I'm broke. I have not a dime! I have a lot of pennies, and I just counted up 200 of them, and put them in my tootsie roll piggie bank, and I'll use them some day to buy a candy bar. I ran out of dinning dollars yesterday. A week ago, when I knew I was about to run out of dinning dollars, I went to HEB and bought about 15 bags of ramen noodles. I can't believe how cheep they are. I remember eating them at home and getting them with my Dad when I was little. I think ramen noodles were the first thing I learned how to cook on the stove. Well, so now I'm in college and I have bought them once again, 8 packs for a dollar. I got "mushroom and chicken," tomato, beef, and chili flavors. I think the tomato is my favorite. I also bought some "Hill country fare" diet cokes for a very reasonable price: 6 for 88 cents! Next time I might get the regular cokes because I'll be needing the calories. I also have a head of cabbage. I love cabbage because it's wonderful raw, but it's good cooked, and I can mix it with the noodles and make a cabbage-noodle-tomato soup that is very good. I had carrots, but I ate all of them, and my apples just ran out too. I have bread and lunch meat. It's a big change from eating in the cafeteria every day. I think I'm going to miss it.

Last week was a little bit chaotic for me, and it shouldn't have been. I had three tests and the work I'm doing in the lab, and then I did not know whether to go to Rio Grande with my bird class, but I ended up going. I was torn because I needed the hours for the class but I also needed to stay here and do work. I decided to go. I ended up not coming into work for that entire week, and this may have been the week that was most important because of the conference coming up at the beginning of March. I let down Jeff, Janagi, and Dr. Riggs because I was not responsible enough to get all my work done. I need to learn to organize my life. In the past, I have tended to just let things fall together, and I've been lucky. My usual m.o. is to close my eyes and make a mad dash into whatever it is I need to do. I make commitments right and left, and then tell myself "don't worry! you'll get it all done." I suppose this is a wake-up call. Nothing terrible happened, or irrevocable, but people do make conclusions about other people based upon their behavior. I want to be reliable and trustworthy. I have to make this a priority in my life.

No classes today!! The roads and sidewalks are completely covered in ice. I bumbled out of bed at 7:30 this morning and tried to go to organic chemistry like the good, determined student that I am. There were no cars on the roads and hardly any people, but I pressed on! I slipped and slidded down the sidewalk, and fell almost to my death once, but i landed on my backpack, and was ok. I made it to the chemistry building and with one frozen hand reached out for the frozen handle and pulled and pulled and pulled, but to no avail. The entire university has been closed! I plan to spend the day sledding with a cardboard box as soon as I find one, and playing scrabble and chess and studying. Or I might have to work the whole day.

It snowed! Well, not exactly but close enough. It's been cold all day and very ugly outside and then tonight sleet began to fall, and I looked out my window and people were playing in the streets and the streets were all white. I'm not too good at snow fights. I missed my targets most of the time, and then my targets came after me, and stuffed snow down my shirt.

It reminds me of brownian motion.

So! Hello, hello hello hello sleepless night. I've been trying to sleep for the past hour because I really am completely and entirely exhausted but it hasn't been working. Its funny - in the dark with my head on my pillow countless clear thoughts run through my head like a babbling brook. But when the lights come on, all of a sudden things are a muddle, I have a headache, my temples feel tight and my eyes feel very tired.

I remember a physics lab that we had at the beginning of the year, one year ago. It was with marbles, and a board with pegs on it, all of them equally spaced. We dropped the marbles in at the top of the board and watched as they moved down to the bottom where there were ten slots. We did this something like 300 times to see where the marbles would end up most often, and we tried it with different sized marbles, and different densities. I can't remember the results, but I remember that they weren't even. I wish I could remember! But thats not why I was thinking about the marbles. It reminded me of how people end up coming to conclusions and believing things in general. It's like marbles! We drop them in at the top in the exact same way every time, and at the end there are 10 different slots that the marbles can end up in and there is no way of predicting it. I guess we don't do it exactly the same every time, because that is impossible. But they bounce around as they travel down. It seems random and mysterious. Thats the way people come to conclusions about things. There are paths in the brain, and you drop a marble in at the top, and it shoots downward hitting the pegs, and changing directions and it's entrancing! And then suddenly the marble is motionless sitting stubbornly in a slot saying "I did this, this, and this, and now I am here." Thats how people come to believe things. Your mind bounces of pegs, and then suddenly it's found it's resting place and it would take a giant hand the size of three thousand mushrooms to lift you out of the resting place and start you all over again.

Blarg! Grah! Oh dear.

feud

Yes, I know I said that I would start putting all my posts in my blog, but livejournal has a new advantage. I now have a picture of yoda. Plus the commenting capability. :o)

blood price

A good conversation, with different viewpoints

I feel like the tides are turning, and there will not be a war with Iraq. Today there is a protest at the capitol here in Austin, and there are protests planned all around the world. Wednesday of last week I was at the UGL studying and I heard a roar outside. A huge crowd was marching towards the Tower yelling "peace, now! peace, now!" I went running outside and joined the march, and then listened to a few of the speakers. I have to agree with Alex about the speakers at anti-war rallys though. I do not like them very much. I think it is far more powerful to see the movement of people, and to hear masses of voices chanting in unison. Rhetoric is tired because words are too easily spoken. I did like the chants though. I really liked it when we were saying "Money for school, not for war! Money for school not for war!" That was pretty amazing.

So I'm optimistic.

I will die a grizzly death.




I will be crushed by a giant duck!

I had a busy weekend. I saw a bald eagle today and a pelican. The pelican was just majestic. We also saw great blue herons, owls, masses of yellow rumped warblers, and sparrows, and ducks, and geese. It was a good good day, and it started before the sun came up and isn't over yet. Saturday was one of the strangest days of my life I think. I was at work all day, but I didn't feel like myself then either. I sort of felt like myself later but not quite. Friday Argyrios and I played scrabble at Metro with these two guys, Lane and Michael. We kept getting good tiles and beat them 384 to 280. The Plan II party was fun. I enjoyed the "wigwom" circle very much.

Here's what I have to do in these next two weeks:
Sigh a lease on an apartment
Pay bills
Genetics test 1
Linguistics test 1
Organic Chemistry test 1
Field Ornithology test 1
Go camping in Rio Grande to see birds!

And I want to see my family some time soon.

The Sam Bam Ida Bida Loon Goon Platoon

I have never in my life wished that I could be a bird more than at this moment, right now! I just came back from a bird trip with my bird class. We drove west from Austin on highway 71, to a ranch out in Spicewood. I realized this morning how beautiful the hill country is. It's rolling hills and cliffs covered in shrubs, grasses, and trees that go on for miles and miles. I wish I was a turkey vulture I wish I could soar like they do, with my wings raised above my shoulders, my proud red wrinked face full of wisdom, and my feathers tossled by the wind! We saw sparrows, a morning dove, cardinals, wrens, a great blue heron, some Forrsters Terns, black vultures, and someone claims they saw a warbler. At the end of the trip we walked through knee high grass trying to flush out a Leconte's sparrow. It worked! And the little sparrow then displayed himself very nicely for us. He sat in a small tree and stared at us with almost as much curiosity as we had for him.


Well, Eric and Sean came to visit Austin for the weekend. I haven't seen them in a long time. Paul and David came over with them on Friday night and we talked for a few hours. It was wonderful to see them but it was different than I remember them. I guess it seemed like we had all stayed the same, but at the same time it felt like we were different people. I'll probably eat dinner with them tonight and then they're driving back home to Irving. Se la vee.

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