13 III 2002 - 17:08 - vita27

I'm vaguely considering the idea of making some pastries for Friday night but I know I probably won't go out and get the ingredients until Friday, making it more of a Friday afternoon project. I also know that the copy of the Moosewood Cookbook which my sister got me for Christmas is my new best friend. They have the best things in there (although they don't seem to be a fan of the nutmeg or the cinnamon, phooey. I'll just add some anyway.)

This is more of a placeholder entry than anything else. I'm feeling rather uninspired about the Ampersand topic this month ("curses") and aside from a short blip about how damn funny it is that in my friends it's the straight people attracted to the gay ones and vice versa. Also I should mention that the use of the adjectives "gay" and "homosexual" as substantives annoys me, because it's not solely what we (ha, speaking on behalf of the international homosexual conspiracy which we all know exists (goingtotakeovertheworld,ha)) are. Er, lost my train of thought there, but I remember that it annoys me. So not much about curses.

There's not much in my life. I should probably be doing homework right now but tonight's a light homework night as I have only two homework-bearing classes tomorrow and Friday I have off (which means that I have until Monday to do the rest of my homework.) If I were a good child (but I'm not, indicated by the use of the subjunctive), I would be doing my homework for Monday. However. Trigonometry has very little appeal to me at the moment, especially where the sums and differences of cosines and sines are concerned.

I was eating lunch with my friends today and somehow we got into a discussion about stripping, which (quite naturally for a group of young teenagers) led eventually into requests for a deal in which I would take off my shirt and another friend (female - most of mine are) would lift her shirt as far as her mid-stomach. Don't ask me why this was happening, or even why I'm telling you about it. It was rather interesting. You'll be glad to know for the sake of the free world that I didn't give in.

Also, a blood drive is taking place at my school. I'm not old enough (or, at the moment, heavy enough) to give blood, but I will next year, and every year after that until I get lucky. (If you don't understand that, go review the Red Cross's guidelines for disqualification of blood donors. And if you think it's sad that I refer to it as getting "lucky," well, join the club.)

Many of the people around me have said they will get things in our boxes in the student center by the end of today. To my knowledge, it hasn't happened (example of expected thing: graded English essay which I'm rather nervous about). Science these days is a sinecure (without segue); we're doing stoichiometry and percentage-yield equations, very simple, full use of the periodic table allowed. I'd fall asleep if it weren't for the fact that there are only fifteen people in my class and it's a small room. I have the feeling that a lot of what we're assigned is just work to keep us busy, which is never a good feeling to have about one of your classes. Undermines your faith in the system, which to be honest, doesn't really need it, not mine, not right now.

Faith, not system.

And in Latin AP today (which was also, because of the weird schedule, our last meeting for a week), we tried to put Robert Frost into dactylic hexameter as a metrical exercise. It didn't work very well - we were using "Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening" and didn't get even one line for our efforts. If that was all gibberish to you, perhaps it should best remain so.

My mother wants me to apply to a program which Stanford sponsors over the summer (QUEST) which, although it encourages everyone to apply, is geared towards low-income students. While we aren't rich, we're not low-income, and so this is the first stumbling block for me. The second is that my mother appears not to have read the purpose of the program: it focuses on environmental and medical studies (neither of which I have more than a passing interest in), preparation of skills for college application (which my school forces us to sit through as well), and outreach to my community, teaching them skills for college applications (again, the nearest community for me is my school, and... they force us to sit through blah blah blah.) Despite all of this she has remained quite adamant about wishing me to apply. Finally I wore her down to the point where she agreed to accept the arbitration of my sisters - so we'll see if that works. One of my sisters is in town at the moment - she's here for a New Century Chamber Orchestra concert - and so when she gets back from her rehearsal (around 8PM or so), I should be able to talk to her.

Drat. I have a lesson tonight. I'm out of practice and - but I don't particularly feel like practicing. What I do feel like is sitting in a dark room, lying awake, and listening to the thoughts careening in my head. Since it's not dark yet and my shades don't do much to keep out light (a reminder of the days when I was actively terrified of, rather than desirous of, the darkness which comes from effective shades), there's not much hope of that.

In order to make myself feel better, I've been writing a letter to Rachel. I'm not sure really how I think it'll make me feel better - it can't even be really that long because of how the sheets of paper/envelope ratio works with the boxed stationery I'm using (2 sheets per envelope), but it makes me feel odd that I should be writing a sort of apologia. To have some articulation of what I want does provide some clarity, but why am I doing it in a letter? I can only hope that she doesn't mind too much...

With the antecedent of the letter to Rachel, I now feel a bit more secure in mentioning that I have finished all the thank-you notes due from Pittsburgh (although I have yet to write my sister a letter; I've been meaning to do so for a while and thought that this would finally make me do it.) With the antecedent of the Stanford program, I can mention that the UC Berkeley intensive program in Ancient Greek (this year from 10 VI to 16 VIII, but I'm going to do it next year, I think) is something I hope to be doing the summer of junior year so that I might create an interesting independent study for my senior year, when I will have no language electives left to take. This of course fits into the consideration of my plans for the next two years which my school is forcing me to make (although to be quite honest, after getting our course catalogues, it takes very little forcing from the school to get me excited about this-all.)

I'm running up soon on a half-hour elapsed since I began this entry. That brings to mind the discussion we had, again in AP Latin, about the use of "a" and "an" before words starting with "h." Is there anyone out there who actually knows what the rule is? The best we could come up was that it was up to the writer, and that whether it was "a" or "an" depended on whether the "h" was aspirated. Is that an actual rule, or is that something we came up with from after the fact?

God, I'm tired, and I have nothing new to say, and some days I wonder why I write at all. (Then I remember how much comfort it brings me and in turn am comforted anew by the thought that none of you have to be here.) I'm looking forward to Slava's concert (15 April) and the War Requiem (October) and not at all to the upcoming Youth Orchestra concert (17 March). Maybe I can go into convulsions on the stage and so distract everyone from the quality of our playing. Although I don't know how they'd tell, with the Takemitsu, as long as we don't stop.

Instead of pastries, I am now vaguely considering the nebulous possibility of an Alexander in my future, not he himself (because I know better than to think him realistic) but one whose spectre is eerily like his.

I've got to stop this before something bad happens. Time to do some research on Benjamin Britten, Bee and Flower soap, and Tilden Park.

Take care; have as good a day as you can.