The New and Improved Pajjes of Noli

ladeedadeedah....

Posting again! For no reason, again!
Hmm...TAC continues TAC-ish. I feel it worthwhile to mention that today I have not yet been dizzy. At all. Also, that I wasn't dizzy last night. At all. It's been about 18 hours dizziness-free!
And yes, that is quite an accomplishment lately.
Today I learned the joys of being in class without being dizzy. Philosophy this morning was an absolutely fascinating class. I think we might have had conclusions! Sort of...at least we agreed on what we couldn't conclude. For a freshman class, that seems to be the best you can expect.
Kitty and I switched clothes today. It's weird, seeing someone else wearing my clothes. Also, I learned that we have more different figures than I suspected. Her clothes make me look REALLY curvy, not necessarily in a good way. She only has a couple skirts that I can wear. Similarly, my skirts make her look very straight-figured. Playing dress up on each other was a challenging(but edifying!)task.
And my hair is getting longer. Yay! I can pull it back now. I was so sick of wearing it the same way every single day.
Hmm.
Nothing else to say, really, so I'm just going to shove in an email I wrote to my family, since I described the mattress pull. No, this isn't the account written in Iliad language. I will get one up here soon. This just refers to the Iliad.
"While I'm writing emails, everything is going fine out here
at TAC. Aside
from my health, which is terrible(people know me as the girl
who is carried
around campus all the time, or the girl who leans on walls
when she does
walk) everything is fantastic. Classes are getting better and
better. We
just finished the Iliad, which finally made sense at the end,
and are about
to begin the Oddysey. We're also about to begin reading
Leviticus and
Numbers (joy!), so I'm forseeing caffeine in my future.
Dorm rivalries are as spirited as ever. We recently had a
most entertaining
display of the maturity of college guys, called a mattress
pull.
Apparently, one mens' dorm, Blessed Junipero Serra, has
somehting called a
"goat stag". I am told that it is the symbol of
manliness and power. Women
are not usually allowed to see it, but it was on display at
the matress
pull. This symbol of virility is made of copper pipes and
wood, and looks
like it might be intended to resemble the head of a goat.
However, as a
symbol, it's desirable enough for one dorm, St. Peter, to
challenge the
possessor of it to a mattress pull for rights to it. A
mattress pull
involves a mattress in the centre of a field, with a goal set
up on either
end of the field. Every guy in the respective dorms(after a
fittingly
ceremonial entrance march in the dorm colors) lined up on
their side of the
field while Fr. Michael, with the dorm tyrants, prayed over
the mattress
for(I think) the safety of all concerned. I don't think he
blessed the
mattress...that would have been very odd.
Once Fr. Michael was safely out of the way, the dorm armies
charged the
mattress and proceeded to beat each other up.
They apparently enjoyed this.
However, the Serra boys were a bit outnumbered, and they
didn't have St.
Therese girls(my dorm!) cheering for them, so they lost
rather badly. After
only about 20 minutes their biggest guys were pinned and the
mattress had
been won by Peter's. The guys then did all sorts whooping and
hollering,
but quieted down for the solemn relinquishment of the goat
stag by Serra's
dorm tyrant to "Joe-Moe", Peter's tyrant.
And thus ended the saga of the goat stag, with much glory and
honor to the
victors.
Obviously, these guys read way too much Greek writings for
their own good.
Fortunately, there were no spears, so I don't have to give an
account of
where they went in and out, or the clouds of darkness that
fell over their
eyes, or their complete family histories.

For all the aunties(and my mother, naturally)-- the dizziness
thing really
isn't so bad. I mean, I can't walk alone, but you should see
the inventive
ways that my friends help me across campus! Last night I was
carried down
on two guys' crossed arms, about 5 and half feet off the
ground. That was
fun. I was also almost carried to class on a chair from the
commons by some
guys I don't even know who had seen me leaning on two girls
to walk, but my
friend Nick decided that wasn't a good idea and just carried
me himself.
Also, it has given me admission to the elite "Dead
Princess Society". There
is actually another girl here, Kitty, with the same
unexplained dizzy
spells. We both end up being carried across campus like
swooned princesses
rather often. We also both love teaching guys to swing dance,
so the
Society has been formed as the two of us, who alternately
find random
helpful guys to carry us across campus and, when steady and
upright, steal
equally random and entirely unsuspecting guys and make them
learn new dance
moves. It's loads of fun. Our cheif pupil, Nick, now knows 28
different
moves, and can string most of them together in succession.
I'll try to get
someone to videotape us dancing for all of you at some point.
However, "Philosophia me vocat." I need to finish
about 30 more pages of
Plato before tomorrow morning, so it's off to the books I go."
Actually, I'm off to lunch, then Lab class, in which I will stay awake. The whole time. Really!

posted by Noli at 11:36 AM

the pointless post

No one that I know who isn't here actually reads this thing, that I know of, but a certain person will not leave me alone until I post so...I am posting.
I left home one month and 2 days ago now...it doesn't quite feel like it yet, though. I stil kinda feel vacationy, like I'm going to go home soon. It's way too much fun here to be school sometimes. For instance, right now I'm surrounded by friends in the study room in my dorm, which is very very cool. TAC social life involves mostly studying in groups and swing dancing...and the occasional jelly beans.
Lesse...I'm never actually bored here, but my daily life still makes a pretty boring story. Today, for instance, I got up(eventually...my bed is quite comfy)and went to work. There I did a bunch of boring data entry stuff and sent out a couple of letters. Then I went to class, and had the best class I've had since I came here. Everything we'd been reading in philosophy finally made sense. It was fantabulous. Of course, I said alot of really dumb things, and I think Mr. Richard thinks I'm a moron, but hey, at least I learned something!
Just don't ask me what...
After class I....hmm. Oh, I helped Kitty get to the commons because she was dizzy(justlike me!) and then I became sympathetically dizzy. It was actually a really bad spell. I had JB help me to mass, where I had to grip the back of the pew in front of me the entire time to keep from falling over onto the unwitting gentleman beside me. I have no clue who he was, but I'm sure he thought my behavior odd. Getting up to communion was also a bit of an adventure.
After mass I worked my way across to where Mary(the one who bites...) was sitting, since my automatic 'help, I'm dizzy and don't know how to get done what I need to' reaction is to find my Mary. So she gave me her seat just before I collapsed into it, and got me food(yay for food!), which I proceeded to eat rather messily. Bill had written her, so I got to read that letter, which was nice, though his diction was frightening. After lunch I went to class, lab, where I alternately slept and counted who else was sleeping. Awesome class, that one...oy. After that I convinced Dierdre that she wanted to model for me sometime soon. Then I went to my room and finished the Iliad, then burned a cd for Nathan, then took a nap until dinner. I ate dinner with Lauren and Scott and a few other people, but it ended up being Scott and I and a bunch of strangers after a while, so Scott and I talked. Then for some reason I got really really depressed and almost started crying. Poor Scott. He had no clue what to do with this suddenly emotional girl. So, since I was dizzy, he walked me back to my dorm to get my Iliad, since seminar was in half an hour. We were waylaid a bunch of times, so by the time we got to the dorm we had more like 10 minutes until seminar. Scott, being Scott, spent the entire time I was inside the dorm buzzing my room over and over and over. My roomate took the phone off the hook, so it didn't bother us anymore. So, having waited for me to come out with my Iliad, he ran off to his own dorm to get his own Iliad. Doesn't make much sense, I'm afraid. Scott never does. Then I hobbled my way, still very dizzy, down to seminar, where I lied to the entire room and insisted that I was completely fine. Tim, of course, didn't buy it, but no one else knows me. Then seminar, which was fascinating.
Are you asleep yet? I almost am. Told you this was boring.
Anyway, after seminar Katy and I walked down the commons, where I flitted about a bit, convinced Maria that she wants to model for me, and convinced Nick that he wanted to study with me. So Katy and I went back up to the dorm, changed, and came out to find Nick waiting.He then ran off to his own dorm(two guys in one day wait for me for 5 minutes and then leave...weirdoes)and met me in the library. The study rooms were full, so we went to a classroom to go over latin. We talked about all sorts of things, and some latin, and finally got through everything we were supposed to. Then we went over Euclid. Somewhere in that time the power went out. I hate it when that happens, but fortunately Nick knows me well enough to immediately whip out a flashlight and assure me that, really, there were no bogeymen in the room. Or squirrels. So we did latin by flashlight until the power came back on. On our way out of the science building, we discussed photography and stuff, and he walked me back up to the dorm. It was only freshmen in the dorm, since everyone else was in a meeting that lasted past curfew, so we locked out all the prefects. Fun. Then there was an odd bout of wrestling(I flipped Mary twice and flattened Kitty once, and Kitty and Lauren each flattened me once...*sigh* I am weak.)Then Kitty and I watched St. Bernards boys run around in black clothes doing something or other, which I will inquire into tomorrow, and came back inside to study. Which we are doing now. Sort of.
There, this post is long enough to make up for all of the previous non-posting, and boring enough to be marketed as a sleep aid. And now, I am off to sleep myself, having succeeded in boring myself nearly to tears.
But I wasn't bored all day!
Pictures to come when I convince Nick to let me use his laptop at some point. Love you all!

posted by Noli at 8:04 AM