And now, for superficiality...

Scene: A dorm room. Two girls talk. The subject of time post June 2006 comes up in conversation. Alex gets pissy.

Inna: Boston and LA aren't impossible for long distance...

Alex: Well, it hasn't even been discussed and we're probably not going to do it, so I don't want to think about it.

Inna: My friend and her boyfriend are doing New York- San Francisco....

(Alex looks at Inna's friend and her boyfriend on Facebook.)

Alex: See, the problem is, I think Jon and I may be more superficial than they are...

Inna: You mean better looking?

Alex tackles Big Morbid Subjects....

I just finished writing an email to my brother Charles' old nanny Jeanni, a delightful Canadian who lived with us for three years. My mother called me up frantically on Friday to tell me that she'd just gotten an email saying that Jeanni has been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma, and is starting chemo on Monday. I was to email her and offer my condolences/support.

What do you say to someone in a case like that? My email ended up being unsatisfactorily short, something along the lines of "blah blah blah was shocked by the news... I know you'll pull through it fine. You've always been a marvel of determination and strength, and you're right, your training in perseverance from rowing will pay off here. (Jeanni was an amazing rower, slated for the Olympics, until she HORRENDOUSLY injured her back. Now she coaches.)

She had mentioned something about needing hats for during chemo, so I asked for her favourite colour and mailing address, but at the same time... I don't know. I feel so inadequate in my response, but I didn't know what to write in the least. The woman lived with my family for three years, and we squabbled like sisters (I think she's only 5 or 6 years older than me) but we've fallen out of touch, and now I don't know what to write to comfort her. I hate situations like this. You just feel so powerless and unable to comfort, because there's not even the proximity, and then there's the whole "should I joke? be irreverent? be sad? scared?" aspect. How precisely to formulate the whole "oh my god you have cancer and I can't help but panic at the thought of this but at the same time obviously you're going to be fine there's no way you can't be fine heh heh who am I to panic, YOU'RE the one who has their cells going crazy" thought pattern in a sane, reassuring fashion? It's far too hard for words.

One of the things that I've always regretted was that the last time I saw my stepuncle Gherardo before he died of lung cancer (more like wasted away, actually... it was still treatable, with a high chance of success, when he was diagnosed, but then he just gave up the will to live, essentially) I was too shocked and scared to approach him for more than a few moments. In the span of a term away at boarding school, he'd gone from a delightfully witty, handsome lawyer who did magic tricks for his nieces and nephews to a shrivelled yellow doll propped up in bed. His skin was tight around his face, and his eyes, formerly always half-closed, were wide open and vastly disproportionate. I couldn't bear to look at him.

There's no real way to end this post-- more maunderings and regrets just come in when I try to stop. Suffice it to say that I hate these situations, that I wish I could DO something, and I wish I could've thought of something better to write Jeanni.

Anachronism

[Liza and Alex howl with laughter. Liza is crying from laughing so hard.]
Inna: Wait, why are you guys laughing?
[Liza and Alex point at screen]
Alex: That's Paris Latsis, Paris Hilton's ex-boyfriend.
Inna: Who?
Alex: Paris Hilton?
Inna: I don't even know who that is!
[Alex and Liza try to explain.]
Inna: But why would anybody care about her?
[Alex and Liza look at each other]
Alex: You know... I have absolutely no idea.

SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY!!!!

According to none other than our very own scientific expert Madam Liza S., using the mysterious scientific method of "write something the fuck down because it's due uhhh yesterday", the Universe is not, as previously conjectured by scientists, somewhere around 15 billion years old, but in actuality 1 times 10 to the 18th power. Now, let's see, what does that look like?

1, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000

Yes, that pretty much fits my conception of "REALLY FUCKING OLD". Lizochka darling, you're a genius. I don't care if they laugh at your answer. They laughed at plenty of scientific breakthroughs before this.

OK NOW HOLY GOD I NEED TO GO WRITE A BLOODY RESPONSE PAPER ON BLOODY MENTAL HOSPITALS OR I WILL BE KILLED BY MY LARGE SOUTHERN TF! She will attack me with her raspberry blusher, by God!

Phrase of the night

Ass petals!

-Inna

Multiple Choice

If you were my neighbours would you:

A.) Sing that "I'm a big big girl in a big big world" song soulfully and tunelessly, so that it resounds BEAUTIFULLY through the fire door.

OR

B.) Kill yourself for your lack of taste and vocal ability.

It's a tough call, really.

The Perfect Coat

Behold:

So bloody beautiful. And it would look so very bizarre on me. Ah well.

Snuffeln und Doezelen

After crowing about my TF's flakiness and how my section didn't have to do the special miniproject for my History of Madness classs, I met with her today and discovered a.) she's really sweet but b.) she forgot to tell us about the miniproject last Thursday, and OOPS it's due this Thursday!

Although annoying, this isn't all that big of a deal-- just looking at the available literature (mainly online) for two mental hospitals and comparing them to see what the face of residential psychiatry is for the interested public today. I'm probably doing good ol' Mclean and The Retreat in the UK, unless I can find something more interesting than Mclean. But ANYWAY, the POINT is that while poking around The Retreat's website, I found that one of the means of treatment for some of their more severe patients is something called Snoezelen. Now, what exactly is Snoezelen, you ask? Bearing in mind that it's casually plopped into a list alongside such innocuous-sounding courses of treatment as "Small group work" and "Quality of life sessions", my evil mind immediately assumed it was something bad bad BAD! involving scary butch nurses, restraints and electrodes.

Upon Googling, however, Snoezelen was revealed to be "a multi functional concept: In a purposely designed room (mostly a white room) the use of light and sound elements, scents and music initiate sensual sensations. These have both relaxing and activating effects on the different perception areas. The specific design directs and arranges the stimuli; it creates interest, brings back memories and guides relationships."

For some reason this isn't letting me upload the image of the Snoezelen Room, but click on the link and see how lovely and relaxing that looks. Mmm.

Olympic FEVER!

The Olympics are being held in my hometown, which means I'm supposed to be all excited about them. The sad truth is, beyond forcing Jon to watch the opening ceremonies with me (With intermittent cries of: "Look at the pan of the city! My house would be [points to somewhere four feet off the screen]! Isn't it pretty?!?!?") Jon decided to be nice and sit through the 2 hour show. We did not, however stay for the Special Treat. That was pretty ok by me-- at that point, my head had exploded from the combined hottitude of all the male skiers anyway. Something about professional winter athletes-- apart from the ice-skaters, the women show a startling tendency to look like their faces were scraped off a highway, but the weathering actually works on the menfolk.


Spirit Fingers has a rather splendid post about the positions male figure skaters get into (WITH ILLUSTRATIONS) here.

My other brush with the Olympic action was when I tried to go into the common room of Leverett G Tower to get a Twix bar this morning, and found myself confronted with a crowd of IMMENSE girls, all wearing head-to-toe Canada gear, intently watching the hockey. It was scary, I tell you. One of them could have BROKEN me, and I'm 5'9 and pretty good at defending myself. Scary Canadian hockey fans. Not that I don't love them. Just wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of any of these girls.

Sunday morning ramble.

Jon's sound asleep in bed, or rather thrashingly asleep in bed-- he just spasmed and said "wuh!" really loudly. I did one of my now-typical pop awake exactly seven and a half hours after I fall asleep things, which meant 11 since I feel asleep at 3:30. It's actually kind of refreshing to be on a regular schedule of sorts, and not lose time sleeping. Much more efficient.

Nothing really has been going on on this end. Dinner with Inna and Clay last night, which was quite nice. A lot of work, a lot of sleep, a lot of time with my boy. My parents have decided to crack down a bit this term, though they are being rather delightful-- my father and I have taken the unprecedented step of exchanging near-daily emails, not relating to financial matters, but just everyday chatting emails. I feel that by the time I graduate, two years from now, I might actually have worked out some sort of system of working with them. We shall see.

I dreamed about Sex and the City last night. I don't particularly know why, as I don't watch that show very often, though I do like it when I get into one of my spurts of seeing it. Charlotte was in the grips of a generic "pills" addiction, but then quickly switched to chalk. Big was in jail for embezzlement. Samantha started a porn site, and Carrie finally went bankrupt from the strain of wearing a completely different designer outfit every day. I never liked Miranda, so she wasn't present-- I think my subconcious nicely killed her off.

And now, having said nothing much at all, I'm off to do some Russian. I made my to-do list for the weekend (including, of course, things I had already done so I could cross them off) and was instantly glad it's a long weekend. I need to work HARD this term, equally for my parents as for myself, and I'll be able to do it, but it's going to take some restructuring of my time. I think I'm managing that right now, but we shall see.

Scammed

You know, there is just something the teensiest bit evil about people from Harvard selling books on Amazon to... people at Harvard, and then STILL charging you shipping, even though they just scrawl a name on the book and drop it into the interhouse mail.

With no return address, of course, so I can't hunt them down and demand my five bucks back.

Back!

Back from the mini-break, healthy and hearty. We went to Cape Cod, stayed in a delightful cottage, frolicked on the beach, and went to an amazing restaurant for dinner last night. I had elk... yum! Bloody! This morning-- woke up, managed to peel ourselves out of The Most Comfortable Bed on Earth (TM), went over to the main house, had immense delicious hunks of french toast for breakfast (Jon had three servings. I scarfed all the bacon-- actually, fed him a piece, which turned out to be the first piece of bacon he'd ever had... that's what he gets for dating a goy... does that word even apply to females? Am I being insanely offensive? ...I'm not quite up to date on code here. I GREW UP IN A CATHOLIC COUNTRY.) and then (after a nap) set off to explore the rest of the Cape. We made it all the way to Provincetown, blasting Southern rock all the way for no good reason. Leapt among the sand dunes, and watched the reddest sunset EVER before going home. It was perfection.

The bar has no officially been raised for future boyfriends. Read this and beware!

And on that note, I'm going to go read a really tedious book on Russian poetry. Coming up: Symbolic language! Whoo!

But then I get to go curl up in bed with my boy.

Gloating...

So, in certain circles it's been taken under advisory to not mention the existence of Valentine's Day, but... I just need to cackle gleefully. Skipping around my room, even, if I weren't seated on the futon, typing. In 3 minutes I'm being whisked away to (location as of yet undisclosed) until Wednesday night!!!

I'm being whisked away!

I tend to file V-Day under the category of "Holidays that depress me because they're so built up and then actually tend to sort of suck", though my past two haven't been bad-- last year I cooked dinner for Misha, and the year before went out to the North End with Thanos-- never mind that that one ended with me deciding to get trashed and get sick. But now I'm psyched. Whee!

More details to follow on Thurs, perhaps, as well as (hopefully) pictures of Trinidad and Tobago and a vague explanation of why I dropped off the face of the earth.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!