Wednesday When My Roommate is Having Private Talks and I want to Sleep.

"Qu'est ce que t'as fait, Philipe? Tu as bu."
That is a verbatim quote from my fantastical french professor, Hugh the Badass. That's how he started our "what we did over fall break" conversation. That man makes my day all the time. Well, all the Tuesdays and Thursdays. And we laughed at the same joke last time, and he winked at me. God, recognition by people you admire is so great. So great.
On that note, this real purdy girl I snagged a smooch from during a night of drunken sluttery now smiles at me regularly and occasionally even makes verbal acknowledgment.  Yessir, I am climbing such social ladders at Reed. She may or may not have once dated the dude who dressed as Hunter S. Thompson for Rocky Horror. One degree of separation. Booyah.
Tank Girl costume is nearing completion. The question lingers: to wear a shirt, or to not wear a shirt? It will likely be answered by forces outside of my control, since Get Naked is hosting another dance party after Harvest Ball. That was the best dance party of the year, no competition. Killer music, killer vibe, steamed windows, full encouragement to disrobe, what is not to love, I ask you? Run on sentences. Well fuck grammar and punctuation and all of that bourgeois bullshit. See how Reedie I am? You know, the first yearbook-thing was written in phonetic English.
I will aspire to that level of edgyness one day.
Tomorrow is Jason Webley, if I can get off my ass and find some folks to go with... Thursdays are inopportune for concerts. I shall overcome.
Yeah, I didn't actually think this one out. I just thought, hey, these blogglets are all so after-the-fact that you can't tell what it actually feels like. So I tried to do feelings dear, you know how that's hard for me. So that is what it is to think and feel. Hah. Yeah, whatever, maybe one day.

Sometimes Crazy Shit Goes Down on Tuesdays, Too.

On Monday I realized that Electric 6 was playing in Portland the next day. I also realized that it was at a 21+ location. I decided that was a negligible detail.
Luckily, Nikole is up for adventure. Lyle and Dan say they would have gone, but they had homework and were sick, respectively. Anyways, in the pouring rain, at 9 pm, Nikole and I biked the 4ish miles to downtown Portland.
Here are the steps of not getting into a concert:
Step 1) Lock our bicycles 3 times while listening to a very drunk homeless man tell three jokes.
Step 2) Buy a doughnut at Voodoo so that we feel entitled to drink some of their water.
Step 3) Observe the bouncer carefully examining an ID card.
Step 4) Confer with compatriot about plan of action. Namely, just hope he doesn't see the 18 part of the ID card. If he does, be cool.
Step 5) Get in line, ask if we can buy tickets inside.
Step 6) Wait awkwardly in line.
Step 7) Get asked for ID
Step 8) Get rejected. But he was nice about it. We pretended we didn't know it was 21 and up.
Step 9) Leave calmly and wander around to see if there's a back door.
Step 10) Realize you forgot to use the distraction techniques (cleavage) that you planned on.
Step 11) Decide to give up and wander around downtown Portland
Step 12) Run into the same homeless man and hear his 3 jokes again.
Step 13) Nikole walks into another club. The bouncer just stares at her until she comes back out. He was kinda hidden, so she thought we could just go for it.
Step 14) Decide you're not in the mood for a strip club
Step 15) Decide it's time to go back and do homework.
Step 16) Buy 4 more doughnuts
Step 17) Nibble on doughnuts because it's raining and you need some extra backbone to get back to Reed.
Step 18) Bike home in the rain.
Step 19) Assemble Boots and Lyle, for whom you bought donuts.
Step 20) Eat donuts.
Step 21) Listen to Boots play Lyle's banjo
Step 22) Listen to Lyle play Lyle's banjo
Step 23) Peace the fuck out, it's homework time
Step 24) Walk back to dorm without shoes in a miniskirt and tank top
Step 25) Grab homework, seek fire to counteract the rain and scantily cladness of your sordid past
Step 26) Find fire, and many people
Step 27) Do not do homework, instead helping someone else do the physics problem set.
Step 28) Talk to Anna about her webcomic and psycology
Step 29) Play with rats
Step 31) Try to explain Hunter S. Thompson.
Step 32) Talk about Hunter S. Thompson with someone who understands.
Step 33) Realize you haven't done any homework and it's 1 am.
Step 34) Peace the fuck out, it's time to sleep.

So, that's how it happened. And the best of the homeless man's jokes was:
Why doesn't Santa have any kids?
Because he only comes once a year, and that's in your chimney!

The Perks of Being Just a Little Bit Death-Plagued

Today I slept for two hours between 12 and 2 pm. What a strange time for a nap, you may say, and you would be right. This bizarre doziness is the main reason I got a mono test. You know, apart from knowing that I was exposed. Anyways, for now it’s negative, so woohoo! But for as miserable as my week of Reed Plague was, this strange dénouement is totally awesome. I feel really cozy all of the time. My attention span is shot, and I tend to fall asleep while doing work, but I can work all day because I really just feel like curling up with a book. And everything I’m doing is in a hazy of cozy, so I’m kind of out of it, but it feels real nice. It reminds me of Oxycodone a lot, actually. Everything is inconsequential and totally mellow. Yeah, I kind of miss the swingyness of real moods, but this has some of that too. I’m dozier pre-nap, and peppier post-nap. We’re just on a different scale, or a different part of the spectrum. I just felt the need to share how goddamn comfortable I feel. Yes, I may be sick. Yes, I may be barred from making out with people for a while. But boy, a really solid REM cycle in the middle of every day may be completely worth it. We shall see. I think this is how people get addicted to Oxy. I don’t think I’ll get addicted to mono, or whatever this is, just because that previous sentence is total bullshit, but I can see how it could happen, right? Apart from the disgusting brain latching and leaching that drugs do. You know. Okay, so I’m not the most coherent in this state of cozy goodness. But fuck coherence. At least until I have to write that hum paper.

I’ma go read a book and cuddle with a giant stuffed T-Rex. Make the most of this situation.

Sundays are always the same. FULL OF EPIC PHYSICS.

So, I’m employed. Not gainfully employed, but prestigiously employed. OMSI, motherfuckers. Damn straight. For two weeks now, I’ve worked 8 hours plus a half hour lunch break in the physics lab on Sunday. They have more than four Van De Graff generators, a theramin (oh lordy), a TESLA COIL (HOLY COWCLICKS!) and a Gaussian Rifle (my personal favorite) and one of Edison’s early lightbulbs, and nano particles of iron in water. There is no end to the excellence that goes down there.

My coworkers are chill too. We talk about random stuff mostly, but they’re cool nerds. The coolest has a degree in mechanical engineering and works at OHSU. Interesting fella. Actually, they are all fellas. There is one girl who works in chem, but all the physics kids are dudes. It’s okay. I hold down the fort.

Also, working at OMSI means that I get a membership which lets in 4 people under 20, 1 over 20, and me. So, OMSI parties will be going down, frequently.

I’m exhausted. There is your overview of my work.

Thursday and Friday balance each other out.

Thursday was beautiful because I was feeling so much healthier. I climbed ropes, I kicked ass, the basics. Then at night I adventured around, watching fire dancers and listened to Jewish queercore punk. It’s their new years and such. Then I went to Mac 3 for a dance party.

And then everyone played tetris instead of dancing. So that was a bad omen. Then I went to Mac 2 because I was bored, and everyone was doing homework. But then the friend I hooked up with over the weekend wanted to hang out, so we did. And then I had to break up with someone for the first time.

Still have a black heart, it seems. I tried to tell him early on. But I think next time I just need to have a pause, explain, okay? Session, instead of explaining once in a while to the best of my ability but not really clearly.

So, that was traumatic for all parties. At one point though, he suggested that I should try to be a different person, so I felt that I had definitely made the right decision by then. Who does that?

Anyways, I was sicker on Friday, and feeling really bad about the whole situation. Then he got tested for mono and Ooh! He’s got it! Fuck. So I go in to the health center, fairly certain that my symptoms weren’t mono. I didn’t bother getting tested though because in the first week there’s a 25% chance of a false negative. So, I’ll go back next week. Then I asked about counseling services, and cried a little bit.

So, later that day I met with a therapist! New experience! Unfortunately, it came a  little bit too late, because I had already gotten over the whole thing to a large degree. It was still good to talk it out. My main reason for going was because I had no one here to talk to, but then I chatted with Ryan about it and that helped. It was still valuable though. Also, I now have an appointment for acupuncture! OOH! Free acupuncture! What a great school! I would also like to say that I watched an episode of Top Gear in between mono visit and psych visit, which of course has massive healing properties. In the form of laughter.

Okie doke, so I was a little peppier. I ate dinner and did some Hum reading. Then Liana and Nikole and Austin and I were going to watch Closer, but Nikole would probably die if she got mono, so we ended up putting it off until we’re sure. Because when you watch and aphrodisiac like Closer, you never know what might happen.

Instead, we all went to dinner. I ate a wee bit, to participate. It turns out most of them were going to eat again at a Jewish dinner later, so we basically all had two dinners. This Rabbi across the street hosts dinners for lots of students for Shabbat. His family is so sweet. Anyways, Nikole and Liana went to that, but Lyle showed up and another girl mentioned this theatre thing that I had forgot about and we headed off to that.

It was awesome. It’s called Antarktikos, and it’s this trippy dream-death-real life mix up of adventurers and artists and insomniacs. It was wild. Then the author spoke, but didn’t say anything too interesting. Also, we went with a lot of prospies, so that was fun. Reed has a weight that it puts on you, and prospies don’t have that. Freshman barely do, but it’s still nice to talk to floaty folks.

Lyle and I split. We went to SLUR for a bit, but it was crowded and they were on a beer run, so even though it was pirate themed, we didn’t stick around. Lyle ran off to get water and I followed him, creeper that I am. We decided to play chess, but got distracted at Chitick because they had an advice couch. (Also, they were drinking Vodka Tang-kikis, vodka plus tang. WHAT) and Lyle and I didn’t know what to ask about, so we went to Sullivan to write a list of ‘Things for which one might elicit advice”

1.       Whom should I romance with?

2.       If you give up accidentally, is it still giving up?

3.       What is the Principal Thing

4.       Sex

Lyle did one, I did two, Thales did 3, and british soccer player who signed my tits did 4. He made sure that we understood it was not him who needed advice on sex, just other in general people. He was also very disappointed that I didn’t mention him in my article about soccer. Nikole was back, and Maggie and some other folks were going to go to Which house. Last time Witch house was boring though, so Lyle and I just went back to Chitick to get advice. We learned very little, but we saw August on acid which was HILARIOUS. That kid is supremely lovable.

Then we went to Winch and drew on the chalkboard, drinking liquid inspiration. You know, beer. We felt very artsy. It was beautiful. The other half of the  board had Brosiedon, king of the Brocean. I promise ours was better. I’ve been into weird deconstructed faces lately. Lyle did squiggly lines, and also a face. It was class-tastic.

Speaking of class, then we wandered around for a while before running into kids who were going to hang out with Hugh, the resident communist. I’m sure he’s not the only one, but he’s the most insistent. We layed about in his room and he drew on my legs. I think this need to write on people is very interesting, especially since I was scribbled on by two people last night. Both signatures. At least some of Hugh’s was signature. I wonder if it has to do with a sort of illusion of possession. Anyways, I left with Lyle because Hugh was very drunk and very touchy. Also, I should sleep because I’m sick. So I did, and I felt good about everything,

Very different from Thursday, but that’s how it goes. In a good way, all around.