Nicole

Someone sent this to me in a .pdf format. You know how Ernesto and I hate Adobe, so Ispent hours typing it. Ernesto didn’t even crash once, amazingly. It will eventually make it to Talitha Cumi, but until then, it’s here: Read the Bible in a Year.

As I was driving north in a snowstorm the other night, I got to wondering: What is it about a place that can give you more of a sense of wellbeing than actually having wellbeing–I mean, why would anyone risk their safety to get somewhere, just because they called it “home”? Continue Reading »

French roast coffee + French vanilla cocoa mix + half cup milk = magnifique. Even better than spiking coffee with Hershey’s syrup, which I had been doing all week since I let my last almost-full gallon of milk go bad. I finally got sick of Nesquik (or maybe it wasn’t French enough for me) and so I quit drinking it.

Anyway, this gallic coffee concoction could explain why, at 1:30 am, Hidden Valley Club residents could look out on the parking lot and see a demoiselle with a bun on top of her head, ballerina-style, wearing a tweed overcoat, blue fuzzy pajamas, and loafers with no socks (think Don Johnson), rifling through a Mitsubishi named Rodrigo and muttering to him about “December Firsts.” Rodrigo, did you eat my December Firsts?

It must be the heat. I don’t know what is wrong with the people downstairs, but they seem to keep their apt at about 108 degrees. I have my air on and the floor still feels hot. Every day is like being in the tropics. I guess it’s kind of Russian, like sitting in those little sauna things. I’ll have to start whacking myself with leaves.

I had something else I wanted to write about, what was it? Ah, mais c’est bête enfin!

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Study: Jeremiah 1-20

Scripture: 1 John 5:5

Music: OH THAT’S WHAT I WAS GOING TO WRITE ABOUT! It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue~~Robert Zimmerman… I’m writing another paper wherein I begin by quoting song lyrics. It’s my new thing.

–That’s what Prof Makin says all the time about the French. Being a Britisher, I guess he can’t help himself. I made it through his last class today without throwing a fit over it.

Then I placed a Require brochure with an Indian guy on the bus today, and as we talked about foreign languages, he said he always wanted to learn French, because the language is pretty even if the people are awful.

Well, earlier tonight I was French-seaming my favorite shirt where it started to unravel, my hair, wet from the shower, is in a high French twist on my head (almost to beehive proportions), in the kitchen there is a loaf of French bread, with which I might make French toast tomorrow, a canister of French roast coffee, a box of French vanilla cocoa mixes, French fries, and two bottles of French dressing. I have French Impressionist prints as decor and a matelasse bedspread. I might watch Casablanca later and sing along to “Le Marcellaise” and shout “Vive Le France!” when Yvonne does. C’est la vie.

There was absolutely no point to all that. I’m tired.

I AM FREE OF OBC!!!!! I don’t have anything to dread anymore. Even though Socrates gave me YET ANOTHER A-, I am too relieved to care… Swing low, sweet chariot… Even though I bombed my Russian presentation, I don’t care… Free at last, free at last, no more being late for work and hungry all night, free at last. I am never taking a 4-5:30 pm class again.

I *ahem* avenged myself as best I could on the evaluation. I went on for 2/3 of the back page, and could have finished that baby out if the volunteer-department-runner hadn’t been so anxious to leave. I was the only one who spent much time on it. Guess no one else is as мстительная as I am.

This semester has been way too long. I wish they all were 7 weeks. I wish the classes were half as cool as 203! But oh well. I am FREE!

I am sick and I want my mommy.

This is where I’ll be next semester, barring some closed classes opening up. A pox on froshmore status and late registration dates.

It almost works, doesn’t it?

I stayed up most of the night again. Soc paper was due this morning, along with discussion questions the GSI then told us to forget about….Rrrrrrr. Why can’t they at least humor you and pretend all your work and forsaking of sleep was worth it? Just take the paper and smile. Don’t say anything. Is that so hard? If you don’t want to grade them, throw them away. I won’t care. I probably won’t want to cry by then. Maybe.

It’s good to be back at “my” desk, the rectangle table against the wall of the Mac classroom in the LRC, the one with the padded navy chairs. I was just looking through the window in the door, through the hallway, through the open door of classroom 21-something, through the window, and perfectly framed in the bright blue sky are the girders of the natural sciences building. They are not steel, they are red iron. Which is what has paid for most everything I’ve had in my life (excepting the steel of Rodrigo, who was paid for by Kohl’s and eBay :D). But still, instead of studying the rebellion on Battleship (also made of iron) Potemkin in 1905, I’m wondering what, and how, I should pay my parents back. I’m glad I’m paying for my tuition here, but there has been so much in the past… I don’t know if it’s the tiredness or what, but I suddenly feel so guilty about how spoiled I’ve been, and how it was never enough at the time. It’s almost amazing that I’m the same person who had such ambition–or any ambition, for that matter–when it came to horseback riding. And it’s also amazing that, contrary to my often-voiced belief, I haven’t died without riding in my life. There will be a time and a place for it, I know. Eternity and paradise, respectively.

It was hard, choosing classes for next term. I almost didn’t want to. Thank Hidden Valley Club and their lease-breaking clause for keeping me here.

Last night about 3 am I discovered Paul’s speech at Acts 13:16-41. Amazing, that. (Okay, how many times have I used that word in 4 paragraphs?) But seriously, read it. I can’t even form intelligent commentary on it right now. I have always loved the one from chapter 17 on the Areopagus, where he quotes their poetry back to them… “For we are also his progeny…” But this one is maybe more complete…? I don’t know, someone wanna help me here?

Seriously, help me. I don’t speak Russian, and this crazy lady thinks I do, and I have to get a grade from her next week…

So maybe I should have titled this “Behind the Iron Curtain.”

Okay, seriously, gotta go.