life is a bowl of spaghetti

You know what's almost better than Christmas? Going to the Electric Fetus.

BBC NEWS - December 21st, 2006

Title of Harry Potter 7 revealed

Author JK Rowling has revealed the title of the seventh and final Harry Potter book.

It will be called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The announcement was made on the writer's official website.

Despite the publication date not being known, the book is tipped to be a big seller, like the rest in the series.

Speculation about the plot has surrounded the book after Rowling admitted two characters will die - some think it could be Harry Potter himself.

(This is me speaking now) There's just no way the seventh will be ready to distribute by next summer. So please, stop telling me that it's hitting the stores in June! Lies, all lies.

Snape is going to die.

Here ends my obligatory Harry Potter post.

In three weeks I will be able to sleep.

In three weeks I will be able to sleep.

In three weeks I will be able to sleep.



That is one of the only thoughts keeping me cheerful right now. And my blood level now contains 10% coffee.

Day three of break and not much to say. I attempted to write my music history paper today but really didn't accomplish much. Actually, I didn't accomplish anything (this is code for 'I played far too much Morrowind'). I've begun bemoaning the good ol' days of high school, when I seemed to accomplish so much homework in so little time. Where did that ability go? It seems that I've a) lost all drive to work, and b) lost any shred of efficiency previously possessed. It now takes me hours to start, let alone finish, a simple five-page paper. I've seriously begun reconsidering grad school because at this point, the thought of writing a 250-page thesis doesn't exactly fill me with anticipation. Which brings me back to square one - if grad school is out of the works, what DO I want to do with my life? Not the sort of question a college sophomore ought to be asking herself. Clearly Lifegoals skipped away hand in hand with Motivation.

I hold Colby partly responsible for this academic decrescendo. Would I be more willing to invest more into work and extracurriculars if I were happier here? Yes. I think I would. It's not that I hate the place, per se. Given that I don't plan on pursuing music performance as a career the music department is adequate. But when people ask me why I decided to come to Colby, my answers sound unconvincing, pathetic, even downright stupid. Stripping all literary garbage aside, it really comes down to this. I came to Colby for three reasons:

1. Colby offered me a scholarship I couldn't refuse.

2. I wanted to have the experience of living on the East Coast.

3. I wanted to break away from the social demands of my family.

I really feel terribly about reason number one, because I know of several people at Colby who've shared complaints regarding what I'll call the Paolo Effect. And right now I'm an embodiment of that effect. Number two is, I suppose, a legitimate excuse and one that I absolutely do not regret. Addressing number three is a Pandora's box that I'll save for later.

I have more to say but I've just seen Wee Willie Winkie walk past my window so shall stop here for now.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Hope it was filled with lots of food, football, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

I did promise to infuse my entries with more angst over break, but I feel it would be doing this holiday a great disservice. So for today, it's nothing but cheery. Fear not, Cliff! Bitter emo-ness shall be forthcoming, especially when homework panic sets in.

Day in summary:

Spent most of the morning being a general in-the-way nuisance and watching the parade on TV. Two of Nicki's aunts came over around noon and we sat in the kitchen eating hors d'œuvres and drinking a rather amazing blend of Chambord and sparkling cider. I drank two glasses worth and felt very warm and fuzzy inside! At two we ate an excellent dinner and then left to go see The Queen - I'll be quite surprised if Helen Mirren doesn't garner an Oscar nomination this year. Returned and then promptly left again to go see DJ at the barn. Came back and simultaneously stuffed myself with pecan pie and more of the Chambord cordial mix. Rewatched Spirit with Nicki's younger cousins and then went to go have a speaker phone conversation with my family. Two things were elucidated during the course of our lovely chat:

1) Teleconferencing with one's family while slightly tipsy is a no.

2) One should never ask one's 15-year-old brother how he enjoyed his first high school dance. Apparently, Peter really enjoyed 'torquing with girls'...and no further questions were asked.

DAY 1 OF THANKSGIVING BREAK (in order of completion)

1. I slept in until 10.
2. I 'helped' Nicki make cranberry bread.
3. I let Nicki's birds sit on my shoulders and peck at my jewelry.
4. We went to lunch at Panera. I love Panera so so so much.
5. We did some Christmas shopping at the Whitney Field mall in Leominster. I spent far too much money. Example:
6. I bought Gosford Park as a Christmas gift to myself.
7. We watched Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and it was sad.
8. We visited DJ (that's Nicki's horse) and Nicki fed him apples.
9. I tried to do homework for half an hour. Then I gave up and played Morrowind for another hour.
10. We ate dinner and laughed at the caveman imitation made by Nicki's dad.
11. We did massive amounts of laundry and watched the Madonna special on TV while folding clothes! Was almost sent into a seizure by the strobe lights and constant cuts.
12. I wrote an e-mail and sent it off en masse to my relatives.
13. Now I am updating LJ, trying to make as dry an entry as possible. Will have to stop here because my laptop is almost out of power.
14. The End

Oh, Monday nights, how I love thee! Four hours of oboe playing and I'm pulled back into nostalgic yearnings for senior year. Spent part of this weekend listening to recordings of the orchestral pieces we played during my last season with MYS. In retrospect this was a poor choice because a) crying ensued, and b) I was reminded once again of how much I took my experience for granted. For the uninformed, I gave up 5 years of Friday night socializing to haul my ass out of bed for 8.45 AM Saturday rehearsals with Minnesota Youth Symphonies. Finding lifelong friends aside, Manny wasn't joking when he said we were better than most college groups. Playing with the orchestra here is one of the key reasons I dislike Colby, a combination of frustration and the ever miserable thought of 'what could have been.'

And while I'm wallowing in self-pity:

As excited as I am for break and the thought of spending Thanksgiving in Mass., it's not home. Not that I miss my family and friends (though, of course, I do). But you can't exactly request that the operator connect you to 'city life.' I am tremendously excited about our foray into Boston, a neat little blend of an unfamiliar city with a familiar atmosphere. Hopefully this dose of the cosmopolitan will last me the three short weeks to winter break.

But I do wish everyone a very cheery Thanksgiving. Not for the food (ugh, turkey!) or, even worse, the football. For the bickering relatives and moans of 'Why did I eat so much?!'

Because we all know what starts the day after.

That's right. The Christmas shopping season.

HELL ON EARTH.

Daily Moral for November 13, 2006

DO NOT PULL ALL NIGHTERS, NO MATTER HOW MUCH FUN IT SOUNDS LIKE AT THE TIME.

COFFEE WILL NOT HELP AFTER YOUR SIXTH CUP.

I am now going off to sleep for 13 blissful hours.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?! I CAN BARELY KEEP MY EYES OPEN!!!

Okay, this was officially a very poor decision. I crave the warmth of my bed!

( I think it's time for a break )

I drank so much coffee that I think I might go into cardiac arrest! But at least I'm not tired!

I am going to pull an all-nighter tonight!!!! I have had 3 cups of coffee so I'm ready to write into the wee hours of the morning. It will be thrilling!

Who am I kidding? This is going to be the pits.

( Välkommen! ...That's about the extent of my Swedish. )

I committed the academic cardinal sin today: skipping class because you haven't finished the paper due that day. So now this weekend I have to

a) finish the 5 page prospectus that was due today
b) write a 10 page essay based on the prospectus I have not yet written
c) re-read Howard's End (THANK THE LORD I READ IT THIS SUMMER!!!!
d) prepare an oral presentation based on Howard's End
e) write a 5 page music history paper
f) finish my techno piece (this is approximately 35-40 pages of sheet music)
g) do laundry
h) convince my brother that Bill O'Reilly is, in fact, neither a reliable political source nor an upstanding citizen

In order to get all of this done I will be hibernating in my room. It will be 'teh suck,' so to speak.

Today in music theory a student photographer came by to take photos for the department's webpage. Prof. Nuss, coiner of such catchphrases as 'Maria, stop balancing your checkbook and start giving me the next chord!' and 'Did I ever tell you guys about the time I scared off three prospies by threatening to kill off one of my students?' and even 'If you keep writing pieces like that, you'd better start looking forward to a life of mopping floors and fixing air vents' decided to mix things up by rearranging the class into what he considered photogenic poses. After frightening away the poor photographer with a series of cheesy 'Look interested, not braindead!' and music major mugshots, he decided that to measure the success of our techno exercises, we had to dance to each exercise and those that didn't elicit any dancing would be considered failures. Needless to say he is the best professor EVER.

Do you ever get the feeling where you study unbelievably hard for a test and then when you sit down to take said test all your hard-won knowledge suddenly gets locked away in some irretrievable dusty broom closet of your mind? That's an accurate description of the relationship between me and my music history midterm circa 11:00 AM today. I put together a 15 page study guide for that test. I studied until 2:30 AM. All atypical of my usual studying habits. ALL THAT BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS FOR NOTHING!!! Hopefully Eva is a merciful grader, because I'm going to need all the mercy I can get.

OH LORD. Remember that girl in Dana who sounds like some sort of dying animal when she laughs? I'm sitting in the Bixler lab right now and that girl is talking on her cell phone right outside the library entrance. And she's making that laugh. I really want to crack up but I'm afraid one of THE twins, who is sitting in the cubicle next to me, might give me a death stare. And I really don't want to die, even if my midterm did come straight from academic hell.

Called my family today and was notified of several facts:

1) Dad's on workers comp leave for a week. Apparently his back is now going out every three weeks instead of triannually, which means Dad now lies on an icepack routinely and reads James Fenimore Cooper while playing Wynton Marsalis at high volumes. He then bores us all at dinner with what he considers interesting tidbits from The Pathfinder. This also means that Dad needs back surgery.

2) Because Dad's back is going out so frequently, Mom wants to get rid of my dog because he is primarily cared for by myself and Dad. Now that I'm here and Dad's preoccupied with Fenimore Cooper, poor Amsy is not getting the love and attention (and baths) that he deserves. If Mom gets rid of him, I will be tremendously angry and sad because I have had Amos since I was 8 and the bond between man/woman and dog is SACRED. You can't break that bond! It's inhuman! It's unjust! Besides, who wants a 13-year-old basset hound with poor eyesight, vision, and a propensity to eat his own feces?

3) Ben passed his drivers test yesterday. Twin Cities drivers, beware a 6'2" male with blond hair driving a Toyata something-or-other and blasting Avenged Sevenfold or Dre at unspeakable decibal levels. On a more serious note, I'm wondering how he's going to pay for insurance since most of his spending money goes towards cigarettes and weed.

Promise to post the good, bad, and the downright ugly from our weekend trip to Salem, MA (and, if I'm feeling ambitious, pictures!)

( Oh, I always like these. )

It is Homecoming here at Colby College, otherwise known as Parents Weekend and one of the few days I wish I'd gone to school closer to the STP. I feel quite lonely walking by myself amidst the throngs of students showing their parents around, eating in the dining halls with their families, and playing with their siblings. Rather like Little Orphan Annie, in fact. But Little Orphan Annie had Daddy Warbucks. Which, by the way, I always thought would make a good rapper alias. Young Buck ain't got nuttin' on Diddy Warbuxz.

And being the pre-pre-planner that I am, I've begun thinking that I'd like to spend an entire year in Italy rather than spring semester. In part because it would take about a semester to assimilate inro Italian culture. In part because missing a year at Colby wouldn't be the end all be all. But mostly because living abroad during college is something I've looked forward to my entire life, and I'm not giving that up.

Ricardo has been playing DDR at 3 AM, 10 AM, 3 PM, 10 PM, the past couple of days and I can hear the vibrations through the wall. One of these days I am going to pitch his TV into Johnson Pond and enjoy the gurgling sound it will make as it sinks into the E.Coli-filled algae.

I am sad about the poor Twinkies. They just can't seem to perform well in the postseason.

Must go practice impossibly difficult Debussy arabesque Joann gave me, which I can actually play now at half speed. Then will practice even more impossible Hindemith oboe sonata which I have to play for the departmental recital. Then will snap oboe clean in half while shedding tears of 'Why didn't I become a singer?!'

I tried to download iTunes 7 and now my computer won't open iTunes at all. I want to cry. That program is my flesh and blood. If I can't listen to Madonna life just isn't worth living.

I put up a bunch of magazine clippings from a fashion magazine Elyse gave me last year. Then I wished the room were red because black and white photos against a red wall would be HOTT. But our room looks much better now and once I get a rug for the main room, a butterfly chair, and a bamboo plant (that would be hott in a red room too), our room will be bitchingly awesome.

My uncle flew into Portland today because there is some sort of geology convention (he is a geo professor) in Maine this weekend. So he came to see me at Colby today and it kind of made my day because 1) he gave me money and 2) I saw someone familiar from home! Now I'm a little homesick for the first time in a month.

Also, I have a lot of homework this weekend and would like to bury my head in some sort of hole. Like an ostrich.

And I really want to see The Science of Sleep.

Wow. Long time no blog. Here's a brief update on life:

I hate unpacking. Forgot cell phone charger at home so was out of contact with the world at large until yesterday. Then remembered that I kind of like, you know, not keeping in contact with the world at large. Except the Times. I do so love the New York Times. Oh, and Entertainment Weekly.

I didn't get to campus until 10.00 PM, when I discovered that Mollie was nowhere to be found, and neither was my HR. So I slept in the basement lounge under the ping pong table. And let me tell you, that floor was HARD. And there were spiders. Not that spiders bother me, but I don't recommend sleeping on lounge floors. The sleeping environment isn't too conducive.

Haven't missed a class yet, which is a miracle as I have a 9.00 AM four days a week. Good news is that I don't have any classes on Friday (meaning my weekend started at noon today!!!!) and I haven't been sleeping in. My workload is hard this year - I have to compose a techno tune which will be sent to NYC, mixed, and then played for a group of record executives and at one of the school dances. And I'm supposed to spend two months on this. Am whipping through a book a week in my modern British fiction class, writing two Italian compositions a week, and speeding...I won't bore you anymore. Have also upped my practice schedule to 3 hours a day so my nominal social life is now on the brink of extinction. If I come home bald it is because I have ripped every hair out of my head! The chasm between freshman and sophomore year appears to be deep and wide.

In other news I'm loving season 2 of Flavor of Love.

Have also mastered the skill of the unintentional sexual pun. While attempting to do a chord progression for a class yesterday and becoming bewildered, I asked my professor 'What more do you want from me?' Beat. Class bursts into laughter, then breaks into 'How do you solve a problem like Maria?' Single most embarassing moment of my life.

Oh, and I might be going to India during JanPlan to study a primary school which teaches impoverished children how to play classical violin. It would be highly exciting and the best experience of my life.

I was hoping to spend my last day at home outside visiting my favorite neighborhood spots and washing my dog. He decided to roll himself in poop two days after I'd given him a bath just to upset me. It upset me. But now it is pouring rain outside so I am left to stare out the window and imagine beautiful weather. We did go to Richfield today to BBQ and mini golf with my cousins i.e. watch my 10 year old cousin Wesley recreate the Napoleon dance. I really do miss my family immensely at school, despite how much I bitch and moan.

Have spent the last couple of days visiting people and washing all my laundry in an effort to save the $1.30 per load it now costs at school. Travesty, I say! Also listened to my brother tell my frightening stories about airplanes, including the recent one about the airplane in Kentucky that went down the wrong runway. I thanked him for giving me nightmares tonight. Then I checked my e-mail to discover that I've been assigned 50 pages of reading and an entire Kyrie from a Christmas Mass to memorize for my first music history class. aoinbsdioehwqrkn IDON'TWANTTODOSCHOOLWORK. Hello, even bigger nightmare.

I promised myself I wasn't going to complain this school year, and lookee here! That's one resolution broken.

I still can't believe I'm leaving tomorrow. I fly out of Minneapolis tomorrow at 12.30, enjoy a lovely two hours in Philly, and get into Portland at 7.30. Dear Nicki is meeting me there and we will get to Colby around 9.15 PM. I do wish I was arriving earlier so I could have dinner with the clan and retrieve my sleeping bag from Coburn, but no such luck. So to all you East Quaders, please don't be frightened if you happen to walk in the basement lounge and see a lump on the couch. It's just me, and I'll probably be asleep.

Anyway, the point of this post is to wish everyone a very merry school year. Which I do, most sincerely.

My final week at home and it's already starting to feel bittersweet. Sarah, Ilse, and I drove over to Uptown Monday night to try out Chino Latino's and celebrate our last night together. We all dressed to the nines and ate delicious food. Then we came back to my house and made awesome shirts which I will wear next week and make everyone at Colby think I'm mentally ill, in case they don't already. Yesterday I finished packing and sent off two boxes via UPS. I always have horrible thoughts of my valued possessions being sent to Thailand or falling out of the airplane and putting a large hole in a barn. One of my boxes contains 8 pairs of shoes - I shall be especially sad if it is lost.

As Mom and I were driving down Larpenteur yesterday we saw a car with 'cutie with a booty please marry me heart heart heart' written in the back window. Cutie with a booty? If some man proposed to me by calling me bootylicious I think I know what my answer might be. But I digress. If she enjoys backin' that ass up I wish her well in her marriage. And divorce.

Ben finally finished up outpatient rehab and then went to spend a week in Alaska with my cousins. The day after he came back, I saw him smoking a blunt a couple blocks from our house with some friends. Mom and Dad told him they'd kick him out of the house if he continued smoking. I can't wait to get back to Colby. I really don't be around when that goes down.