I was very sad to find out at the age of 12 that it was not, in fact, volumptuous.

Tall girl fetishes

For your viewing pleasure, I present: Tall Girl Stories! (Very safe for work)

And no, I wasn't surfing for this... I was sent the link by a friend.

Today I woke up with the voice of a blues singer.

Fussy's newest post has been the source of significant trauma for me. She talks about telling her son that his fish haven't died, they've just been taken to the pet hospital to be taken care of. Much laughter, until... My cat Joey? and my cat Booboo (yes, I was 4 when I named him)? Who were given to loving families who really really wanted cats? I'm terrified that I have been living a lie for 13 years.

I'm sitting in the library again, trying hard to cram for two exams but actually reading the archives of various blogs, and it may just be me, but... it does sound like there are strange yodelling noises occasionally coming out of the elevator. I'm scared. Also, the man in front of me has a very oddly-shaped head, rather like a kidney bean. I'm trying not to stare at it, but he has a shaved head and his skin is reddish-pink, and it's nigh on impossible not to laugh.

Alright, it's time for the last 10-minute push before going to my study session. I'm very sad-- this photographer, Klavdij Sluban, who takes amazing pictures, and who I've had a mini-crush on ever since I got to see him speak yesterday (which was amazing... it was limited to ten people (I got invited because I'm friends with the girls who organised it) is having a gallery opening today down somewhere near the Med School and I really really want to go, because he is fascinating and his pictures are beautiful, but I don't think I can go, because I have two stupid exams to cram for. Surely seeing amazing pictures of people in prison is a worthier cause than studying the history of psychiatry!

I have just successfully finished eating the enormous bag of candy that Calum bought me in celebration of his finishing his exam (still haven't figured out the logic in that one either) and to wish me good luck on my upcoming exam and to distract me from the fact that the lining of my throat is trying to cough itself out of my body. The licorice allsort-y goodness did its trick, but now I'm having to concentrate on the fact that i've just consumed the sugar allowance of Latvia and this just can't be good for me.

Ahhh! Review session!

The downside of going on the facebook in public locations.

When you're stuck in the library, say, writing a paper due in 5 hours, sometimes you go on the facebook. And then you come back from the bathroom and you realise that the person sitting with the clearest view of your computer screen is a good friend of the person whose photos you just went through for the past 20 minutes, and... you really hope they were far enough away not to recognise the profile.

Revised 20 Questions for the Procrastination Generation

OK, so... it's 12:54 am... VERY early Thursday.

When is my next paper due? 5 pm Friday.
How long is it supposed to be? ~12 pages.
Have I started researching it? Not really.
Do I have a CLEAR idea of what I'm going for? Nope, beyond themes of women and horses in Isaac Babel's Red Cavalry stories (marvellous, by the way!)
Have I at least read the subject matter? Yes, thank heavens, but I'll need to re-read it.
Am I pissed at myself for my horrible time-management? Yup.
Am I freaking out? Uh-huh.
Did I just cry on the phone to my boyfriend about this fact, in the library stairwell, for NO GOOD REASON other than the fact that I am really stressed, and I decided to be needy? That would indeed be the case.
Have there been weird hijinks going on in the library all night, such as people wandering around in their undies and a beautiful man wearing angel wings and a beatific smile distributing candy from a CVS bag? Either I am going bezerk, which is equally possible, or this is the case.
Am I probably slightly screwed? Hopefully not. But...

Those were only 10 questions, but I can't deal with inanities any more.

But, on the upside, I HAVE accomplished SOME things today, and even though I shouldn't be writing this right now, I just turned in my summaries for my study break, so I deserve a five minute break. I'm afraid I'm going to get wrist pains again soon, though. Ack.

Billie Holiday is single-handedly saving my life right now, for no good reason. I only listen to her on rare occasions, but those have been condensed into a couple sessions of her on repeat, and somehow, when she's singing about love and stuff, nothing can REALLY go wrong with the world.

I have iTunes on shuffle and the past three songs have been:

Drinking in LA by Bran Van 3000
California by Joni Mitchell
and Goin' to California by Led Zeppelin

I think the madness has officially reached the tipping point.

Superficial musings

Now, I ask you, why is a girl I hate wearing a bizarre, loose, red, orange and green plaid top with a white ruffled high-necked bib collar over a circle skirt and ankle boots? Is she doing this just to make my day? Is this a little present to me, her saying "yes, Alex, I know you glower at me every time you see me, and I know your boyfriend makes fun of my shoe collection. But I love you! Here! You see?" I don't know what it is, but it suddenly has made beings stuck in the library so much more exciting.

My god, I wish I knew how to operate the camera on my phone
.

Just to demonstrate how small and quasi-incestuous the Russian studies world is here:

I go to the library to look up books on Isaac Babel. SOMEONE has checked ALL of them out until September. My paper is due Friday. I contemplate crying hysterically. Alternately, murder might work.

I go online and whinge about this fact to Inna. Inna replies, "Hey! I think my cousin might have them. Here, let me email him."

Lo and behold, Inna's cousin is, indeed, the evil person who has checked the books out until September. (He is actually very smart and very nice, so my plan of murder will have to fall flat.) An email address is given! I can request the books from him! Whee!

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In other news, I was walking down the stairs after bathroom trip #37493827493827439287 (all that Diet Coke... it's bad news) and came upon some poor guy sobbing hysterically and saying something about not being able to bring himself to write some paper as his (female) friend held his head in her lap and stroked his hair. We've all been there, and for some reason this Reading period seems to be taking a particularly tough toll on people (perhaps the lack of sunlight? Maybe? Huh?) but I feel bad that he had to break down so publicly. Poor thing.

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In other other news, I got the cutest compliment ever from my father the other day. He called me up from whatever exotic locale he's supervising corporate finance in, and told me that he always gets choked up when he finds himself watching the tail end of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe on flights, because the girl who plays Lucy (who was literally the most adorable little girl to ever flash a freckled-cheeked smile across movie screens, I'm sure everyone will agree) reminded him so much of me when I was seven, except (he loyally added) that I was so much cuter and more adorable. Bless!

Sabine: What do you think of beards?

Alex: On men?

On another note, I have formally decided that when I grow old I am going to get a convertible with hydraulics and drink everyone under the table, just like my friend's Puerto Rican grandma.

*POUT*

My tummy hurts, perhaps after my orgy of gorging on chocolate chip cookies. And I have an oral exam tomorrow. And my paper is only 3 pages long, and, while this inital part is getting polished, it still lacks a certain "I actually researched this in full."

Thank heavens for extensions.

This is just to say...

I love words. More specifically, I love thesauri. Also, I love dictionaries, particularly weird dictionaries, such as the ones specifically for obscure words. I also love technical dictionaries in foreign languages. The terms you find in there are so delightfully useless for any practical purpose (hey! Just like the words I learned all semester in Russian!) and the books are so dusty and unused that it's a simple pleasure to flip through them. More than that, though, I enjoy that there are online dictionaries, for my paper-writing perusal. I miss my old dusty books, but when I'm delightfully ensconced on the big purple couch in Jon's room, tracking down a Webster's just is not going to happen. Sure, he's got a copy of Roget's Thesaurus, but it's all the way up on the top shelf of his bookcase, and I'm not going to get it. Nope, I'll just stay curled up in a ball and write away about human rights abuses, rejoicing in the fact that I can go to Dictionary.com and instantly find whatever strikes my fancy. Mmm-hmm.

Sunday secrets

Also known as the "I really have no driving urge to read a tome entitled On Soviet Totalitarian Psychiatry" post.

Anyway, here goes:

I get really really really freaked out by the X-files, and so have only ever been able to sit through 4 whole episodes, though my little brother is obsessed, and wants to watch them all the time. No particular reason.

Tea and biscuits.

Those would go over quite well, right about now.

But we're getting sushi tonight, so I suppose that's second best.

Back to Normalcy

It's Saturday afternoon, and the second and last production of Inherit the Wind is officially over. We got a standing ovation, just as we did last night, which was a nice touch, particularly as the entire cast was hung over from the cast party last night at the director's house. The party was fun-- particular highlights involved an insane faux-hawked Spaniard explaining in great detail just how it was he planned to burn down Tufts, and an in-depth investigation on the part of the females in the cast (all five of us... it's one of THOSE plays to discover just what precise sexuality ratios there were among the male cast members. After some indelicate questioning, the results were in-- a very surprising majority of straight men. Insanity! The production today went well, it seems, though there were a few minor glitches-- Calum rather spectacularly forgot a cue, and I had to fight hard to keep myself from falling asleep during the courtroom scenes. All in all, though, it was a lovely experience, and I look forward to the reunion whenever it is to get the t-shirts (which I designed ALL BY MYSELF) distributed. Now, however, my hand is bizarrely spasming, and I need to buck up and face the harsh reality of looming deadlines (GAH!), so it's off to the land of library books I go. I shall post pictures of the play (particularly of my spectacularly psychedelic costume) whenever I receive them.

Ow, a piercing whistle just went off. I don't think it was an alarm, though. Weird.

Blame the Sky

I'm library-blogging again. I'm supposed to be researching humour in Tolstoy, with specific relevance to courtship, particularly since I'm supposed to discuss this idea eloquently tomorrow at my meeting with my professor, but somehow the draw of the loaner computer ("to do online research") proved too strong. Ah well.

A few days ago I interviewed for Response, a phone counseling line for girls that deals with relationship issues, particularly rape. I've been interested in this subject ever since a good friend of mine was raped a couple years ago, and I had to talk her through the entire process by phone. She's from a very conservative background, so there was nobody else to whom she was willing to turn. I was doing my backpacking in Wyoming at the time, so I wasn't able to talk all that much, but I was able to talk her through it, convince her to get a rape kit done, and to go talk to an actual counselor. She decided not to press charges, as it was a very complicated situation.

Terrifying as that situation was, it was also interesting for me to be able to see the whole process of treatment and dealing with rape. I've been interested in counselling for a while, and function as a general sounding-board for a lot of my friends, so I've long been anxious to do this in some sort of official capacity, since listening is one of the skills I actually have.

Unfortunately, however, I checked my email last night to find that I had not gotten the position. I find this grimly ironic: the girl who had to leave school for a year after spending too much time shoring up her friend's emotional issues and literally being on suicide watch, who everyone she knows turns to at times of emotional distress, can't get a position at a rape and relationships hotline. The interview was tough, particularly the second scenario, which started out with a girl telling me about her nightmares and ended up with her admitting that her parents beat her and starved her. I think I did well on all the other parts, but the second scenario terrified me, simply because of not knowing what protocol I was supposed to follow on handling that sort of situation, tacked on to nerves due to having two people watching me. I know I messed it up somehow, but I'm just really frustrated because helping people and listening to them is one of my best skills, and here I can't do anything. In the evil quitter part of my mentality, it just kind of justifies why it is I don't really do extracurrics-- if I can't do the one thing that I actually really cared about doing, why bother? Foolish logic, I know, but a logic I follow far too often.

I've emailed them asking for feedback on the interview, and now... I don't know. Again, I'm really frustrated, just not knowing why, even though it will gnaw at me when I actually do know why. Maybe I will do one of the other groups they suggested, but the petulant part of me just wants to curl up and sulk and dwell. I'm going to try not to do that right now-- I have papers to write and Russian to learn. But still-- ARGH.