P is for Physically Fit

Q:  What's up with the "P is for"?  I thought it was just "C is for Cookie..."

A:  Well, C is for cookie.

Q:  That's good enough for me.  No, but really.

A:  In high school, we had this thing called the "Grad at Grad."  It was a list of goals essentially that my high school wanted us to have achieved by the time we were a graduate at Graduation.  No big deal, right?  Goals are good.

They introduced the Grad at Grad our freshman year with an acronym:  RIPLOC.

Religious
Intellectually Competent
Physically Fit
Loving
Open to Growth
Committed to Doing Justice

I'm still amazed that I haven't forgotten it yet.  That's the power of a good acronym, I guess.  Anyway, sophomore year we had to meet with a member of the faculty or administration and talk about our progress.  How were we doing with getting to the Grad at Grad.  Somehow I got paired with the Dean of Students.  The big important dean who got to call snow days or force us to come to school in a blizzard.  I'm pretty sure I bluffed my way through most of that interview, but I was honest about "physically fit."  I said something along the lines of "Well, I used to walk to the bus stop, but then it started getting cold...and I walk to all my classes..."  And left it at that.  I never took a gym class in high school because I took fine arts all four years.  I'm not 100% certain why those are equivalent, but I'm totally okay with that because I really never wanted to take a gym class.  So the dean said I should probably work on physically fit but  it seemed like I was doing well with all the others.

Did I work on it?  Not at all.  Unless you count singing and dancing at the same time in theatrical performances, which I wouldn't really count, no.

In college I had to take P.E.  Because we're a liberal arts school and they like making weird things required for graduation.  So I plotted to take the easiest P.E. classes ever.  Which I did: Fencing, Badminton, Fitness Walking, and Cycling.  Although to be fair, cycling was the most difficult and most rewarding one that I took.  I liked it a lot.  In the end, I never really ended up "physically fit."

Then last semester, my friend and I went to the gym to lift and do things in the weight room, but that petered off because I'm a wimp.  Although we did really well for a couple weeks, I have to say.  I was impressed with us.

Source: Uploaded by user via Brianna on Pinterest

So I'm still working on it.
Yesterday I stole my brother's bike and took a ride on the bike trail near my house to the library.  It was pretty awesome.  Once I got home I was hot, sweaty, and gross, but I felt fantastic.  Probably because I went into it with some measure of excitement and came home confident.  Or the music on the radio was just really good that hour.  Regardless, I'm doing it again today.

I'm really excited about my new-found activity because it's going to give me something to do.  If I'm perfectly honest, I've been a bum for these first two weeks of being a college graduate, and that just makes me feel like a piece of fungus hanging out on a slice of bread.  And that's not only gross, but can't be healthy.  So...resolving to actually get outside and do something?  Yes I am.  Is it optimistic that I'll stick with it?  Absolutely.  But hopefully I can.

"It takes four weeks for you to see your body changing, it takes eight weeks for friends and family, and it takes twelve weeks for the rest of the world.  Keep Going."

A Reflection (from HS Senior Brianna)

Guess what, I'm still cleaning my room.  It's becoming increasingly clearer that it's going to be a summer project that's going to take approximately forever.  Well, hopefully just the summer, but forever is an option, I suppose.

Senior year of high school, I took a class called Justice Seminar.  It was one of the choices for a religion class senior year, and it was the only time we got to choose something different in the religion department.  It was either Justice Seminar or Theology Quest (in which everyone was placed by default if they didn't "get into" Justice).  Though Theology Quest sounds like it would be a really cool video game that has you searching for Jesus and gaining lives by collecting the host or Catholic artifacts...I thought that Justice would be more fun.  It was really heavy on reflection and discussion, and there was also a service aspect.  Today I found my "reader" with all the articles we read, and I'm finally coming to grips with the fact that I should probably recycle it because all it's doing is gathering dust.  Inside this reader I discovered that I had bookmarked my reflections on some of the articles.  So I'm going to share one of those here.

This is a reflection based on a chapter from Henri Nouwen's Out of Solitude called "Care" and also Henri Nouwen's "Report on the Possibility and Desirability of Love."

As Mr. Nouwen said, it seems as if our expression of indifference has been the only time we use the word "care," and even then, we are using it incorrectly.  A person who cares is a person who "instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand."  Maybe it's arrogant to say that this statement along with the remainder of the paragraph convinced me that I am a caring person, but it did.  Either that, or extremely inarticulate.  Whenever my closest friends are having trouble, or just having a really bad day, I'm the friend that they go to who will listen to them, and just be there.  Maybe it's because I can never think of what to say at those moments, but sitting there feeling helpless along with the best of my friends is one of the main ways that I can express my love for them, and how much I care.  By offering to split an entire container of ice cream between the two or three of us, I feel like I'm doing something, even if I'm not offering the sage advice that I sometimes get.  It's the friends who are willing to just sit on the phone and listen to me rant that I really appreciate because I can tell they care about me, even if they don't know what to tell me to "make me feel better."  It's not really something I can explain, because I have a feeling if I did, it wouldn't have nearly the same impact upon me as it does right now.  A friend allows you to be yourself.


The quote, "...that it was better to suffer than to lose self-respect by accepting a gift out of a non-caring hand," confuses me.  It sounds a heck of a lot like charity, but I'm not completely certain.  It sounds like the explanation of the poor refusing help because they're "too proud," and I never really understood that.  Seems I still don't.


I agree that our society is preoccupied with "taking" and "power," because we are afraid of each other.  We're nervous about someone stabbing us in the back because if they figure out our deep dark secret, they'll use it against us.  And that makes sense.  Every man for himself, right?  But it isolates us.  It distances us from each other.  We have to constantly look over our shoulder to make sure that we're not being followed, and we never feel safe.

"When a man cries, when the walls of his self composure break down and he is able to express his deepest despair, weakness, hate and jealousy, his meanness and inner division, he somewhere believes that we will not take and destroy him as if a voice told him, 'Don't be afraid to tell.'"

This quote really stuck out to me because it's kind of like revealing your complete self and just announcing, "Here I am, take me or leave me."  Nouwen seems to be saying that we have to let ourselves be vulnerable before we can love and be loved.  I mean, the most repeated advice you get before, after, and during Kairos is "don't be afraid to open up."  And I wrote a reflection about the importance of opening up before.  Really, opening yourself up to feeling other people's hurt, and allowing for the possibility of yourself getting hurt, that's what love is.  We have to open up that oyster shell of our's, as Nouwen puts it, and let our loved ones see the pearl within.  But we are afraid of what others will say about our pearl.  We are afraid that we'll intimidate people by our willingness to share, or the gleam of our pearl in comparison to someone else's.  But just as Marianne Williamson said:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

We really have to learn to love ourselves, and open up in order to allow the people around us to do the same.  If one person turns on their light, then the others can't help but follow, because how can you be afraid of the dark if all the lights are on?  If one person opens up, and loves, then the people around them will learn to love by example.  Maybe that's idealistic, or completely off the point, but it would be such a valuable change from taking love to giving love or sharing love.


So it seems that senior year of high school Brianna was pretty profound.  Interesting.

"Somehow we know that strength is often hidden in weakness and it is exactly there, where love becomes visible."

- Henri Nouwen, "Report on the Possibility and Desirability of Love"

Satyrs

I'm still cleaning my room, but I found some things that I thought might be fun to share.

Once upon a time, freshman year of high school, our teacher had us pick monsters or lovers from Greek mythology.  If you picked lovers, you had to write (go ahead, guess) love letters between the two.  Whereas if you got a monster you had to write a parody of a song and perform it during class.  So I chose monster, of course.  And then I picked "satyrs" out of the hat.  This is the script from my performance:

Hello.  My name is ______________.  I am a historian researching the curious activities of the satyrs of Greek Mythology.  I used this time machine that I build in my closet to go back into the time when Greek Mythology was actually happening.  I have never been in ancient Greece before, so I wore a toga of some sort so I would blend in.  Since my time machine had left me in a forest, I began looking for the intriguing goat-men known as satyrs.  Needless to say, I got rather turned around in the forest and it wasn't until nightfall that I heard voices.  I peered out from behind a large tree and saw the god Dionysus and none other than his satyr attendants drinking, laughing, singing and dancing around a bonfire.  I heard the satyrs singing a song that goes a little like this (reads off her paper):  The best thing about being a satyr, is the prerogative to have a little fun.

Well, maybe you'd understand what I'm talking about better if I sang it.  (spontaneously breaks into song)


The best thing about being a satyr
is the prerogative to have a little fun and...
oh, oh, oh, go totally crazy--just drink and be lazy
half man, half goat,
oh, oh, oh, really go wild--Dionysus style!
Oh, oh, oh, get in the action, feel the attraction,
nymphs on the run, just havin' fun,
oh, oh, oh, I wanna be free--yeah to feel the way I feel...
Man!  I feel like a satyr!

The guys/goats are thinkin', singin', dancin', drinkin',
and never let our spirits down.
We don't need romance--we only wanna dance,
chasing all the nymphs around...

[repeat chorus]

(straighten tie, etc.)  Ahem.  Yes.  I found myself drugged and in my laboratory the next morning.  I cannot recall anything else from the previous night.  I wonder, what ever happened to plain ole ordinary, normal, peaceful, sober goats?!

First Lines and Openings

In my Writing Fiction class, we had to write openings for stories.  Five per week, and post them on a class blog.  If anyone's interested in reading these nuggets of creativity, you can find them here: http://455fictionopenings.wordpress.com/

Today we had an award ceremony for these openings.  My classmates and I nominated lines within six different categories, and today we learned who won.  I won three out of the six categories.

Best Dialogue:
"So I got an e-mail from an April Diamond," Seth said, taking a long drag on his cigarette.
Lucy shook her head, "Sounds like a stripper."

Funniest:
He never understood the appeal of Marilyn Monroe and even standing by the statue on Michigan Avenue staring up at her gigantic white panties, Steve still didn't get it.

Best Overall (because it was unopposed):
I told him because I'm afraid.  Afraid of everything that might happen, and everything that might not.  Most of all, I'm afraid of being happy.

Actually, three of my openings were nominated for best dialogue.  It's fun because all of them sprang from real life conversations that I had before I submitted my first lines.  This one actually happened.  It's a part of a tradition of my school's chapter of the National Residence Hall Honorary to send out these cryptic e-mails from an e-mail account that's registered to April Diamond for the induction ceremony.  It's super creepy, I remember being confused about the whole thing and not really wanting to go to the quad after dark to be jumped by a stripper, because that's what April Diamond sounds like.  Luckily, people still show up and induction happens and everything's good, but it still worries me that one day someone won't come and won't even realize that they're a part of NRHH.  That would just be strange.

I personally don't think that my line was the funniest of the nominees, but hey.  There's a statue of Marilyn Monroe in downtown Chicago.  It's based on the still from Seven Year Itch with Marilyn's billowing white skirt.

Spring Break in Chicago.  Two of my friends are scandalized.

This statue is near the Tribune Tower, and honestly, I thought it was a pretty ugly statue.  I was more interested in taking pictures of the Tribune Tower, so this picture is one of a grand total of two pictures that I have of the Marilyn statue.  And I honestly don't really understand Marilyn Monroe's appeal, part of me feels like I should probably figure out because she's technically an American icon...if I'm correct.  But the Marilyn statue was kinda like The Bean for me.  I don't really get it.

My last line shouldn't have won, but it did.  Only because it was unopposed.  If it had gone up against someone else's line, I have no doubt that other line would have won, and it would have deserved it.  Meh.

Shakespeare and Boccaccio

Q:  So what are you up to nowadays?

A:  Well.  I'm sitting around worrying about The Future, spending time worrying about my business stats test instead of actually attempting to start studying for it, agonizing over my management "double-weighted" quiz that'll be on the same day as my stats test, and then I'm thinking a lot about Shakespeare.

Q:  That's nothing new, you might as well stop typing now.

A:  Yeah okay.

So I have a paper for my Shakespeare class.  I'm going to write it on Cymbeline, which I'm really excited about because it's a really weird play.  Not even the critics really know what to do with it because no one really knows what genre it belongs in.  Our book classifies it as a romance, so that means there's going to be love and shenanigans, no one's going to die, and everyone's going to live happily ever after.  Right?

Wrong.  There are at least two deaths, one of them being a suicide and the other one featuring a headless body that stays on stage for a little bit to cuddle with the female lead.

I also have a huge problem with the play being called Cymbeline after a secondary character because I'm still trying to figure out what his significance to the play is.  Mostly because I've given myself permission to not think about him up until now.

But I'm writing my paper about women.  And Shakespeare's source material.  Because it's a little known fact to people who know Shakespeare's stories but aren't familiar with the history behind them that Shakespeare never really came up with his own plots.  Due to copyright laws being nonexistent in Shakespearean times, he could pick and choose plots that struck his fancy from other people's works, and no one could say a word about it.  Better than that, if people recognized the source material they could gloat and talk about how clever they were that they actually knew where the plot came from.

A large part of Shakespeare's plot for Cymbeline centers around a wager that Posthumus (what a horrid name) makes with Iachimo based on the chastity of Posthumus' wife.  Because yes, you can be chaste when you're married.  So this plot actually came from Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, which I learned through a very quick Google search while my school's library website wasn't working for me.  It's interesting that in the original story, the character upon whom Posthumus is based brags about how his wife possesses all of the best virtues that a woman can possess, and additionally the virtues that a knight or squire might possess.  Whoa, crazy!  I'm not sure if Shakespeare keeps this comparison, but if he doesn't, this is going to be perfect for my paper.  It's interesting that Boccaccio would go so far as to allow a character to bestow the virtues of a man upon his wife because I highly doubt that Boccaccio was a feminist in the contemporary sense.  Maybe he's saying that to show how absurd the character's bragging is.  "Anyone who would think to claim that women have the same virtues as men is clearly addled."  This seems plausible.

So it begins.  My lovely to do list unfolds:
- study for business stats in any manner possible
- study and read for management, pray that the questions aren't absurd
- write a paper for Shakespeare
- critique fiction

"I thought her

as chaste as unsunned snow."

- William Shakespeare, Cymbeline, 2.5

What a to do...

...to die today.

This is my 200th post.

It's also going to be a throwaway post because I have a lot to do today.  At least, I just realized the magnitude of the things that I have to do before Break is over and...well...it hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.  So that's what I'm going to be doing instead of writing a pretty blog post.  Sorry!

A Letter to My Bulletin Board

Dear Bulletin Board,

It's the beginning of March.  I'm going to have to change you.  Very soon.  Or live with "Cheering Charms: A How To."  Because I'm definitely going to be here to stare at it.  Yup.

Bulletin Board, you're a massive expanse of corkboard covered in newspaper, and I've learned to call you my friend.  Sure, you're a mammoth and it's a struggle to cover every inch of you in information, but it's been a welcome challenge.  This is March.  This is my eight billionth bulletin board of my career as an RA.

Because I'm trying very hard to make the theme of my hall "Harry Potter," this month's board has to be related to Harry Potter in some way.  And it is.  Because it's about Palmistry.  I'll bet you're excited to have a deformed looking hand stapled to you so people can look at the diagram and compare their life lines to the hastily drawn line on the diagram.  I'll bet you can't wait to have people holding up their hands in front of you and trying to figure out if they have a square palm and long fingers or a long palm and short fingers.

Bulletin Board, please don't hate my stapler.  The last couple times we met, you were all cranky and you made the staples bend in all sorts of ways that staples aren't supposed to bend.  So let's not do that this time.  Because that would be really upsetting.  Also, if you can, please make sure that the residents refrain from drawing strange and distorted images of appendages they wish they possessed on you.  You know what I'm talking about, I'm not going to say it because this is a classy blog.

That's pretty much all I have to say, thanks, Bulletin Board, let's be friends.  :^)

Cheers,
Brianna

This is the board I ended up making for March.  It's about palm reading because I wanted to learn about palm reading.  Yeah, that's a hand.  I drew it.  This is why I'm not an art major.  

"Our mission is facilitating enjoyable, sustainable, and inclusive communities that support and enhance students' academic achievement and personal development."

- ORL mission statement

A Letter to Sleep

Dear Sleep (or Slumber or Lengthy Nap Time),

I'm really glad we're friends.  We haven't had too many difficulties during the past years, mostly because I've kind of established my bed as a place for sleeping rather than a place for doing other activities (get your mind out of the gutter).  I've been told that if you do homework or read in bed that it stimulates your brain and you won't be able to fall asleep as easily because your body's accustomed to working on intellectual things in bed, so...it won't let you fall asleep.  I don't know if this is true, but I tend to think so because Sleep, you and I get along pretty well.

Except I really don't like when you leave me right after I roll over.  This morning, I rolled over, I took the time to roll so that I was facing the only window in my little room, and my alarm went off.  You just stood up and left me in a lurch, whining under the comfort of my covers.  I really didn't want to wake up this morning.  It might have been because you and I were reunited a little later than usual, but absolutely positively did not want to wake up.

The only thing that's helping me cope with my losing you is the prospect of breakfast.  I can already smell the greasy cafeteria food breakfast delicious and my stomach's growling in anticipation.  And I can take home a muffin for tomorrow's breakfast, and maybe a banana that I can eat with peanut butter...my future prospects are looking pretty good.

But Sleep, I miss you.  A warm and cozy oblivious state in which I can dream of absolutely anything.  In fact, last night I dreamt that I was moving back into my residence hall, and I was driving a little car (backwards) into traffic.  Luckily I didn't hit anyone, so that was nice.

Sleep, can we be friends forever?  Just do me a favor.  Please don't follow me to class.  I saw you in business statistics yesterday, and it was a very near thing, we almost had that heart-to-heart conversation that I was hoping for, but I had to resist because otherwise I'm not sure how I would learn what a null hypothesis is.  (Although let's not kid ourselves, I still don't know what a null hypothesis is.)  And then you followed me to Management, which was bad, because it was warm in that classroom, and I was bored with talking about goodness only knows what...

In short, I think we're doing pretty well, so let's continue this relationship.  Although I warn you now that I may sleep with Nap Time.

Cheers,
Brianna

"Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day."

- Friedrich Nietzche

Wednesday it was a revolver

For my fiction class, we're required to write five openings for pieces of fiction and post them on our class blog.  I'm really impressed by some of the stuff we come up with, because I know if I had to come up with a story that belongs to my opening, I wouldn't know what I was writing.  Mostly because I know that it's just an opening, so I can do whatever craziness I want and I don't actually have to commit to it.  I was going to steal an opening from one of my classmates to write this blog post, but then I thought that might be creatively immoral, so instead I'm using one of my own lines.  Yay free writing!

On another note, Poem-a-Day March is in the planning stages.  I've asked my good friend Claire of Musings of a Rhythm Junkie to be my Poem Keeper for the month, and she's going to set me a challenge akin to my "love poem a week" challenge for February.  I'm really excited because it should be a good month!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday it was roses, Tuesday it was chocolates, Wednesday it was a revolver.  The boxes just showed up on Frank's doorstep with no explanation, stamp or return address.  He flattered himself to believe that they came from a secret admirer, but he would have hoped that she would reveal herself by now.

It had been three days and the most unexpected gift arrived on Frank's doorstep.  Packed in with those foam peanuts and some stray Easter grass was this old-time revolver.  Fully loaded.  No note, no nothing, just like the roses and the chocolates from the previous days.  Frank replaced the revolver in its nest and crossed to the front window, parting the curtains just enough to peek down the street.  Nothing unusual or out of place, just the neighbor kids playing in a sprinkler out on their front lawn.  And Mr. Perkins sitting on his front porch like he did every evening in July, paying homage to an older time when porch sitting was a pastime.

"What the hell..." Frank grumbled under his breath, lumbering back to the box on his kitchen table.  He sunk his hands in amongst (don't you dare tell me that isn't a word, Chrome, you know damn well it is) the packing peanuts and felt around for anything he might have missed.  His knuckles bumped against the cold metal of the revolver as he felt around on the bottom of the box where something smooth separated him from the divide between layers of cardboard.  Latching on to it, Frank brought the thing out into the light.

The thing just happened to be an envelope, making Wednesday's delivery starkly different from Monday's and Tuesday's.  The envelope held no markings, no postage, no address, except it was sealed with a tri-colored fleur-de-lis.  It looked like it had been made with a rubber stamp, the colors blending in to each other.  Frank tore open the envelope and pulled out the card, reading the single word of the message written upon it in a sophisticated script:  "Run."

Frank's eyebrows furrowed, and it almost looked as if he was about to take the message seriously and run.  His eyes held a terror he hadn't felt since he had broken up with his homicidal girlfriend for the last time, and his body tensed.  But just at the moment when it seemed like Frank would jump through his front window and start a mad spring to Somewhere Else, the envelope and the card fell from his hand.

"Pssh."  Frank let the air out of his mouth, looking at the card skeptically as if the card really thought he would take it seriously.

He stuck a cigarette between his lips and raised his lighter to the tip when there was a knock on the door.  For a brief moment, Frank regretted not listening to the card.  The moment immediately following that one brief moment told Frank that he was ridiculous.  Just as a precaution, Frank picked up the revolver and held it out in front of him as he turned the doorknob and wrenched open his front door.

The woman standing on his doorstep looked at the revolver and was unimpressed.  She didn't even flinch.  "What's that, a museum piece?"  She laughed at her own joke and sidled around Frank and into the house.

A Letter to Business Stats and Economics

Dear Business Stats and Economics,

You probably know me.  I'm the blonde girl sitting at the computer...front row, avoiding eye contact with her open e-mail as you write yourself all over the white board in black, sometimes green, marker.  You've definitely made eye contact with me, so you have to at least have registered that I'm around.  You with your unwavering scowl at the students who don't understand you.

Students like me.

When my professor's going over examples on the board and you're doing your happy little stats dance, I know what's going on.  The symbols on the board make sense to some extent.  Everything seems methodical.  When I'm reading the book, things make sense there too.  The bell charts look right, the examples stand out from the rest of the text, and I flatter myself that I might end up doing well in this class.

Then I attempt to do my homework.  And that's when I forget.  What's a t-distribution?  I'm not really sure what mu is for, but it's a good-looking symbol, I'd like to take it to the x bar before we catch some z's with the t-crit.  I'd like to see the curve on that bell and show it my degrees of freedom because the probability that I'll understand this problem is zero.  Might as well figure out something else to do.

It might be hopeless.  Which is okay, because my job prospects don't really involve numbers or statistics or the relationship between numbers and letters and statistics because thankfully I don't plan on being a math teacher.  I pray this never happens accidentally.  Business Stats and Economics, it'd be really great if I could Google you and you would tell me how you'd like to be done.  Would it help if I sprawled out across my tile in prime writhe position?  Or maybe cuddle up with my book on my bed?  Or maybe you'd just prefer the simple location of desk.  Because that's where my other homework gets done.  In theory.

Business Stats and Economics, I propose a truce.  I'll give you some lovin' if you'll be a little easier.

Love,
Brianna

"A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything is last year."

- Marty Allen

The Page Is a Puppy

For my Writing Fiction class, we had to write about our relationship with the page.  As in the page you write on. We were supposed to write how we feel about the page and what compels us to write.  I'm really hoping that my reflection doesn't demonstrate that I hate writing and that I do it merely out of necessity, but I have a bad feeling that this is what it's saying.  Which is a lie...but this is what I wrote...

-------------------------------------

The page is a puppy.  All floppy-earred and tail-waggy, the page is eager.  Enthusiastic.  The page bounces at my feet when I come home, sliding on the tile because it can’t really get traction.

            “I can’t, I have homework,” I tell it.  “I have piles of reading and stacks of e-mails, and no time.  I’m sorry.”  But not really.  Let’s face it.  I’m not sorry.  My backpack is empty.  I don’t have homework, and if I did, it masqueraded as my Facebook stalker feed and the refresh button.

            My page is a puppy, disappointed in its master who leaves it empty and bored.  If ASPCA knew about this page puppy neglect, I would never be allowed to keep it.  The page looks up at me one more time with those warm puppy eyes and begs, sitting back on its haunches with an open mouth prepared to howl.  I leap to my feet with all the haste of a jack-in-the-box racing a cuckoo clock to chime the hour.  The page can’t make a sound or I’ll break.  So I pour it some water and feed it a movie quote and youtube video mélange to tide it over until morning.

            And in the morning, the page climbs into bed with me before dawn and whimpers, nosing me with its cold snout.  It’s hungry.  And lonely.  When I pull back the covers, the page wags.  Once my feet touch the floor, the page yips hopefully.  It skitters on the tile when I sit at my desk and…check my e-mail.

            One hour before class and I pick up the page.  I have to chase it because all of a sudden it thinks I want to play.  I catch the page and it wiggles between my hands in anticipation, licking my fingers with a grainy tongue.  I put it on my desk and tickle its ears for only a moment.  There is no time for extended pleasantries when there’s a deadline.  Pulling a pen from my desk, I write for the sake of necessity.  All the same, the page preens.  It wags its tail and shakes out its fur.  I throw out words across my desk and the page fetches ideas and delusions of grandeur.  Once I’ve sat down rewarded by the page’s affection, I don’t want to leave it.

            I smuggled the page into my accounting class once.  The leverage and manufacturing overhead confused it as much as they confused me.  Anyway, it amazed me the professor didn’t see me playing creative short range fetch with the page in the front row.  I think that the page is invisible to business folk because my classmates didn’t see it either, and if they did it was only a glimpse.  Maybe when you choose a discipline you choose willful blindness towards other things.

            I see the page.  And the page is a puppy that’s teething.  It attaches itself to my pant leg before getting a better purchase and nibbling on my ankle.  Though puppy teeth don’t hurt, I fear their pressure, their little pinpricks insisting I play.  Insisting I write.  And when the page howls, my heart sputters like an old car starting in winter cold.  I want to feed the page prose and poetry, and weird punctuation, but those teeth snap too eagerly at my fingertips and lap up the ink too quickly.

            But I’m attached to the puppy page as if the leash melded into the skin of my palm becoming a second life line.  The page tugs me to somewhere unknown where imaginary things spider off of shelves and the ridiculous isn’t so strange.  We have an understanding, one in which the page forgives me even after months of neglect.  Somehow the page is always constant, always a puppy.  The page tolerates flarf and drivel, all it craves is attention and maybe some kibble every now and again.  And the page makes me laugh, curled up in my lap, while providing warmth and comfort.  

"The page waits, pretending to be blank.  Is that its appeal, its blankness?  What else is this smooth and white, this terrifyingly innocent?"

- Margaret Atwood

Goblets of Fire

On another note, I made door decs for my RAs this semester.  In keeping with my Harry Potter theme, I made Goblets of Fire:

I made the goblets out of brown foam (because the book says that the goblet is made out of wood) and used gold glitter glue to make it look more goblet-like.  The blue flames are made of white, pale blue and dark blue tissue paper cut into flames.  I used Scotch tape to attach the layered flames to the back of the goblet.  The name is written in a font called Big Mister C because I wanted it to look like handwriting, but I didn't want to write them all out myself.  So there you have it!  Goblets of Fire to make all my RAs Triwizard Champions!

Sleepy Time

Q: What time's your bed time?

A: How do you know I have a bed time, hmm...?

Q: I...um...well...I don't know!

A: Well it's pretty rude of you just to assume that I have a bed time, I mean, I'm over 20 years old.  I don't know very many 20 year olds who have bed times.

Q: Well...I...uh...

A: I usually fall asleep around midnight.  When I'm at school doing my homework, midnight hits and I cease being productive.  By that point, my bed starts calling my name and I just can't help but answer its call by brushing my teeth and leaping towards my pillow.  Which (if you've seen how my room at school is set up) is quite a comical image because I would have to leap and fly a little to get up onto my bed...which is lofted.  I've learned this midnight deadline through my repeated attempts at pulling all-nighters to finish my Senior Seminar paper last semester.  I would convince myself that I could take a nap and that I would wake up again, and then all of a sudden I would be asleep until morning.  Which was bad.

When I'm hanging out with friends (usually at school), midnight is the time at which I turn into a pumpkin.  Because I'm the carriage, not Cinderella.  (I have only just now realized this implication, and I find it hilarious.)  Anyway...I truly tell people, "I'm going to turn into a pumpkin soon, so I should take off."  Part of me wonders if my friends think I'm strange because of this, and the other part of me assures the first part that they already think I'm strange, remarks about pumpkins aren't likely to change that.

When I'm at home, it's a completely different story.  The house gets all dark around 10 PM because my dad's gone off to work and my mom's getting ready for bed herself...so it's weird.  Wandering around in the dark house just seems odd to me.  And it's really weird being one of the only two people awake (I say this because it's obvious my brother's still awake when I can hear him playing video games in the front one) so sometimes I end up passing out around 10 PM and waking up at whatever daylight hour I usually wake up at.  Which is usually 7 AM.  And then there are other times when I don't find the quiet strange.  When I actually want to stay up curled under a blanket with a good book and read under the horrible light until I'm sleepier or until it's at least a little closer to Pumpkin Time.  Or like last night I'll decide it's a good idea to read in bed until my pillow screams that I should sleep and so I rudely pass out while texting my boyfriend.  I'm so nice.

And I usually dream.  The last time I dreamt (Chrome, you know that's a word, so shut up), I dreamed that I was eating banana bread and talking to another RA about why he was quitting.  And that was the most normal dream I've ever had.  I've dreamed about training a person like a dog, I've dreamed about being lost in multiple schools, being chased by Teletubbies, killing kidnappers to save my family members, being in "CATS" again and not knowing the lines, directing a play...it goes on.  And on.  In one series of dreams (this went on over the course of a couple nights) I was dancing.  Like ballroom dancing.  With random people.  Beauty and the Beast style.  It was awesome.

"Sleep is the best meditation."

- Dalai Lama

Account for Yourself!

I hate Accounting.  For real.  Like a lot.

When I first started the classes for my business minor, I was only taking one business class at the time.  It was Accounting.  That class wasn't too bad.  It was very basic, methodical, and I could handle it because the book walked me through everything really simply and patted me on the head when I was right.  So it really wasn't too bad.  It might have helped that I had a friend in that class who wasn't an Accounting major.

This year, I'm taking three business classes at one time.  That means three out of the total four classes that I'm taking this semester...are business classes.  Aside from the crushing depression that I feel every time I enter one of those classrooms because I just feel creatively stifled (aside from the poetry writing, but that's a way of coping, right?)...it's just generally awful.  The material's horrible.

But the reason I hate this Accounting class is because without fail I always feel stupider when I leave it.  I don't understand why you have to do so many complicated calculations to figure out how much money you have when you can really just go out to your bank vault and count the bills.  I realize this would be a problem mostly because it's the accountants who do the calculations because they're never actually allowed to touch other people's money so it would be a problem if the bill-counting was standardized, but whatever.

[I was going to put an Accounting cartoon here, but it was copyrighted...]

I understood Accounting last year.

This year...not so much.  I don't understand why I have to know about standard costs and statements of cash flows, and I don't understand how I'm supposed to know all this.

There's one kid in my class who sounds like he was born with all of this stamped on his brain matter.  He raises his hand and has intelligent sounding conversations with our professor in the middle of class which leaves me to stare out the window longingly but also leaves me feeling like I'm inadequate.  Not that I want to be adequate when it comes to Accounting because it's so damn frustrating.  And counter intuitive (I swear that was one word...).  And I don't want to sacrifice a piece of my soul so I can be good at something that would so obviously crush whatever spirit I have left.

I say all this because I have a test on Tuesday.  I'm sitting at home (at my real home home where I grew up home) staring at this Accounting book in misery, trying to figure out how I'm supposed to study for this.  Am I supposed to just memorize things?  Is that going to be the easiest way for an English major to figure out what's going on?  Or close?  I really have no motivation to study.  Aside from my GPA.  It'd be nice if my GPA would stay where it is.  That's really my only motivation for doing anything vaguely business related...because now I realize that if I screw up, my GPA will suffer.  Which is great.  Though not really.

It also doesn't help that this is a test the week before Finals.  Because my professor is a sadist.  I'm convinced.

What's my test on, you ask?
Well.
It's on chapters 9, 11, 12, and 13 in the devil book, I mean...my Accounting book: Introduction to Managerial Accounting.
So that means...
Chapter 9 -- Standard Costs
Chapter 11 -- Relevant Costs for Decision Making
Chapter 12 -- Capital Budgeting Decisions
Chapter 13 -- "How Well Am I Doing?" Statement of Cash Flows
I love when my Accounting book tries to be cute.  It's really quite endearing.  I especially enjoy when it tries to be "hip" and use direct quotes from supposedly real people in its chapter titles.  It's really adorable.  I can't get enough of it.

So...cheerful post next time?  Alright.

"Account no man happy till he dies."

- Euripides

Senior Moment

Q:  So you're a senior, eh?

A:  Yeah, what's it to you?

Q:  So that means you have to do all sorts of senior-y things?

A:  A tad more specific than that, but yeah.

So I have to write a paper for my Senior Seminar class.  This paper has to be about 18-20 pages long.  And I've never written a paper that long before.  So that would be hurdle number one.  I'm also writing about Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle.  For a professor that I've written really horrible papers for in past classes I've been in.  And when I say those papers were horrible, I'm not kidding.  I'm so totally not kidding.  Lots of not kidding-ness.

I wrote about 10 pages for my rough draft.  I got that back a little while ago, and it's sat in my backpack for about a week, maybe more.  It took forever to write originally.  Anyway, I took a clean copy of it and went through it on my own and marked it up and then added in the marks from my professor.  So now I have a master copy with all the edits that I need to make.  All my comments are in happy orange and my professor's are in pink, so it's a really happy draft.  But that doesn't really matter.  Because despite all the pretty colors, there's a LOT of them.  (I know that sentence didn't make sense, we're just going to leave that alone for now.)  There are a LOT of pretty colors all bleeding on my paper, and this creates the problem for a lot of work for Brianna.  A lot of work for Brianna during a weekend when she's going to have a friend staying with her.  And Brianna's going to want to hang out.

So that leaves Brianna here.  Blogging instead of writing her paper.  Because that's definitely the smartest thing to do at this precise moment.  Yup.  Awesome.

My paper file is open on my desktop, it's right there.  Draft 1.  Yup, there it is.  It's staring at me.

A Letter to Conflicts

Dear Conflicting Events,

Hi, hello, I'm Brianna.  You probably know me already.  I'm over-involved.  But this isn't about me.

Anyway, I'd like to take a moment to congratulate you on the number of events that you're holding on campus!  Really, it's awesome that you've got so much going on!  There's movies, speakers, game shows (though I typed "shoes" the first time, game shoes...hmm...), dances, programs...you've literally got a sampling of just about everything that's good in life.  You've even got free food.  And what college student can pass up free food?  What human being can pass up free food for that matter?

With so much going on, it's a wonder that you keep it all straight.  There are Facebook events, flyers, there's the campus event calendar, the planner...sometimes I wonder about who's responsible for creating all of these things and I wonder if it's all the same person, because I notice some inconsistencies.  Especially in the student planner versus just about everything else.  I swear whoever puts together the planner gets a totally different calendar than everyone else.  Which probably doesn't do much for their self-esteem.  Which is sad and depressing.

My problem is that I have friends.  That's not really a bad problem to have, but it becomes a problem when my friends are involved in planning things.  Or organizing things.  Or performing in things.  You get the idea.  It's a problem because I have friends that are just as involved as I am.  So I'm obliged to go to their events.  And they're fun events, don't get me wrong, but there are also eight other events going on at the EXACT same time that I want to go to as well.  Which makes me want to be able to split myself off into eight separate parts so I can be at all places at once.

And though that would be really cool, part of me wonders if that's just a little too much like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  Or cloning.

And I'm not really sure how people would react to that.

Plus I'm nice.  I like being there for people.  I like lending support.  And I like going to events.  I generally like people.  I say generally for a reason, but this post is not the time to explain that one.  But yes.  I generally like people, and people go to events, and I get to see them, and I have fun, and it's great.  But I inevitably have to say "no" to one person if I say "yes" to another.  And that pains me.  Because occasionally I'm a good person.  I don't really like disappointing people.  Not that I think that there are people out in the world who think, "Hm.  Who can I disappoint today?  I quite enjoy disappointing people..." but you understand what I'm saying.

Conflicting Events, can't you just create a wormhole so I can see into all the different events at the same time? That way I don't have to clone myself or split my soul or anything painful like that.  And everyone's happy!  Right?

Much love,
Brianna
The Over-Involved One

Clue Night

After all the hard work on the script, organizing people, advertising, and all that jazz (although I only really helped substantially with the script), International Clue Night will take off tomorrow night.

So there are a couple really cool things about International Clue Night.  For me, one of the first cool things is working with my friend to write the script.  I helped write last year, so we kind of knew how the other one worked when we came to the process this year.  What made this year so different is that Family Weekend is so early (and that's when Clue takes place).  It's this weekend.  Usually it's late October.  So basically we had a lot less time to work.  But that meant that we got to spend a TON of time together working on the script.  And no joke, plotting out this script was SO much fun!  This friend and I play really well off each other, and we're really good at asking each other questions when something doesn't make sense.  We took a good long time outlining the plot before we even thought about writing the script or describing characters, and that was because of how Clue Night works.  It's mostly because we need to make sure we know everything about the mystery even if the audience doesn't know everything.  We also need to make sure that we know what's getting revealed when, and that it all works and makes sense.  Lots of thinking of "motives."

The most common motives that I could think of were:
- money
- revenge
- blind rage
- jealousy
- insanity

And you can only use those so many times.  So thank goodness I wasn't alone, or the plot would have been so linear and boring.  I really enjoy my friend, she's a truly brilliant writer, and it's an amazing experience to be able to work with her!

AND this year I get to act.  I acted my sophomore year as the CEO's daughter who was about to succeed her father as CEO and change the entire company into an environmentally radical company.  I was part of the reason my father ended up dead.  Oops.  I also got to do the big "reveal" at the end of the show, explaining about how clever I was and how I figured out that China was the murderer.  Well, China the representative...
Last year I was out of town for a conference, so I couldn't act, but I did help write.  The daughter was the killer that year...
And as I was saying...this year I get to act.  And I'm Switzerland, the land of cheese, chocolate, and knives... Needless to say, I'm absolutely thrilled.  I haven't acted in ages (as I've said in blog posts gone by...), so it'll be good to get back "onstage," and even better because of how unique this show is with regards to audience interaction and the like.  SO exciting!

The Motorist: Where is it?

Wadsworth: What?  The body?

The Motorist: The phone.  What body?

Wadsworth: There's no body.  Nobody.  There's--there's nobody in the study.

- CLUE (the movie)

Bikes

[This is all I could think of to write today, so yeah.  Still working up the courage to revisit that "Little Shop" post down there.  We'll see.]

I am silently judging you for riding your bike.  It's not the general fact that you're riding your bike, it's because you're riding it through the quad.  I know where you live, I've seen you going into one of the residence halls that are in the center of campus.  I just want to ask you why you're riding your bike right now.  Okay, I get it, three steps is a really long walk to the science building, and unlocking your bike, riding it, and relocking it is a much quicker way to get to class, but really?

Our campus is tiny.
Please walk.

If you live off campus, I understand.  Bike.  Much more sustainable than driving, more efficient than walking.  I get it.  I'm okay with that.  But if you live in the hall that I live in, and you're seriously going to bike across campus just so you can get to class in 3 minutes instead of 5, please don't.  Really.

You are a hazard to pedestrians.  You may think that you have the right of way because you're on this person-powered monstrosity that you picked up at your local garage sale this summer, but if you're thinking that, you would be wrong.  There are more pedestrians than there are of you, and if you run me over, I will slash your tires.  And cut your bike chain.  Oh.  And your brakes.  I'll take care of those too.  You don't know how to steer, and you're riding on the sidewalk.  Go home, please.  Put on some walking shoes and suck it up.  Five minutes is really not that big of a deal.

Let's talk to students on campuses larger than ours.  Yeah, they're biking.  They're also taking buses so they can get to one of the many dining halls on campus.  You are not.  You can walk to our only dining hall.  And if you're late for class in the music building, jog that distance, and you can count it as a work out.  Please don't ride your bike through campus.

Because I'm silently judging you every time I see you.

I don't care if you're wearing a helmet.  And kneepads.  You're in my way, you're irritating, and you really need to get off that bike and walk.  Park it somewhere on campus and pick it up after you're done with classes for the day.  Do NOT ride your bike through campus, I beg of you.

I can't wait until it's too cold to ride bikes.  What will you do then?!

"The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets."

- Christopher Morley

Goodbye Summer, Hello School!

This morning marked the first day of my last fall semester in college.  I'm a senior today.  Much as I hate to admit it, I'm getting old, and by the end of the spring semester, I'll be graduated and embarking on a terrifying adventure into the new world.  Let's face it today.  I'm a senior.  And I'm still terrified.

As I was walking to my first class this morning (which turned out to be Senior Seminar, if that's not a wake up call, I don't know what is), I saw on the sidewalk the words (or something very similar) "Good luck on your first day!" and "Good-bye summer, hello school!" followed by variations on "<3 Greek Life".  I also wandered around campus a little bit and found that the well wishes from Greek Life had been altered or erased in some places.  Someone had changed "Greek Life" to "Greek Death" in one place and drawn dead fish around it.  And others wrote that "good luck" and "go Greek" are unrelated.

Now.  Let me throw something out there.  I'm not in a Greek organization.  I have no desire to join a Greek organization.  Well, not a social sorority.  I'm in an honors fraternity for English, but I don't think that counts.  Anyway.  No desire.  So a little part of me was annoyed when I saw that all the well-wishes were surrounded by hearts from Greek Life and also suggested that the reader "go Greek!"  I'm a senior, I'm not joining your sorority, I feel like I've earned enough years to be a little annoyed that you're bombarding the campus with what I'd like to call propaganda...but a meeker force tells me I shouldn't.  So I won't.  Even though the thought and sentiment are there.

Anyway.  Despite my slight irritation, I still enjoyed the messages provided by Greek Life.  I'm not stupid enough to hope that I have a horrible day just because Greek Life says that I should have a good day.  Maybe it's me, but even though I don't connect having a good day with going Greek, the thought is still there.  Someone, presumably a stranger, wished me well this morning.  So I appreciate that.  I'm just going to ignore the "go Greek" because 1. I can't and 2. I'd rather not.  Which is a personal decision that I'm perfectly fine keeping to myself.  Other than this blog post which just happens to be advertising it...no one reads this blog anyway, right?  (Melbourne...)  Point being, I'm going to have a good day.  I appreciate the thought, so thank you, Greek Life.

To the person or group who decided to alter/change/erase those positive (though subliminally advertising-y) messages, there is a time and place for your ire.  I understand that you're upset.  I understand that you want to make a statement.  If Greek Life had only put "go Greek!" everywhere, sure, go ahead and change those if you're really upset about it.  But are you really going to be so petty as to alert everyone to the fact that having a good day isn't connected to being in a Greek organization?

People who want to join a sorority or a fraternity are going to join regardless of whether you cross out "life" and replace it with "death" on the sidewalk.  If they're super dedicated to the idea of joining, that might even cause them to defend the Greek system against your wrath.  Partly because it's childish.  And partly because their loyalty has already been won.  So maybe I'm telling you it's a hopeless cause...but really what I'm trying to say is that it's a personal decision.  They have to choose for themselves, and ultimately it doesn't matter how many "go Greek!" flyers or chalk drawings they see, they're going to choose whether or not they join.  (for the most part, I'm not going to go into the Recruitment process because that's not the point)

What I'm saying is: back off.  There is a time and place for your anger, but the first day of school on chalk drawings that say "good luck" is neither the time nor the place.  Please, I beg of you, don't spread negativity on words that were meant to be innocently positive.  I remain optimistic that the people who were responsible for the original chalk messages meant first and foremost to wish everyone on campus a good day.  Their intentions were mostly pure.  Don't alter their messages just because you don't agree with who wrote them.  Would you do the same to Habitat for Humanity if they wrote inspiring messages and then asked you to join them?  No.  Probably because you would have to be really silly to do that...but come on now.  We're all adults here.

Aren't we?

Elle: I promised her, and I can't break the bonds of sisterhood.

Professor Callahan: Screw sisterhood!  This is a murder investigation!  Not some scandal at the sorority house!

- Legally Blonde

Door Decs

So I feel like I should have promised to share my door decs with all of my adoring fans.  Because they're pretty much amazing.

All I did was take foam rectangles and cut out the shield outline.  With the scraps I could make the top bit where the house name goes and with the scrap from the other color, I could make the bit where the RA's name goes.  I used puffy/fabric paint to write the names of the houses and the RAs.  And I got the badger, eagle, lion, and snake heads from wallpapers that I found here: http://ibuki-san.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24.  I basically printed them out, laminated them, and glued them to the foam pieces that I had already duct taped together.

Simple as that!

This is me!  Hufflepuff for the win!

Gryffindor rawr!

Slytherin, hissssss!

Ravenclaw, CAW!

"You might belong in Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart..."

- The Sorting Hat