sophonisba

I just... love youtube so much.

Hey there friends list! It's been awhile. Feeling totally bored at work, so here is a list of  1001 books we're supposed to read before we die. The ones I've read are bold.

( very long list )
As far as I can tell I've read about 55.  (Counting is hard, people.)  This seems quite puny to me, but I suppose I'm not planning on dying for awhile, either.  It seems quite unfair to me that I have read exactly one book by Faulkner (Light in August) and one by Hemingway (In Our Time) and neither made the list.  Also, whoever did this sure likes Margaret Atwood.  Inexplicably left out: All The King's Men - Robert Penn Warren, Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card, Lamb (The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal).  I wonder if there's a children's lit list?

I was not on the bridge when it fell into the river. I hope very much that you weren't either.

My dad was in the hospital most of the week but he got out on Wednesday. He can tell you more on his blog. Love you, Dad. Feel better.

My mom is coming up to visit tomorrow and the apartment is a veritable disaster area because Chloe is moving on Wednesday (sob) and as for I, well, I'm a total slob. ugh. Also I am tired and lacking energy and inclination to clean.

On Wednesday I saw a guy at the museum with a tattoo of the Fonz. That pleased me immensely, for some reason. Much better than the Peruvian guy with the Bryan Adams tattoo.

This morning I had a moment of panic because I woke up and the clock said 8:93. I was like "Shit! 8:93! I was supposed to get up at 8:20! I'm going to be 73 minutes late for work!" Then I realized it actually said 89.3, because it is a clock radio and the alarm was going off. Also, turns out it is never 8:93.

Stu, Megan, Chloe and I are signing a lease on Sunday. It is a lovely 3-bedroom upper duplex, 2 floors, near E. Lake Street, which means: easy access to cheap tacos! It is $1200 plus electric and gas, with FREE wireless internet and 160-channel satellite TV. So $300 per person plus utilities, which is CRAZY CHEAP. And it really is pretty, nice new wood floors in the common areas, new tile in the bathroom, new cabinets in the kitchen, nice carpet in the bedrooms, nice paint.

I bought a ticket home yesterday for May 23, 10 days after graduation to give me time to clean up the Marshall Planet and move into the new place, coming back June 17, after I go to SPAIN with my mom and a bunch of high school kids.

I just found out that my grandfatherly coworker worked in development for arts orgs for most of his career before coming to WPI. So that is vaguely promising; I am going to talk to him about My Future the next time I see him.

Less than 6 weeks until graduation. Yay/yikes?

Oh my GOD, did you guys see Shizuka Arakawa skate tonight? Most amazing thing ever. Now that was a well-deserved gold medal. And yet the top story on ESPN.com is called Silver Belle and is about Sasha Cohen. Does anyone else dislike her with very little cause? Because I do. Irina Slutskaya I like, and not only because her name makes me giggle. I mean, come on, that was some serious adversity over which she triumphed. I wish she'd gotten the silver, but man, the Japanese woman! so freaking good.

Because it makes me feel tough, I guess.

Current temperature, St. Paul, MN: -5 F
Current temperature, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: -4 F

actually, it probably doesn't but could you do this anyway? it's fun.

http://kevan.org/johari?name=Sophonisba

also this one:
http://kevan.org/nohari?name=Sophonisba

cool.

just got up, got dressed, and otherwise got completely ready to leave for choir tour, then realized I don't have to leave until FIVE, not FOUR.

Better than being ready at 6 when I'm supposed to be ready at five.

I'm going to New York. see y'all.

While watching John Spencer on the West Wing last summer--

Sophie: I want him to come over here and read me bedtime stories.
John: I want him to come over here and BE MY FATHER.

'West Wing' actor dies at 58

we miss you already.

Partly Cloudy
1°F
Feels Like
-10°F

dammit...

I am having the strongest urge to skip class. But I won't.

yay.

For awhile there it looked like the Marshall Planet fruitflies (hey, we should make a baseball team or something) were dying out, but when I was washing my breakfast dishes this morning (ok, it was noon but whatever), I noticed we'd had a veritable Baby (Larva?) Boom. Ew.

It is winter now. The gears on my bike froze, and I can't say it's much fun riding a bike with frozen gears. Also, I thought I'd left my gloves at work, but they don't seem to be there. So I'm wearing socks on my hands. (Not right now. That would make it hard to type.) On the plus side, I love my blue and rainbow scarf my mom made me last Christmas. It is soft and enormous, as all good scarves should be.

I've forgotten how to deal with winter. I've always said I don't mind that Minnesota winters are so goddamn cold, only that they last until May, but I think this may be a lie. It's 18 degrees now, and it's going to get a hell of a lot colder, and I want to move to the tropics.

*I have retained very few Quechua words, but I remember three exclamations: "Añañaw!", meaning "Yum," "Akakallaw," meaning "What a shame," and "Alalaw!", meaning "goddamn, it's cold." There must be more rhyming ones, but those are the only ones I learned. I recommend slipping them into your everyday conversation. Makes you seem worldly.

It's a good thing I didn't get my hopes up by believing weather.com yesterday when they predicted 4-6 inches of snow for today, because it is totally 38 degrees and raining.

At 3 am, the windchill is expected to be 6 degrees. I'll try to be inside.

Graduation is 6 months from today.

Wow.

This afternoon, after a whopping half hour of not-very-productive practicing (I'm supposed to learn to change pitch with my brain, not my my throat. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT), I realized I was trapped in the practice room because the latch on the door had fallen out, leaving a little metal bar blocking the place where the latch should have been. Luckily I had my cell phone, so I didn't have to resort to pounding on the door and yelling, which would have been quite embarrassing, so I called Facilities Management. Then a very amused security guard and a rather frustrated locksmith spent 40 minutes hammering, crowbar-ing (shut up, it's a word), swearing, and sawing the thing before it FINALLY opened. Of course, I was a huge help throughout:

Security guard: Can you tell what's blocking it? Is it the lock plate?
Sophie: Uh... no... it's a metal... thing. The thing that's supposed to close the door fell out into the thing.
Security guard: The what?
Sophie: I don't know. Maybe we should call the fire department.

So, Macalester people, if you have a chance, go check out the door to practice room 217. It's not in very good shape.

In other news, it is finally Friday, and somehow I've acquired a lot of weekend plans -- birthday potluck for Megan tonight, A Prairie Home Companion tomorrow (for free! I have a great job), and a performance of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier on Sunday. Not to mention general debauchery, of course. yay college!

Name:LA CIENEGA
Meaning: The Swamp, Marshes
Gender:F
Origin: Spanish

The worst part is it's SPELLED WRONG. I hope any mother who decides to call her kid that because babynames.com told her it was a real name does her research and finds it should be spelled La Ciénaga, because otherwise it'll JUST LOOK STUPID.

You know what the post office released today? Muppet stamps!!!!

Life is good. Perhaps I shall buy some and put one on my rent check, which constitutes the vast majority of my correspondence.

aardvark_gumbo continues to cope with empty-nest syndrome by putting up old family pictures on his new domain, which is just fine with me because we were so dang cute. Look, it's ( Little Hannah! )

Aren't cabell and I the cutest thing ever?


(1986)

(The answer is YES.)

I have a cold, and my sinuses hurt. I'm a little miffed at the timing of this thing -- I have to sing all weekend at choir retreat, and I wanted to try out for the solo in the Debussy piece, and I just don't know if I'll have the voice for it with all this extra snot. We'll see, I guess.

Today I learned that in Brazil they say "Beleza," beauty, to mean "ciao." It makes me like the world.

I dropped my night class, and now I only have 3 classes. My schedule was just kind of crappy -- I just don't think I could have gotten much out of a three hour class that was after 3 other 1-hour classes, an hour "working" at the anthro department, and an hour and a half of choir. I'm pretty happy now, although I feel a little ridiculous because it was my only anthro class and now I have Portuguese, Russian, and music history. Whatever, they make me happy, and I didn't need the anthro class for my major.

aardvark_gumbo has learned how to use his scanner and now a bunch more of my baby pictures are online! I like this one because it has our old dog Lucy in it, looking young and sprightly. She was a very good dog. She lived to be almost 18, but she was pretty pathetic towards the end. For awhile, we had this dog Sam, a somewhat evil, very untrained and rambunctious hound, who would accidentally knock poor arthritic, blind Lucy over, and it was just very sad.

Stu's birthday has actually been over for 27 minutes, but you can tell him happy birthday anyway.

I'm trying to get all my Livejournal friends' locations plotted on a map - please add your location starting with this form. Username: (Then get your friends to!)