On being backup

It's time for story time with Wild Card!

I have a friend, J, who is going on a first date tonight with a young man whom we shall call D. (This isn't supposed to be a sexual entendre. We're going by first initials here.)

In order to be good friends, I went with another friend, S, to meet D with J. S and I were functioning as a cross between J's parents and her backup mob in case D turned out to be some sort of creeper that made J really uncomfortable.

So we all went to the commons to meet D, and it turned out that D is very nice. He greeted J with a hug and then awkwardly hugged S and me as well. We all hung out for a few minutes to get acquainted with D.

It got to the point where D mentioned that maybe he should have brought a friend too - that was my cue to turn and let J and D do some date-y thing.

I turned to S and proceeded to gently pull her away towards our dorm.

"Wait, no, I haven't threatened him yet!" She protested, pulling out a key.

"S, we don't threaten nice people," I told her, and I started to pull her away again.

"I do!" She said, and I kept pulling her out gently.

When we finally got out of the commons and into the dorm, we grinned at each other. "I liked him," I said. "I liked the exit. We should do that more often."

And that was how S and I became the resident Romantic Partner Screening Committee for our group of friends.

Late post

I'm sorry this post is so late - I lost track of time last night. I'm also running out of topics to blog about.

EXCEPT PLUTARCH. This guy essentially created the biography as a genre and heavily influenced SHAKESPEARE. (Some guy called North translated Plutarch's "Lives," and Shakespeare read it, and then wrote things like "Anthony and Cleopatra.") so that's kind of cool. I feel like I should check out Plutarch in Greek on my own, just to see what the guy's writing style is like. That's probably only going to happen after NaNo, or at least after I get my homework under control.

In other interesting news, I have none. Farewell. 

On the planning of zombie apocalypses

Today in Greek class, we started out talking about Thucydites the historian and ended up discussing a hypothetical zombie apocalypse in Athens.

See, Thucydites survived a plague in Athens and wrote about it in a very clinical way. In class, we decided that this plague was the thing that started the Peloponnesian wars - that Sparta had to wipe out the Athenians in order to stop the zombies. Thucydites recovered from his bout of zombieness in order to write about it. Others, however, were not so lucky. Either Socrates or Plato (I don't recall which) became a full zombie but was cognizant of it, which inspired the quote, "I know that I know nothing."

We also decided that the classmate that came up with the idea is going to write the bestselling novel based on the premise. Our professor is going to adapt it into film, and Samuel L. Jackson is going to play someone important.

This is what we do in class, in case you were wondering.

On NaNoWriMo

So I got my idea for National Novel Writing Month 2014 last week. The plot is basically like Beauty and the Beast, except Beast (actually named Galen) is a former inventor (currently a dragon) and Beauty (here named Eva) only has one arm. Currently, I have about four ideas about how it can end, and I can't decide which of them to use. Two of them involve some sort of dramatic, Disney-style reunion where all sorts out okay, and the other two involve the female lead's memory getting wiped and nothing working out because of it. (At the same time, her memory getting wiped could wind up with a sequel.)
So that's my idea. I'm working on plotting the middle, which is always the hardest part for me. I know how I want the beginning to go. I know that someone in Eva's family is not going to like the fact that she is developing a positive relationship with a dragon. I know that person is going to inevitably react poorly when they find out that Eva is willingly staying with a dragon. I know I don't want Eva to have any magical ability, but I don't know how big a deal that is in her world yet. I do know at least one member of her family will have magic - most likely, that person is the one that reacts poorly to the whole dragon thing. I know Galen is rather self-centered for a while, but I don't know how self-centered and for how long. I don't know whether his human form has magic.
Also, I may have Galen try and make Eva a new arm. But that's only a maybe. After all, it's kind of difficult to build anything wood-based when you're a dragon.

So that's all I have for you right now. What's your favorite fairy tale?

Communication is key

Something that amazes me is the human ability to interpret things. There's a wonderful and hilarious game that shows (in a really bad metaphor) how interpretation can change things depending on what the message is, who is doing the interpreting, and who is receiving it.

Here's a photo:

It starts with "Hitler gets so angry his toupee falls off." Then the person next to me reads the sentence, draws a picture, and folds down the paper so the next person can only see the drawing. The third person writes a sentence based on the drawing and folds it down again; the system repeats with alternate drawings and sentences. Somehow, the last sentence is "Hitler with Antlers' toupee falls off and he calls lightning on people."

though the results are frequently hilarious in this game, it can also show how much you really need to know the facts in order to actually know what is being communicated to you. Though the humor in the game is dependent on misunderstanding someone's artistic ability and/ or penmanship, you need to actually communicate with your peers in order to be effective.

The Return of Classes

One thing never changes about going back to school: the first day is all about getting to know your classes and seeing your friends again. (Of course, in college, it's a lot easier to do the latter earlier than the former.)
Of course, classes in college are different than in high school. The only time my class schedule has been the same from one semester to the next was when I was a freshman, and that's only because the freshmen don't have many options when it comes time to register. This semester is the most imbalanced schedule I've had so far; most semesters, I've had one or two classes on one day and two or three on another. This semester, I have three classes (plus choir) on Monday, no class on Tuesday, four classes on Wednesday, choir on Thursday, and two classes on Friday. Needless to say, Wednesdays are not going to be fun. (I've had good Wednesdays before, but the prospect of those happening this semester are rapidly decreasing).
I'm really excited about the semester, though. I'm doing courses in Shakespeare (commence epic fangirling), Greek Historiography (we're reading Xenophon), Uses of the Bible in Literature (which, as an English course, has more emphasis on the literature and less on the Bible part of it) and Basic News Writing (this is the one that's happening on Wednesdays only. It may be the reason that Wednesdays are terrible, but I don't know yet). I'm also doing choir, which is a lot of fun.

Also, here's an update on THINGS WILD CARD IS READING RIGHT NOW.
As some of you may know, there's a very popular YouTube series called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which follows the story of Pride and Prejudice in the form of video blog posts on YouTube. Well, now it's come full circle, and The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, the companion novel to the series, is the book I'm currently reading. It's written diary-style; while you could probably understand the book with some decency if you know the basic plot of Pride and Prejudice, it's definitely a lot easier to take out a few hours to watch the series before you read the book. (I realize that this may be the only time I advise someone to watch before reading, but the vlogs came before the book.) You should all go check it out on Amazon. I may do a proper review of it later.

But, for now, it's time to prepare for a lot of academia.

The Question of Eggs

I recently saw the 1999 chick flick, "Runaway Bride." It's not very thought-provoking, but it definitely works if you're looking for a few hours of humor financed by the wedding industry.

Richard Gere plays a reporter doing a story on Julia Roberts's character, who has run away from three (going on four) weddings. When he's asking her ex-grooms about her, he asks them how she takes her eggs. They all say different things, but almost all end with the words, "just like me." Richard Gere's very serious theory is that nobody should be getting married to someone else if they don't come to an independent conclusion about how to eat their own eggs. This is supposed to be the major insight into Julia Roberts's psychology. 

I don't understand this logic. For one thing, I don't think egg preparation should be telling about someone's personality. For many years, I would only eat scrambled eggs. Then I discovered the omelette bar at school. Now my favorite way is to have a single egg fried so the yolk is hard and put into a whole wheat toast sandwich with buckwheat honey. Maybe I should change one more time just to make sure my Egg Preference Change Score is even with Julia Roberts. Maybe I should act like my friend W, who takes his eggs "cooked." (Since my new favorite kind of egg prep is so specific, I feel like I should adopt this response to the question; I really will take my eggs most ways that will prevent food-borne illness. Also, I never realized buckwheat honey existed until about two weeks ago.)

The other reason the egg question doesn't quite make sense is that it's supposed to be the big revelation about how Julia Roberts is not quite in fine tune with her own preferences - she just goes along with the standard order of her partner. The thing is, you can kind of tell that she's not quite in fine tune with her own preferences if she's had three weddings and zero marriages. That might be indicative of other things as well, but I'm not a psychology major, so I wouldn't know. 

In the end, the question of eggs might be out of place a little, but it's worth pondering for college students with blogs. 

PACKING!!!

Well, as I approach my two-year blogoversary here, I must make a bit of a confession: I haven't spent time to think about my two-year blogoversary here. I've been thinking about packing. I leave for school on Wednesday, and most of today has been dedicated to two things: laundry and packing. The latter is a bit easier now that the former is done, but it wasn't very difficult in the first place. Aside from sorting out what yarn and books to take back to school, most of today has been waiting for my laundry to finish in order to fold it and figure out what to take. (to be fair, I haven't done much of that, either. I still need to take down most of the hanging laundry, which still hasn't dried yet.)

To be honest, packing for stuff is not exactly my strong suit - specifically, packing for college. If it's something like a J-term trip, I've got it handled. Even though this is my third year of college, there's always something I feel like I should have taken or some other thing that I should have left. Of course, by the time I actually get the chance to make the dropoff of the unnecessary goods, I've forgotten which ones I actually want to leave at home.

There's always that risk, though. There's a lot of guesswork - for example, there's the eternal question of "how many pens do I really need?" (I must constantly remind myself that the answer is probably "the amount you already have in your pencil case, Wild Card.") Then there's the frustrating moments after I buy a brand-new notebook or bag of menstrual products, only to realize, far too late, that I definitely had plenty of that product with definitely enough material left to last at least half the semester. (Knowing me, though, I can always find a use for notebooks and menstrual products.)

This is also my first year without baggage of a different kind. I returned from summer school and my boyfriend promptly broke up with me. This is my first term in three years - we'd been dating since I was in high school - where I don't have to coordinate my class schedule with his in order to plan Skype sessions with him. I hope I'll be able to effectively use the extra 30 minutes every week that would have been occupied by talking to him. (In retrospect, if we got to the point where we could Skype for barely 30 minutes once a week, then it might have been the loudest signal that the breakup was going to happen.)

In all, though, it's hard in any situation to pack up one's life, even - maybe especially - for college. Since I'm going to school in-state, it's easy to get into a mentality where it's safe and easy to go home and get more stuff or drop off some stuff. After all, it's a three minute walk and a two hour train ride, and there's guaranteed to be clean underpants at the end of it. At the end of the day, you have to make sure that you've packed in your laundry detergent to clean your own underwear.

Shopping Experiences

I had an interesting school supply shopping experience yesterday.
Okay, I wasn't only looking for notebooks. I was also looking for ingredients for soup and an umbrella (I was not looking for these in the same store, mind. I was looking for the umbrella in the same store that I was looking for school supplies, because it was RAINY and I've known that same exact chain to put out umbrellas when it's rainy).
So I got my ingredients. I went to get school supplies. I found the notebooks and pencils easily enough. I went all over the store looking for an umbrella. Were they by the lawn chairs - perhaps to shade the pale vampires from too much sun? Nope. Were they by the school supplies sale aisle? Despite the fact that there were lunchboxes and mascara wands in that same aisle, there was nothing with which to keep your perfect eyelashes dry.
I eventually gave up and went to the counter to actually purchase the notebooks and pencils. Classes start soon; I need this stuff.
As I was leaving, I glanced to my left. There were the umbrellas, tucked away unobtrusively in a corner of the MAKEUP AREA. On a RAINY DAY.
I was unaware that umbrellas were supposed to make my face prettier. I'll keep that in mind the next time I try to purchase an umbrella.

A Review of Exercise

Exercise is one of those things that I don't like doing, but I like having done. I might not necessarily enjoy "running" up really long hills. It might really suck having to clip my stride to attempt to do it. And don't get me started on non-running exercise - it sucks. I don't really have patience for yoga or ab-specific workouts. (Mind you, it's been a vicious cycle of not liking it so I don't do it, but the only way to like it is to do it). And, of course, I'm also really self-conscious about my abs.
Exercise is necessary. Physical exercise, for sure, but also mental exercise. Memory games and all. Maybe that's why I appreciate the daily crosswords I have access to on the Subway - there's free newspapers in there. (The city provides the free, quick paper by every Subway station I've been to. It's small, and provides short articles and a crossword, a SuDoKu, and a Scrabble thing.)
So, what do I think of exercise as a whole?
It sucks, but do it anyway.