I'm back at school again. I want to thank mom and dad and Wally for a wonderful time at home; I was so happy to be back even if only for a week. Maybe one day I will go back home and it won't feel like home, but I'm glad that day is not now.

I can't believe it's the end of my break already. . .


Two hours after getting home, a friend of mine was having her wedding and I had just a chance to lay down in my wonderful sunny room before I was on the road again. It was a very lovely wedding, outside, with a string quartet, and lots of red flowers (her favorite color). My friend, Katiya, is just 4 years older than me. We had the same violin teacher for a while. I remember when I was 11 and hated to dress up and she promised my mom that if she could take me shopping she'd find nice clothes that I'd like too. And she did--- she was the first person to. She had a knack for finding really cheap cute clothes and tried to teach me all of her tricks. She and her husband are going to Italy. I hope they will be happy :). I'm sure they will be--- she's one of the sunniest and sweetest people I know.


I gotten to hit all of my favorite restaurants--- Little Tokyo, which after every single Japanese restaurant I've been to still has the best food, I think, and real Southern cooking at Walnut Hills. And even El Sombrero. But mainly I've gotten to eat my mother's cooking, which I miss. And I have more ideas for what I will cook up at school.


6.170 is depressing. I still can't get my old p-sets to work :(.


I've finished reading Ender's game. Yay! Lalala. Yay again!


My brother got his first pair of glasses. I think he looks cute in them.


I'll be back up Sunday night. I don't think I want to go back. There is absolutely nothing to look forward to in the week ahead of me, or the week after.

Upon finding two random poems I must have written a while ago and forgotten about

I.

Flipping through the pages
of a love-weathered childhood book
trying to find my favorite story,
the one with the sheep


I’m sure it was somewhere between
page 37 and the picture of the sailboat,
but all I find there is “The little girl ran
past the street, past the trees, past the pond. . .”


Perhaps the sheep got bored and wandered to another book
Perhaps a wizard wrote an important spell on those pages,
and had to tear the page out
so that no one else could discover how to make un-meltable icecream
Maybe it’s one of those things that disappear with age
Like the ability to see fairies
and the longing to stay up past 8:30 at night
Maybe my mother made it up, knowing that I liked sheep
Or maybe since I liked sheep, I made it up


Oh, that I were a child
Oh, that this book still had the sheep story
Because I’ve forgotten how it ended



II.


Last year, my grandmother told me
I should marry a rich asian boy


Last night, my fortune cookie told me
that my lucky number is 37
and that I will marry a man
who cooks me lo mein
and has the habit of folding little paper strawberries
and leaving them tucked in the corners of my bookshelves
His lips will fit into mine perfectly
(like lips always do in anime)
he smells like eau du green tea
and whispers in my ear that I am “his asian girl”
{sigh} what can I do but accept my fate

6.170 is the worst class ever ~_~;; I will never be a software engineer.


After working on 6.170 all day Saturday, we headed to Deli Haus and the 1E party. We sat in the hallway and told jokes. Jim started out, "My dad told me a joke once. It was in Polish. It had an airplane in it."


"Oh, let us hear it!"


"So once the Polish airline crashed in a cemetary. . ."


"The whole airline?"


"Well, so it's hard to translate."


"Then let us hear it in Polish."


"Okay. . . [5 minutes of Polish words]. . .[More Polish words]"


Pause.


"That was the joke".


Roar of laughter.


Brett found a women's kendo uniform, and he's lent me a shinai. I'm going to try to go to kendo practice with him on Wednesday. . . woot!

Had we but world enough, and time


One day while wandering through the wilderness, a monk stumbled upon a vicious tiger. He tried to run away from it as fast as possible but found himself no further away from danger--- for he realized he was heading for the edge of a high cliff--- at the feet of which waited many more hungry tigers. To his relief, he noticed a vine hanging over the precipice and grasped onto it tightly. Unfortunately for the monk, after a few moments of dangling, the vine began to give way and with him, began a swift descent. But as he was falling, he noticed a berry growing on the vine. He plucked the berry daintily off its stem and popped it into his mouth. The story ends: "And it tasted delicious."


Fate is a funny thing. The day after I declared myself happy and fortunate at the beginnings of my first romantic relationship, he provided me with an additional piece of information. It is true that he is greatly attracted to me, and cares for me deeply, and it is also true that he also loves someone at home. That is definitely something that I don't want to destroy--- an already existing relationship. I would never have imagined myself ever in the middle of a love-triangle. I feel a lot of guilt for making him feel confused and ambivalent. And I would have stopped my attractions if I knew from the beginning that it had been this way. He kissed me, and wished that he had met me without any previous bindings. But I respect his decision and his honesty. The kiss, I felt, was like the last meal of one who is doomed--- a reminder of everything I love and will never experience again. But I can accept it and my fate with the enjoyment of the moment. It tasted delicious. Here's a wish (though not a hope) that things could be simpler. But life is not simple, it is how it is. And I know what I must do.

There's something intriguing about short plays--- more so than most long ones I've read. They seem to be more fresh, more original, like little snapshots of life from weird angles. We performed a few by David Ives in HASS class this past week. The one that caught my attention was called, "Sure Thing", about a guy trying to pick up a girl, apparently often performed in drama/speech competitions. The same scene is acted out many times, interputted by a bell and repeated with slight variations in what each of the players say and do, either because of one or two small changes in their lives before hand that changed who they were at the moment, or because of changes in their decisions of what to say at the moment. In short, two people meeting together and saying and doing everything just right seems so improbable next to the many many wrong possibilities.


I often wonder, how it is that people manage to get in relationships at all. Me finding someone who I love is first of all very improbable--- both the list of things that I insist on and the list of things that annoy me in a member of the opposite sex is so long and strange that I've only felt true attraction once or twice. And after this unlikely event, it is even more unlikely that this person will feel the same strength of attraction to me, yes? I've pretty much resigned myself to it's being impossible, so I don't typically go out of my way to find one, or get upset when someone I admire cares nothing of me. So it is with a very high degree of shock and suprise that I now say that it's actually happened. Maybe really late, since it took 18 years to happen, but he's completely worth the wait. I would have happily loved him without any hope of love in return, both because I'm a sore loser, and he's that wonderful, so his admission of equal attraction to me. . . has made me unspeakably happy.


So, sometimes we do reach that star. . .

Bought my brass rat! :) Best quote ever: "Why do you have a Phi and Theta on your ring?" "Oh, I'm a big fan of spherical coordinates. . ."