That moment of horror

Last night after I'd finally buckled down to study Latin, I heard a bird call it's little birdie tune--one that I'd heard a few times last year during the wee hours of an Edinburgh morning--and I had a horrifying moment where I was certain I'd stayed up all night and I'd look up from my textbook and see the sky was lightening and then my alarm would go off suddenly and I'd have to run off to my midterm without having slept. 

So, having recognized that same kind of deathly panic that rises up when you lean juuust a little too far back in your chair and are suddenly convinced you are about to die, I turned off my desk lamp and crawled into bed.  And then I huddled around my body pillow and felt clever for not staying up all night. 

Magical Realism...

is how the academic world can accept small doses of poetic urban fantasy as real.  It's how the erudite literati can pick up and read a fantasy novel without addressing or suffering under the stigma of it.

Academia drives me crazy sometimes.  There's nothing wrong with liking fantasy!  We don't have to classify it under some highbrow genre title just because the prose is pretty and there are non-anglo cultures represented in the story.  If there are ghosts and spirit guides, you're probably reading fantasy.

Good grief.

Meh and etc.

Today was the first of what I'm sure will be many frustrated moments that all sound vaguely similar:  "I want a week off.  Two weeks.  What happened to my eternal summer?!"

Dyed my hair today.  I'd call it an auburn-y color now, but there are those who might call me ginger.  Can't decide yet if I'd agree with them.

Oh, and that part about rocking Latin?  Lies.  Braggery.  (<--not a real word)  Boasting and arrogance.  I'm drowning in declensions and it's horrifying.  Horrifying like a horror movie.

I wish there was more time for fun writing, but whatever.  November's coming up, which means Nanowrimo (which means writing a 50,000 word story in 30 days).

Life, it do go on.

Oh gosh, and guess what!  Google "weird penicillin dreams."  Seriously, go do it and see what the first thing that pops up is.  Life goal on the bucket list: check!  BECAUSE I'M AWESOME. :)

Oopsies, Oreos, Latin, and Halloween.

I got a gentle nudge today from a lovely family friend about how I maybe ought to update my blog.  Oops.  In my defense, everything from move-in to the start of classes has either been too hectic or banal to write about.

So now I’m sitting at my nice desk in my lovely bedroom in my new flat in the postgrad/grad housing munching on double-stuf Oreos when I should be making dinner and avoiding tonight’s Latin assignment.

I’m rocking Latin this go-round, by the way.  A+.  It’s making me feel pretty awesome.

I’m taking a Dante class as well, and my flatmates and I have decided that one of our Halloween costumes this year are going to reference the first canto (chapter) of the Inferno.  Before Dante descends into hell, he tries to skip all the bad stuff and climb a mountain that leads straight to heaven and god and his lifelong unrequited love who’s suddenly thoroughly enamored with him.  He’s thwarted, though, by a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf, all of which have very deep allegorical meanings that nobody actually knows.  Soooo… clever animal costumes!  I’m going to be the leopard.

And The Brother, who is taking the train up to spend Halloween weekend with me, is going to be the tenth doctor from Doctor Who!  I think I’m more excited about it than he is.  Maybe I’ll dress up as Donna Noble one night.

So many oreos.  I’m going to turn myself into a fatty, and then I won’t fit into my leopard costume.  Brilliant.

Layin' it on a little thick, maybe? (Everything's true.)

Excerpt from an application I've been filling out:

What would you tell a student who is unsure about studying abroad?

"The time I spent abroad was the best year of my life.  You're going to have more fun than you can even imagine right now, and you're going to meet the coolest people in the process.  It's okay if you're nervous.  When I first got off the plane in Edinburgh there was a moment of, 'Oh, my god, what am I doing?  EVERYONE I've ever known is thousands of miles away!'  But I don't have a single regret--I don't even regret the grease fire and landing myself in the hospital, or ending up on the wrong island in Greece and worrying about being solicited for sexual favors in the wee hours of the morning.  In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't even matter where you go--you'll never forget your time abroad."

It's kind of a lot of text for the dinky little box I was given.  And I really wish I could italicize stuff instead of capitalizing it. And I know it sounds kiiinda cheesy, but... meh, it's all true.  And I've said most of it aloud already to another girl who left for a semester in Stirling (also in Scotland) last week.
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Also, a year ago today I had already missed my first flight out to Edinburgh, had made it to my rescheduled flight, landed and lugged my massive 50lbs/20kg bags up four flights of stairs.  (Three, for you people counting across the pond.)

Exhausting.  And scary.  I've never felt so isolated: I didn't know anyone; I couldn't even call anyone for help if I needed it or got lost.  And besides (as I kept telling myself), what was my mother or my dad or my best friend going to do?  They were thousands and thousands of miles away.  I was totally on my own for the first time.

(And frankly, it was a matter of pride that I didn't call home for help or in tears.  It was one of those mornings after sitting on a plane for seven hours, unable to sleep, where you just grit your teeth and tell yourself that you got this shit 'cause you're awesome and damnit, you're an adult, now act like one!)

I didn't know what a Tesco or a Sainsbury was.  I couldn't find anywhere to eat, and I was too tired to wander far.  I slipped into an overpriced pizzaria on Grassmarket just before they started closing up and tried to both stay awake as I ate and not wonder too much about what I was going to do tomorrow.  Tomorrow didn't matter, I kept telling myself.  Tomorrow'll be much easier to handle after sixteen hours of sleep, anyway.  Or, you know, nine or ten hours.

And it was.  Fresher's Week was ridiculous and hilarious in all the ways that first week off at uni/college always is.  And by the end of the week, I'd already met so many of the people that I've been missing while sitting around my parents' house in California.

Hugs to all my Edinburgh friends, even if you're not in Edinburgh at the moment.  I miss you guys.  So, so much.

Neverending summer break

I literally didn't know what day it was today.  It was both one of the greatest and confused moments of this summer.

I thought it was Wednesday. 

It's Friday.

(Well, it's about fifty-eight minutes into Saturday morning, but you get the gist of it.)

Perhaps Wednesday was the last day I looked at the calendar.  Or Tuesday--that might make more sense.  I would have looked at it on Tuesday and gone, "Oh, tomorrow's Wednesday," and ended up doing that for the next... however many days.  Three days.  (Except the looking at the calendar part.)

Water from the sky

It’s one of those stupid familial inside jokes: “what is this water falling from the sky?”  It’s right up there with “yeah, and the Titanic never sank.”

First rain since I returned at the beginning of July.  Pretty frigging weird.  It’s a respectable rain for anywhere in the world, and a veritable downpour in San Diego terms.  (We’re always in the middle of one drought or another.  There’s never enough water for everyone who lives out here, and there probably never will be.)

I left my window open last night and dreamt of rain in Edinburgh—probably because I could hear it falling this morning.  It felt very real. 

Pens and PTSA. And dog turds.

I just found a pack of the nicest pens I've ever owned.  Yes.  Such success today.  Baked a cake (chocolate), mixed up the icing into the proper color (Tardis blue), cleaned a bit (under the bed), packed a bit (scarves, books and two mugs), read some of Dante's Inferno. 

Oh, and yesterday during a PTSA meeting my dog, in his profound excitement, pooped under the table and nobody noticed until after the meeting. 

Nobody said anything, anyway.  Noticing and drawing attention to the mongo dog turd under the dining room table are two rather different things. 

Back to travel pics

Fewer musings on Vegas and coyotes, more travel pictures.

Thus, the Hungarian Parliament in Budapest, Hungary on the banks of the Danube.

I don't understand how something so gorgeous can exist.

SoCal Coyotes

There are always weird things you gotta get used to, living in a foreign country. The language/accents. The food. The weather, the measurements, the attitudes, the public transportation. The layout of cities that are about a thousand years older than your hometown. It's phenomenal, granted, but it's also... sometimes it's exhausting. Mostly it's just tiring, like when you take a puppy outside and they run themselves ragged.

What's weird, though, is lying down in your new bed with it's too-thin mattress and strange duvet at the end of each day and listening to the unfamiliar noises outside your window.

I don't think I will ever, ever miss the sounds that came from the Three Sisters. Just to be clear.

What I did miss, and what I will always miss no matter where I go, are the coyotes in San Diego. When we first moved into this house--I was thirteen or fourteen--I panicked and huddled under the blankets the first night I heard them, convinced there was a pack of screaming women out in the canyon across the street. And then I started wondering if I was going crazy and hearing things, because no one came to their rescue. And since I'd already half-decided I was losing my mind, I wondered if there was some kind of unearthly creature racing through the darkness and eating people.

(Try not to laugh too hard.)

I still imagine a pack of coyotes could give professional mourners a run for their money, but I've come to appreciate the idea that there's some wildlife outside our despicable cookie-cutter neighborhood. There's at least a single pack out there, maybe two packs, and there's got to be enough deer and bunnies running around to keep them alive. I like the idea that there's life out in the canyon, even when the dry brush is almost as tall as I am and twelve inches of rain every year is probably all we're ever going to get (and five of those inches happen all at once, in December).

Usually I'm in bed by the time the coyotes have caught something and start celebrating. Usually it's between midnight and three in the morning. Tonight, though, I came home from a friend's house and parked the car across the street from my parents' house. I gathered up all the nonsense I'd brought out to the car and crossed the street, hoping the front door was unlocked or I'd have to go digging around in my bag for my house keys. (It wasn't, and I did have to.)

In the middle of the street, I stop and lift my head. It's faint, but coyotes sing in the canyon to the south. I stand out there on the blacktop for a while and enjoy the music. Before tonight, I hadn't heard them since leaving for Edinburgh last summer.

After a short while I turn to cross the other half of the street and take a step, then realize I'm hearing coyotes in surround sound. They're singing to the north, too.

There's an odd moment of simmering panic as I picture myself surrounded without having realized it, but both packs (and the northern one didn't sound like more than two or three coyotes) are faint. They're not among the houses.

This would have been a much more interesting post if I'd spotted one or two or been attacked, but unfortunately that's the extent of my story. No sightings, no attacks, nothing interesting--just the first whisper of appreciation for home stemming from something outside the obvious bits. (Family, the weather, my massive pile of books.)