education (and hopefully edification)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    HUUKAY. Let's talk school. I just got my schedule for next semester worked out. This is what it looks like!

• HUM112. Civilization and Culture II: From the 16th Century to the Present. More history! Basically the second half of the history class I'm taking right now. Or rather the continuation. Or something. History. This is good because I already know I don't have to actually read for it to succeed.
•  BTS112. Old Testament Studies II: Psalms, Wisdom Literature and Prophets. (Christian college, we kind of have to study the Bible.) Same situation as history, only instead of doing "ancient civilizations to the 16th century" followed by "from the 16th century to the present," it goes first-half-of-the-Old-Testament (the Pentateuch and the historical books) to second-half-of-the-Old-Testament (psalms, wisdom literature and prophets, obviously). New Testament next year. I am so looking forward to the Prophets bit of next semester, I love me some prophets.
• ENG101. Composition, Writing and Research. Don't know much about this one. I'm going to be taught how to write things.
• ENG 201. Introductory Studies in Literature. Usually taken sophomore year, apparently, but all the other class options had prerequisites, conflicted with Old Testament, or sounded too boring/scary. Upperclassman Shelli says both English classes can be handled at once (she did it herself).
• PHL111. Introduction to Critical Thinking. I have only a foggy idea of what this class is about, but I've heard it's difficult and fun and makes one learn things.

    So that's three professors for five classes. History and Critical Thinkin' with Dr Mac, Old Testament II with Professor Mine Enemy, and  the English double-feature with the young, beautiful new English professor. I sat at lunch with her a couple weeks ago when Shelli took her to the cafeteria, she seems nice. We admired the reuben sandwiches together. She's tallish and dark and lean and well-dressed and I've heard that she owns a cat named Gatsby.

    WAIT WHAT IS THIS I AM NOT READY FOR ANOTHER SEMESTER I NEED CHRISTMAS BREAK TO BE LIKE AT LEAST TWO MONTHS AKGH

    (but! on the upside, no more math or public speaking.)

also, mattresses

     Dear Harriet Walter,

    You know what's awesome?

    Fred Astaire's spats are awesome.

    My ridiculous dog is awesome.

    Matt Smith's hair is awesome.

    Frosted brownies are awesome.

    Getting out of the shower the day after a blondey hair-dyeing (which turned out a little more bright yellow than expected), all ruffly-like, and having one's Krista burst out laughing and be like "Ruby, you look like a little chicken!" is awesome.

I have no regrets.

    And now I need a new word.

any day I get my head showered by someone else is a good day

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    whoa

    whoa

    hey

    like when did I get so self-absorbed?

    (Been reading over email correspondences from last summer and then my blog as it stands now.)

    I suppose when one is changing and growing, one has to keep an eye on the directions of one's growth.

    And my life is really seriously interesting right now. To me.

Here is a picture that is a picture of you and not a picture of me. Although I'm off-campus and so can only screencap from youtube and not my dvds.

     In other news, that was an extremely different Thanksgiving day. An excellent one. Never been apart from my family on Thanksgiving before. I am learning so much from hanging out with juniors. Today was full of card games and turkey and sparkling cider and lounging about reading J. Peterman catalogs and playing with dogs and and hair dye and sugar cookies and confessions under blankets and drawing and listening to my ladies express frustrations about frustrating Boys. Everything is interesting.

by the time I finished writing, Shelli was asleep

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Bwurrrtired. Thankfully, Thanksgiving (durr repetition) break has started today so I don't have classes for a week and I'm currently stationed at Upperclassman Krista's house, where Upperclassman Shelli and I are both spending break because Shelli lives in Michigan and I live in Oregon/Idaho/I don't even know where anymore and plane tickets are 'spennnnsive. Shelli is curled up next to me on the couch, working on a paper or something, and Krista is in the kitchen writing a paper or something, and I'm blogging like an unproductive person because I'm tired and I woke up really early to take a math exam this morning and I'm really sick of trying to work on my persuasive speech and blah.

    Krista has dogs. This makes me happy, I've missed having dogs around. Back home I had my dog and Best Friend had her nervous poodle dog and my Auntlet had two doggies and so I am just used to dogs being present.

Here is the fuzziest, darkest picture of Shelli (left) and me available, its fuzziness and darkness is comparable to a duckling covered in oil

     In extremely sad news, Right-Hand Man has informed me that the excellent Richard Morant, otherwise known as Mr Bunter, has recently died. This is dreadful. This is not particularly ok. He will be remembered.

    Goodbye, you beautiful, beautiful man.

    (i will hunt down season two of Captain Zep: Space Detective if it's the last damn thing i do on this earth, just for him)

I am so excited I could vomit

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    hey

    hey

    hey guess what

    guess what I just found out

    I just found out that my request to swap the order of my May Term spent studying Los Angeles (formerly supposed to be at the end of my sophomore year) and my two-or-three-week overseas immersion experience (supposed to be my junior year) was approved so now I'm doing my overseas trip at the end of my sophomore year and my May Term at the end of my junior year

     and if I had done my overseas thing my junior year I would have gone to the Caribbean but since I'm doing it next year instead, now

    I'm

    going

    to

    Israel.

This is me. Right now. Let's go.

i hate drawing on lined paper anyway

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    Here is a picture I drew in a notebook. I decided to draw a picture of Dr Mac in a spare moment between classes and ended up with a unicorn dripping with blood.

     Not a very close likeness, all in all.

slingshot/Vane

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    It was very difficult to keep from snorting out loud today in Old Testament I class. We were covering the end of 1 Samuel, which includes the story of David and Goliath, and Goliath was described as being a "man of war" and (for one perfect moment) my first thought was that we were talking about the Portuguese variety.

    In other news, Right-Hand Man is amazing. Look what he found to show me. Look look look.

Right-click, open link in new tab for bigness.

    Harriet Vane clothes. From the J. Peterman clothing catalog, circa 1996. Right-Hand Man hunted this down with his magical powers after telling me about it as an illustration of how awesome J. Peterman is and I wanted to see it so it was found. Isn't it glorious? Isn't it the most perfect thing of all the perfect things? i cannot even process what is going on right now it is so wonderful aahwenenbszasdnfrkjlfnwef

    I have the best friends. And I mean both that my friends are the best and that I possess all the highest-quality friends. I own the best of the friends, all the nicest, hand-crafted, imported, gourmet, high-end friends belong to me. Yuss.

like I needed another one

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    So I was looking at the complete class schedule for next semester to try and figure out what I was going to register for, and I was looking at who teaches which courses I was thinking about when I saw Professor Mine Enemy's last name in an extremely unlikely place.

    I hadn't heard of anybody else at this school with that last name, and it is a very very small school and we talk about professors all the time. It wasn't a typo, because it appeared in a similar context on two very different schedules and lists.
   
    I checked the college website's faculty page in alarm, but there was only one person listed with that name and that was him.

    I went next door to the room of the upperclassmen Laura and Laurelinda.

    "Guys! Guys! Do we have more than one professor named S--------?"

     There was a pause.

    "Yep, we do," said Laura.

    "Oh, thank goodness." I exhaled, and the sky was blue again.

    "You thought S-------- was teaching math next semester, didn't you?" said Laurelinda, grinning.

    "Yeah. That was...that was a bad moment."

    "That would be an intense math course," said Laura, laughing.

    I cannot even imagine.

hermit time

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I think I'll go abandon people and be a hermit in the mountains. I'll tend goats and strum lutes and wear long robes and not hurt. I'll give up materialism and vanity and eat clean things, and sometimes on rare Saturdays I'll wash extra thoroughly in my freezing river and put on a nice dress and a floppy sun-hat and white gloves and write the word hesed in the dust with a gnarly stick before going down to the city to be around busy people and cobbled streets and musicians and old theaters and fancy restaurants with outdoor patios, and I'll stay the whole day there until evening, when the lights strung between posts turn on, and I'll dance a while with somebody I'll never see again, and then at last climb back up my mountain, where my goats will make goat noises at me and will not have missed me.
    I will curl up in bed and breathe in the silence and let myself remember just for a moment how being around people can be a slow and painful death, and then I will fall asleep and the goats will eat the sun-hat which I discarded on a table.

    OKAY SELF SHUT UP, the people here are wonderful people and hermitage is not hygienic and everything is going to be ok

    Surely I'm not actually going to post this drivel.

    Here is a picture of a tiny turtle, for merit.