Thanksgiving...


Lindy invited me to come home with her this Thanksgiving. Her house in New Hampshire was so cute and cozy, her family lovely, the food delicious... It was wonderful to get away from school, to spend time with her, to relax... especially since Brett broke up with me just Monday. I'm actually kind of suprised that I've been able to come to terms with things as quickly as I did. A great deal of it is because my friends are as supportive and caring as they are.


Lindy's mother and sisters inspired me with their knitting--- and as soon as I got back to Boston, I went looking for needles, and yarn. The only available needles were small (and plastic, ug), so the pink scarf I am knitting is proceding very slowly. But it should be warm since the holes are so small!


Thanks to Bunnybeth for the sweet Thanksgiving greeting:




Check below for pictures from the formal and Halloween!

The Business of Being Cute


The author of a book on Hello Kitty (Hello Kitty: The Remarkable Story of Sanrio and the Billion Dollar Feline Phenomenon) came to MIT to give a talk on Friday. I had class, but Brett offered to go for me, and take notes. I can imagine him standing there among lots of Asian girls, looking all serious, and with a yellow pad of paper ^_^. Among the interesting things he said were: Hello Kitty is an official non-citizen in Japan, with the registered name "Kitty White" and the registered weight of 3 apples. In Japan, Sanrio makes cheap good quality items, encouraging children to buy their products. In the US, Sanrio makes a limited number of items of each style and type, and cycles them out quickly— going for collectability. There is someone in charge of dictating style guidelines to the artists: recent trends (as in, within the past few years) include pink and light blue Hello Kitty: from analysis that those color of cell phone cases sold the best in Japan. This person, the author said, is not what you would expect of a Hello Kitty style supervisor: she wears black exclusively. U.S. economists predict that Hello Kitty will go out of phase in the US soon— since US children get bored by any sort of product fad easily, but will cycle back, since most of Sanrio’s revenues come from Japan anyway.


Jinkies!


Max and I dressed up as Shaggy and Velma from Scooby Doo. Halloween was on a Saturday, but we went to class dressed up on Friday.



Happy Birthday Janet!


Janet turned 20 last Wednesday. We went out to eat in Chinatown on Wednesday and had this delicious Ginger Ice Cream, and then had 3 cakes for the East Penthouse.


DDR’ing


We’ve been playing DDR for the past few Friday nights in the East Penthouse. It’s a lot of fun, and my weekly "exercise": because I’m too lame to do anything else. ^_^ Lindy is absolutely awesome— I remember the first time we played together freshman year. I still kind of suck, but I’m getting better. . . Must. . . learn. . . to do. . . eighth notes. . .


On the Red Carpet Formal


The formal was held in the Copley Square Plaza Hotel— which was gorgeous. The music sucked, as usual, but it was still fun. Vivian, Janet, Victoria, Vikki, John, Max, Brett, and I went. To go along with the theme, they had cardboard cutouts of lots of famous people, including John Kerry, which I thought was really tacky against the fanciness of the hotel.