Sunday, December 11, 2011

Puppies! And last post before finals.


Is it bad that the most daring things I’ve done in my first semester of college are leave my homework to the last minute and shower on the boys’ floor (when the bathrooms on all of the girls’ floors were closed due to some (apparently epic) flooding)?

Actually, don’t answer that.

Moving on…yesterday was the incredibly fantastic day when various alums brought their dogs to campus for us to pet. I’ve heard of this kind of thing on campuses before, but I particularly like this version, with the dogs belonging to Mac staff and alums. It made it seem friendlier and more personal, and it was nice to see the alums chatting amongst themselves. And it was amazingly destressifying to get to ruffle the fluff of various highly-excited doggies. One adorable and sweet dog (who was at least as big as I am) got all stressed out because of the many people and other dogs and had to go for a snow romp with her person to calm down, but all other dogs seemed to be having a splendiferous time getting cooed over by dozens of new friends. I also really enjoyed watching everyone lose about ten years of carefully accumulated cynicism and (supposed) sophistication to get all drooly over a pack of puppies. I stayed out with them until my hands got numb and then dashed back to my dorm to defrost.
 my new best friend, named Maya (the one with her back to the camera)
 Oiseau, a sweet and shy dog, who is so named (according to his extremely friendly person) because he chirped when he was a puppy
 the very fluffy Honeybee, before she got stressed out and the snow romp was necessary
 sorry for the lack of quality in these pictures--my hands were shaking with the adorability and the cold
 "POINT!"
 muddle of doggies!
 Oiseau again, this time with his exuberant brother Kip

Because it is the weekend before finals week, much of my time has been spent studying or wandering purposefully through the ridiculously over-crowded library trying to find art history information (for my final paper). While doing so, I found a couple of things that made me extremely happy. First of all, this dedication, which is sweet and old-fashioned and personable:
and secondly, the hilariously named Great Scots collection, which houses books written by Mac faculty, staff, students, and alums in the last five years (there isn’t enough room for all of the books, so periodically they have to clear out everything older than five years and put it back into general circulation). And the great thing is that these books are not exclusively (or even primarily) academic books. They’re picture books and children’s books and novels and short stories and histories that are not so much written for the publication record as for fun. I wanted to explore so many of the books, but now is not the best time to be looking for new reading material, so I restrained myself and only left with one book: Zachary Zormer: Shape Transformer.
It’s a fantastically nerdy picture book that seems primarily to be written to introduce children to Möbius strips and other cool math tricks,
but manages to have a pretty good story as well. And Möbius strips are always pretty fantastic.

Anyway, just wanted to share those little news bits with y’all (I’m highly disappointed with my lack of accent. Almost everyone here has some sort of accent and I feel all left out and boring. Sorcha’s is New Jersey, Emma sometimes has a Texas accent, and Rachel says b-AY-g instead of bag. So sometimes I pretend that I have one.) before life gets extraextra crazy.

Gots to pasta (Leslie—sometimes I say this to people here and they give me this look and then I try to explain the etymology, which I can never quite manage to do, and then all is confusing. So I’ve had to start bottling it up.)!

My window looks extra pretty right now, with that glowing, twilight blue and the snowflakes and our Christmas lights reflected on the window pane.

P.S. I just noticed that we usually say that something is reflected in the window, or in the mirror, and I really like that. Because it always looks like the reflections are in some magical other space that the window is part of instead of (more scientifically) on the glass. Or off of? I’m not sure how you’d actually say it accurately. Either way, I like in.

P.P.S. ONE WEEK TILL I’M HOME.

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