Grinnell, part 02 (Ultimate)

One of the best things about Grinnell is how active virtually all of the students are. We had an activity fair last Wednesday and if we had lined up every table with every club/organization/event end to end, it would have taken up at least three straight city blocks. I kid you not; and many of the stands gave out free food! I got a falgene, two books of poetry and general writing by condemned prisoners, a cookbook, a few hundred dollars' worth of coupons, and a few handfuls of other things. Oh, cookies and ice cream (bars) included. All free. And I got to sign up for more things to do--I'll be playing Ultimate (of course; I was already on the mailing list--more shortly), learning how to juggle, learning how to do things such as kayak (already begun this morning) and climb the rock wall (Grinnell Outdoor Recreation Program), and vote. Here in Iowa. I'm pretty excited. I'll also be starting cello lessons this semester; I'm actually almost as excited about that as I am about juggling, GORP, and political activism together--perhaps moreso regardless of the social/societal ramifications.

Anyways, Ultimate has happened every day except for Saturday and Thursday since last Sunday. It's been so, so hardcore-awesome. Of course, I've been playing barefoot all week...so my feet totally kill right now--especially my right foot. That swollen toe? This archetypical big fat handler who's really, really cool (and can also run and reach really, really well, so he's pretty much incredible), one of the captains, stepped on that same toe (joint) with his cleat. Meh. That heel's also pretty badly bruised--no longer discolored, but definitely swollen and painful. I'll live, but I've been limping a lot when not sprinting.

So then last...Friday I had what was probably my best layout ever. The games had started just as general pick-ups with lots of first-years and random people, but after about ninety or so minutes (we played for probably about 2.5 hours each day, except an additional one on Wednesday when we started at three instead of four), most of the less serious players had gone off to dinner and mostly Grinnell team people were left--and me. So we were going back and forth in a really low-scoring game and a lot of us were getting hungry, though not so much tired, so we decided to call a water break in another two or three points. Well, by the time there was only one point left to water, we were all really, really thirsty (hot mid-afternoon sun etc.), so we were dying for the drink. Our team had just scored, so we pulled down the field, jogged up on D, and started bidding for a turn-over. Eventually, we got it...maybe a third of the field away from our own zone. I've been handling a lot, but I also tend to play the whole field (I'm not sure if it's an endurance thing or a newbie, unorganized thing--probably the latter, but I'll start learning real technique tomorrow at the first practice), so I think that I had moved it up a little bit with some other people so that it was slightly less than half of the field away from the other zone, our goal. I cut mid a bit, then mid-long, and finally decided that my D was too tight and cut way, way back for a long huck right in the endzone. Well, I got it--at least, the throw. Everybody makes mistakes (myself a whole lot more frequently than most other remotely comparable players and much more frequently than realistically wish), but this throw was a decent distance, just way, way off to the side--I was hoping for a deep right toss, to where I was cutting, but this (forehand huck, I believe) came in more than a little off-center left. My D saw it and came running up, but then realized that it was way too far for me to catch. I definitely wanted that water, though, and I didn't realize that I couldn't catch it until I had already gone pretty close, and it wasn't until it was about two feet above the ground and I was maybe twelve horizontal (relatively accurate estimations) that I saw that it was just too far to get. I laid out anyways. The kids watching said that I looked exactly like one of the faceless guys on the discs laying out horizontally for a disc. I had a bit of grass on/in my pants (laying out forward stomach-down does that) and stains up the entire front of my shirt. My hip had some scratches and is lightly bruised. My elbow has a bunch of scratches and a large bruise. My back and side had some scratches. It was probably my best catch ever. Not to brag or anything (I know it is; I apologize), both teams and a few spectators yelled when that happened and I got high fives from all around. A couple of the people on the field who missed the catch but heard the yells and turned around to see my succeeding roll and stepping up slowly said that they had no idea how I caught it but could tell by how I skidded how nice it must have been. After I realized that the disc never, in fact, touched the ground, and that it was, indeed, still in my hand, I just kind of lay there for a second before getting it. If none of the fifty other things that could have, that play made my week.

Right. And then today the Grinnell team scrimmmaged against the Iowa City/State (I can't remember which) team and they beat us, owned us in points, but we all played a really good game. We lowly first-years didn't get altogether too much game time since we needed mostly experienced people who could spot such things as plays and double/triple/whatever cuts, but a few of us made it on-field. I was in for three of our four points. It was just generally exciting, I guess.

Oh, and our hall voted on bathrooms today--much to my satisfaction, we're having "gender-neutral", or co-ed, restrooms up in Cowles Third--Second, also, but they're marginally less important to me since I don't really shower or anything on other floors. Evidently each hall votes at the beginning of each semester with the decision's going to the least conservative vote (so it only takes one person's wanting single-sex for it to work that way), but I guess that we're all cool here.

Oh, NERF happened on Friday. It was awesome. Since it was the first night, not altogether too many people came out, but there was certainly enough for some sweet deathmatching. I spent most of my time running around with a certain other Ultimate player, Kimball, finding groups of our teammates who were stuck and running around flanking the opponents, occasionally running really, really hard, also, when we were outnumbered and the original group was wiped out. I think that dodging NERF darts is actually more fun than shooting other people with them. Regardless, I'm really looking forward to Friday nights in general for yet another reason (aside from not having class the next day, that is, primarily).

And jebus, it's almost nine. Well, I suppose that I can get back on that homework stuff now. Oh, and I've magically come up with some breakfast cereal a headphone/mic set, so...GTalk to me? If you're ever interested. Thanks.

Oh, and in case you can't tell, Grinnell's awesome, but I think that it's college in general that's the best. I strongly and emphatically recommend your going.

'Night.

Actually, I lied. I just wanted to add that I went on another bakery run Friday night (they're always at two AM since that's when the guy gets there to start baking for the day) and they actually had donuts and pastries this time. I had a decent custard-filled (Boston creme, if you will)...longish thing and an incredible cinnamon roll hot immediately off of the oven. =)

Grinnell, part 01

/Even hundred posts. This is the 101st. I really like Blogger.

So for the next half hour or so, I believe, there's a movieish thing continuing here at Grinnell, but I'm not going to it partly because I really, really needed a shower after Ultimate today and partly because I'm just tired (again, mostly from Ultimate). A small part of my staying in my room is you guys, too, that you may hear from me at all. I know that I'm unconscionably busy right now with, like, social stuff, and once the semester starts, I'll have class (though probably less hanging out), homework, and regular real Ultimate (and, eventually, swimming), but I still kind of really wish that I could have taken some of you kids along with me; people like...well...everyone of whom I can think who would read this blog (and to whom I'm probably going to send a link) would love it here. Every single kid is cool, or, if not that, at least exceptionally satisfyingly and refreshingly deviant from stereotypes. I love it.

By the way, just so that I can get it out early and not really think about it the rest of this post/whatever, I've played Ultimate every day since Sunday, relatively hard, and my wounds (larger than small scrapes) include a mildly sprained and swollen toe, a largeish hip bruise, several small leg bruises, and a painful (right) thumb bruise. I'm pretty excited about this whole playing for real thing; it's a whole lot more organized than I'd ever experienced. I get the disc a lot and tend to play...everywhere on the field, every position (that I really know), and I know that I don't play very prettily with regards to form, but I guess that I'm still strong enough a player to draw some attention. Woo?

This semester, unless they (and all of their respective sections) fill up, my classes'll be my first-year tutorial (each kid gets one; supposedly it basically teaches college writing) is Old English Rediscovered. 'Tis an 8:00-9:50-type class, but my professor (read: advisor) is really cool and is letting us start at 8:30 to go through the end without a break. Tuesdays and Thursdays. The other days of the week will be computer science (fundamentals of), philosophy (intro. to), and math (linear algebra) from nine through almost noon, basically. After speaking with my advisor, I've decided to reconsider dual-majoring--not that I've given up on it, but I'm at least going to think about it more. Evidently any degree from "the liberal arts school Grinnell College" means that I've done more than merely my major to most places--i.e. evidently each major is only about a fourth of each student's coursework, so like a class per semester. Maybe I'll get to take a lot more of those intro. courses than I thought.

Actual, among the courses which I want to try but probably not push past the 300-levels at most are:

• psychology
• biology
• physics (ish; I've decided that I wouldn't be able to, say, major, maybe concentrate (Grinnell concentrations ~= minors); just too much stuff to memorize and know, not to figure out)
• political science
• anthropology
• French
• Italian

My potential majors/concentrations, as it stands right now, are:

• math
• computer science
• philosophy
• Latin
• linguistics

...Ish. And those lists are incomplete, but they're reasonably close right now.

So when I went canoeing (that'll be a post itself...more later), there were about twenty-fiveish kids divided into four nearly even groups with two older, non-first-year "leaders", i.e. upperclassmen who knew what they were doing and could make sure that we didn't do anything too bad. Of course, spending about a week with the same group of people helps you get to know them and spending five or so days with the same group of seven people really helps you get to know the others. I've been hanging out with kids from my group a lot these past four (since Saturday evening) days that I've actually been on-campus, but I've also met some really cool other kids whom I see frequently.

Jebus, college is so much fun. I'd expected it to be so, but it is dramatically more so than I'd anticipated and for which I'd allowed myself surprise. Betsy told me not to expect altogether too much from the place and I think that that helped (unlike situations such as not expecting much from movies which end up being worse, even, than I had thought so consistently possible).

I'm not going to lie; I got distracted and now it's like twenty minutes later. Ad Lorton just dropped by my room on his way to another one on my floor, but I was already [plans]'ing at that point, so I was already lost.

Regardless, one story which I want to relate in particular (and about which I feel slightly guilty) happened last night and this morning. See, one of the girls from my GOOP (that canoeing pre-orientation shindig) group, Cari, has a car and another girl, Erica, spent a whole lot of time this summer chilling in IHOPs around her town and having cathartic discussions and entirely open conversations with her friends. Nathan, one of the first and coolest kids I've met so far, at least hung out a whole lot in a waffle house or something doing comparable things. So last night we all went to Des Moines (about fortyish minutes away from Grinnell), drove around until we felt like we were at least somewhat close to one, and stopped by a BK (it was closed, so we swung around to the drive-through). Since Cari was driving, I told her to ask for pancakes. And she did. After a long pause, the menu left the advertisement and went to the screen on which it displays whatever items you've ordered and the total. After a bit longer, the man told us that they don't have pancakes. So we asked for the nearest place that did...and he gave us easy directions to IHOP! Success! So we definitely drove over and had some extremely tasty breakfast food; things like fruit and chocolate pancakes, respectively, crepes, hash browns, bacon, and eggs. /Drool. We were also flipping out really hard when we found out that at least that IHOP is open twenty-four hours each day. Yeah, that's right.

I went on a "bakery run" yesterday morning/carried over from the night before. Evidently, at about two each morning, this certain bakery in town opens up via the back door when the baker gets in to start baking stuff for the day. So a bunch (maybe a hundredish or more--probably more, but my estimate's not a very reliable one) of us new (and old) Grinnell kids went over and bought cookies mostly (everything else was sold out by the time I was only a few yards away from the door; the line stretched from the front door of the bakery through the area with all the ovens etc., out the back, around the corner, and around the corner to the front--then out into the street a bit, too, I believe, but I was towards the middleish when we made it there.). It was awesome.

So now that I've been "posting" for about an hour, I think that I'm going to run to do more things social. Capture the flag starts in forty-five minutes, contemporaneous with organized DDR and karaoke.

Peace, kids.

Meh

Honestly, I would write a real entry if I had the time.

As it is, though, I'm busy being at Grinnell.

I'll do something about that in a week or two after things like my pre-orientation GOOP canoeing trip and, perhaps, New Student Orientation itself.

Note, Music, Note: Palindrome

I have a good bit of work to do (yet) tonight, so it seems like a good time to post.

So...my two bands of the moment are the Protomen and Wolfmother, who are a rock opera group singing about Mega Man and his predecessor-brother Protoman on their journeys to destroy evil and free their city (ruled by Dr. Wily), and who sound like Jack White of the White Stripes, only hi-fi and mostly always energetic. I like them both.

Well...so it occurred to me a few minutes ago that that I'll be going to Grinnell next year hasn't actually kicked in yet. It probably won't until I'm getting ready to leave (for real life, that is, in about four years), but oh, wellz. I get that I'm going to college and all of the associated "etc.", but...meh. I'll probably enjoy myself all the same--it just won't be as philosophical and filled-with-rhetorical an experience, for greater or less.

Saturday, the Best in a While

So...as I told Betsy briefly earlier today, I kind of decided since some time last Friday early morning that I would post an entry simply for its own sake--well, that, and my future enjoyment, primarily; none of this silly having a point/theme or trying to make an impression junk.

So...Thursday/Friday was the last bad night of my high school career. My final (semester) project for Logic was due, so I stayed up all but about two hours, give or take half of one, working on it; some thirteen pages typed (with a good bit of white space, to be fair in my description and aesthetic for the paper) plus another twelve of scanned references/textual excerpts. I was actually kind of proud of it once I'd finished, but then, of course, whenever you're holding a stack of paper too thick for staples to be effective with your name on the cover sheet (oh, right; so fourteen pages, I guess, ish), you get a slightly fuzzy feeling on the inside, be it good or bad.

So after that, there really isn't much left in the semester; I have to write one more paper for Wheeler, but I believe that I'm going to work on the internet's effect on language. It should be interesting so long as I rediscover sufficient sources for my opinions and ideas; I'm pretty sure that I can figure out my precise stance based on what I've already read and know. As for other classes...well...nothing much besides my Analysis final (pending rescheduling, because of overlapping with the), AP English exams (darn lateness), and...figuring out precisely what's happening all of that last week of school. I don't actually know if I'm expected to be in class with the rest of the juniors or if it's okay if I head out with the seniors, but I'm pretty sure that it won't be a problem if I skip a bit. I did, after all, already miss senior skip day, so...you know.

...Then running on sleep from about three to five, I was in an exceptionally good mood on Friday. Between the lack-of-sleep induced abstractedness and the elation from losing so much stress, I probably didn't act at all differently from my otherwise normal behavior. I even decided to go swim rather than home and crash or anything--and even, later, LAN. Swimming was pretty good; 75 sets, long, and kind of fast. But we'd done a lot of stuff with fins the entire week, so it was only right to throw in something at which I am not disproportionately able. LAN...was just LAN. It would have been cooler if two thirds of the people weren't on WoW the whole (entire) time, but they were cool people (Reggie, Nathan, Timmy), so it was still cool. Yeah, and then sleep at like two again.

Saturday...meant getting up at about two or three, doing a bit of helping around the house before I left for a Bretscher swim party and my mother had students over. Unfortunately, the weather was rather cold and overcast, so nobody went swimming, but we went paddle boating for a while after...some totally sweet Ultimate! But that description and the activity are mutually inclusive; that is, despite the slope so great that one simply couldn't see each endzone from the opposite, and despite the several patches of ground on which it was virtually impossible to maintain footing due to mud etc., our teams were miraculously well-balanced. Let's see...the first game was something like Jeanette, Annalise, Nick Stevens...oh, right; and Ryan Payne, I believe, versus a bunch of other people like Mischa, Adam Clute, some upcoming swimmer Sara, Alys, Jamie, and another person, I believe; I can't remember the exact teams, and we played twice with a team change, so I'm probably confusing the two games, but...those were most of the people who came and played. Andrew and Luke Crimmins, too, second game. Right; and I was on the smaller team the first time (well...both times, I think), the five vs. seven. Geez; there were some sweet catches and blocks happening yesterday. I definitely (thanks to slightly inexperienced land-sporters who, I suppose, were only looking for open people to whom to pass, not so much watching what the defenders were anticipating, too) had at least two diving blocks which would have made the game alone, but I also had another nice steal from, I believe, both Adam and Mischa (although I distinctly remember taking Adam down, because...) in which they were covering precisely to where the disc was floating down, but I ran in, jumped above and into them, and came down with Adam's shoe on my cheek. It was hardcore, and, fortunately, wholly painless. Meh; my highlight of the party. Few other decent slides (very wet grass and all), one terribly awful hammer pull, several very nice, smooth hammer passes and pulls; it was generally a positive game. I'd take Andrew's backyard over the Dells at DePauw any time any day.

Afterwards, to Jeanette's! With Davis, Alys, Brad Robinson (each of whom had to go at various times before I did), and Jane (whom I gave a ride afterwards)! To watch "Bee Season" and talk into the wee hours of the mrawning! And jebus, it was nice. I guess that it's been far too long a time since I've hung out with anybody not really worrying about time and just...talking. I really enjoyed it. Of course, evidently rather too much, because then I got home...late relatively to curfew. =P. But it was definitely worth it.

Hmm...well, I think that I am going to end this post here. It was pretty spontaneous anyways (normally I have at least a rough idea of what I'm going to write when I blog), so...'night.

(I don't really have any idea what's going on at all.)

Benchmark Postish?

...Largely for all you Wellesleyians with whom I've only recently become reacquainted...and anybody else who comes here, obviously. G'luck.

Post starts last Friday, too, by the way.

So...last night. Lots of stuff happened. The day wasn't that interesting; I suppose that I'll describe it in a bit, because that's what I do here, but meh.

So last night, I get home at...midnightish, we'll say, and, of course, come upstairs to my computer. Oh, look, Gtalk says that I have one new message...from Facebook...with Brad Fishkin having listed me as a friend!? Holy schnikes, *flips out*! Bajebus; I thought about it a while ago, but decided that I should wait until, say, I'm actually at Grinnell to look for all of my old Wellesley friends or whatever...but I guess that those of them who are about as wired as I are also more assertive than I--and my thanks for that. Jebus, looking through other people's friends at WHS, it's like...I haven't even heard some of these names in (literally) years, what with not having time to visit back and nobody here knowing them, but...I still remember many of them. I don't expect that they would really know how I am (especially most of the girls whom I remember--you know, the whole "hye look at me im in 7 grade lol" thing, and the whole "OMG GRL!" thing (although, please, let me recall correctly that middle school wasn't actually ever quite that bad), so I'm just hoping that I'll be double-counter-Facebook'd, or whatever--since I'm counter-Facebooking right now, after Brad found me.

But...well...Okay, once again, friggin' jebus, was/am I excited that I've made recontact with a bunch of these my old friends. It's kind of reassuring; pssht, they're almost positively not as elated as I am, since they'll only've heard back from one kid who left a handful of years ago, but for me...*sniff*...I'm rediscovering my childhood (/drama)!

Alright. But then, I realized, when you don't talk to a bunch of people for, you know, four or five years, stuff happens...and especially through high school at all, worlds change. So...what about mine? Well...I'll hit some big things, both for your and my sakes, starting with a bit ago. In no particularly order.

Back before high school, I'd never done any organized sport. I almost seriously considered cross country back at WMS, just because I was something of a runner, but...I didn't do it, partly because I was still too elitist to be willing to join anything in which I wouldn't be the best, but also just because that wasn't the kind of thing that I'd do then. I was a lot more into...vegetating, I suppose, between reading and computering--and video gaming *significantly* more, then, too. Video game...yeah, those were definitely big for me until about...maybe midway through my freshman year of high school. More like a bit of the way into my sophomore year, actually. I still enjoy them and everything (especially more indie games (*cough*), such as Gitaroo Man, Frequency, Rez, Katamari Damacy, etc.--at least in principle; and, I'll not deny it, especially DDR (between adrenaline and endorphins, I'm pretty much sure that I have a reason why, now, Betsy)), I just don't care as much anymore. Oh, another "amazing" and "revolutionary" game of any given sort? Meh. Okay. It's also going to be at least $50 for several months, after which point I'll have heard about all the good bits from people who care. Oh, and I don't have the time to spend on it. Among other reasons. Right; it' more PC games now, but only really Counter-Strike and Warcraft III, because those are what we play at our weekly LAN party.

...But that paragraph started about sports. So freshman year, then, I decided, mostly as an application-booster, but partly because the small handful of relatively good friends I'd developed (Pete Edberg, I guess, being the largest influence) were into it, to join cross country. So...first day of school, after it was out, I called home to see if that was okay...and it was. So I went and "ran", or, more appropriately, jogged a few hundred meters, walked a few more than that, jogged a while, walked, etc. I don't think it was until about 3/4 of the way through the season that I finally finished a bloody 5k without having to walk at all--and so I came home all beaming and ebullient. I think that my parents were pretty proud of me, too. It's not like I was able to beat a certain number of people (such as even, say, one) consistently, but...it was something, at least. Most importantly, though, cross country was probably when I started seeing how cool Greencastle people really are. I didn't get to know many of the team very well that year (that introversion/shyness thing), but it was enough to convince me to swim, too.

So then I swam--along with about 75% (realistic approximation) of my friends (from here) both then and now. Petey, Zach Grammel, William Dory, Mark Jedele, etc. etc. were the important people then; Betsy Lorton, Jamie Grivas, and Jeanette Jones have been the important people more recently. And, of course, when about 90% of your friends have swum at one point or another on a competitive team, and all of them have enjoyed it, it's not too hard to believe them. *And*, of course, when you have a super swimmer on your team as well as several back-ups for each event, guaranteeing a nearly perfect season every year, it's not too hard to hang around supportive and social people all of the time. Of course, there are always going to be less cool people, but I can typically deal with them easily enough even if they're clingy or whatever.

...And track my freshman year kind of sucked, even though we had several super athletes. It was just too big, impersonal, and generally misdirected; everything was about beating other people, not making good times; setting up the best relay, not balancing for fun and points toward lettering; doing the events that the coach thinks you can do, not the events that you know you can do or have always wanted to try. At least, for everyone but the top one or two in each event, I guess. Meh.

Ultimate, though...right. I guess that between seventh and eighth grade was the first time that I attended CTY--Johns Hopkins University's Cener for Talented Youth. You know, self-paced math (what I did) for seven hours a day, five days a week, right? Broken up into segments, of course, and with excursions in random stuff, such as topology, number theory, Rubik's cubing (friggin', 41ish seconds is my record from lunch once--everybody, including the principal, who happened to be around, came and watched, as I discovered on successful completion. To great surprise), and much more interesting stuff. Transfinite numbers, once, too; good thing I actually learned what was happening when we were doing that a few semesters ago in Theory in Discrete. But...CTY is also where I learned of Ultimate. My conventional-swear-word-abstinence does not allow for easy explanation (or exclamation) of how much I'm into Ultimate. Well...if six hours a night is a very respectable average for a week for me, and my Wednesday night is looking like a four hour one, then I'll still turn up and try out for a pick-up game; that's one way to put it. If I've been unable to speak, a little dizzy all day, and slightly nauseous, I'll still try to go out. If I've terribly bruised/sprained my big toe that I can't swim fully well, and I've had a ridiculously difficult practice, and there's a meet the next day, I'll still go out. If you drop the hypothetical qualities of those sentences, then you've only gained truth values.

That's about the most significant stuff for sports. Academics? Less interesting, but probably no less notable. Of course, this is my junior year and I'm off to college after it's done, sans diploma. I've taken...all sorts of classes: my school's honors junior English, honors senior English, and done some of the coursework for AP English, all this year; calcs II and III at DePauw University, a 200-level theory in discrete math course, and another analysis class this semester (the entire course was building, from the ground up (nearly literally--from defining natural numbers, integers, reals, functions, and continuity all the way through differentiability and Riemann integrability, culminating in, yesterday, proving the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (prof. writes last line of proof, then, "That's it. The course is over!"))); introductions to Latin poetry and prose, then a 400-level Roman Historians course, all at DePauw; several semesters of Chinese back in eighth/ninth grade, at DePauw; and an interesting philosophy course by the simple title of "logic", also at DePauw, right now. My high school stuff, honestly...AP bio's probably my most interesting class right now, with the Englishes in close seconds or so. Nothing, I'm afraid, terribly noteworthy in general; all sorts of specifics, but, you know, most of those are only worth mentioning if either you were there for it or you know the teacher. (Sorry.)

Right...summers? Well, CTY thrice, once in NY, once at JHU itself, Baltimore, and once in LA, CA, respectively. Ultimate all three times, of course. Last year, then, I spent about a month in Taiwan teaching English to youngsters, mostly, and tutoring another couple of kids my age or slightly older. It was cool; I certainly did not earn as much money as I might have staying in the country and working, but, you know, I certainly experienced at least one or two things (/litotes) that I wouldn't've around here.

'Kay, so now it's Tuesday, and I'm coming back to writing this after three days...Sorry, but I tend to get busy and forget about things. My bad.

Anyways...I've lost track of my trail of memories and it'll take me a bit to get back after it. Well, I guess that I'll just cut this off here and say, "C'est la vie--pour moi," although I rather doubt that that works out, not having taken any French ever. Meh. Maybe, some time after a few finals are over, I'll come back and write a part two or something to this massive wall o' Notepad code/text. But then, I say that all the time, so instead, I'll just go study math now.

Lists are Useful

...Especially when all you really have is a few brief, disjoined thoughts.

• Today felt like a day on which, if it had rained, I could really have enjoyed it. Too bad.
• It seems like all day of prom, the vast majority of people going are in an extremely good mood--and following. Therefore it's significantly more fun to hang out with them. That is, friends of mine who aren't typically are nigh-irrationally positively social.
• I think that I am going to go on a project to make a shirt. And it'll be cool. But it'll take a while, because I'm unassertive and will probably never actually get around to it.
• I've been thinking a lot about going and getting another laptop for college, just because it'd be a lot of fun to go places on campus and log into the wi-fi, or while in class, or whatever (a tablet, that is, perhaps), but then, a desktop would be probably about half the price for two or three times as much power, memory, etc. even after hardware such as monitor, keyboard, and...I don't know...batteries for the wireless keyboard.
• It really bothers me when a band produces single tracks that I like off of an album--such as System of a Down's slower stuff, Deftones' "Pink Maggit", or the Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?". Unfortunately, some of the Dandy Warhols' tracks are pretty "meh" for me, I'm a great fan of the rest. Similarly, there are two or three tracks off of the Kaiser Chiefs' "Unemployment" which I don't much enjoy.
• Love kind of works by intelligence, perhaps; it's a lot easier for somebody very smart to be liked, of course, or dated. But then, a great disparity in intelligence with the more stupid person not ignorant of it (or with the smarter disliking feeling powerful), is a problem. For an example that's by no means the first one which came to the front of my head, I can have a decent ten-second conversation with Kenzie Nichols, but if we actually sit down for a minute, then it drives me insane. And I guess that she enjoys my company, if only because I've heard so from others (that is, that I'm a decent friend of hers), but I can't see myself ever hanging out with her, even along with another crowd of people. Also, one other person who is a focal point of this thought, but I'm not exactly sure what her situation means for it: Kirstin Keck. (Absolutely nothing negative, by any means, just...food for thought.)
• Now senioritis is kicking in again and fully.

Pre-Post, followed by a Post

Five things that I'm going to cover by some point in the near future (today, if I can help it):

1. Last Wednesday's "Ultimate" and the lead-in to it
2. Last Friday
3. My last few nights' dreams (at least since Friday night/Saturday morning, but maybe since earlier)
4. A comic which made me think briefly (although if I can't draw up anything longer or more interesting than a few sentences, I may just omit this...list item)
5. Grinnell, via the Chronicle of Higher Education. If I finish reading the article, even, it'll be an entry even more fair on my part!

Alright...so Wednesday, of course, is Ultimate night, and last (and next) Wednesday are also Grinnell admitted-student-chatroom evenings. Well...regarding the chatroom, suffice to say that it was a single cgi. That is, a tiny little script which was nicely simplistic...but had to refresh to show new messages. Read: AJAX is good for something.

The people were pretty cool, though. I know that I've told a few people who unimpressive the UI was but how interesting everything else was. There were financial aid people, admissions folks, athletic coaches, a handful of current students, and a bunch of us prospectives. A couple of other various people dropped in here and there, but it was mostly the same group of about...maybe...a dozen or so high-schoolers. Of these people, we were split into about three or four major categories: say, those just there to sit around and see what happens and glean what bits of useful/noteworthy topics come up, athletics-oriented people, and maybe extracurriculars-/facilities-/academics-interested kids. I mostly floated between the latter two kinds--you know, just one room, so everyone sees what everyone writes, right? Except they did have a sort of whisper-function (I can't remember what it's supposed to be called, but it's that nice little function where you may message only one specific person) and I guess that a few things happened there. Well, I guess that a lot of people were interested in swimming--the swim coach who was there had to keep asking newcomers for times, interest level, etc. and encouraging them, telling them that they'd have no problems swimming at Grinnell. I asked, but he didn't actually give me much that I wanted to know to that end; practices divided between "red" and "black" swimmers (or maybe "scarlet", since that's how Grinnell calls that of its school shades...) practices for stronger/weaker swimmers (presumably); I didn't get much more than that, nor approximately yardage, size, many record times, or whatever. Can't blame the guy, though; there were no doubt a bunch of other less active people in the chatroom who needed his attention. Oh, and with each refresh (about once a second, I'd guess), there were anywhere from no to five new messages, the vast majority of which took up only one line. And that's in a UI which only displays about ten lines at any given time. There was a blacklog option, to view everything said that night, but that was a problem--indiscriminately everything. That refreshed at about the same rate, too. The only other buttons were to view current users in the room and to log out.

Meh. Oh, and, of course, I asked briefly after independent studies, a fair amount regarding languages, extensively about Ultimate and other extracurriculars, campus events, and...off-campus events. 'Twas all pretty interesting (especially the interaction, IMHO), but I don't think that anything came up that really would have swayed my opinion too much about it--especially nothing that I couldn't've learned from visiting (i.e. next Thursday through Saturday) or just reading all of the literature sent my way or listed online.

(Oh, and Betsy? You have a friend, Andrea Rissing, right? And her brother just got accepted to Grinnell and will be going next fall, right? Well, he was one of the...maybe five people all night who used a facsimile of his name: Jonathan Rissing. Sound right? I would have tried to ask after him, but he left just after I arrived. Meh. Just...interesting if it's the right guy.)

Oh, well. Worth it.

Especially when, at about 9:17ish, I had to apologize and excuse myself hastily, begging Ultimate. =).

...But it actually wasn't that hot that night. John, Petey, and I were around, took a brief campus trip trying to gather some others who were, evidently, three-strong and throwing a light-up disc earlier, failed to rediscover them, and just threw for a while. But Haley showed up and joined us for another half hour or so (probably; but then, my time sense sucks), so it wasn't strictly high school kids there. And it was too bad, too, that nobody else came, since I definitely had a strong throwing night. Both my forehand and my backhand, that is. My hammer was about average (I could get it within a yard or so of my target every time, and each one which I threw was easily catchable), but I was really throwing everything else in a manner nearly perfectly straight and just as hard as I wanted to. For once, both my power control and placement were right on. But no game. ='(. Well, it almost made up for that extremely windy day towards the end of spring break when we tried to disc on which I definitely failed miserably and repeatedly; inexcusably, even due to the wind. Meh. Hopefully this Wednesday (and Friday! At Grinnell!) will be better...If not, I'll just stress or something.

Let's see...list item number two? Ah, Friday. Meh. I guess that I don't really have anything interesting to post aside from factual stuff; my mother gave a talk in Texas Thursday, so I had to pick her up Friday after school. We ended up hanging around the Avon/Plainfield area instead of coming home very shortly afterwards (I had meant to make a choir/band concert (Mr. Price's last, as I learned post factum! No!)) doing a bit of shopping, getting me some new clothes, taking a bit in Jo-Ann's picking up some frames and a newly framed scroll--and with my realising that the store actually has a lot of nifty stuff...More on that later. But after all of that, dinner at Charbonos (pretty tasty, but kind of pricey) and back into town. It was relatively nice.

So...It may very easily be since that last Wednesday night's failed Ultimate (although I don't think that I slept very well that or the next night due to going to sleep earlyish and waking up early to do homework...) that I've been dreaming about it. I know that, if not since then, at east since after Friday. And it's been heavily CTY-esque. I believe that I've played (dreamingly, this is, of course) on Johns Hopkins's (Maryland) "gentle slope" Ultimate field (because *any* space can constitute an Ultimate field), Loyola Marymount's (California) fields, and even in a few of the pictures of Grinnell's fields. I suppose that it's just a bunch of things coming together: thinking about Ultimate, thinking a lot more seriously about college (now that it's nearly tangible and everything), and what I've learned about Grinnell. In my mind, I've always seen the idea of college as living at CTY, ish. Classes at various times throughout the day, homework between, and a lot of social time during which to do stuff such as throw mostly-circular pieces of plastic around. Everything but the extent of organisation outside of my influence at CTY seems very similar to me, but then, of course, that's coming from not having actually been in college yet.

Just a note, I hope that I don't sound like too much of a hack, always spewing out all of this junk about "moving into the next stage of my life", "assuming more adulthood/responsibility", "growing up", "going to college""going to college""going to college". If it's bothering, as it probably is, then just...give me another two months, listen for a bit during the summer, then don't even come close between mid-/late-August and January. This blog, if it's still around, will probably just make you vomit.

Anyways, the people (what little I can recall of them, and what little depth there is to anyone in a dream) were...a few people from past CTY, a few more of my current friends (I believe mostly friends like Petey, John, Betsy, Aden; people with whom I often (or recently have) play(ed) or much associate with Ultimate), and a lot of college kids. Of the CTYers, I think that there were one or two of my actual friends, but mostly big-time discers--I distinctly remember one exceptional player who was on a team and everything but a total jerk (of course, I was better than he in my dream, but not back when I was twelveish), another few guys who were about my skill-level back then, so about as good as I now, etc. But the college people whom I didn't know held the overwhelming majority. Every time I came up onto a field, there was just a huge mass of bodies--maybe a hundred--which would, when we got down to the game, move towards the edges of the field and quickly disperse. Then we'd either throw for a while or game, and it was hardcore.

Hmm...of course, even though I talk about Ultimate all the time (read: probably more often than college itself), I'm not actually going to go insane over it in college; I hope to travel with whatever team and play games as often as possible, but it's probably pretty hard to obsess over an intramural sport. So don't worry. Thanks for the sentiment, though. *Cough*

Comic? Meh. Today's Sunday comics included one which featured a disc and another which was exceedingly optimistic. That is, one character asking another why he was always in so sour a mood; the second responded that the problems of the world did it to him. The former commented on the beautiful sky, green grass, and mild weather, but the second just gave up, saying that he'd never see the truth. In fact, they both thought that last thought. It was kind of nice (quaint), but at least after a few seconds' reflection, I realized that that mode of thought, especially in such cute terms, rather promotes the "ignorance equals bliss" thing. Not that this's anything new, but I'd've felt bad still so often saying that I'll write about things maybe then not. That is all on this topic thanks.

...And Grinnell. Did'ya' know that it's the richest friggin' liberal arts school in the States? I certainly didn't. I knew that it was pretty darn wealthy, but not that it's quite that wealthy. Something like $900,000 per capita endowment, and at 1500ish students, that comes out to about $1.4 billion. So, in this Chronicle of Higher Education article on it (the first in a series highlighting the deepening cleavage between higher-end and lower-end schools, as analogous to the social and economic classes) and Clarke, some Roman-Catholic school some 150 miles westish of Grinnell, there were, of course, all sorts of interesting statistics: Grinnell with its nearly 100 times more in endowments, bringing in more from its students' tuition--less than a third of its total annual cushion--than Clarke gets total.

I guess that it's pretty cool (in a self-centered, opportunistic sense) that I'll probably have such facilities and chances for internships, going places, and generally doing things, but that huge difference also makes me feel kind of guilty taking advantage of it. The fact that Grinnell's president said "If we had a lot of truly poor peple, I guess I'd be a little more proud of it," and that they're increasing their tuition by 12% because they "don't want to seem like a bargain", or something; to compete with other similar schools such as, as they cited, Macalaster and Oberlin. Hmm...Something like $5,000 already, if I'm not mistaken. These whole "truly poor" and "bargain school" ideas seem pretty questionable to me, but...whatever. Things like this always make me wish that I could do something, but not quite enough for me actually to. Perhaps when I am older, but everybody says that. I guess that I'm no different; stuff like this is just...odd and slightly unsettling.

Two more things, then, I guess.

First, on April 7, Friday, I made a note:
9:57: My Google quote of the day is Martin Luther King's:
"A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."

I like to think about what that entails, but I'd prefer the quote, "A man who won't die for anything (will die for nothing) is not fit to live."

Second, I wonder how long it takes people like Guy Kawasaki, a pro blogger/consultant or something, John Kricfalusi and Katie Rice, two really beautiful artists, and Ziggy, a music informer ish, to write and finally submit an entry. I know that it takes me usually at least an hour to post here, versus as little as a minute or two on my Xanga, spanning across the entire day. Meh.