waters of my psyche, and for that I thank you.

BEDUS Day 2: Breaking Up is Hard to Do

Today, as I was walking to dinner, I passed through the heavy iron gates of my college and I saw two people standing in silence against the low wall next to the gate. She was looking off the to side and he was looking not quite at her, but past her at an angle. If ever silence could be described as palpable, tension as tangible, this would be the reason why. I felt uncomfortable even walking past them, as it seemed very obvious to me that they were having a conversation so difficult they had nothing really left to say. To prolong this relationship would probably be a bad idea, but to just let go was an impossible task. So they stood in the cold, with their coats on and gloves off, not being able to bring themselves to look at the other. Walking past them, I felt as if I were not only intruding on a private moment, but interrupting a tense and prolonged good-bye. But I had already walked through the gate, so I couldn't just turn around and walk back without making things more awkward. So, I pushed through, left them to their break up and had quite a nice dinner with my friends.

When I was walking back to my room, I took the same route, since I had no reason not to. To my surprise (though, in hindsight, not really, since breaking up is hard to do), they were still there, an hour later. They had barely moved. He looked as morose as he did an hour ago, as if he were at a loss; he could see the problems there but did not know how to proceed; she looked like she was sick of his inability to fix all their problems. It seemed as if the hour in the cold had not resolved much but Kelsey and my footsteps seemed to jar something in the couple. Though she had been leaning against the wall, our presence seemed to impel her into action. Abruptly, she left her partner standing by the wall without so much as a word, her boots clicking on the paved stones. He could only look after her, unwilling, and perhaps, unable to follow, as the last vestiges of their relationship trailed behind her.

BEDUS Day 1: Children's Literature

"Children like a fine word now and then." ~ Beatrice Potter

I shopped two classes today, Complex Molecule Synthesis (previously Natural Products Synthesis) and Literature for Young People. I'm taking both of them and they seem so far apart in subject but they both excite me very much. The Literature for Young People seminar was the fastest I've ever gotten into a seminar and Kelsey and I are taking it together which excites me to no end. We basically had story time today where the professor read us some children's books and we commented on their structures and plots. It was especially interesting to me how many "big words" appeared in Amos and Boris, words like "phosphorescent" and "luminescent" and it reminded me of when I first actually listened to the words in Disney songs, little jokes that are there for the adult viewers. You don't remember not being able to understand the song or the story, but when you look at it again, how could you really at age 6 or 8?

Another theme that really intrigued me was that of loss and death. Many times, the idea of something that went away and never came back popped up in a book otherwise fraught with only a single conflict and had a happy ending. I don't remember by childhood books being that way, though when we read Dr. Seuss, I may be taking a more analytic view toward his literature.

There have been many times during my college career where I have contemplated whether it was right for me to go into chemistry, whether I should have stuck to my eighth grade guns and became a journalism person instead, majoring in English. Were that my university had minors. I think I would have become an English minor for sure.

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In other news, I booked my flight to San Francisco!! SO EXCITED!! (and scared. Wah!)

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Edit: OMG Kelsey got me a Tardis complete with Sonic Screwdriver. ;D

BEDUS Day -1: Cleaning up

So BEDUS ("Blog Every Day Until SpringBreak") officially starts tomorrow, but I had some time and I was doing some cleaning and unpacking while rocking out to ALL CAPS/Ministry of Magic (I'm absolutely obsessed with "World of Warcraft Ruined My Life" and "Lily" at the moment). It has suddenly hit me that this is my last semester of college and excuse my language, but that scares the frack out of me. I know I'm going to be going to school for the next couple of years, but I've always surrounded myself with friends with kooky personalities and diverse interests and soon, I'm going to be around chem nerds ALL THE TIME.

[[Disclaimer: many of my friends are chem nerds, so I guess that wouldn't be too different, and I myself, am a chem nerd, so it's not like I'm prejudiced or anything, but it seems weird to suddenly be confining myself to one area of study for the next four or five years.]]

"But Angela, aren't you already doing that with your major?"

Yes, but in college, I also took classes about music, language, food, the performing arts, philosophy, and sexuality and I'm scared to give that sudden freedom up. I'm never going to have the opportunity to browse through these awesome classes, pray that I get into the cool seminar that I want, and coffee it up with my professor who's helping me write a play. I know graduate school isn't necessarily the "real world" yet, but it feels more real to me than anything I've known so far. It's a scary concept. Exciting, but terrifying.

That's probably why I don't want to leave the safety net of my room today, and why I've been spending so much time cleaning and organizing. I've always been a little bit afraid of change, and the one that's coming is going to be huge. Writing it down here makes it seem all the more real, and as I sit, on my still unmade bed snuggling up to my monkey snuggie, I feel my heart beating faster, the blood pounding in my ears. It's the feeling you get right before you say "I love you" for the first time, before you press the "submit" button for an application, before you jump of a mountain on a hang glider. I just have to push past that tiny, paper-thin barrier of change-phobia, and everything will be fine.

Blog Every Day Until Spring Break?!?

So I've been a little inspired to do this thing where I blog every day for a period of time. People have done VEDA (Vlog Every Day in April), BEDA (Blog Every Day in April), Vlogust (Vlog Every Day in August), Vlogmas (Vlog Every Day Until Christmas), etc. And of course, the Shaytards do vlogs every day, although when Kelsey and I tried it this summer, it proved to be really hard because we didn't have the timing right and were looking to do too many creative things and only had this tiny space in which to do things. Plus, we were working long hours.

But! This is my last semester of college, and, the other day when I read my diary out loud to the world, I realized that I'd like to have that for this semester, since I've been terrible at blogging in the past unless I had a set incentive. This, of course, is just a thing for me, collecting my thoughts in a place where I can write relatively quickly and put down my thoughts in a nice format, and maybe include pictures of my life?!? Wow! Speaking of pictures, here's one of me sitting right now in JFK airport waiting for CT Limo to come pick me up. The time is 5:44 AM. I've already been waiting for 30 minutes and am looking to wait another 1.5 hours.

I look altogether too happy for 5:44 AM, but I have to stay awake until my driver comes or I'll never make it back to school! Planning on taking a nice long nap in the car.

But yeah! Although it would be great if I could blog every day this semester, that seems like an awful long time commit to, so I thought I'd give myself the option of going until spring break (March 2), and seeing where I go from there. I recognize that many of the days, I might not have much to say, because I'll be super busy this semester with grad school stuff and everything, but what better way to document this journey than to blog about it? I have downloaded Blogger onto my iPhone, so I can conceivably blog even when there is no internet! I may even vlog some of my days but it's much harder to vlog then blog because of the editing involved, as I saw this winter.  

So what shall I call this journey of mine? BEDUS? I kinda like it, except it sounds like "bed us". Maybe I can pronounce it Bey-DOOS.

Well, that's all for now. Time to spend some more time waiting for the CT Limo guy to come. Resist the urge to fall asleep!!

Sleepytimes,
Angela