we live half at night

today's title comes from vcr by the xx.

i know i've posted this song before. it's just that good. listen to it again, okay?

i went on an adventure to central park and the mall with some of the hall-es. our main goal was chipotle for the burritos (successfully acquired), but we got distracted by other things. i discovered the wonders of the dollar store today! we played in there for a while - christmas decorations are already out. i was a little mystified. whatever happened to thanksgiving? does no one appreciate the turkey anymore? or wearing politically incorrect pilgrim and indian costumes? this is the backbone of our country, people! okay, nor really. whatever. it's still a time honored tradition. they were still fun, though. i'm debating whether or not i should decorate my dorm room for the holidays. i really want to (you all know by now how i feel about holidays - i'm already trying to organize a gingerbread house for the hall), but i'm not sure if it'd be worth it when we leave campus on december ninth. decisions, decisions (you all know how i feel about those, too).

after that, we went to target and played in the toy section. there's so many cool ones now! i don't know what it is about the holidays, but i always feel about five years old the second the weather starts turning cold. like, i have to bundle up in the puffiest, warmest clothes i own and the christmas socks come out...and so does the christmas list. would it be silly if i asked for this for christmas?

i mean, yes, it is a toy. but - it's buzz lightyear! and we played with it at target and it talks and turns toward you and has a spanish mode and everything. it's pretty much the coolest thing i've ever seen.

oh, and don't forget: chelsea v. liverpool tomorrow at 11 a.m. you should watch it. here's why:

listen to didier. it'd be a fucking disgrace if you missed it. tune in for the atletico madrid-real madrid derby tomorrow, too. it's always fun to watch.

oh, and you might have noticed that i finally changed my 'currently reading' book. i'm rereading extremely loud and incredibly close by jonathan safran foer for three reasons: 1. it's awesome. 2. i finally bought a copy of it and can see all the pretty pictures and word circling and the flip book at the back. 3. he's releasing a new book in just nine days and i want to get used to his crazy multimedia style again.

this new book is the real reason i'm mentioning it. i just preordered it (since barnes and noble is offering free shipping and if you preorder it online you get a much-needed discount, considering the downright cray cray original price of the book) and it looks amazing. see for yourself:

to explain what you're looking at, i'll just include the interview that first clued me into this book:

An enormous last day of life.

“Jonathan Safran Foer, deftly deploys sculptural means to craft a truly compelling story. In our world of screens, he welds narrative, materiality, and our reading experience into a book that remembers that it actually has a body.”
–Olafur Eliasson

Our early conversations with Jonathan Safran Foer aboutTree of Codes started when Jonathan said he was curious to explore and experiment with the die-cut technique. With that as our mutual starting point, we spent many months of emails and phone calls, exploring the idea of the pages’ physical relationship to one another and how this could somehow be developed to work with a meaningful narrative. This led to Jonathan deciding to use an existing piece of text and cut a new story out of it. Having considered working with various texts, Jonathan decided to cut into and out of what he calls his “favourite book”: The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz.

As Jonathan began to carve out his story, we started doing our production homework and literally got turned down by every printer we approached – their stock line being “the book you want to make just cannot be made”. Thankfully, we found Die Keure in Belgium who relished the challenge of making a book with a different die-cut on every page.

Over a year of writing, cutting and proto-typing later, comesTree of Codes, a haunting new story by Jonathan Safran Foer cut from Bruno Schulz’s words.

The book is as much a sculptural object as it is a work of masterful storytelling: here is an “enormous last day of life” that looks like it feels.

doesn't it look amazing? i'm excited.

random fact: i've been listening to the xx while i typed this. itunes is weird, though, so when i type "the xx" into the search bar, i get every song, band, or album artist that features two Xs and/or the word "the". which means i went from nice, muted, good-for-writing, indie techno pop to:

yeah, i don't know either.

fell out of a daydream

today's title comes from low road by grace potter and the nocturnals. she's my latest musical obsession. and, no, ginger, i don't care if you don't like her - watch the video, anyway. here it is:

 

due to my college-bound circumstances, i've been forced to buy her albums on itunes. they were so worth it, though. i'm listening to them right now. other recent itunes purchases (since today turned into a less-awesome version of music day): sharon jones and the dap-kings, tv on the radio's return to cookie mountain (since my less-than-legal version was a little lacking in quality), and a preorder of cutie and the followills' new album. it came with a free download of radioactive, also known as the new single with the ridiculous music video.

so...what's been happening in my life? not much, actually. college feels a lot like home, but not as nice. and isn't that weird to realize? like, it's more fun and there are always people to hang out with and things to do but...i want my dogs. and my bed. and my mommy coffee maker. speaking of the momster, she's on vacation with husband number three right now and keeps texting me pictures of dolphins and restaurants and food that i can't eat. it's highly depressing, especially since - surprise surprise - i'm sick. again. oh immune system, why must you hate me? at least michelle the hall-e/neighbor has vitamin c and cough drops and orange juice and managed to turn me into a semi-functioning person today.

class was actually fun, today. my chaucer class - aka the 300-level class that my advisor warned me was really hard - was hilarious. all we talked about was rocky and bullwinkle, dante, and chickens. well, chickens and roosters. and then to illustrate how hilarious the nun's priest's tale was, the professor made us all cluck and crow like chickens and roosters...for ten full minutes. and since our auditorium is right by the building's entrance and the door was open, we got a lot of weird looks. also, since i was still a little doped up on dayquil/cough drops/vitamin c, my clucking was...enthusiastic. let's go with that word. enthusiastic enough to get me singled out with other dozen or so "champion cluckers". why do these things always happen to me?

after that, we celebrated one of the hall-e's birthdays by surprising her with sherbet and ice cream and cake. oh, and we got her a balloon and nail polish. it was fun, since we surprised her with all of this - and singing - at 12:01 in the morning.

so, in case you couldn't tell, this post was actually started on tuesday. a lot has happened since then, so i'm just going to keep typing in this draft instead of posting the beginning of this separately. let's see...

i had my stats and bio tests on thursday and friday. they were both easy. disappointingly so, actually, since (as the oovoo munchkins probably saw) i stayed up forever on thursday night rereading the six chapters covered on my bio test just in case i forgot something. i didn't. it was possibly the easiest test i've taken in any science class since elementary schools. one of the questions asked where one goes in the event of a fire (one of the answer choices involved standing in a corner). i'm a little bitter.

to cheer ourselves up, the hall-es and i went to see toy story 3. we showed up a little late after dinner so we got to see it for free, even. it was awesome, and all of the hall-es who hadn't seen it before had the decency to tear up (take that, ginger). after that, michelle and i went to our round of club meetings. the last one ended around 11:30. so, walking back to our dorm in the dark, we're a little surprised to see a huge crowd of people sitting on the ground in a circle in the middle of campus walk. oh, i think. there must be a hippie club on campus.

...and then three of the hippies turn around and wave at us, and we realize we know some of them. it turns out that after our epic halloween idea thursday afternoon (we're being the disney princess ensemble - i'm jasmine!) the hall-es who didn't have club meetings decide to wander around campus. and somehow or the other they ran into friends and friends of friends and started a disney song hippie circle. one of the hall-es even has the disney treasury songbook with sheet music and lyrics for all of the songs from every movie. we made our way through a ton of them, scared a few passersby, and talked a few more into joining us. and then someone started singing airplanes and one of the new friends mentioned that if you look at the sky for eleven minutes, supposedly you'll see a shooting star. so, being sensible people, we all lay flat on the ground in the middle of campus walk at 1 in the morning to look for shooting stars...but all we saw was airplanes. and then lauren the hall-e had the bright idea to take us on a field trip to the old amphitheater (it's in this out of the way corner of campus on a hill backing the woods, and the back of it is crumbling off the hill so they decided to stop using it and let it just turn into creepy ruins) where we...were creeps, actually. it's good to know that i'll never have normal friends.

after that, we drew inappropriate chalk people outside the auditorium and hung out a little longer, before finishing a knight's tale (where i had the incredible brainwave that ginger could be the ginger in the movie. well, if he was angrier and cooler. maybe our goal should be to turn him into the ginger from the movie?) and watched get smart. oh, anne hathaway. your bangs are such an inspiration to me.

today we woke up in time for brunch. i broke a flip flop (that's the third pair since june. what's going on here? it's like karmic retribution since lulu isn't here to eat my headphones) and left my starbucks mug on a bench (it's okay - it was still there when i went back for it). mornings suck. we're doing homework now (or i'm supposed to be, but i figured i'd take time to finish this post since i've been such a lazy blogger) while we wait for our laundry to be done. and then we're going downtown to get stuff to make t-shirts for our glee watching party (next week! i'm so excited i'm just going to use a few more exclamation points! like this! !!!!!) and stationery (so i can write you all letters/send you postcards, etc.) and random things.

i'm going to go do my homework now. i really don't want to have to spend my whole weekend worrying about it. but, before i go, i'll leave you with a few more songs:

idk, idk. blame the hall-es. 

oh, and this:

that's right - 8:30 tomorrow morning. liverpool v. manchester united. don't forget to watch.

p.s. i'm watching this game right now. you should, too:

the list goes on and on

today's title comes from gives you hell by the all-american rejects/glee because it came on my itunes shuffle just now.

so, my first week of classes is almost over. i've actually managed to survive it. i even did laundry! and my roomies and i are now mostly unpacked. we're still figuring out how to organize everything. we're thinking of going to the mall this weekend to pick up a communal bookcase since, as you can see, my desk area is a little cluttered right now:

the mall is fun. there are actually two of them, right across the highway from each other - an indoor mall and an outdoor reston town center-type deal. we went the sunday before class started with michelle, chiara (she's an italian international student with a fancy coffee maker - i took it as a sign that we should be friends), and renata, my neighbors. michelle's the girl from fredericksburg that i mentioned in my last post. freshmen aren't allowed to have cars on campus but she got her parents to drop hers off for the day so she could give us the grand tour/we wouldn't have to take buses. she's got the cutest car - it's a bright yellow beetle. i'm in love with it. oh, and while we were in downtown fredericksburg, i found the cutest vintage thrift shop. it specializes in nothing but audrey hepburn memorabilia. like, it tracks down posters and post cards and replicas of outfits she wore in movies. i probably don't have to tell you this, but i stocked up:

classes started monday. it was pretty easy. i have my biology lectures and lab that day, but it turned out to be a lot of review from high school. i had a lot of sophomore year/s-la flashbacks. oh, and we got to play with tapeworms. that was fun. our tapeworm had spots and cute little goggle eyes when we looked at him through the microscope, so my partner and i decided to name him fred.

i've got three classes in a row on tuesdays and thursdays. two of them are really fun and one of them is stats. my chaucer and his age class is amazing. the professor is just like my ap lit teacher last year, which means everything is automatically funny. today we started out talking about chaucer's life and the various references he makes to religion/history/literature/nature/astrology/your mom and somehow ended up talking about mimes and how she still can't pronounce virginia place names correctly. i'm happy, because it's a 300-level english class and my advisor was all "caution! danger! danger, will robinson." but it's all good.

my other english class is global issues in literature, which is, predictably, depressing. it's also my last class of the day, so we usually go straight from there to dinner. not the best idea. so far we've been focusing on famine and poverty. as you may expect, these aren't topic conducive to a healthy appetite. thank god for to go boxes, i suppose.

tuesday was pretty eventful outside of class, too, actually. on the way to dinner we ran into a guy dressed like this, which i'm sure s-la will appreciate:

and i stopped him to say hi/tell him how in love with his shirt i am. (the friends i was with were mildly bemused but i think i'm training them to get used to the weird). after that came the awkward small talk phase that actually wasn't awkward because the guy told us the cutest story about how he and his friend were going to the dodgeball club game (side note: there's a dodgeball club. oh, college) and everyone was a little afraid of going now because two people who graduated last year had met at dodgeball and were now married. and then he asked us to go to dodgeball with them. which...no. i'm holding out for an accent or someone with proven culinary ability. we all know what happens when i get near a kitchen. it's a good thing there are dining halls/restaurants/takeout.

the takeout around here isn't bad, actually. i still haven't found a good thai place, yet, but we found a yummy chinese place that delivers and had a movie night in on wednesday. wednesday was basically a girls' night, actually. to begin with, the momster came to visit/drop off more things that i forgot. we walked around downtown with the lulus. i miss my evil little munchkins so much. i wish i could smuggle them into the dorm with me. they're so tiny, it's not like anyone would notice. well, not until every pair of headphones in the hall ends up in lulus evil clutches, anyway. still, we had a good time, see:

after that, we headed to the wonderfully air-conditioned library to chill in the tree houses:

while there, we discovered that one of my hall-es likes to dance while she's studying/listening to her ipod. we got the funniest video of it but i've been banned from posting it. oh, we also invented the term hall-e. it's pronounced like wall-e and it's basically the people who live on your hall. idk, it's just fun to write out. plus we had just watched wall-e (one of the other hall-es was showing it in her room and we popped in) so we sort of had it on the brain. then we had more animal fun times. first, we tried to lure a squirrel over to say hi with trash:

and later that night we saw russell the cat again:

club fair was wednesday night, too, so now i'm signed up for all sorts of interesting things. i'm excited. after club fair was the laundry party. me and six of my hall-es grabbed our laundry and met up to combine our laundry and get it all done together. our laundry room is in the basement, so it was good to have buddies down there. we ended up bringing computers and ipods and speakers and having an exercise/dance party since it took, like, two and a half hours to get everything sorted/washed/dried/folded/sorted again. oh, and in the middle of it, s-la, jenibean, and meggo were all "get on oovoo"/melodramatically asserting that i'm dead (i'm clearly not - look at me bloggling!) so i got on oovoo and talked to them/let them creep on us. it was pretty fun.

and then after that was a bout of creepiness/general hilarity that i can't blog about but am mentioning so you can remind me to text/call/skype you about it sometime. it's carried over until...now, actually (two of my neighbors, one of my roomies, and a couple of my hall-es are stalking the fourth floor while i write this), so you'll want to hear this eventually. i might get to be james(ina?) bond after all! and to think my second grade teacher told me being a super spy wasn't a viable career choice. that bwitch.

today i had three classes in a row again, so nothing too interesting happened. like i said, we took today to clean and organize and make a list of groceries to get (we're splitting breakfast and basic snacks with our neighbors so we can all have breakfast and decent coffee together early in the mornings instead of going all the way to a dining hall before class. i spent some more time studying in the tree houses with a few of my hall-es. oh, and we had a mini nail party in the lounge. there were so many pretty colors, i was a little overwhelmed. my fingers are now sherbet orange with a sparkle me silver top coat (OPI! i love my hall) and my toes are painted red hot chili pepper. after that we just chilled in my room and watched reruns of community and the office. oh, and we finally figured out the channel listings. that was exciting (well, to me, since we all know i'm a nerd). and now i'm blogging really quickly (in case you couldn't tell, i've been saving bits and pieces of this post as drafts all week long and was too lazy to finish and post it) before everyone comes back.

tomorrow i have my first revolution and cinema in iran seminar. i'm really excited for that class, in part because the kite runner is on the reading list for it and i really loved that book. wish me luck! and tell me how life has been for all of you. or get on skype. i'm sunandsilence (obviously). i need friends!