islanded in a stream of stars

This is probably the only time in my life I wish I were a cat, because then when I fell off my bed - it's about 4 feet off the ground - I'd be able to reposition myself and reach the ground less painfully.

I remember rolling off an 8 foot ledge in 6th grade after being surprised by someone's sudden entrance, but I think I was so shocked that it didn't hurt as much as it does now.  Damn, and I'm supposed to be smiley for the prospective student panel I'm speaking on tomorrow afternoon, too.  Normally I'd be tempted to take an over the counter Tylenol, but ever since my neighbor was convicted of armed robbery to feed his pain killer addiction I've become really cautious.

Useful things not to mix up:

Serrer la main is not the same as faire un poing de main. In other words, le Maréchal Pétain did not slap Hitler at Montoire when agreeing on collaboration; Pétain shook his hand instead. Or so the story goes.

This is also why I ought to be less sleep-deprived in general so that I stop saying stupid things. Then again, I already make a fool of myself quite often while well-rested so the point is moot.

What's disturbing me right now his how awake I can force myself to be under the sole influence of...playing techno action film music in my head. I have no idea how that works, but at least I don't need to become a slave to caffeine (yet).

I officially have my cue to hide underneath the computer desk.

I thought that I sent an e-mail with a study break suggestion to my floor proctor (the Harvard equivalent of a RA, or resident assistant who is the organizer/authority figure on the floor). The e-mail addresses here usually are in the form of first initial, last name (John Smith would be jsmith). Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case with my proctor, who shares an almost identical login name with another student. So I just suggested a group Pink Panther film festival to some guy in the middle of Tennessee, who also appears to be a Peter Sellers fan. (I thought you would appreciate that, clarequilty :D )

I also met a tremendously interesting Indian guy from my behaviorism seminar whose claim to fame is "passing out on Hadrian's Wall, and then waking up laughing about midget Scotsmen battering their way through it" and "being kicked off every continent except for Australia [and Antarctica]." Sophia, Maulik (this very interesting Indian guy) and I plan on taking a trip sometime to Wonderland, which is apparently the last stop on the Boston subway blue line, just to discover what there is out there.

Besides those two, I met several new girls from my floor at one in the morning in the floor bathroom. Apparently the bathroom is only totally abandoned at 2:30 in the morning; one is inevitably drawn into a conversation with several others just happening to have the same "It won't be crowded at 1 AM!" scheme. We had a really strange conversation about Marxism, the Cold War, and how the International Baccalaureate (IB) exams tend to favor the political left. Unfortunately, two of the people I was conversing with were absolutely convinced that the Berlin Wall appeared while LBJ was president, and I gave up trying to correct them. One of these two is now trying to get me to join her ballroom dancing class, despite the fact that I look like a drunken turkey when trying to dance.

It then struck me that most people my age probably don't have discussions like this at one in the morning during the summer. Most of the people I have befriended so far, though, are terribly nice geniuses intending to go into science or pre-med. They all manage to intimidate me with their intellect and make me feel welcome at the same times. Needless to say, I don't think I will be bored this summer at all, and perhaps I won't lose too many neurons from staying up late waiting an empty hot shower.

I might very well go broke at the Coop (the big campus bookstore in Harvard Square) as there are just so many interesting things that I want to read instead of my summer reading. (Un)Luckily for me, the Coop is just across the street from my dorm. I have been trying to resist the urge to start reading too many of my new Nabokov novels since I should get more of my reading for this week done ahead of time. Strangely enough, my behaviorism and behavior modification textbook is one of the funniest textbooks I have ever read.

Unfortunately I didn't have my behaviorism class today after all because the original professor has medical issues and won't be able to teach the course any longer. The replacement professor can't come until Wednesday, so I ended up wandering around the science center with Sophia and attempted to figure out what the freefloating representation of the organic molecule hanging by the staircase is. There are two carbon molecules bonded to each other, with one also being bonded to a nitrogen atom and the other bonded to a hydrogen. Sophia and I have been attempting to figure out what this molecule is and why the letters "the origins of life" are right next to it on the wall; I'm guessing it's either C2NO or CNOC. Perhaps it's part of a nucleotide or it's an amino acid?

Perhaps if Sophia and I stayed in the Organic Chem lecture long enough, we would have found out, but we quickly realized that Sophia's physics lecture was in the adjacent hall. This week students are allowed to "shop" in different classes to see whether or not they would like to transfer out of their current classes into a new one and also to sample the other classes, so I joined Sophia's class for the morning. Frighteningly enough, the lecture covered material that I learned as a high school freshman, and there was one undergrad who seriously didn't know the law of sines. Just about everyone in the class is in pre-med as the course fulfills the physics requirement for pre-med students, but don't they still have to do math? As smug as this sounds, even someone who is as mathematically clueless as I am knows how to derive the law of sines and add and subtract basic vectors.

Besides these nerdy endeavors, I'm aslo trying to avoid this weirdo around campus who pressured my roommate and I to watch Legally Blonde with him the first night we arrived. We snuck out of the theater a few minutes later, but it's a little hard when he sits just two rows in front of me at the dean's welcome and kept turning his head back the entire time, possibly staring at me.

I better go back to my dorm now to stamp letters (I've finally figured out how to get money into the finicky stamp machine! Yay!) so I'll be back later. Be seeing you!