spain spain spain!

my unrealistically exciting spring break is now officially official hehe. the missing link - a ticket from paris to madrid - has been filled and i am just elated! i have never been to spain before gaaaah! cordoba with caroline... fromage on behalf of jchen in paris... oy vey! now all i need to do is survive midterms and get my passport. arg. what a way to end february!

school-wise today was a hilarious mess. i didn't really go to bed last night, but i was only pseudo-productive. i "woke up" at 6 and kept writing till 8, when i promptly ran to gov. international institutions was actually really interesting this morning and i was suprisingly awake, which was awesome because i get this feeling that digiusto notices when i consistently fall asleep while writing my notes. :P i dropped my es quiz grade and that got rid of that stress. the rest of the afternoon was spent in the library type-typing. dinner with gravling - my favorite part of tuesdays - included being hit squarely between the eyes with a black bean, and a few hungarian sentences. now i'm watching law and order with nugget/ studying chem because i have an hour of office hours in less than 12 hours. i can't wait till thursday is over!

less than perfect day. some parts were good.

that little bird is a barrows goldeneye (picture credit is something from google. i'm getting really lazy with these things, and one of these days i'll get in trouble. that's all i need right now. haha my stupid camera sucks. not an excuse. whatever.) anywho i saw a bunch of these guys (like 3) and a few buffleheads, oodles of gulls, a greater blackback, common eiders, and a really cute dog. all this morning before 10. pretty good way to start a monday. the wind was bitterly cold, but we had fun. i can't wait till the spring so i can go sea kayaking/birding at the same time!

after that little adventure i spent a good few hours running around trying to put my life in order. spring break is fast approaching, i don't have a passport and i'm freaked out about work. lots of library time, a scary email from a professor, a nice email from another professor, a lack of email from the one person who consistently makes me happy haha today sort of sucked. i came home around 5 and made dinner (it was probably the highlight of my day - other than the birds. marinated portobella mushroom stirfry and rice. sweet sweet. sadly then i fell asleep and woke up absolutely terrified that i'd slept all the way till 8am (it was 8pm) and not finished my work/not studied for my es quiz/ written my response paper. i'm not in the best place nerve-wise right now. just not on top of things. i keep having really terrifying dreams/ really odd, not fun dreams. also the general lack of sleep is getting to me.

i got an email from mr gamgee today (holy crap, that's a first in about...oooh...A YEAR!) and apparently we're having tea on thursday. i'll believe it when we're there. i don't understand how you can go from being such good friends to essentially nothing. but whatever. we like the same music so we can talk about that. and beowulf. sweet. freshman year feels like so long ago. again, whatever.

i guess i'm in a pretty bleh mood, although i'm listening to the battle so that's inspiring. everything feels like a big whatever right now, and that's not fun. yesterday, on the other hand, was fun. fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge.

salman...school...sleep!

it's been a while since my last adventure type-typing, and there've been no shortages of things to write about - only a shortage of time. all my anti-tasking is evidently catching up with me :-P today has been an awesome friday, and being that i'm not too far behind in my work, a good day to write.

waking up hasn't been going well lately. i set my alarm and routinely sleep through it. if i don't set an alarm, i just sleep all day. sometimes though, if i set two or three alarms in sequence, i can wake up. thursday for example, i slept through two out of three classes. today i got up at 9:30 instead of 8:30 - and that only because nugget's loudspeaker of an alarm made me bolt out of bed to switch it off for her. (sort of dangerous eh? me switching her alarm off? we could potentially BOTH sleep through the day...) but anywho, 9:30 was fine and i worked for a couple hours till lunch with my brilliant little older sisters hday and erica. we went togetherish to see salman rushdie (thus the little picture there hehe) and he was AWESOME. when i told graham that rushdie was coming to bowdoin he sounded rather disinterested, having already seen him three times. for those of us not quite as lucky as grahammy, one time was quite amazing. i have to admit that i've never read his books, and didn't think too highly of the model/actress wife bit, but seriously i guess judging books by their covers was never a highly regarded occupation. he spoke about family (craziness and all), expanding the universe - just a little bit, split infinitives and star trek (though briefly. i jumped for joy!), national security, our pres. and "duck" cheney, oh it was awesome. i hadn't intended on getting a book signed (because i didn't own any of his, and because i really belonged at the library during that time) but as soon as the Q&A ended, erica and I ran (very literally RAN) to moulton to get in line (well, that wasn't the first priority for erica, but it was up there). we ended up 1st (erica) and 3rd (me) in line. haha we must've looked desperate! but it worked, and i'm elated.

so school is going splendifically - more or less. i'm a bit overwhelmed with work, and i have midterms this next week. papers, oodles of reading, and darn lab reports that absolutely SUCK the life out of me. gah. but in terms of the flavi-happiness meter, things are good. the weather has been unseasonably dry (but cold) but that makes it pretty wonderful to go running after class. i'm hoping for some snow though, because megan and i intend to go xc skiing during lunch this week, but it's difficult without the snow! i've been a bit antisocial lately - a result of those evil lab reports and reading, but the time i do spend with friends makes me really happy. nugget and hal are amazing as always - and many an hour of olympics have distracted us from work. i'm basically an expert at judging ski racing (nugget can testify) and i'm actually beginning to enjoy curling. :) so i guess aside from hanging out more with kruiky (who i've seen surprisingly little of, despite being in the same town again after 8 months. :( boo.) the thing i most need right now is more sleep! haha. right.

back to reading about the mexican revolution now (next post i have to write about my paper topic - corridos - absolutely AMAZING. gah i love allen wells!) i've really gotten sucked into mexican history, which surprises me a little because i've always preferred us/european history to latin america. i really attribute this to the professor. he is awesome.

but i will keep this lack-of-a-blog in mind, and hopefully i'll write again soon. so stop stressing ivanna (hehe) i do exist, again.

just a little writing...

it's not so earlyish on this chilly wednesday night, and i'm listening to the donnie darko soundtrack, reveling in the ease with which i can now turn my desk lamp on (thanks to j) and contemplating continuing my mexican revolution reading for tomorrow. today was one of those insanely packed days that you can't exactly look back on until a week or two down the line. all i remember is that i got far too little sleep last night (and the sleep i did get was on the couch :(...) and i didn't enjoy es lab so much. anywho. my friend-in-crime (hmm, perhaps not crime. perhaps friend-in-all-things-worth-doing-with-friends) and i cooked dinner tonight. i always have fun with that. cooking is so relaxing, you know? hehe kadar a magyar madar... hungarian tongue twisters and how to pronouce "gy". i learned that you don't pronouce the g in jag. sometimes i really love life.

tomorrow holds a bit of potential - gov and es in the morning, which are exciting, early lunch with a friend who i don't really know yet, but who i know enough to know that i like, mexican revolution with cassia and holly (woot!) and gear room in the evening (which means secret agent names and running around like a chicken with its head cut off!)

ps think positive thoughts about me+bowdoin this summer. working to find some fun research to do. oy vey.

ladysmith black mambazo

***** (doesn't really have anything to do with anything. just me being mad.) *****
gosh i feel like i should just say "go read the entry from the day with the mountains." everything has been so up and down recently i'm really getting mad. i just got off the phone with my parents - my 99% sunny, happy, chipper parents - and i'm borderline pissed. nothing makes me more sad than when i hang up the phone wondering why i called. papa has been answering the phone in THE most annoying robotic voice and its really irritating. on top of that, once i identified myself he asked "wait...did you just wake up from yesterday?" ok i love deep questions, i love quirky tangents, but I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE questions like that that only serve to provoke questions about what in the world is going on in seattle. it's midnight! i've talked to them already once today and he knows for a fact that i didn't spend the whole day in bed, so what kind of question is that??? gaaaaaaaah. do i sound frustrated? geez. not the post i'd been planning to write. other than this latest human interaction of mine, today was quite awesome. indeed, these last couple days have had some of the most gratifying moments in a while. where to begin, now that i've already vented my negativity early on... hehe only sunshine dust ahead. (oooh citing sources: creepy saladfingers)
***** (ok...done with that one...now on to the funner (hehe) stuff) *****

tonight i went to a concert at pickard with kruik, holly, rose, dan, gill, and mike - ladysmith black mambazo - it was amazing. (prompt google search, etc etc. go see them!) i'd been rather bummed about it till dinner, because i didn't have a ticket (they sold out reaally quickly) and so i figured i'd just do laundry and homework and fun stuff like that. anywho dan's friend couldn't make it so he offered me her ticket. i am eternally grateful to both of them. so much energy, so much fun. i realized while i was sitting there, that many of my most memorable moments have occurred in pickard... seeing paul rusesabagina speak... sitting there as freshmen... watching a play there as a prefrosh... anywho. one more awesome event to tack on to the memory list. i kept thinking of grahammy during the concert (they're from south africa) and how much he would've enjoyed seeing them. c'est la vie.

there's a chance lima's coming up next weekend, which would make me so happy. (fingers crossed, right?) ooh thinking of things to do...

speaking of things to do, it's 12:11 and i'm exhausted. there is much to be done tomorrow along the lines of cleaning, baking, and gathering random facts about some as-yet undetermined countries for NATO-VINO tomorrow night. i'm really glad it's the weekend. i need to get over this stupid cold, do my readings for next week so i don't encounter the same difficulties in the mexican revolution as this week (i.e. waaay too many similar spanish names of waay too many dissimilar characters that i couldn't, for the life of me, keep straight.) i'm sure we have a quiz next week in es, paper topic and collective action dilemma in gov, and another short story for english. before i go to bed (after gargling with water from the dead sea first... g;lskdjfs) i just have to say that although i'm superbly bummed that i don't have enough time for auditing ornithology, there is no way i would drop this english class for it. despite my disproportionate affection for birds vis a vie the english language, i've never been so excited to go to a class that has NOTHING to do with my major, and could potentially kick my ass. BRILLIANT.

it's amazing how happy just typing can make you. i was angry-ish when i started this, and now i'm just sniffly. mental hug and goodnight!

f e b r u a r y !

happy february :) the month of wasted paper cards and kids eating too much heart-shaped candy. oy vey. i'm just kidding. i love february.

my 02.01.06 got off to an interesting start. i went to bed last night exhausted and feeling blah, but i set my alarm thinking that i'd go to ornithology this morning. i woke up at 8:30 feeling even more blah and decided instead just to keep sleeping. so four more hours later, i woke up again entirely scared that i'd slept through es lab. what's more interesting was how i woke up. i'd forgotten to set my alarm the second time, but i had a terrible dream that (luckily?) got me up for class. in this dream, the us was overtaken by a plethora of camels (the one hump variety) and no one knew what to do. suddenly there was a huge flood, and i remember all these camels floundering under a bridge trying to get out of the water. the police decided that the best thing to do would be to taser them, so i woke up dreaming about electrocuted camels under some pretty little stone bridge. definitely one of those dreams you only get when you're not feeling well. arg.

anywho, lab was really long and not particularly fun. holly and i hung out for a bit, and now i'm off to bed. yes it's 7pm, but nothing sounds better right now than being cozy under way too many layers of clothing, comforters, fleece blankets, toasted rice equivalents of hot water bottles ooh, and socks. yay. (my mum says that if you sleep with socks on, you won't get married. i dont know about that, but being warm is really my primary mission in life) i hope tomorrow is better.

thing i'm currently most bummed about: mike invited me to an accordian concert in portland tonight, and i think it would've been wonderful. :( such is life.