another micro post!

So, I'm sitting in my room one this rather warm Friday evening, working on a project, and two friends just stopped by my (lovely propped-open) door to chat and disperse Starbursts. They wandered in a little and began inspecting the room (as lots of people do--the many photographs seem to have some sort of magnetic draw). Usually, when people see the quotation on my wall, they say "What's that from?" And then look politely blank when I try to explain about Stargirl (the book it's a quotation from).

But today, one of the girls stood looking at it for a moment and then said, "is that from Stargirl‽" And then the other girl said, "Oh, I love Stargirl!"

Hooray for Macalester people! They're so awesome and knowlegeable about the right things!

Just had to share.

entertaining chemistry problem

I'm supposed to be working on homework and it's very late, so this isn't a really blog post, but I came across this problem in my chemistry textbook, and had to share.

• In a game of "Clue," Ms. White is killed in the conservatory. You have a device in each room to help you find the murderer--a spectrometer that emits the entire visible spectrum to indiciate who is in that room. For example, if someone wearing yellow is in a room, light at 580 nm is reflected. The suspects are Col. Mustard, Prof. Plu, Mr. Green, Ms. Peacock, and Ms. Scarlet [I must say that I appreciate their use of Ms. instead of Mrs. or Miss]. At the time of the murder, the spectrometer in the dining room recorded a reflection at 520 nm, those in the lounge and study recorded reflections of lower frequencies, and the one n the library recorded a reflection of the shortest possible wavelenght. Who killed Ms. White?

Obviously, this has a lot of problems as a persecution scheme (also, who said that Col. Mustard always has to wear yellow, Mr. Green always has to wear green, and so forth? And clearly it can't be Mr. Green, because both of the Mr. Greens I know of (John and Hank) are clearly excellent, non-murdering, made-of-awesome type people), but it's such an adorably transparent attempt to make this homework interesting that it makes me happy.

Also, now you know how to commit murder. Just wear a color that has nothing to do with your name. And WHAM! You're safe. 

[I just discovered that it's part of my homework assignment! YES!]

"I'm not going to talk about fall, I'm NOT going to talk about fall, I'm going to......gush about fall. Again." *sigh*

 

the leaves really were this pink (like rose petals) in real life!

The weather lately has continued be incredible, although it can’t really be called fall anymore. It’s really Indian summer (which I know no more PC name for—anyone?). Anyway, it’s gorgeous, and everyone has been celebrating with sundresses and shorts and blankets on the lawn and classes outdoors. It’s so wonderful and friendly and collegiate, and made better by the changing trees and fallen leaves. And now the trees are changing faster and faster and with more variety. The tree that was the first to change is now bare, and all the others are starting to b half green and half yellow or red or orange. It’s stunning, although it makes me want to take my camera out every day, because the beauty keeps changing and disappearing. Anyway, right now I’m sitting outside in the quad, surrounded by rustling branches and a lawn covered leaves and other people studying or sleeping or reading outside and the breeze blowing. I’m so in love with this place!  [Also the people here rock—Sorcha just came out to collect leaves for an event and said, about fall, “it’s like the whole world is on fire, but it’s not too hot!” And then I taught her how to tie her shoes the Tschudi way, which made her extremely happy. I have now been ordered to add “Sorcha is pizazztastic today!”]

Now, to continue from my last post…

Moving right along after those terrible puns, I have actually been doing other things than just bouncing around eating apples and enjoying the fall, telling bad jokes, and watching Doctor Who. Like, real college school things!

A couple of weekends ago, I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Art (hereafter referred to as the MIA) for an art history project. It was unfortunately more interesting for the random things I found than for the piece I picked for my project, but I’m getting more excited about it since we finished our Egyptology unit in class. The project (did I already explain this? I can’t remember…) is to pick an ancient piece from the museum and then we’ll write three papers about it through the year. The unfortunate part about this otherwise awesome project is that the ancient section of the MIA is teeny-tiny and not terribly interesting. But I picked this piece:

which is fascinatingly titled Striding male figure and is (as is probably obvious) Egyptian. And I’ve written my first paper for it—a formal analysis (basically just a detailed description, without any interpretation)—and got a 94%, so that’s good! And some of the other stuff I found in the museum was definitely worth a visit. I saw my first Rodin in real life, for example,

which I was only able to examine after a pair of fourteen year old girls had finished giggling over it. I also saw this bust:

 which I loved for the gorgeous representation of the veil. It really looks like she’s wearing something gauzy over her face, but the method is actually pretty simple. I also liked this portrait of Eurydice:

not so much because it was a gorgeous painting, or anything, but because of the moment of the myth that it chose to represent. It doesn’t represent the walk back to life, or Orpheus playing for the Hades and Persephone, it only shows Eurydice quietly examining her wounded foot. It’s striking because Eurydice has no idea—but the audience does—what is going to happen: her death and near-return to life. This is almost the beginning of the story.

Speaking of Eurydice, I just have to put in here that I finished memorizing “Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes.”! All ninety-five lines! I finished it last Monday, but didn’t let myself put it on my list until I’d slept  on it one night. So as of Tuesday, I know seven poems (actually, now eight, but the latest is very short and not terribly impressive. It’s “Who Are You, Little I” by E. E. Cummings and felt appropriate to my mood lately)! I know I’ve said this before, but I love to memorize poems because then they’re rattling around inside my head and at my beck and call whenever and wherever I am. And Rilke’s poem has always been a favorite, so I’m extra excited about it. Everyone should go look it up and read it, at least everyone who knows and enjoys the Eurydice myth! I also really like the E. E. Cummings that I memorized, which I’ll put in here because it’s rather short (I must say, I find his spacing and capitalization rather silly, but that makes this an especially good poem to memorize—when you say it aloud, you can say it however you want!):

who are you,little i

(five or six years old)

peering from some high

window;at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling: that if day

has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

The extra wonderful thing about all of this is that my roommate is clearly an excellent person. She mentioned E. E. Cummings, and when I brought up this poem and started citing it (as requested), she got incredibly excited and finished it with me. Also, she wrote this on our whiteboard:

How did I get so lucky‽

In other school-related projects, I watched La Grand Illusion for French a couple of weeks ago (as I believe I mentioned). It’s a movie about World War I from the (you guessed it!) French perspective, but what’s awesome about it is that it’s not really biased towards the French. The German soldiers are presented as very understandable humans who are just stuck on the opposite side of the war. The last scene of the movie really emphasizes this point. It shows the two French main characters who have just barely gotten across the Swiss border, with a group of German soldiers in pursuit. The soldiers take aim, but are stopped by their commander who tells them that the French soldiers are in Switzerland and therefore safe, and the last moment of the movie is one of the soldiers saying, (at least in translation), “Good for them.” It wasn’t the best movie of all time, or anything, but I really appreciated its message and its attempt at fairness, despite that being a really unpopular view at the time.

Badminton has started! I’ve only gotten to go to one of the two practices (the other one as happening while I was at a play), and nobody at practice was very experienced, so it was a bit boring, but I’m  seriously so excited to be back on the courts that it doesn’t matter. I’ve missed badminton so much! Also, I’m finally getting to use the racket Aunt Meg et al bought me for Christmas two years ago, and it’s wonderful! Thanks again, guys!

I think I freaked out some random guy on campus the other day. Charmaine and I were walking back from dinner and (I’m not entirely sure why) discussing the queen’s famous wave. I was telling Charmaine that I thought she did that in order to keep  her arm from getting tired, and demonstrating, naturally, because that’s just the kind of person I am. Charmaine had just put up her arm to try too when this guy who was walking past snapped, “Hello‽" at us like we were being terribly rude! For some reason, this sent Charmaine and I into paroxysms of laughter (since we definitely weren’t waving at him—we weren’t even looking at him!). Excellent roommate bonding experience, but perhaps less fortuitous if I ever want to be friends with that guy!

To move on to another of my classes, Chemistry is going swimmingly! I really like my professor, who is funny and engaging and straight-forward. She’s exactly the right mixture of sympathetic and strict, and she enjoys her subject a great deal, it’s apparent. She also says the funniest things during class, which I’ve taken to writing down in my notes. It keeps me amused when I go back to read them. I’m going to include some of them here (I seem to have inherited a love of terrible jokes--this may become a problem):

• “When you’re a chemist, you realize that 99.9% of everything is a white powder. And if it isn’t, it’s highly poisonous.”
• “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.”
• “Water is extremely vain; it likes to hang out with itself more than anything else. But Lithium hates itself. It just wants to be Helium.”
• “Oxygen is such an electron pig!”
• “Water is like, 'if you’re not polar, go hang out with yourself.'”
• “Imagine you can put up a magical stop sign and pause the reaction.”
• “[About the possibility that particles can travel faster than the speed of light] If it’s true, it might make time travel possible.” (!!!!! I KNEW the Doctor was out there!)
• [About the “Ultraviolet Catastrophe”] “This is my favorite experiment name! I also think it would make a really good band name, but so far no one’s taken me up on that.”
• “Do people ever act like waves? If you walk through that door, are you going to accidentally end up on the biology floor? No. Good thing too, life is confusing enough as it is!”
• “I actually measured my son’s speed [for this problem]. He weighed 151 lbs at the time—he’d just had a check-up—and this was when he had just learned to crawl and was using his head as a fifth foot.”
• “It’s a double replacement reaction, which is basically a cation do-si-do. So swing everybody around and switch partners!”
• “My goal in this class is to teach you to understand pop culture references to chemistry.”

In order to live up to that last one, I have to tell you one of my favorite jokes: Heisenberg is driving along in a car when he’s pulled over by a police officer. The police officer comes up to the window and says, “Do you have any idea how fast you were going‽” And Heisenberg replies, “No, but I can tell you exactly where I was!”

We also had our first chemistry test recently (last Friday), which was a bit nerve-racking! It was a pretty long test, and one that I neglected to study much for (my own damn fault, of course, but it didn’t help with the stress!), and we only had an hour to take it! I ran over a bit, and didn’t get to show much work on the last problem, but at least I was glad it was over. And then Keo made the brilliant suggestion that we go to the cheese shop for lunch (instead of the usual, boring Café Mac), a plan which was extra brilliant because it was a gorgeous day and we’d previously discussed wanting to make friends with the cheese shop owner (who is a Mac grad, adorably shy and sweet, and a great lover of France). So we headed over there and discovered, to our delight, that one of the options on the sandwich menu was a Surprise! sandwich! So we each ordered a surprise, bought a brownie to share, and she got Pellegrino and I got clementine Izze. When our sandwiches came, we were extra excited to discover that they were different surprises, so we switched halves and went outside to eat them under the warm sun and blue sky and cool breeze. It was an incredibly lovely meal (and felt very French) and our sandwiches were both delicious. I’m still not entirely sure which I liked best.

The one on the left (originally Keo's surprise) was lettuce (probably arugula or some such), balsamic vinegar tomatoes, salami, and some sort of delicious, mild, creamy goat cheese spread thin on the bottom. The other one (originally my surprise) was turkey, provolone (both of which ingredients were delicious and carefully crafted—none of this lunchmeat nonsense), caramelized onions, some sort of North African chile paste, and (I’m sure of it, but Keo denies it) honey. Mmmm!

Oh, and I got a 92% on my chem test, which was one of the highest grades! Hooray!

I’m so lucky to be finding such awesome friends, one of whom is the Sorcha mentioned above. Last Friday night, she stopped by my room (which was open) to say hi, and ended up coming back and curling up n my chair to chat. We spent quite a while discussing politics (which felt very collegiate and exciting) and then (I’m not entirely sure how we made this transition) decided to play this card game (called Set) that Sorcha loves (while eating chocolate and drinking tea). She beat me terribly, but I shall prevail!! Then we discovered that a group of people were watching Whip It (a movie with Ellen Page about roller derbies that Sorcha had seen and enjoyed) in the lounge, so we went to join them and steal their popcorn. It was really fun, even though I don’t usually like coming into a movie that’s already started. And the movie was pretty good, too! After that, I decided that I was tired and ready to sleep, but when I returned to my room, I discovered that Charmaine had accidentally locked me out! After a minor tantrum (induced because of the lateness of the hour (2:00 AM), my extreme fatigue, and Charmaine’s penchant for coming back to our room really, really late (6:00 AM)), I left a note on our whiteboard and went to hang out in Sorcha’s room while she cleaned, decided to call me T-C henceforth (after I mentioned that my name doesn’t much lend itself to the British way of addressing people (by last name)), and began the long (and according to her, necessary) process of educating me in punk rock. Luckily, Charmaine came back before too long, but it was still rather an adventure!

TO BE CONTINUED…

Isn’t this ensemble incredibly stylish?

P.S. I’ve gotten some questions on what on earth this “chemistry art project” I referred to in my last post was. The answer is that I honestly don’t know, but this is what the sign said:

My best guess is that it’s a contest based on using some specific program that is usually used to draw chemical diagrams, but instead people are supposed to use it for other drawings. Like I said, though, I really don’t know! I just liked the Dalek.

P.P.S. The bagpipes are practicing right now, which I'm usually a fan of, except they keep repeating the same song over and over and over again, and I have a headache! Rawr.

Lily continues to be much too enraptured by autumn

I recently discovered that wily Fairfax sent a postcard (using my stamps, I might add!) to his twin requesting apples, claiming that I wasn’t giving him enough to eat! This is patently untrue! You can see the evidence for yourselves!

my duplicitous hedgehog

It’s October, everybody! And you know what that means! FALL!! And Halloween! And Clara’s birthday! Clearly this is an excellent month. The weather the last few days has been completely glorious. It’s been sunny and warm (just take moment to notice that Lily—this Arizona child—is saying that it’s “warm” when the high is seventy) with this amazing chilly breeze, and the trees are just starting to turn. And some days, the wind is incredibly gusty, roaring past the windows and through the trees and making the windmill try to take off. It is so glorious, and so enlivening. Some days I’m just so in love with fall that I can’t help but skip, or do a few dancing, running steps as I walk to class. This is such an exuberant and melancholy season and I love it so much. When I first realized—I mean really realized, and thought about it—that Mac was in Minnesota, I was pretty worried and disappointed, but right now, I’m incredibly glad. It’s such an adventure to live here, and a chance to spend some time in the Midwest, which I’ve never really done before. And to experience the gusty, blustery fall! It’s incredible. The other day, I went out to take pictures because I just couldn’t bear to be inside or to be outside without my camera in my hand.  I took a tour of the campus, starting at my dorm and walking around one side (and taking many zillions of pictures!), but before I could make it all the way around, my battery died. It was extremely upsetting, but I went out again the next day and took lots more pictures. Here is a subset, but I can’t post too many (even though I really, really want to) because blogspot will be cranky!

 

 

 

 pictures of fall at Mac

Even more excellently fall-related, I got to go apple picking yesterday! It was incredibly lovely and exciting and Midwestern-ish and autumn-y and wonderful! Mac bought a bunch of tickets (another example of the adorability of this place) and we could sign up (first come, first served) for them. The orchard was surprisingly far away—the trip took maybe an hour and a half, although we did get lost three times, one of which took us into Wisconsin! I’m not even kidding—we went to the apple orchard by way of an entirely different state! Anyway, once we were there, we got our hands stamped:

it’s like being a kid again! I love hand stamps!

and got to choose between apple picking (the red cow) and the corn maze (the black mummy). Keo and I went to the apples first, and had a lovely time picking all different kinds of apples. I think I ended up buying maybe four types?

 

 

 

many splendid apples of happiness (with Keo)!

 Then, after a walk around the orchard, which was filled with children and parents and several pumpkin patches and a hayride and this adorable cow train:

adorable cow train!!

we stood in line to buy our apples, at which point we realized that there was also raspberry picking! So we took turns waiting in line and picking raspberries. I didn’t have time to get very many, but I enjoyed the process immensely.

raspberries are the prettiest fruit!

After that, we took a break to munch upon our newly acquired apples and then headed off to the corn maze! Before venturing into its (surprisingly tall and labyrinth-like) turns, we paused to buy an apple donut each (covered in cinnamon sugar and surprisingly delicious):

 

and then we bravely entered the maze! We had to pick the easy section (there were three different areas, but the times ranged from twenty minutes to an hour and a half, and we only had about half an hour before the buses were to leave), unfortunately, but it was still rather exciting. It really was an easy maze—it took us the prescribed twenty minutes, and only one wrong turn, I think—but the wonderful part was just being surrounded by the tall, rustling corn and being able to look at its lovely golden color against the blueblue sky.

“the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye, and it looks like it’s climbing straight up to the sky!”

Afterwards, we rode home on a silly yellow bus, with the cold wind and afternoon sunlight blowing in through the window, and dozed. I have a great deal of fondness for school buses (I’ve had some lovely long drives home in them, especially after badminton games) and it was such a perfect, sleepy afternoon time. I’m so glad that I went (and signed up early enough for a ticket!) and that Mac made it possible for us. 

Oh! And I almost forgot! As suggested by Clara (who knows about Fairfax’s love of apples), Fairfax came with us. 

I forgot to take pictures of him picking apples (he was dashing all about), but I did take a picture of him at the corn maze.

he pretended to be cool and calm, but actually he was a little nervous about the maze

Also, my friend Keo bought some apple cider, which she was kind enough to share with me. I’m drinking it right now and it tastes like fall and cold weather and holidays.

and it’s pretty!

As previously mentioned, October is also the month for Halloween, which means that I’m getting way too excited for my costume. As many of you know, I’m going to be a character from my favorite television show (the Doctor, from Doctor Who) for Halloween, which is basically the most exciting thing ever. Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately? I’m not sure.) this has also meant that I’ve recently become even more obsessed with Doctor Who. I re-watched some old episodes from when my doctor was around (Quick plot summary: The show is about a 907 year-old Time Lord (alien) from the planet Gallifrey who flies around saving the universe from destruction and generally being awesome. When he is dying (assuming it’s not an instantaneous sort of death), he is able to regenerate, which means that he disappears and re-appears (although it is of course much more dramatic than that) as a new person with the same memories. To all of you who are thinking, “Well, that’s an obvious plot device.” it is, but it’s also not a cheat. The brilliant thing is that the new regeneration has a totally different personality, so it still feels like a terrible loss when one doctor dies and is replaced by the next.) and now I can’t stop thinking about the show. The other night, after my Wednesday night class, I was invited to watch one of my favorite episodes (“Blink”) with some friends. My better half kept saying, “You need to get some sleep!!!” but my other half (the one that proudly wears a shirt that reads, “I <3 Doctor Who!”) insisted I go. It was incredibly fun, and then afterwards we geeked out about our favorite episodes and plot twists for a while. Yesterday, some friends and I had another party to watch the season finale (which was absolutely terrible). Afterwards, we were feeling so nostalgic for the old, wonderful Who, we decided to watch that, after drawing a TARDIS on their whiteboard.

our beautiful illustration (words and outline by Cassidy, coloring-in by Lily (notice the subtlety of the blue whiteboard marker’s shading))

We had just started the episode though, when a whole group of other Whovians (brought by another friend) came trouping in to meet us, after which we had an impromptu hanging-out session chatting about life and Doctor Who. By the time everybody left, it was ridiculously late, but we still had to finish the episode, which we did, and then I stumbled back to my room to sleep! It was an excellent (and rather collegiate) Saturday evening.

Worse than all the time I’m spending on Doctor Who, though, is that I’m starting to associate random things with the show (for those of you with no knowledge of the show, you may want to skip this last bit). For example, when my art history professor was talking about the city of Punt, I was sure for a moment that she’d said The Lost Moon of Pooche. And when I watched La Grande Illusion for French, and one of the commanders was wearing a really elaborate neck brace, I thought for a moment that he was Soltaran. The sqeaking of the flagpole on windy days sounds like the music behind “Blink” when the angels are coming, Sethos’s title (from the Amelia Peabody books by Elizabeth Peters)—the Master—makes me think he’s an evil time lord who hears drums, and there’s this one door on campus that I’m pretty sure I saw the TARDIS disappearing from one evening. It would be a perfect place to park the TARDIS—it’s almost the right shape.

an ordinary door pretending to be a cosmogyral TARDIS

And all of my doodles lately have been Doctor Who-themed.

 

many doodles

(I’m a little concerned about how cute my Cyberman is)

This is not helped by the random references to Doctor Who that I see around campus. This is someone’s chemistry art project:

daleks for VICTORY!

Relating to this recent über-obsession, I was watching behind the scenes and blooper clips from Doctor Who when I stumbled upon a video of some British actors (including my favorite Doctor) messing around backstage and telling these jokes. Apparently there’s this format—kind of like the “knock, knock” jokes—where you say “I’ve got a new business” and then when asked, you describe it. The other person then asks, “well, how’s it going” and then you finish up the joke with some sort of terrible pun. Some of them were incredibly hilarious, so here are some favorites (one of them slightly differently told).

•  “I have a new business.” “What’s your new business?” “I’m making statues of religious icons.” “How’s business?” “Well…I’m making a profit.”
• “I have a new business, actually!” “What’s your new business?” “I’m just making fireplaces.” “Making fireplaces, how’s that going?” “Grrrreat!"
• “I’ve got a business!” “What is it?” “Demolishing massive clocks.” “How’s business?” “We’ve hit the big time!"
• “So….I’ve got a business.” “Is it new, how is it?” “I’m a lifeguard.” “Really, how’s that going?” “I’m keeping my head above water.”
• “I’ve got a new business!” “Oh, what is it?” “I have a job re-purposing broken calculators.” “And how’s that going?” “The numbers just aren’t adding up.”
• And finally!—“I forgot to tell you, I’ve got a new business!” “Really?” “I’ve teamed up with a sculptor, and we’re making iron busts of famous people.” “And how’s that going?” “Forging ahead.”

I suspect that few of you will find these as funny as I did (with the exception of my father, who makes even worse jokes than I do!), but I couldn’t resist including them.

 

 more fall pictures that I couldn't bear to leave out!

TO BE CONTINUED…

[I have way too much stuff saved up to write about, and I’m pretty sure I won’t have time today, so I’m going to do this post in chunks!]