The internet makes people stupid, Part 2

A couple of weeks ago, I sent my parents a list of things to bring me from America. This evening, just a few minutes ago, I got the following messages, which I swear I have not altered, except to change our names and add one clarifying note.

[12:33:21 AM] Dad says: We just took a quick look for the Damon Runyon books, and didn't see them.. Do you know where they are?
[12:34:18 AM] Dad says: Also, this is the list 'o stuff - Are we missing anything?

(Ed. note: Antares' Original List, With No Alterations)

Contact lens fluid (Optifree if possible)
Earplugs
Aleve
Sudafed
Skippy creamy peanut butter
Fluff
Taco seasoning
Reese's cups
(if you have time for this) a pair of cheap sneakers from payless, size 9 and a half.
you already have socks and underwear
Damon Runyon books (exercise room, bookshelf closest to the computer.)
[12:48:33 AM] Antares says: yes...the Damon Runyon books are in the exercise room. on the bookshelf closest to the computer.
[12:49:30 AM] Antares says: i think that list is complete.
[12:49:51 AM] Dad says: Good, we'll look for the books.

I spoke plain English in my original list. You all saw that, right?

No, I'm still alive. Seriously. You checked 5 minutes ago.

My parents have IMed me on Skype pretty much every single day since I got here. They ask me how the weather is and what I'm having to eat today, just to make sure I answer. It got really old really fast. This week I didn't really answer them much, and they got agitated. I'm really confused for several reasons:

1) I'm 24. If I can't take care of myself by now, I pretty much deserve to get run over by a bus or die of gangrene caused by not doing my laundry or whatever else they think is going to happen to me.

2) I'm seeing them in a few days. This really should cause a relaxation of their apparent "Ask Antares what she's eating for dinner and confirm she's still alive" policy. They can come check for themselves.

3) I used to e-mail them every day when I was at school in California. They didn't like it much (that's what they said, anyway) so I stopped doing it when I came here, and now they freak out if they don't hear from me for two days. I guess they considered California to be relatively benign.

4) Are they doing this because England is a foreign country? Seriously? The only country I can think of that might be less scary for me to go to school in is Canada. Maybe. Really, people, England is civilized. You can drink the water over here and everything. Frankly, California was scarier by several orders of magnitude. There was a carjacking at a stoplight about 50 feet from my apartment, students used to get mugged every night, gunshots and screams from the alleys on my street were not an unusual occurrence. I did not share any of this with my parents at the time, of course, because I am not an idiot. Maybe I should have.

I really, really hope that they will come here, spend the week, realize that England is not crawling with land sharks and suicide bombers, and go away and Skype me once a week.

My favorite part of all this obnoxiousness is the fact that, if you ask them, they will proudly declare that they are not Helicopter Parents. No, indeed. Judging by this past semester, I think it's only because they can't afford to come visit David and me every week.

Staying at school over the holidays = not cool

It's now winter break, and all the food places on campus are closed. The only thing open was the cafe by my dorm, and it wasn't selling sandwiches today, just coffee and freetrade chocolate. I'm used to just buying a sandwich or something when I get hungry, so I only keep snacks in my room (cereal, NutriGrain bars, oranges). I went into town for the day so there would be food around when I got hungry.

I spent most of the day trying to keep myself occupied - if I just went into town and bought hot food and went back to campus, it would get all cold and gross by the time I felt like eating it. (This is what happens to you when you spend two months only buying food when you get hungry - the idea of planning ahead is bizarre and perplexing.) So I hung around until dinnertime.

First, I learned that it is impossible to get lost. I decided I would wander around, even though it was light out and I am a night wanderer, so I walked to a section of the city I hadn't been to yet, but I kept reemerging in familiar areas. That only killed off about 2 hours.

Then, I thought I would go to the cathedral and do some sketches of the exterior sculptures to use in my drawings later. I learned that if you are close enough to see the details, there is nowhere to sit, and if you move back to the wall, you can't see well enough to draw anything. I am sitting on the wall riffling through my sketchbook and sulking, when something hits me in the middle of the back. I have been befriended by a tabby cat, which is now annoyed that I am not paying attention to it. I had no idea the cathedral area had a cat. My dorm area does, a tuxedo cat with a neon yellow collar, but that one isn't quite so insistent.

About 3 hours in, I get bored and wander into Primark, where I find a bra in my size. This is a minor miracle, as I am a 34E and usually have to settle for 36DDs.

After 4 hours of struggling through the crowds, I decide I have had enough and buy a sandwich from a street vendor and head back to school. On the way back I remember that today is my mother's birthday.

Help! People notice me!

I was under the impression that I've been flying under everyone's radar (which, yes, is a very bad thing to do when I think I need letters of recommendation not only to go on to another program, but to give to the immigration people so I don't get sent back to America in September.) This week, I discovered that my Egyptology professor knows my name and background. I was completely disturbed. I don't think I've said more than three or four sentences to him the entire term, and I figured he didn't know who I was, because I'm used to non-art professors not giving a flying fuck who you are if you don't go to office hours every week and make a nuisance of yourself. But I had to go to his office hours on Monday because of this awful assignment, and he already knew who I was and started talking to me about my art background, and today I discovered that he's been marking me present every day even when he doesn't pass the attendance sheet around. So, now I'm wondering if they actually read all our files, or if our tutors warn people we take classes from. "Watch this one. It escaped from an art program."

It did get me an A on his midterm, which soothed my poor bruised perfectionist ego after those two B's. Apparently, being able to long-windedly explain your interpretation of Egyptian art is almost as good as actually knowing what the hell you're talking about in the first place, which I don't.

The Parts I Leave Out When I IM My Parents

"There's a lighted Christmas tree on top of the tallest building in the school"...and I use it to keep track of where the campus is when I go wandering alone at night.

"I didn't get to the downtown library today"...the street was blocked off because of the bomb scare.

"Yes, it's okay if David stays here with me so you don't have to get two hotel rooms"...even though he's now the sort of person I would never speak to if I didn't have the misfortune of being related to him.

"Grandpa sent me a birthday check, so I went into town today to send him a thank-you note"...and I used the money to buy the British Harry Potter books.

"Yes, I am trying to figure out a specialty so I can pick a thesis topic"...when I can tear myself away from the paleopathology textbooks.

"I'm thinking of getting my visa status changed and getting a job here next year"...because I'll miss you, and I'll miss NephthysWrath, but I don't care if I never see America again.

Dear Flatmates,

Please stop playing loud, horrible music and scuffing your feet up and down the hall. I am about ready to snap.

I realize it could be much worse; you could be like those people I lived with at USC who puked in the showers all weekend. But it's the last week of term and I'm tired, goddammit.

That is all.

Wow.

...I was talking to one of my friends today about crummy assignments.

N: "...and I had to do a bunch of drawings of Mesopotamia for this one guy. Ha, his name was Professor Snape. He was kinda grumpy."

Me: "Well, can you blame him? I mean, I think I'd be pretty cranky."

Jeebus. If I were him, I'd have changed my name ten years ago. I have the horrifying idea that he's probably published under it, though.

The suckiest week that ever sucked

Monday Morning: I go to my Romanization class. It's a seminar day; I am in the upper level. Only one other person shows up. The professor is unperturbed and proceeds to ask the two of us a lot of horrible questions about why Septimus Severus was going around sticking government buildings in tiny frontier towns. I leave after an hour feeling like I've been run over by a train and hating both Septimus Severus and my professor for ever existing.

Monday Afternoon: I get to my second class and am informed that the midterm I turned in weeks ago on a memory stick wouldn't open. I am skeptical because I have been having computer trouble, so I was extra careful to make sure this file worked before turning it in. I take the memory stick to the library and the file opens fine on their computers. I take the memory stick home, open the file to make sure it is still working, and then e-mail the exact same file to the instructor. I am informed ten minutes later by e-mail that it worked fine. I spend all afternoon with the distinct impression that I am being jerked around.

Monday Night: I am sick all night and do not get to sleep (food poisoning).

Tuesday Morning: I get two of my other midterms back. I have B's on them. I don't know what pissed me off more - the fact that I got B's and I need A's to get into a PhD program, or the fact that, after walking into an advanced degree program knowing basically nothing about the subject and managing to pull B's on my midterms after only a month, I am angry at myself. I need slapping.

Tuesday Afternoon: My tutor sends out an agitated e-mail regarding next semester's courses. I am suddenly reminded that I forgot to sign up for next semester's courses. I race to the office in a panic and get the office assistant to register me for what I think are the right classes. I get home and find out that I got one wrong. I have to go back and get the office assistant to reregister me. I am sure that by the end of this exchange she was hoping I would get run over by a truck as soon as I stepped out of the building. To make things even better, there was an associated series of e-mails that were also sent to my tutor, so now he knows how stupid I am. I found him quite intimidating enough before this.

Wednesday: I gloom around all day. I go to a seminar, which sucks.

Wednesday Night: Someone is trying to microwave frozen bread in the dorm, and they set off the fire alarm at 11 pm. I was already asleep. I had washed my hair about three hours earlier and it was loose and damp. I have to drag myself out of bed, pull out my earplugs, find my glasses (I HATE WEARING GLASSES), stuff my feet into shoes, dig my coat out of the wardrobe, and go stand in the freezing cold for half an hour in my dorky pajamas with the owls on them and really spectacular bedhead. Not cool.

Thursday: My parents Skype me. My dad tells me that I will have to write better papers if I want to get into a PhD program. YES, THANK YOU, I HAD WORKED THAT OUT FOR MYSELF. Also, I discover that the hidden objects on my hard drive have been multiplying. (My computer has been infected for months now, and I can't fix it. I will have to reformat over break.)

Friday: I go to Egyptology and learn why sitting in the front row is not advisable. For our group project, the front row group is assigned a high priest, on whom there is absolutely no information to be had except for a couple of stelae. We have to write 7 pages about this person. I want to stab myself in the eye.

Friday Night: I drink and watch movies that contain my celebrity crush.

Saturday: I have to buy presents for my family. It is ridiculously difficult. Today, I learn that the city's high street is precisely lined up with the winter sun, so that if you are walking one way, you can see fine, but if you walk the other way, you are absolutely blinded. I am more photophobic than a rabid dog, but I walk around for two hours with my eyes watering and squinched shut before giving up and going home. On the plus side, despite how crowded the streets are, no one shoves me aside, which is what usually happens to me in America. I get home and find another white hair.

Next week had better not go this way.

The internet makes people stupid

My family is visiting me in England for Christmas. I have to keep David in my dorm room with me. That means my parents have to dig up one of my air mattresses and bring it with them. I have two - a single that will fit on my floor, and a self-inflating double that won't. They are pretty impossible to confuse, given that one is very large and comes with a pump, and the other is very small and does not. My parents know this, as they have used the air mattresses before.

My dad came on Skype this evening and said "I found an air mattress. How do I tell if it's the single or the double?" The man has an IQ of 180ish.

I wanted to shut my head repeatedly in the wardrobe door.

I can't feel my face!

The good part? I can walk around in the dark by myself all I want. (I mean, technically no one was stopping me in LA either, except the fact that my neighborhood was like a war zone and I am a solitary female.) I love walking around in the dark by myself. Not being able to do it in LA or at home in NJ was making me crazy. And it gets dark early here.

The bad part? Jesus H Christ on a pogo stick, it's cold out there at night.

Totally unrelated: I bought another book today. I'm beginning to think I might have some sort of hereditary susceptibility to the gravitational field of bookstores. I wonder if I walk crookedly down the street as I come under their influence.

The Return of the Book Man

I've been having a terrible week. I won't go into specifics right now because I just don't have the energy, but it's really been bad. Normally, when I am having a terrible time, I buy books. (I buy books all the time, of course, but especially when I'm having a terrible time.) I managed to avoid the campus Blackwell's, but I took a shortcut through the student guild hall and the Book Man was there again. I gave in to the inevitable, wandered around a bit, and chose a medieval history book (I came to the conclusion about a week ago that I will probably end up in Medieval Studies, and I should stop fighting it with Egyptology classes). I bought that, figuring at least it was cheaper than a new book, and the Book Man said to me, "You were the one that bought that big book on William the Conqueror a few weeks ago, aren't you? Are you enjoying it?"

And I was rather freaked out. For a brief moment I had the impression that no one else could see the Book Man, and he was sent here specifically to lead me straight into temptation, to the point where I will be unable to drag my suitcases down the stairs when I go. But then I realized that students eyeing the books for 20 minutes or more with expressions of conflicted desperation are probably not that normal.

Current book count: 38.

Say What?

There's nothing quite like IMing your parents when you're completely annihilated on Strongbow and cheap chardonnay.

That's all I have to say. Because, obviously, I'm completely annihilated on Strongbow and cheap chardonnay, and I don't want to incriminate myself any more than I already have.

It's...it's like being back in America!

Yesterday, I heard that Woolworth's had been put into receivership. Not cool - where else am I supposed to get cheap stuff? So, this afternoon after my Egyptology class, I headed down to the one on the high street. I needed cheap bed linens for when my family comes for Christmas (my parents are staying in a hotel room that I booked for them, but I have to keep David in my dorm room) and I wanted to try Pic 'n' Mix, since it's supposed to be the highlight of British Woolworth's.

I got to the high street, and discovered that it was completely blocked off. Apparently, there was some sort of bomb scare - I heard that there was a briefcase left unattended, but I'm not really clear on the details. Apparently, they were taking this very seriously - they had cordoned off the part of the high street that I needed to go through. (To be fair, the city did have an actual bombing earlier this year. My mom does not know this, and no one should tell her.) I stood around for a while and watched, as most people do. The bomb scare was very American, but the scene itself was so overwhelmingly British that I was fascinated.

Everyone just stood. They talked quietly among themselves and occasionally craned their necks over the barrier. No one shouted or pushed. Eventually, they got bored and walked away, and other people took their place. Some kids accidentally snapped the barrier tape ("Oh, my God, it was you, Sam!" "No it weren't!") and no one proceeded forward through it. The police wandered around but didn't make any loudspeaker announcements, and everyone behaved themselves. It was the weirdest thing I've seen so far.

I took pictures, but sadly I cannot post them, because there's a very distinctive piece of public art on that section of the high street.

Eventually, I, too, got bored and wandered on to Woolworths, using side streets. I got my sheets, some tinsel garlands and LED Christmas lights, and some Pic 'n' Mix. (Pic 'n' Mix is amazing. I'm sorry I'm only discovering it now. I will have to make as many trips as I possibly can before a Tesco replaces the Woolworth's.) Then, I went home. I haven't heard any explosions, so I assume the high street is safe.

Whine

My mouth is improved. Which is good, because I had the following conversation with a British friend:

Me: So, how hard is it to find a dentist around here?
Brit: *politely attempts to stifle incredulous laughter*
Me: I thought so.

So I have not been to see a dentist. My mouth issue has cleared up somewhat, which means that I was probably right and it's just some localized gingivitis or something, but now I'm worried that the gum is going to slough off or do something equally disgusting.

All of my midterms are in. Unfortunately, I volunteered to do the final presentation for one of my classes early, on Monday (I always do this). And now I don't wanna. It's for the class in which I learn how to beg for grant money, which means they don't care what I say, but they do care if I say "um" too many times or my Powerpoint looks terrible. It will not surprise you to learn that I'm a godawful public speaker, and I've accepted that I'm not going to do well. I've come to terms with it. I care about my grades (um, obviously) but the best I can hope for in this class is a pass. But, it was recently brought to my attention that the British find American accents even more amusing than we find theirs. I don't want to stand up there and give a long presentation in my funny accent!

My hair is thinning. It has actually been thinning since this summer, so this has been going on for quite some time now. It's beginning to get on my nerves, though. It's not even so much that my braids keep getting thinner and thinner and I keep having to readjust my updos for thinner hair. I don't think it is a health issue - a lot of people go through a shed in their early twenties, and I think this might be mine. (I'm in my mid-twenties, but whatever.) And my hair has merely go from "thick" to "average", so it's not like I'm dealing with bald patches or anything. But my god, the shedding! I have to pull clumps of hair out of the rug every week. It's disgusting. I'd like for it to stop. There's also the fact that, if it starts to grow back in, I will be right back to having a tapering braid. I just got done with that last year! Argh! I'd probably have to cut it up to shoulderlength and start all over again, and then I would be cranky and miserable because I'm vain about my hair. It's not the end of the world. But it is pretty damn annoying.

Teeth, Part 2

I'm many, many miles away from my dentist, so of course I'm having a mouth issue. Anywhere thousands of miles away from your dentist is apparently the prime location for developing mouth issues. I remember, with a distinct lack of fondness, getting my wisdom teeth taken out over winter break during my junior year, recovering wonderfully for a week, and then getting on the plane to go back to school and promptly getting dry socket infections. Stunning.

So far, this problem is not quite as bad. But the gum over my right top canine has been a little sore for a week or so. I barely noticed until this morning, when I looked in the mirror and noticed that my gum is receding from my tooth. This is a Bad Sign of epic proportions. First, because I am prone to periodontal disease (thanks, Mom) that probably means the bone is dissolving away as I sit here typing, and second, because I do not have a dentist here in England. I have free health care. But, from what I understand, most dentists have completely full practices and are not accepting new patients, so to get seen I would have to join a private practice, one I am not covered for, which is obscenely, ruinously expensive on my current budget (think something along the lines of $700 for a visit, roughly converted.) Dude, that is a month's worth of food and supplies and miscellaneous expenses and probably some of my housing, right there.

Of course, I told my parents about this, and both of them freaked out. My mother was rather hysterical, actually. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the money, even though I kept bringing that up over and over again. I mentioned in my last Teeth entry that they have huge obsessions with teeth, right? Yeah. They have good reason to have them. You see, my dad has the normal amount of cavities for someone who grew up before fluoride treatments, but my mother has probably the worst teeth in the western world, and periodontal disease along with them. You can't tell from looking at her, because if there's one thing my parents will spend money on it's teeth, but she has lovely porcelain crowns and has had several root canals and has sand packed into the dissolved bone under her gums from advanced periodontal disease. I have already been to the periodontist several times because my orthodontist thought I was having an issue with bone dissolving as my teeth moved, and my dentist keeps up a morbid and rather excruciating examination of the bone between my back molars every time I come in.

Anyway. They freaked the hell out. I mean, I know gums receding are a very, very bad thing, especially on someone like me, but by golly I must go to the health center TOMORROW and if they can't help I must get to a private practice dentist the VERY NEXT DAY and in the meantime I must rinse with Listerine every thirty seconds and possibly dance and chant and burn incense as a preventative measure, too. Because they know from painful experience that if I have a minor infection and they have to give me $700 to get some antibiotics to fix it, they are getting off cheap and easy compared to what it will turn into if I don't fix it right now. Dental problems never go away, they just get worse until you give in and pay to fix them, the problem area falls right out of your head, or the resulting abscesses eat through your skull and kill you (have a look at a paleopathology textbook sometime.)

So, to sum up: My gum is receding. I have to get it looked at, and I don't know where to go to do that. I am not going to have a fun week. And I love my parents.

Things That Have Made Me Happy Lately

Terry's chocolate oranges
The Illusionist
Having three of my midterms turned in ahead of schedule
Gone With the Wind (I do actually have a short list of romantic books that don't make me ill or homicidal. Connie Willis wrote most of the others.)
This. I laughed and laughed and wheezed and then laughed some more.
Tesco's diet lemonade
My sketchbook (for some reason, all the best art is done when you're supposed to be doing something else; I should have left art school earlier.)
Discovering that England still sells my favorite old-formula Herbal Essences
Primark (socks! I found socks!)
Navel oranges
Melatonin and earplugs (dorms suck)
My tiny DVD player and the stash of X-Files I brought along
The tiny fish-shaped bottles of soy sauce that came with my sushi (the sushi itself was the most awful thing I've experienced so far this month)
Blackthorn cider
The weather (rain makes me happy. Don't ask me.)

killed off my evening with the Dacians and ancient Britons, and...

Remember how, in high school, once a year or so you would get assigned a 10-page research paper? In English class? Or sometimes social studies? And it would be a huge giant deal, and you would get a week of class time in the library to do it, and the whole thing took a month? And, during freshman and sophomore year, it was assigned in stages so your teacher could check up on it?

These days, 10 page research papers take me three days, research and everything. I weep for my youth.

What election?

The British people I know are really concerned about this election. It was exhausting to talk to them today, and as a result I have really had enough and am going to try not to think about it anymore (yeah, I'll still end checking the coverage every fifteen minutes though.) I voted several weeks ago by absentee ballot - and if you haven't voted yet, oh my goodness, what are you doing sitting there?

Totally unrelated - did you know Pandora is blocked in the UK? You can't listen to it here. (Okay, you can. Nothing is impossible on the internet. But you have to do some things of questionable legality.) Instead, you can listen to Musicovery. Personally, I like it better than Pandora and will probably stick with it if I do end up leaving here at the end of a year (more about that later.) Maybe you'll like it better than Pandora too! Try it.

Socks

So I was talking to my mother the other day, (she IMs me on Skype every few days, mostly to ask what I've been eating lately, I'm not sure why) and I mentioned that I keep having to do laundry because I run out of socks. My mother promptly responded, "When I was in grad school, I knew a girl who had 50 pairs of underwear so that she wouldn't have to do laundry as often," which, in her own special language, means, "Go buy some socks, you stupid girl!" (In retrospect, I really hope the 50 pairs of underwear girl wasn't my mother.)

Therefore, yesterday I went out to buy socks.

If I were in America, and I needed socks, I would go directly to Target, buy two packs of white cushioned ankle socks, and be on my merry way. Therefore, it seemed logical to go to Woolworth's, which was the only Target-equivalent store I could think of.

No socks. Maybe, I thought, British people just don't wear socks?

I wandered bewilderedly about for a while, and then had a thought. Maybe they keep their socks in shoe stores! I wouldn't buy socks in a shoe store in America, but what the heck. And they did have socks, but they were only in children's sizes. I have big feet, so that wasn't going to work. It wasn't a children's shoe store, so I really don't know what that was about. Okay, I thought, maybe only British children wear socks?

I had another thought, and went to an athletic store. They had socks! In packages! But I picked one up, and the price made my jaw drop. Okay, only British children and very rich people wear socks.

I still don't have any more socks. And, as though they sense my predicament, all the socks I brought from America are developing holes. It's kind of shameful. I'll go back tomorrow and try once more for socks. Any suggestions?

Things That Still Unsettle Me

Dumping out my change purse this afternoon to see if I had enough money in it to do laundry tomorrow and get ice cream this evening without going to the bank. I do. In fact, going by the current exchange rate, I have about $30 in there. I'm not used to coins actually being worth so much.

Laundry. Back home I do laundry with reckless extravagance. In the summers, when I was staying at the coast house and it was hot and there was no air conditioning, I would change my clothes 4 times a day - go running, shower, put on pajamas, sleep, get up, get dressed, go for a walk, change out of sweaty clothes, shower again, put on another set of clothes, lounge around, put on running clothes again. I did a lot of laundry. Here, it costs $4 to run each washing machine, and $2 to run the dryer. The machines are tiny. I blow about $12 every wash day. (Currency converted for your convenience.) Needless to say, I have begun to resort to the dreaded sniff test for items such as sweatshirts, instead of just throwing them in like I would at home.

The peanut butter. I do not have the words, but I'll try. It's oily. It's bitter. It has mysterious flecks of wrongness in it. When you try to scoop it out of the jar, it oozes back off the knife. I have already Skyped home and begged my mother for Skippy.

I have, for the most part, gotten used to the way British people speak. I've never been one of those people that could imitate accents, so I have resigned myself to getting more and more annoyed with the nasalness of my own voice and the way I don't pronounce my t's. However, I am never going to get used to the way they spell artifact as "artefact." As you can imagine, I have to look at this spelling a lot, too. I complained about it to one of my British acquaintances and even she admitted that "artefact" looks completely wrong. Seriously, I can kind of understand your shoving extra vowels in anywhere, and I can ignore your "aluminium" weirdness, but why change the spelling of "artifact?"

The weather. I used to try to check the weather on the BBC site every morning, but it lies through its lying little teeth. Really, I'm not sure anyone could predict the weather here anyway. It rains out of sunny skies. Or the weather site will say "heavy rain" for the day, and there will be 5 minutes of drizzle and then sunshine all day. Or the site will say "sunny intervals" and it will begin to hail, as it has been doing this entire afternoon. I just don't know. I have at least learned to always carry an umbrella (you can buy them in the vending machines, too.)

Dear Mr. Book Man,

Please, for the love of all that is good and right in this world, stop setting up your book sale in the building I have to pass through to get to the rest of campus. I realize that this is shrewd marketing on your part, but I'm begging you to stop. You see, strange things happen to me around books. The first week I was here, I was walking into town in search of a power strip and a working alarm clock, and WH Smith sucked me in and I bought seven books all at once. (There is actually a reason why this is not as insane and irresponsible as it seemed, but I'm not going to share it here.) That same week, I went to the Free Stuff giveaway for international students in the hopes of scoring some shampoo or something, and I got two books instead. (They were free, but this is not the point.) Last week, I had my birthday, and I experienced that peculiar gravitational warp I always seem to get around large amounts of books. I got sucked into a Waterstone's and ended up with three more books (two of them were just terrible, too. I struggled along for about a hundred pages, and then, once the author had described the heroine's eyes as "flashing" for the third time on a single page, I quit in disgust and fled back to my battered copy of Fire Watch that I brought from home. "Chick Lit for the thinking woman," my ass.) And I have shamelessly used the "textbook" excuse to score four more books from the campus Blackwell's. And, just last week, I walked past your shameful display, and the gravitational warp set in again. A book on William the Conqueror leapt off your shelf and into my hands, and a banknote soared out of my bag in your direction. It was all over before I even knew what was happening, and I don't think it's quite fair.

All told, I have acquired seventeen books since I got here. I didn't mean to do that. It's perfectly fine to acquire books when I'm at home; my parents grumble a bit, but they only own four bookcases between them and leave books strewn over every vertical surface in the house, including the kitchen counter, so they don't have any real grounds for complaint. I still have room in my bookshelves. BUT THESE BOOKSHELVES ARE BACK IN NEW JERSEY. You know, that place way the heck over there? That it costs me $1 to mail postcards to? And I'm only allowed two pieces of luggage when I go back there, and the two I brought over were already nearly twice the permitted weight? Yeah. I only meant to buy textbooks if it was absolutely necessary, and to get the rest of my reading material from one of the two libraries I have finagled access to. See how well that worked out for me? And it's only been three and a half weeks. AND YOU ARE NOT HELPING.

In conclusion: stop it. Stop it immediately. Go away and take your books with you. You are not welcome here.

Love,

Antares.

PS - I realize it's been a while since I've posted here. I've had some problems with my Blogger account. I was having problems with some of my university accounts, and these obviously took precedence. So, I'm sorry for leaving you hanging, but not all that sorry. I'll try to be back more regularly.

Weather

So, I'm being a little slow to learn about British weather. Yesterday it drizzled on and off all day. Whatever, New Jersey is like that a lot. Today? Wow. There was sun in the morning. There was sun when I got out of my first seminar. There was sun all the way up to the point where I sat down on a bench, extracted my sandwich and a book from my bag, and started to eat, and then suddenly, from out of nowhere, there was a downpour. What the hell?

Then it happened again this evening. I said to myself, "It's nice out there. I'll take another walk to the library and poke around some more." I spent a pleasant 10 minutes wandering through all my favorite sections (I made a note to come back for that book on Aging in Ancient Egypt) and then I walked out again straight into a downpour. Of course, I didn't have an umbrella. Why would I have an umbrella? I was only warned to always carry an umbrella about nine million times.

Apparently this is perfectly normal for England. During my second seminar, the woman talking to us said "We've already had sun, clouds and rain today. We even had sun and rain at the same time. We haven't had snow yet, but it's only 2:00 pm, so there's plenty of time." Okay. Never forget the umbrella. I get it already.

Another thing I'm having problems with is walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk. If I'm walking, and someone is walking towards me in the opposite direction, my first instinct is to move over to my right-hand side. Unfortunately, the British move to their left-hand side. It's the same thing with doors - entrance is usually to the left, and the exit is to the right, when my instinct is to go the other way. My dad also warned me a couple of hundred times to look the opposite way when crossing the street - cars come at you first from the right, not the left - and this is a huge problem for me. I have obviously not been run over yet, but I always forget.

I'm working on it. Still no signs of real culture shock, though, just little irritating things like this. I keep waiting to see if it's all going to drop down on my head right when I have to start classes. So far, I've had less trouble than I did adjusting to California. How sad is that?

Don't Tell The University I'm Hiding In Here

I don't have anything related to classes until Monday, apparently. However, the university has evidently decided that the best way to keep their internationals from having meltdowns is to keep us too busy to sit down, start thinking about things, and freak out, so they've given us a little booklet full of things to do, marked by things we absolutely have to do, things we really should do, and things that might be fun. (This is actually a brilliant idea, and exactly what we used to do when I was working as a camp counselor - keep the kids completely occupied until they pass out, exhausted, at bedtime, and that way there's less crying.) They're also really, really big on us joining several of their millions of societies and seem to generally disapprove of us staying in our rooms doing nothing but study. I'm doing my best, but I can only take social interaction for so long. Today everyone is supposed to go and meet up in their department and meet their tutor and all that, except apparently for archaeology postgraduates, who don't have to do anything until next Monday. I might go out later and look for free food (free is good when you keep having to double all the prices in your head to remind you how much you're paying) and set up my bank account, but for now I'm just trying to finish unpacking before I get dragged out again to do something else.

Traveling, dorms, and how some British guy almost scared me to death

I don't really remember a lot of yesterday and the day before, but I'll share anyway.

My parents got me to the airport about 5 hours early, bought me lunch, stood around and watched me check my luggage (took forever), wandered around the airport with me for about another hour, and then finally said goodbye in front of the security line. They were distinctly freaked out. I don't blame them. I was distinctly freaked out during my entire first flight and kept having the "What have I done??" thoughts, until around the time I landed in Dublin, at which point my brain decided that the best way to deal with all of this was to pretend it wasn't happening.

By the time I got to Heathrow I was in a serene daze of unreality. The university's organization there was a complete clusterfuck and it took them three hours to get us all on their transportation and start taking us to school. I stood around with my suitcases and other dazed international students for quite some time, but I don't remember most of that. I kept dozing off on the way to school, so I don't remember much of that, either. I remember staring calmly out the window at sheep and Car Boot Sales and thinking "This isn't really happening. I had my life all planned out and there was nothing like this involved. I'll wake up and it will be early February and none of this will have occured."

By the time I got to school I was filthy and mostly asleep. I got my room key and someone took me to the dorm, and some guy took my suitcases from me and carried them up the stairs for me (which was probably the best thing anyone could have done for me, because the thought of trying to get them up the stairs made me want to burst into tears). The dorm is...scary, but I didn't really have the energy to deal with it and merely went "oh. wow." I showered and went out again because I was supposed to, called my parents from the first telephone booth I saw (I only had three free minutes on my card, so it was a "Hi I'm here I'm alive everything is alright bye" kind of call), skipped the party I was also supposed to go to, bought some scary prepackaged thing in the student union (which they apparently call the student guild hall here) and passed out.

Before I left, I read that there are three distict stages of culture shock. In the first one, you are incredibly enthusiastic about the new culture and tend to write home and gush about it. In the second, you realize that things don't work the same way there and become resentful. In the third, you get used to the differences and are comfortable there.

I seem to be going through all three at once. I am wildly enthusiastic about the Ben & Jerry's vending machine outside my dorm, I'm kind of appalled by the dorm itself, and mostly everything seems okay to me. Except for the fact that I can't have anything from the library until my student card is activated tomorrow, that is.

The dorm was built about 768945067 years ago, give or take, and whenever I told a student helper which one I was in they would laugh knowingly. It's a little scary in here. It's divided up into sub-dorms which are basically giant apartments with 12 bedrooms, a kitchen, a tiny lounge (the 12 chairs and coffee table take up all the available floor space) and a shower, bath, and two toilets in their own separate rooms. The whole thing is incredibly narrow and blocked off by fire doors at random intervals. If you are standing in the hall, there's barely room for another person to get by. The toilets are the kind with an overhead resevoir that flush with a chain, and the shower is basically a closet sized room with the spout on one end, a drain on the floor, and a hook at the other - in other words, it just leads directly to the hall, which I found really weird. There's also a random room with a connected sink and tub and overhead racks, which I hope to God isn't intended for laundry. (This is what I get for saying "Meh, better to live in the cheapest dorm and save money.")

My room is actually kind of nice. It's not very large, but it's bigger than I thought it would be. It's kind of cinderblocky and the bulletin board is frankly gross-looking, but it has a bed, a bedside table, a huge wardrobe, a sink with mirror and light, a desk and padded swivel chair, bookshelves, and a carpet that really looks too nice for a dorm room. The pirate flag will cover up a good percentage of the bulletin board (yes, it was terribly important to bring!). I would actually rate it higher than the room I had at Pardee Tower, where you didn't want to walk barefoot on the rug and you had to keep kicking the closet door back into its slot (oh, USC, how I do not miss you) - everything is in good shape. Also, once I found the Ethernet slot (in probably the last place you would look, except maybe for the ceiling or down the sink drain) it hooked me up immediately without demanding that I tromp across campus and register my computer and router and wait 24 hours for Internet access (oh, USC, how I hated you outright).

I got a little activity booklet and have been spending today doing what it tells me to. I went and heard people talk about the college (of course, as all colleges do, they talked about their Most Famous Graduate - someday, I may have to admit who it is and where I am, as I'm currently having to omit a lot of funny things to avoid giving away my location), I got given free stuff, and I got my student ID. I also found out why the place took me, although the guy checking my documents had to scare the bejeezus out of me so I could. I went to show the admissions people my passport and diploma as their letter told me to, and they guy asked for my graduate anthropology degree. I beg your pardon? I have this fine arts degree here, and some transcripts, and, um...Much muttering to the supervisor ensues. It seems they admitted me because of the anthropology classes I took at the community college (and, presumably, the volunteer work at the dig) and they thought I had a diploma to verify that. Um, no. They kind of went "Oh, okay," when I explained about the classes, and they approved me for full admission, so I'm hoping everything is alright. I didn't lie on the application (obviously) so I don't know where that came from. Hopefully, there's no basis for the archaeology people to give a howl of outrage and boot me back to America.

Anyway, I have more things to do just now. I'm sure I'll have more to write about later.

I'm here!

You can all stop worrying now.

Believe me, I have plenty to write, but I haven't slept in 30 hours, not counting the times I dozed off sitting upright. You'll hear more when I'm recovered.

Packing List

So, I'm supposed to leave in three and a half hours (seven hours early for my flight - I do acknowledge that you should leave a lot of extra time for international flights, and that this new airport, which I've never been to, is scary to drive to - but still, my mother is insane) and I thought I would update this before I go.

What I'm apparently doing is flying from here into Ireland, going through customs there, and then flying on to England, where the school will retrieve me from the airport (good, because jetlag makes me cranky, irrational and totally unable to understand train schedules. Plus, I have this luggage.) Anyway, this Ireland thing seemed like a good idea in June when we were making reservations, particularly considering how much more a direct flight cost, but now I'm beginning to not be so pleased with it. The problem is that I think I have to uncheck my luggage, drag it through customs, then recheck it. I do have a long enough stopover to do this, but I'm feeling less than enthusiastic about it (jetlag = cranky). I'd really be more than okay with them rifling through my stuff without me, as long as I don't have to haul it around a strange airport and then wait in line to give it back, but unfortunately I don't get to make these decisions.

Anyway, I most probably won't update again until at least Monday, since by the time I get to school on Sunday I'll probably just do a faceplant on the bed. (The school has some kind of party on Sunday night for international students, even though we all have to arrive that day for them to pick us up. It is to laugh.)

Also, I will now share my packing list (with commentary!) It's going to reveal how horribly spoiled I am. I won't even try to defend myself. It's also broken into rough categories for your convenience, even though I suspect it's totally useless to everyone who isn't me.

Packing List

Bathroom:

• Sudafed and Aleve (if these two things can't fix me, I know to go to the doctor - and I think they are controlled over there)
• DivaCup
• toothbrush/paste, floss
• contact lenses/saline solution (I was warned that saline solution is obscenely expensive over there)
• glasses
• makeup/nails
• razor
• bathrobe
• vitamins
• hair towel
• handmirror
• retainer (I still have to wear it a few times a month. It sucks.)

Accessories:

• earrings
• heels
• running clothes/shoes
• shower shoes (NOOOO! I thought I was done with this!)
• scarf, hat, gloves
• raincoat (when the Californians warned me about the terrible cold, I knew to laugh at them. When the British warned me that an umbrella doesn't always help because the wind will blow all the rain under it and soak you anyway, I figured I should take them seriously.)
• sewing kit
• hair accessories
• purse (and this was when I realized I didn't own one)
• messenger bag
• thick socks (instead of slippers, which I never wear)
• watch/rings/necklaces

Carry-on:

• underwear, shirt, socks, deodorant, soap (In case my luggage is lost)
• USC diploma, transcripts, extra passport photos (wacky things the school asked me to bring for no discernible reason)
• Handbook For Clueless International Students (which the school sent)
• International Student ID Card (is also a calling card and travel insurance)
• British money
• driver's license
• umbrella
• fleece jacket (which I borrowed from NephthysWrath when her family took me to New York last weekend, and intended to return, until her mother bequeathed it to me)
• books (I seem to be down to ten, so not all of them will be in the carry-on, obviously)
• markers and tiny fuzzy posters (which NephthysWrath gave me last night to amuse myself with on the plane)
• finger puppets (which another friend gave me ages ago to amuse myself with on the rides to and from California)
• coat (it's too big to pack and would take up half a suitcase, so I'll just carry it along)

Electronics:
(Obviously, some of these will be in the carry-on)

• laptop
• USB hub
• external hard drive
• portable DVD player
• MP3 player
• digital camera
• router (my dad has firewall paranoia; I find it best not to argue and just drag the thing along)
• surge protector
• microphone (for Skype)
• adapter
• converter
• clock radio
• cell phone and charger (it doesn't work over there, but it does make a good emergency alarm clock)

Bedroom:

• Photos and postcards
• Cross-stitching (you have to have something to do that has nothing to do with your major, so going through the library's history books is no longer an option)
• pajamas
• cookbooks (vegetarian, and with very simple instructions)
• stuffed animal (I brought Procyon the puppy when I realized Regulus the lion was going to take up too much luggage space. Yes, I do amuse myself.)
• clothes (wow, was that the least helpful item on the entire list?)
• journal
• cinnamon tea (I'm pretty sure England has tea, but this is the only kind I can stand to drink hot)
• map
• sarong (I did not pack this because I can't find it, but I firmly believe that everyone should pack a sarong)
• bathing suit
• laundry bag
• pirate flag

So, there you are. I hope the curiosity wasn't killing you or anything. I'm also bringing two suitcases. NephthysWrath packed the first one for me because she can fold and I cannot, and she darn near got it down to one suitcase, but it was five pounds overweight and I wasn't quite done yet, so it was better to split it into two. (Plus, whenever I do come home, if I don't bring about 20 pounds of chocolate for my mother, she won't let me back in the house and will simply leave me at the airport. Therefore, I need to have extra suitcase space. You only think I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect.)

Right. Assuming I don't have catastrophic technical difficulties, I will see you all on Monday.

Thanks for that

I'm working on a longer post, but for now I will just say this. The very best way to describe my dad, so that you can fully appreciate what it is like to live with him, is to describe what he's been doing while I've been packing. He got me an external terabyte drive for my birthday so I could put my movies on it and not have to lug millions of tons of DVDs to England. While I have been preoccupied with procuring clothes and money and a raincoat, he has been sneaking movies like Arsenic and Old Lace and My Stepmother Is An Alien onto it.

Pretty much the entire goal of everyone in my family is to annoy the living crap out of each other. He wins this round.

More Packing, and The Trainwreck Keeps On Skidding Down The Rails

There isn't all that much new. I do finally have a packing list, though (NephthysWrath helped me - turns out these things work better when you categorize the items, as opposed to making one long list in which you write things down three times. Dur.) It's even marked by Things I Must Buy, Things That Are Sitting All Over My Floor (they actually aren't anymore - they're in piles by category), and Things That Are Hidden Somewhere In The House. Thank goodness for friends with tidy minds. I'm trying to take care of the last category during the rest of this week, and then this weekend NephthysWrath is going to help me buy and pack everything. (Come on - packing is much more entertaining when there are two people and pizza involved.) I'll post the packing list later. The packing lists I found online were thoroughly unhelpful, which is why I kind of had to make my own from scratch, so I figured I would throw another one out there. Mine is probably thoroughly unhelpful to everyone else, too, but I'll post it anyway.

In other news - my mother is currently fluctuating between "I thought I raised David better than this! *sniffle*" and "Why the hell is that boy so gullible?" with a side of "Couldn't he find anyone in L.A. to date?" She was beginning to calm down until he called last night and set her off again. My dad is still not home, but when he gets home tomorrow night I predict much entertainment. She currently has some sort of Evil Plan in which my dad finds some excuse to accompany David to the city. I am grateful that I never brought anyone home and that I only have to listen to this for about nine more days.

The Great Family Trainwreck of 2008

subtitle: Why I Am Suddenly, Since The Last 24 Hours, Wildly Enthusiastic About Leaving For England And Possibly Never Coming Back.

I would also like to point out, before I begin, that I am the only completely innocent person here, so why I am receiving waves of hostility from both sides is totally beyond me.

So my brother met this girl on World of Warcrack. (I'll pause for a moment so you can all react in the appropriate manner. Done? Good.) Apparently they hit it off rather well and have been talking daily for the past couple of months, and now it's getting rather serious and he would like to go to her city and meet her. He does have enough money saved up that he could probably manage it on his own if he needed to, but he'd rather our parents knew and approved, which is good. The only problem is, our parents are....they're....well, let me put it this way; if I were in his place, I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer being ripped apart by enraged hyenas to discussing this with them. They may be the two awkwardest people alive, plus they're sarcastic, and my dad in particular will tease without mercy. That doesn't really explain, or describe the cringing horror I feel at the thought that someday, if life doesn't go as I plan, I might have to ask them to invite my boyfriend over to visit, but it's really the best I can do. So, he IMs me first (he is currently back at school in California) to ask me what I think he should do, which I really don't blame him for, and I am as sympathetic, non-awkward, and unsarcastic as it is possible for me to be. I told him, basically, that he should call our mother and explain the situation, as I thought, at the time, that she would react better. This was yesterday.

I have to admit, at this point, that his description of the girl raised a couple of red flags for me, but as I don't know the whole situation (this is the first I was hearing of it) and I figured he would discuss it in more detail with our parents, I issued a small caution but I didn't do anything else.

I really don't think he could have blown this whole situation better if he'd tried. He called the house, I heard my mother pick up the phone, and I went upstairs to make my bed and shift the piles of England stuff around a few more times for no reason. There's no shouting from downstairs, so I figure it's going okay. Ten minutes later, my mother knocks on my door, and proceeds to blow a gasket. At me. My mother does this thing where she is very diplomatic for up to about 15 minutes at a time, and then she can't hold it in any longer and explodes without warning, and I got caught in her path. (It's always me. I don't know why.) So she apparently was very calm about explaining that she didn't think he should go because he didn't know this girl, how did he know she wasn't an axe murderer or covered in hair, how does he know those pictures she sent were even of her, all the sensible things you would ask in that situation to make sure the person is still here in reality with the rest of us. And then she dragged me out and said everything she really wanted to say to him but couldn't because she was being diplomatic - what a damn naif he is, this girl is totally raising red flags, doesn't he have more common sense than this, if he had dated more in high school he'd have a damn clue and we wouldn't be having this problem now, etc, etc, you get the picture, I'm sure.

I made a tactical error here, I have to admit. I did tell him that it was best to just discuss it with them, but my mother reacted to the fact that she had never even heard about this girl and now my brother was telling her about everything in a five-minute blurb and oh, by the way, can I have some money to travel to this other city, which won't be cheap. You need to give her time to adjust to these things. I remembered, too late, that when I wanted to apply for grad school in a different major I spent weeks carefully prepping her. If you spring things like this on her suddenly she blows up. Given how thoroughly unperceptive David is, I really ought to have warned him about this, but I just didn't think to.

The other problem is that he couldn't have timed it worse in terms of our finances. He just got an expensive apartment and furniture, we just paid my housing deposit and tuition for both of us, and, best of all, our parents just booked flights to England to visit me for Christmas last night. If you're going to ask them for something expensive, you have to time these things better or be careful how you ask, and he apparently hasn't learned this lesson yet.

So, while I was attempting to calm her down or at least remove myself from the line of fire, David was brilliantly compounding his error by calling our dad (who is away from home right now). I wasn't able to warn him not to because my mother had sprouted tentacles and was sucking me down into her vortex of righteous anger, and I'm not really sure what actually happened there anyway. David told me later that Dad said it was okay if Mom said it was okay, but as he completely failed to pick up on how Mom was mutating and growing fangs even as he spoke to her, so I don't think that's what was actually meant.

Then, once I had gotten her to let go and her eyes had stopped glowing and faded back to a dark yellow, Dad called her. She took that one in the bedroom, and by this point I was attempting to stop David from compounding the problem by calling her yet again (he's such a boy, he simply has no idea) so I really don't know what happened there, either. So, at this point, my brother is playing Romeo on my computer screen, telling me that if Mom doesn't let him meet this girl he will hate her for ever and ever omg, and my mother is standing in the doorway snarling through a mouthful of teeth like a deep-sea fish that by golly that dumbass kid isn't going anywhere until after Christmas break, and during Christmas break we are all going to visit me in England and we are going to have a family talk (translation - my mother is going to do her damndest to talk him out of it, and for some reason I have to be there). It was all rather uncomfortable. Then my mother stomped off to bed, snorting smoke and dragging her tail, I spent another half hour talking David out of any more phone calls and trying to contain the damage, and now I am really looking forward to putting an ocean between me and my family and trying desperately to think of a place to be on Thursday evening when Dad gets home, any place at all that isn't here.

So, to sum this up - my brother has a secret girlfriend, and wants to meet her, and thought the best thing to do would be to spring this on our parents all at once just as they are preparing to live on pasta for a month while they pay off expenses (not really).

Well played, Scorpius family. Well played.

My Cousin

I should probably share more about this.

The essential problem we have is that my cousin and I could not be more perfect opposites if we had been designed that way. I am a night person; she is a day person. Most emphatically a day person. I have skin so pale you can see all the veins right through it; she has a dark tan. My hair is so straight and flat that if I am not careful the tips of my ears poke through it; she has a headful of wild curls. If I were an outside observer, I would refuse to believe the two of us were related.

Sharing a house was a terrible, terrible thing. You see, I'm not really a fan of the sun at all, or heat, or summer in general, so when left to myself I go running at sunrise, come home, sleep through the hottest, brightest part of the day, do yardwork or take a walk once the terrible yellow hurtball is below tree level, then stay up all night working on the inside of the coast house, studying, or stargazing. My cousin is a fan of lying in the sun all day and playing our grandparents' phonograph at top volume. Seeing us do yardwork together was an education, I'm sure. Since I was up against my will anyway, I sat on the patio scratching unenthusiastically at weeds and moss and trying to stay in the shade while my cousin rampaged around me, trailing thorny vines out behind her for twenty feet. Then there were the "peaceful" evenings, with me attempting to study Latin at the kitchen table while my cousin divided her time between talking at me and talking at her cellphone (it will not surprise you to learn that she comes in one volume, and that volume is Loud.)

I did go to the beach and the lake with her. I'm proud to say that on these occasions I managed to drive her nuts right back. I refuse to go to either the beach or the lake during the day, because I have to spend half an hour carefully applying sunblock just so that I can get burned anyway, and also because I refused to shave my legs just to go swimming, and no one can see your leg rug in the dark, if there were anyone there to see it. And it was my car, dammit, so if she wanted a ride she was going when I said we were going (the beach is easy enough to walk to, so it wasn't like I was being unfair.) Plus, in the dark it is easier to give the impression of listening to someone when you are really floating on your back with your ears underwater, admiring the Summer Triangle (that's one good thing about her, once you get her talking she doesn't need any input from you to continue and you can ignore the one-sided conversation relatively easily.)

There was also the spider thing. Spiders don't bother me. Normally, they sit in their webs and you sit in your chair and you can ignore each other, unless it's a wolf spider, in which case they are easily stomped on, or unless it lays eggs in my bed, in which case war is declared. Plus, having spent more time in that house than anyone else, I learned relatively quickly that if you try to get rid of all the spiders, they'll all be back within a week anyway. I really don't have the energy to commit mass spider murder every week, so I just ignore them. She is afraid of spiders and apparently could not. So, every few minutes she would shriek at top volume, stuff some poor spider in a jar, carry the thing outside (slamming the door, of course) and dump it. It grew old after about the third repetition.

There was also the various miscellany - "Why don't we take these enormous electric recliners over to the senior center and donate them?" (Because I have a sedan, you twat.) "Why don't we give the kitchen a yellow accent wall, they're so in style in NYC?" (Because the kitchen floor is a blue-gray, the opposite wall is panelled in dark wood, every other wall in the house is white, and accent walls will be back out of style in about 30 seconds?) There was the scraping of bikes against doors I just painted, the spilling of something horrible down inside a stove burner, the running of cardboard-soled shoes through the washer so that I got to spend a lovely afternoon picking cardboard shreds back out of it, the suggestion that we dip the antique mandolin in bleach to clean it, and all manner of similar things until I'm pretty sure that if I beat her repeatedly over the head with a bicycle pump and threw her in the cesspool no jury would convict me.

The very best part? Last week she sent out an e-mail telling us all what a wonderful vacation she had and how the two of us bonded so well. A clear indication that she is living in a universe perpendicular to the one the rest of us inhabit.

Packing

So, further updates? Well, I got my visa about four weeks ago (it only took them about two weeks to process, which was awesome), and I got back from the coast house a week ago, and ever since then I've been spending 95% of my time in a warm pink state of denial. During the other five percent, I have the sudden impression that my well-trained life has slipped its leash and is escaping down the street, with me running after it shouting desperately "No, wait, come back! I was just kidding! Can we talk about this?" and then I sit there in a cold sweat for about 15 minutes.

Anyway, I leave in less than two weeks, and I am in bad shape. I still do not own a winter coat (well, I technically do, but it doesn't fit all that well and is too short, but I never cared because, hello, I spent last year doing that thing where I dash coatless from my car to a building, and the four years before that in Southern California.) I also have no suitcase (David took both the big ones that used to be mine and left me the little gray one we use for week-long trips) and no clothes. Well, I do have clothes. I just don't intend to take them with me.

Here's the thing with the clothes. Three different people have told me on three separate occasions that I need to clean up my act and stop dressing like I rolled out of bed and pulled a pair of jeans off the floor (perceptive, you guys) and my dad put the final nail in the coffin when he asked "What's wrong with your clothes? You're wearing the same outfit I am." And indeed I was. None of my clothes fit anyway because of the aforementioned running shrinkage, and I really can't put off replacing them any longer, even though, it will probably not surprise you to learn, I hate clothes shopping. My friend NephthysWrath has offered to come along, which is good, because she has discounts, and because I don't trust anyone else to tell me that the top I'm trying on looks peculiar on me. My problem is that I have no idea what the heck my body looks like anymore - sometimes I look in the mirror and see a normal woman, sometimes I appear to myself to be six feet wide - and no matter what kind of a day I am having, every time I step into a dressing room, I invariably think "Good lord, I look like a manatee that's been squeezed in the middle," and from that point on I couldn't tell you if anything I'm trying on fits correctly or not. (I think it's the overhead flourescent lights.) NephthysWrath is one of the only people in the world I trust to tell me if my bra strap is showing or if I should really try that in a larger size, so she gets to come.

So, once I have solved the coat, clothing, and luggage issues, there are about a squillion other things I still need to deal with because I've been carefully ignoring them all summer. I have to transfer software onto my laptop because I have to go back to making do with only one computer, and I have cleverly divided all my software between the computers I use now (why? because I am a moron, that's why.) I have to locate things in the mass of boxes I had shipped back from California last year and stuffed in the garage. I have to figure out how to bring movies along with me, because I CANNOT BE WITHOUT MOVIES, ARE YOU CRAZY? (I actually have this mostly figured out, I just cannot share details here. It's taking forever, that's the problem.)

The worst part of all this is that I should be a pro at all this by now, what with going to school on the opposite coast and all. The problem is, I only lived out of suitcases for the first year, and after that I just did what every other out-of-stater did, and either had an apartment or put all my stuff in storage for the summer. I didn't have to worry about what I would do if I forgot my router or alarm clock or whatever because everything was already where it needed to be. It's been a long time since I had to remember stupid stuff like nail clippers. I'm already mostly resigned to the fact that I'm going to forget my retainer or something and have to Skype home and ask for it. It's a pain because I don't want to buy anything there until I decide if I'm staying over there or coming home after I get the Master's degree, so I can't just say, "Well, I'll be here for a while, might as well buy my own *insert item here*," as I did in California; I have to determine as accurately as possible what I need and bring it. I haven't been able to find a helpful packing list online, and every time I sit down to make my own, it gets so long and scary after a few minutes that I give up. Right now, my strategy is "piles of actual items all over the bedroom floor."

Oooh, and that part where I have to select all the books I can't get from the library or Project Gutenberg, but cannot possibly live without? Not going so well. The pile had reached about 25, none of which I was willing to put back, so I had to put them all back and start over. I'm thinking the thing to do is grab some of them as I'm leaving for the airport, because when I premeditate these things I eventually end up with 75% of the books I own.

So, there you are. Further updates as things occur.

Can I have my deposit back?

Since I'm sitting here in the library today until they kick me out, I thought I would play my new favorite game, which is to wander through my new university's website until something freaks me out and I have to go sit quietly in a corner and bite my nails. Today, it was the library's website. I know I posted here earlier with a rant about how they use Dewey, which I hate more than I can express, but apparently it gets worse. Even though I'm a postgraduate student, I'm only allowed 15 books at a time. Fifteen. Also, interlibrary loans apparently cost lots of money. USC let me have 200 at a time as an undergraduate, and interlibrary loans were free. Fifteen books at a time is simply not going to work out for me. I need about ten books a week just to function (I can't leave the house without at least four on me) and since I can only bring about five of my own books with me (enough to keep me going until they give me my university card and I can hit up the library), and I can't buy any while I'm there, I'll be using up my entire limit on the books I require to function, and I won't have any left over for things I'm supposed to read for class. Even worse, there's the dissertation, which will also hit my book limit hard. And I have to pay for my interlibrary loans? So completely unacceptable. And uncivilized. *foam*

Peanut Butter

So, I’m not sure what to do. I’ve been completely unable to figure out what the peanut butter situation in England is. I admit that I haven’t actually sat down and demanded that Google tell me if there is peanut butter in England, but when I search for other things I keep running across conversations that go like this:

Brit: "We do so have peanut butter in England! We’re just as civilized as you Americans!"

American: "Yeah, but your peanut butter tastes like roadkill. Plus, you all talk funny."

My family actually knows people that have not only been to England, but have actually gone to the same school I’m going to, but this hasn’t been all that helpful. My dad is, understandably, reluctant to ask his co-worker about peanut butter, and my brother refuses to ask his friend’s dad because he doesn’t think I should be eating peanut butter at all (he is under the mistaken impression that he is in charge of the size of my ass). I tried pointing out that if you’re a vegetarian, and you hate cheese, there isn’t much else you can put in your sandwiches, but he has been unmoved. For this reason, I have spent all summer morosely devouring fluffernutters and peanut butter and raspberry jelly sandwiches, and if this has had a negative effect on the size of my ass, it is entirely my brother’s fault.

Relatives = suck

I’m still at the coast house, but I’m hiding at the library. (Come on, where else would I go?) Why? My cousin is here. Although there’s the probability that we share some DNA (although you could never tell by looking at us) I don’t get along with her particularly well. Do you know how, sometimes, you’re in a room with someone and you can hear that horrible grating noise your personalities make as they clash, and the other person is totally oblivious? Yeah. (Or is that just me? Whatever. It usually is.)

Also, my cousin is, to borrow my dad’s phrase for her, completely batshit insane. And it might surprise you to learn this, but I am just the tiniest bit sarcastic. No, really, I am. Anyway, we tend to have conversations like this:

Cousin: I think I’ll go to South America and write the Great American Novel and apply to grad school while I’m there. (This is her actual plan for the next year; I thought about making something up, but the truth is more absurd and entertaining than anything I could invent.)

Me: *snerk*

Thus, it’s best if I stay here with my Latin books until the library closes, because if I go home I’m going to have to give myself timeouts every 30 seconds.

This is not a weight-loss blog...

...because the last thing we need is another one of those. But I went to enter my running time into FitDay this morning, and I found that I've been running for a year as of this weekend, and I figured I should say something about that.

I have now gotten up before dawn 6 days a week for a year to go running. Don't ask me how I did it, because I couldn't tell you. I had to, because I refuse to go running during the day for two reasons - there are more people/cars out during the day, and they annoy me to the point where I'd have to turn around and go straight home, and also during the summer it's way, way more pleasant to go running before the sun comes up and it gets hot. Honestly, though, getting up before dawn 6 days out of every week sucks fetid donkey balls. I don't know what else to tell you. It does get a little better after about 8 months of doing it, but it still sucks.

The other thing that sucks - my feet. I have mutant feet. To begin with, they're large and have no arch; and then there's the fact that they don't even match, because one of them has a mild deformity (kind of like a bunion, but more so; the bones are bent funny). This means that finding running shoes is hell because the bad foot is about an inch wider than the good foot; I generally buy shoes that are a little loose on one and a little tight on the other, and then suffer for a week until the too-small one stretches out and stops causing all my toes to go numb. In addition, I have arthritis in the bad foot, and it tends to act up on weeks when I'm breaking in my new shoes or increasing my mileage, and there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. I mean, I get that I could take a painkiller before I go out, but this has always seemed like a bad idea to me; what if I hurt my ankle or knee, can't feel it because of the painkillers, and end up really injuring myself? So yeah, mutant feet = not cool.

When I started, I'm pretty sure I could run about 1/8th of a mile. Now I usually run 5 miles a day, unless it's really hot or I'm not feeling well, in which case I run three, or unless I'm having a good day, in which case I run 7 or 8. Five is my average, though. And it's an easy five - I don't breathe hard, or suffer from noodle legs or stitches, or get that terrifying coppery taste in my mouth.

I can't really tell you how much weight I've lost, because my cheap scale finally bit the dust and my mother's digital scale gives me a different weight. I would estimate it to be somewhere in the area of 50 pounds, but I can't really be sure.

I can give you a better approximation of how much my body changed size, if you're interested. I would estimate that my starting jeans size was a 16/18 (the ones I was wearing used letters, though, and I have since gotten rid of them, so again, I'm not all that sure) and it now seems to be a 10/12. If I remember correctly, my starting measurements were about 47-36-47; they are now 40-29-40 (yes, I know I'm still on the large side. Go troll somewhere else, because I'm not interested). Starting bra size was a 40D; it now seems to be a 36DD.

On the more interesting side - the running seems to control my depression better than medication did. I really don't advocate this for everyone, (good lord, take your meds!) but it works in my case because mine is caused by a chemical imbalance. It's still possible to derail my fragile brain chemistry with too much alcohol or not enough sleep or, even worse, a combination of the two, but Jesus H Macy, it's about 50497286467 times better than taking Zoloft, where I basically felt nothing except the urge to rip the heads off everyone I encountered. With running, I basically feel okay. Some days I am happy, some days I am anxious and upset, and they seem to mostly balance out evenly. I am cranky, but crankiness is part of my basic makeup, and I no longer find myself shouting at people for no reason. This alone would be enough to make me drag myself out of bed at the buttcrack of dawn every morning for the rest of my life, even if I had remained a size 16.

No one else seems to have this next problem except my brother, but I will mention it here anyway. I used to have a problem with ankles that were overly flexible - I would be walking along, one of my ankles would give out, my foot would roll under, and down I would go onto my face. It occurred to me sometime around May that it'd been a while since that had happened to me, so I started actively watching for it, and I seem to be cured. I don't know what happened or if it was even the running, but I suspect that it was because David does not run and apparently it still happens to him.

Then there are all the standard benefits of exercise; you sleep better, you need less sleep, you feel better, etc. Not so interesting. You can read about that elsewhere.

In conclusion - I love running. I intend to do it for the rest of my life, if only so I never, ever have to deal with antidepressants again.

Also, I'm leaving for the coast house again. I'll be back at the end of August or the beginning of September.