A lot has changed since I started this blog. When I started posting regularly last March, I was brimming with thoughts that I felt I wasn’t expressing elsewhere. I had someone to share everything with, but the blog became a means of doing that.

Now things are quite different. I no longer have one major confidante. Life is more complicated. There are things in my life that I wish to record for myself, but not for public consumption. I didn’t really have secrets a year ago (which was a first for me); now I do again. (Don’t worry, I didn’t murder anyone).

Also, I am beginning to fill with anti-Facebook paranoia like everyone else. The tools for consolidating and exploiting an individual’s online presence are being built. I even applied for a summer job at such a firm! (I think their vision of a “more just and ethical society” might be a little Orwellian the more I reflect on them). No matter how private I consider this blog, I shouldn’t consider it a safe space for rambling.

So maybe I’ll get myself a private journal. That probably leaves me with less to say on this blog. Sorry about that.

1. Exercise more: B-.  I’m giving myself a little slack for nursing a broken pelvis for much of the semester. Before that, I was getting a little more exercise, even though I’m now down to 60% endurance (based on the number of laps I swam today).

2. Get out more: A-. This has been a great success. When I wrote these, I felt a hole in my life that I thought I could never refill. I still haven’t done so, but I have developed friendships like never before. Over WT, I made a lot of new friends, then I really hit it off with my future housemates this spring. Now my only problem is making room for all my friends, which is a very new problem for me.

3. Move on in life: B+. I didn’t expect to be able to accept being single again. I’m not sure I really have, but I am no longer the emotional wreck I was five and a half months ago. I am still finding myself, and I haven’t found a new destination, but I am in better-than-average shape.

4. Figure out the future: C+. Well, I did figure a few things out: I’m not doing honors, and I don’t think I’m applying for any PhD’s straight out of college. What am I actually going to do? That is a tough question, and I’m not much closer now than in December. But I’m strangely at peace with the situation. Something will come up…I hope. My serene state of mind is dissolving after only one week of living at home for the summer. I know I don’t want to do this any longer than necessary.

5. Keep my room clean: B. This was not a particularly hard task, especially with fewer squatters effectively living with me. (Still, as I packed up my room last week, I found more ratty green earplugs under my bed). Neatness took a hit when I was crippled, but overall it wasn’t too bad. I’m excited to have a more substantial place next year. I think I’ll feel more motivated to keep the house in a manageable condition.

6. Mend fences: B. That’s too long and sensitive a story to share on the internet. But things are a lot better now then they were three months ago.

This was only the latest development in a very eventful week. Earlier in the week, my idea of a house wiki really took off. I pruned the default wikidot site into a framework that everyone could fill in pretty easily. Then it really exploded one night this week; it turns out writing silly things on a wiki is more fun than our homework. We each have personal profiles, plus a page of rules (mostly fake) and items we each intend to bring. We refer to our house as “Cake House,” for inside-jokey reasons that I don’t really feel like going into at the moment.

Then we went house-hunting Wednesday, checking out most of the four-person village houses on Cedar and Woodland Streets. I stayed downstairs (still on crutches). Of all the houses, only one was clean. I hope we can keep our public spaces tidy, but we’ll see.

The other big event of the week was distributing the third issue of Drivel. I drove Kelly’s Honda Element around campus, and Ben took on all of the heavy lifting. Sadly, there’s a printing error on the cover, but I’ve been trying to ignore that fact. We only have a month to print a second issue, so I’m going to try to write for that today. I don’t know if we can do it all in that short period of time, but we’ll try. But in better news, we received a big bump to our annual budget next year! I really want to make Drivel great, so I’m going to put some effort into it over the summer, perhaps making a real website.

Other things happened, including hanging out with Kriti for the first time in a while. We watched “Run Lola Run” in German House (we were the only two attending the screening). I finished my film paper (finally). And tonight, Danny is celebrating his 21st birthday, so I might join that party briefly. I wish every week was so full of accomplishment.

I enjoy cooking for Passover, so I was mildly disappointed to be left out of that. But after seeing everyone run around to get everything done in time, I was a little relieved. Normally, we have hosted one seder at home and been invited by friends to the other. This year, we had two at our house, one for family and one for medical students. Both of them were fairly routine, with a straightforward run-through of the Hagaddah and the usual foods: gefilte fish, hard-boiled eggs, ratatouille, brisket, chicken, etc.

The highlight of the first night was a 19-month-old boy who my parents sometimes babysit for. His parents brought him along with an awesome high chair, with a jungle toy insert. I was a little bit jealous. And he alternated between contented sighs and grouchy screams, which kept everyone amused. Or me, at least.

The second night, as I already mentioned, was chock full of medical students. It was kind of depressing that a lot of them were only slightly older than me. Next year, some of them won’t be. They were definitely my peers, and maybe I could have hit it off better with some of them, but since my parents are their professors, most of them seemed a little intimidated and socially awkward. Then again, that just made them seem more familiar and relatable. Anyway, I had a pretty good time, and my mom didn’t make any of them recruit me for medical school, so it was a great success.

At one point the second night, my dad whipped out some interesting stories of Civil War seders from an online article, which led me to believe that a more heavily themed seder would be really interesting. Maybe it has to do with doing  the same thing two nights in a row, but I really enjoyed the details unique to each evening.

I really want to host a seder someday.

I’d really like to have one where everyone is lying on couches, to take the commandment of reclining to the left to the fullest. Or have a really intellectually stimulating discussion that participants were prepared for ahead of time. Or a seder with children and fun activities. Or a seder where most people are completely unfamiliar with the whole tradition, and there are lots of questions. Basically, there are all kinds of fun things to do. Pesach is my favorite holiday. Maybe I’ll do something if I am in Oberlin and have a house next year.

Yes, it was my final day in class that we chose to go out to the courtyard for an experimental archaeology activity. We were instructed to use sandpaper and flint to turn a chicken bone into an awl. And by Jove, I was serious about making my chicken-shiv. So serious, in fact, that I forgot to look out for the ice on the ground. My left hip reminded me, with considerable pain.

After screaming “fuck” a little longer than I should have, I tried to calm down the poor professor, who seemed terrified by the event. I think I ruined the class for everyone else, too. Two classmates stood over me as I lay on the icy ground. “I’m trained in first aid,” said one. “So am I,” the other offered. They decided that because I was already flat on the ground, there was nothing more that they could do to help me. But they did keep me company for a few minutes, which counts for a lot.

I was transported by S&S to the ER, where they took an x-ray. “Well, nothing is broken, so we are going to let you go.” That was a relief, but there was still issue that I could not bear any weight on my left leg.  Broken or not, it’s a problem if I cannot walk. Eventually, I received some crutches (after I was discharged), so I was able to hobble around.

The next challenge was my flight to Baltimore that afternoon. With a packing assist from Monica and a driving assist from Corinne (whom I made late for an appointment, sorry) , I got myself and my bag to the airport. As it turns out, airports treat the one-legged quite well. I jumped the security line, I boarded first, I got wheeled to the gate, etc.

I spent the next few days recuperating, but the healing didn’t progress quite as quickly as I had hoped. So today, I went out and got an MRI. It turns out I’m not just bruised; I broke my pelvis a little. It probably isn’t that bad, because it doesn’t show up on an X-ray (they did another one of those), but it means I will be on crutches a little longer than I would like. We’ll see how much I have to adjust my routine back in Oberlin. I don’t think I can walk around campus as much as I usually would.

Death By Snoo-Snoo

I am lucky to have gotten close to my future housemate Danny. He thinks up game designs constantly, more than I ever did, and he actually sets out and accomplishes some of them (even though he usually doesn’t finish them). Basically, he is who I aspire to be in my free time. Last week, he made a prototype of a swarming jellyfish game. Each would calculate its direction, and they would all tend towards the cursor. It was really impressive.

Inspired by his projects and his encouragement, I returned to Blender this weekend. Last spring, I got into Blender because I had a companion crocheting along with me. I don’t have that anymore, but I have friends with whom to share my progress. I was surprised how much I remembered about Blender’s UI, and I managed to finish a rough mesh torso with arms and legs by the end of the day. Here, I’ll share a shot of it with you:

I’m sure I’ll hit some snags as usual. I don’t know how to texture very well, and I always screw up when I am rigging the skeleton. There are things I could do easily in Maya, but the tools don’t always transfer to Blender easily. But let’s not think about such things right now, while I’m on a roll.

I like nothing more than to be inspired by friends. It has been with the help of friends, new and old, that I have been getting through the last few months. Maybe these friends can inspire me to do something more. Maybe I can provide some assets for Danny’s next project. I have wanted a collaborator for a long time.

Jonathan (last name not given), a math professor, taught us the rules. This took fifteen to twenty minutes. It is definitely the most complex game I have ever played. Everyone is given a board representing their farm, as well as some starting people and house tiles. In addition, one can build fences and stables for animals, and plowed field tiles as well. There are four types of building resources (small wooden disks), three types of animals (wooden cubes), and two types of crops. And several times during the game, you need to have enough food tokens to feed your family. There is a set of major improvement cards which players can obtain on their turns. In addition, each player has two hands of cards, one of “occupations” and another of minor improvements.

One thing Jonathan forgot to explain completely was how each round is played. We picked it up eventually. The players go around placing all of their people tokens on a communal action board. Two people cannot take the same action in the same round, which creates interesting opportunities to block each other and necessitating contingency plans.

Scoring, well, it’s complicated. I didn’t understand the need to diversify, and I left too much of my farmland unused. I ended up with the most negative points. Still, I came in second place, in front of Monica, Danny and neuroscience professor Katie (who had a bad game). Jonathan dominated, though, with 43 points to my 26.

There is a lot more to explain, but it would take many more paragraphs than I am willing to write or than you are willing to read. I am definitely interested in playing again, now that I actually understand the game. If only it were easier to learn and teach; I would love to try it out with different groups of people.

That’s not to say I am not a fan of touching, or that I smell bad at close distances (though I cannot really judge the latter objectively). I think I just give off an overly reserved aura, and people are content keeping me several feet away while hanging out with me, assuming that I am too. Well, I am, but I feel like I am more open to resting my head on someone’s shoulder, or vice versa, than I let on.

I have wondered lately, is this just who I am? How do I “let on” that I enjoy hugs every now and then? It seems like the men I know who are more physically intimate among their friends are either really attractive or outwardly silly. I don’t fall into either of those categories, so maybe I should resign myself to my fate as non- or awkward cuddler. I still get a hug every now and then, and sometimes even a spot under a blanket with some friends (after 10+ hours of Star Wars, at least).

Actually, the weekend started with a trip to the grocery, which is notable only because it was a step in the right direction for rehabilitating a friendship that means a lot to me. Then, there was an excellent Acapelicans concert at Shabbat dinner (even better than The Obertones’ performance this semester). Different friends came to support various members of the group, so there were a lot more familiar faces at my table than usual.

After dinner, my housemates and I went to the Math/CS games night. Operation Neuroinvasion, which I mentioned in an earlier post, was on. Unfortunately, an involved game of Agricola had already begun before we got there, so we were unable to try it out. We settled for some Dominion and Carcassonne, then departed to play N64 in Danny’s room. But we called it a night pretty early on, because the real adventure was to begin at noon the next day.

A Star Wars marathon, starting with the new (awful) movies. Three people stayed all day. I didn’t quite make it all day, but the only break I took was a film screening for class, so it hardly counts for reducing eyestrain. But it definitely is a change of pace to go from Phantom Menace to Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light and back again. And after that, I barely left the lounge in Burton. Many Bothans died to deliver pizza for dinner, and we kept watching until past 1 AM, for thirteen hours total.

I learned a lot of things during the marathon. Mostly that you cannot expect to get any work done while watching all of the Star Wars movies with friends. It was a great bonding experience, a test of endurance, and a lot more fun than I expected it would be. I think I would be open to more of these events in the future.

I arrived a minute early, only to wait awkwardly in a hallway for fifteen minutes. We finally did get our food and sit down, and we were about to start talking. I was pretty eager to talk; I had considered in advance what I wanted to say to her. But it was not ten seconds before we were joined by a mutual friend, one who I don’t think would take any subtle hints to leave, even if we tried. And I couldn’t be rude, so we exchanged pleasantries and chatted for a couple minutes. Then, the final straw: the new boyfriend joined us to say hello, having seen that there was already a group of three sitting down.

Somehow, my dinner plans had turned into the exact social setting that makes me most uncomfortable at the moment. I removed myself and ate alone on the other side of the dining hall. Some day, I might look back on this story and laugh. Until then, maybe it can bring someone else a chuckle. I’m going to sleep off my bad mood. As though that works.