Dear Void,

I miss my college friends. I know you can't bring them back together for me, or take me back in time, but sometimes wish that you could. I wish someone would get married so we could all have a big happy wedding reunion.

I was charging my camera to start my newest music video and I started watching the tapes of the interviews I did senior year for the updated Sidehall Video. (I interviewed everyone freshman year and then again at the end of senior year.) I hadn't actually watched any of them since I taped them. I eventually stopped because I think it would be more fun for me to experience them as everyone else will-- in about seven years' time. I want to film an update at five years as well to include that in the film.

While I was watching the video and later when I went downtown with my graduate school friends, I was struck by just how much physically closer we all were. I really like putting my arm around people when they stand next to me, and hugging them when we meet (and not some lame "girl hug" either where you barely touch each other). I feel disconnected here. It was the same with my high school friends, of course, but back then I didn't know things could be different. I realized how much I miss Rory, how much I wished I was closer to Linh. I miss waking up on weekend mornings and joining my three other suitemates in Joanna's bed, where we'd lie in a pile until brunch was almost over.

One day my first year in grad school, Dan called me unexpectedly on the phone and asked me where I was. When I answered that I was in my apartment, he told me that he was on my front porch and could I let him in. He had been down in Rhode Island for a tournament but he'd recently had dental surgery and he had gotten suddenly extremely tired. He was wondering if it would be ok if he took a nap in my bed. He slept for four hours while I got groceries and made us something to eat.

Why can't things like that happen more often? Why do we have to be spread across the country? Why do I never see Xsti even though she only lives an hour away?

When Xsti came to check out Boston a year ago she stayed with Joanna and Thalweg came up with me to meet them and hang out in Boston. In the morning Thalweg found all three of us lying in Joanna's bed and they invited her to lie around with us. I think she enjoyed the closeness. Who wouldn't? It's just that everyone is too reserved to break the boundaries.

I wish my whole life could be like senior week, when Xtina and I would go surfing all day and riding on the roller coaster and in the evenings we'd barbeque and play DDR.


But all good things must come to an end, including college, one of the best times of my life.

Here's to you, Pomona College, and the past.

Here's to you, Void, and the future.

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

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Today Zebo and I were at the brink of chaos. No matter if your system is a pendulum or a planet or a diode, the transition to chaos takes place when the period-doubling parameter of an oscillating function settles out to about 4.669. That's right, that's almost 4.7 [chirp].

---

In nature there is nothing melancholy.
But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper, or neglected love,
(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,
And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he,
First named these notes a melancholy strain.
---S.C.

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From: "Students for Choice"
To: All Students
Subject: Send someone a Valentine's Day condomgram!

Come by the Post Office on Thursday from 10-3 to send your partner, your friend or your crush a condomgram for Valentine's Day! Condomgrams come complete with a Valentine's Day card, a condom and a Hershey's Kiss. They can be sent anonymously if you like and only cost $1 each. Promote safe sex and have a happy, safe holiday!


srsly? WTF?

That's so nasty I don't even want to talk about it. I wouldn't even be able to eat the Kiss, I'd have to throw it away. ech...ylech... I think I just threw up a little inside my mouth.

Back in my day, people sent their secret crushes a flower or a song.
Are these people the future leaders of America?

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Well I tried out for and didn't make the belly-dancing team. Probably a good thing... I don't really know what came over me when I tried out because there is no way I would belly-dance in front of an audience of more than my mirror.

I was the oldest person there, which made me feel... old.
I think grad school is kind of like being President. After 8 years, those guys look like they've aged 20 years. I've probably aged 20 years myself after only 2.5 years of grad school. I think I aged a year in the last two weeks.

But I DID make the "massage team", as in, it's a club where you get trained by a masseuse and then you show up and give random people massages around campus for free at random events. It means I'm going to have to miss our first indoor soccer game tomorrow, but hopefully after I give them all massages they'll forgive me.

In other news, I erased half my research.
The next day I magically recovered it.
Today my Martian volcano exploded for an entire year without incident.
By "without incident" I mean that 1E9 * 3600 * 24 * 669 kg of volcanic ash was spewed onto the surface, but in a way that makes sense.

In other other news, Fluid Mechanics II is killing me. This whole semester is killing me. This is shaping up to be the worst semester in the history of mankind.

Zebo was here but she seemed to be getting some kind of allergy to being at work on a weekend, so she went home. She was telling me all of her symptoms, and I was unsympathetic, because that's how I was raised, but now I'm starting to feel the same way. I have a suspicion that is was caused by being in this closed room without the air on. Zebo may have been the delicate canary in the coal mine, and I ignored her. Here's to hoping we don't all die,

~Zanzibarino

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Since the last time we met, I have learned about chaos theory, weather patterns, boundary layer equations, and radar. I have practiced singing opera, yodeling, playing javanese gamelan, and belly-dancing.

I like to think that I am never the same person you last met, because in the time between meetings I have become better, faster, stronger. I have been studying, practicing, seeking knowledge. No one can make me feel inadequate, because I already know that the pool of things I don't know is boundless. All the more reason to drink from it deeply.

::EDIT:: even if that means I'm studying fluid mechanics at 11:52pm on a Saturday::

More on chaos theory and how awesome it is later, for now I leave you with this stellar Jurassic Park quote:

"You've never heard of Chaos theory? Non-linear equations? Strange attractions? Dr. Sattler I refuse to believe you're not familiar with the concept of attraction."

~Dr. Ian Malcolm

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I was picking out some canned pineapples when I heard a sneeze. A woman said, "Bless you". I turned around and saw the sneezy-mc-sneezerman. Oh. He was cute. It seemed as though he thought it had been me, but then he realized that it was the other woman. I suddenly wished that I had been the one to say "Bless you".

I turned back to the pineapples. What was I thinking? Clearly this man was sick. He was sneezing all over the store. Who wanted to get into a conversation with a bag full of heinous disease? Yeah, we'd probably have to shake hands, and who knew where that disease-ridden hand had been? Clearly this man had an inferior immune system. Who would want to date a guy like that?

When I turned around again he was gone.


What a relief. That was close.

In unrelated news, I am spending Valentine's Day in a monastery.

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The whole driveway is covered in ice, like an ice-skating rink.

The other day Thalweg didn't get enough of a running start and her car stopped halfway and slid all the way back down the driveway into a snow bank. Luckily I showed up at just that moment and with a combination of putting my car rags under her front tires and me pushing the car from the snow bank, we were able to get her back out of the driveway so she could give it another shot.

We are a little curious as to why our landlord hasn't put an salt out, since he put salt on the pathway. Still, I sometimes get this crazy fear that if you put too much salt out and you put it out too often that the ice will somehow evolve into Super Ice, immune to the effects of salt, AND THEN WHAT WILL WE USE TO MELT IT?!?!?

Or it could just corrode my car, probably starting in the dent where one of my pot-smoking housemates hit it last summer. Speaking of Super, there is a Super Bowl going on today, so I must ice skate out of the driveway and over to the store.

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