Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
Change of Tune

Just read over some of my recent posts, it's been a little too whiney-stressy-lamenting lately. I'll try to remedy that, not just on the blog where the lasting effect is minimal but also for the benefit of the friends I've been punishing lately with my crap and crappy moods. I'm tough little cookie sometimes, gots to work on 'dat. I need to get some better outlets rather than making the people around me feel bad. that's ng.

I guess all I really needed was some malt liquor and a home-cooked meal to break out of my slump and be reminded of good things. Wesleyan was probably the piss-poor performance of the year, debate-wise. I have no idea what was so disastrous about Jeremy and I this weekend - some awful combination of errors, but it was an all-time low in our already sub-par and forgettable debate careers (but we had some serious judging qualms and I'll not fault us too much). For some reason, I didn't give any leader speeches / rebuttals all weekend and this probably wasn't the most effective distribution of labor. Considering all of the nightmarish problems with Wesleyan it was a surprisingly positive weekend and even the novices grinned and bared wet clothes and sleeping in the science building. Hands down, one of the best parties I've been to this fall despite its creepy likeness to fight club. I had a very good time. And I will always hold a special place in my heart for a bunch of white kids from "small new england colleges" going ghetto and watching movies like "Pooty Tang" and claiming to relate. Hey, who wasn't raised on Dre's The Chronic and the perennially fav Doggystyle? Props to Mike Cooper for representin' this weekend.

But last night, a dose of home did everyone well. To quote some 80s band, I think it was The Cars, it was just what I needed.

My sense of direction is appalling & maybe worse than ever. It took roughly 6 hours to get to Middletown from Middlebury because map quest is moronic and we're morons for following mis-directions despite the number of times I've been burned by this service before and the lesson I should have learned a long time ago. In an effort to be more self-reliant, I have an atlas now and made it back to Midd in record time from home today, cruising the empty highways at 7am. An even sadder fact, even though I've been there upwards of 20 times, and I can't tell Middletown's 5 dinky little streets apart.

After losing track of time and my bearings, a mini-vacation period from debate is certainly in order. I need a real weekend or fool myself into thinking that I'll use my time productively and stick around here. I think I'm losing touch with my midd peeps anyway - dinner felt like a reunion - and the last time I remember seeing anyone but my neighbors for more than 2 minutes was Harvard. Who knows where the time goes, but lately every hour is scripted and accounted for and it�s very unsocial and disconnected. This week promises to be ugly if I want to have all my affairs in order to greet the hordes of eager-to-be-drunk-and-irresponsible-again-alums headed back into dodge for homecoming on the 18th. Sometime during that drunken escapade, I promised Dan a sophisticated cocktail affair so he could bring his tenuous lady friend with the BMW to a safe environ where he can be himself and perhaps even think of something to say. A big sister has certain responsibilities, after all. But we could all benefit from a little gin and gossip on the rocks this weekend. Speaking of O'Shea, we made our final thanksgiving plans today. We've opted to stay in Scotland until Wednesday - taking a few day trips to provincial estates and outposts - heading back to the States on Wednesday to spend Thanksgiving with our folks. Should be fun and dammit, I really would kill for a Calder's cream ale right about now.

In terms of my real kin and sibling duties, spoke briefly with my sis last night while I was in my pjs and watching TV like it was my job. Hoping to touch base with her soon after I go to Davidson for fall break and get a couple more days of rest, relaxation and good eats at the Jasinski homestead. Krick, by the way, you need to start blogging again. Oh, and you missed the Mrs. America pageant on PAX TV last night. This was an inspirational experience. All of the contestants are married and they are first presented to the crowd wearing a costume representative of their state. Lots of people dressed as �flowers,� but the best was Nevada who voiced her pride for the wedding capital of the world in a wedding tutu and thigh-high garters. So priceless and my mother somewhere between North Carolina�s stock-car spokeslady and the wilderness huntress from West Virginia, �wait, this is for real?� Proof yet again that television is the best medium for just about everything.

At some point, I endeavor to get more than five hours of sleep a night but it might have to wait until November, realistically. I feel like a Chinese middle school student. I've been straddling this very slippery middle ground between college student extraordinaire and adult. Adults use the weekends for non-work (leisure) purposes, but college kids generally rely on the weekend to get ahead for the week... so I am mixing oil and water and ending up with a mess.

It's raining again, of course, and my trusty umbrella got trashed at sucko Wesleyan. Ari Fleischer is talking tonight and since I am near certain I couldn't get a seat anyway, I'll just watch the video tomorrow. Not feeling like the crowd scene anyway. But this is a big decisive divide on Middlebury's campus - a huge anti-war protest (curtailed by the rain??) scheduled to break out on the steps of Mead Chapel. Boo-yah, Midd kids haven't been this riled up since they trashed the new dining hall last weekend for no reason. Complacency and ease of existence obviously has a downside, there is vandalism out the wazoo this year and if anything, life has only gotten easier.

Okay, American Presidency tonight... that's one class that's gotten the shaft in the past two weeks.

posted by lmjasinski at 6:45 PM