I started to make a catharsis mix tape for my roommate, but it turned into me just listening to the Smiths and reading [zabby's] amusing website, which I had previously had difficulty accessing. The story from today's entry cracked me up. My plans to write last night were interrupted by an unexplected explosion, which I'll get to later, depending.

To pick up from where I left off, what happened Wednesday afternoon was I went and signed out a pair of binoculars from Janet McI. Williams (who is an extremely sweet lady as well as having the best middle initial ever), along with a "purse" for them, and went to model them for the triplet. Brigid (whose online shorthand nickname "brig" is to my knowledge rarely used in spoken conversation) found them useful for reading her astro textbook from across the room. Very much in keeping with the logic of that room, she has moved her mattress out of the large room and turned her bedframe on its side to serve as a partition/barricade to prevent Zabby's mess from infiltrating her desk area. We didn't talk, because, you know, we never have conversations.

I'm sure I got something accomplished back here before tea-time with Nori and Laurel (which we want to make a pre-African ritual) and leaving for African. I drummed for an hour and a half and then danced as long again, and each part caused me some amount of physical pain. Not a lot. From drumming only when I was doing a steady 1e+ 2e+ rhythm on agogo with my left hand at a funny angle, against a clave on the drum. It was tricky too, since I'm more used to doing that with the hands switched. Charles gave me a few exercises to work on. He had some questions too - he wanted to know how I would play a seven on traps, and the name of the William Tell overture. Dancing (in African II, which was at least as crowded as the biggest African I class last semester, if not bigger) was extremely intense, from its pacing as much as anything else. He gave me a few corrections that I had some difficulty encorporating. Rebecca says that my dancing has a markedly different aesthetic from what he's looking for ("not that it's bad"), maybe just because of my body type. If class maintains this pitch, I'm sure I'll be improving quickly, and that's exciting.

The next morning, Nori and I made it on time to philosophy, but after enough other people that the only seats left were in the back. I guess he couldn't see my hand that far away, so he didn't call on me to participate in talking about Plato's Gorgias (which Nori and I had read in dialogue the previous night) which is intriguingly ambiguous in its applicability to contemporary modes of thought. Plato is clearly operating under assumptions that I'm not necessarily sure I agree with, and it's not always obvious why he's getting at what he is. Is it helpful just to expose a contradiction if it doesn't really explain anything new? Nori talked to him after class about auditing, and it sounds like he's stubbornly and emphatically against it, which is a real shame, for my sake anyway. French was fine (Ben Wharton and I picked out an atelier in the cinqiéme arrondisement) and Syntax was slightly more productive, (Donna Jo subbed admirably, even though she had lost her mother just the night before. "I guess it seems like tragedy striking the ling dept." she said, and warned that she might have to stop in the middle of the lesson. Her teaching style, or I guess just her demeanor, makes such a contrast to Kari's easy understatement.)

Nori and I made the trip to Genuardi's, which seems much closer on the way there than on the way back, burdened with a full frame pack of groceries, but it works, although now there are lentils all over the inside of it. Before that I had finished part two of Cloudsplitter (that's page 300; intermittent progress but progress nonetheless) and Brigid was here to discuss it not long afterwards. It's a fascinating book that raises a lot of questions - many of which would require some historical research to answer, although we did consult mapquest for one of them. We might have to take some field trips too. Alyssa and Sean made seven for dinner, which was tasty veggie kugel and an inspired but only somewhat successful edamame-peas-shallots side.

Most of we sophomores ran off to the "chocolates and choosing" meeting, wherein most of our class gathered in upper tarble to listen to inadequately miced Dean Charlton (who always reminds me of the frazzled, well-intentioned teacher in "Clueless") explain about major requirements, some of which was new information to me (but how many people really course double major in the same subject as their honors minor?) The packet they alphabetically distributed (Holman next to Hoffman; Brett-Esborn near Blecher) was not as helpful as I had anticipated (ie. it didn't contain tentative course offering lists for the next two years), but it was nice to see the whole class in one place like that (as Stefanie mocked me for saying). I took a rose, did the Language Lab thing, came back here to Alyssa and Stocking. While we were reading, Rae came by to chat, which made for a sort of awkward moment (was it awkward? I thought it was). Then I went into the kitchen to do some dishes, and that's when it hit. Joel walked in after having been somewhat conspicuously absent for a few hours, and said: I was just dumped. It's real fun.

I think I'll write about that, and the conversations that took place in the next several hours, before and after we went to bed, a little later on. For now, here's today: It was absolutely gorgeous today, a stark contrast to the persistent drizzle and gray of yesterday; clear blue sky from the moment I looked up. That is, cloud cover of zero-tenths, or as I misheard Janet "call me Janet" McI, zero tents. I like the idea of tents as a scale for cloud cover, it makes a good deal of sense. We stood in a circle behind Martin and described sounds and their direction, spotted some mourning doves (columbiformes) on the river birches and conifers, and a scurry of passenteries at the feeders: titmice, chickadees, sparrows, juncos, finches, faster than she could talk about them. As became even more abundantly clear a few hours later in the indoor portion of the class (after French lab and sitting in parlors with Claire while Jonathan Schneider and whatsisname, Gavril, were ridiculously conversing about vectors and dot-products and Australia and a refreshingly normal conversation with Rachel Block about art - she has a show up in Beardsley - and interrupting Alyssa's Sharples date with Melissa Min, who has either changed a lot or else I my sense of her from last year was incomplete; she was being far more earnest and talkative than I would have guessed), the group is split between abject beginners like me and Abram ("birds are pretty") and seriously experienced folks like two who have spent summers banding birds and one who has incurred the jealousy of Ms. Williams by having travelled to South America with "only one of the most important living ornithologists" (Janet's words). Debates about the pronunciation of "Appalachian" have already started. The class should be really interesting and different; it's nice that Joe and Ali are taking it too. I might go on a field trip with them Sunday. After class she took most of us to look at the Swarthmore College Bird Collection, which is three large cabinets in a back room of Martin whose drawers contain hundreds and hundreds of stuffed birds, including owls, eagles, hummingbirds, parrots, and a pelican. Many people kept commenting on how beautiful they are, or adorable even, and they certainly are, in a way, but it just struck me as a funny response. I guess if you're used to these things.

she told me she would meet me 'bout a quarter to nine
and believe it or not she was right on time