Success! I am now fully enlightened as to what the dumb purple twig is called. It's red kangaroo paw, or anigozanthos rufus. I am so incredibly delighted, and a little annoyed that the teachers led me off in a totally wrong direction. But hey, while we were searching, we found a really wonderful supermarket called Whole Foods, which sells only organic foods and lots of other interesting thing. We studied the ice cream section quite thoroughly. There's actually an ice cream made out of rice. It's really good too, I bought some.
We [as in, my roomie and I] found a great art store near by, and there's a huge section selling nothing but paper. Expensive paper too. We bought a packet of handmade paper for $20 and some putty and we wallpapered our room. I really like it, though my side looks disturbingly like Starbucks.

So, today was quite another day of frustration. The history discussion class was interesting for the most part, but I've come to realize that I don't like theater majors, I really really don't. I hate them not because they're bad tho. I hate them because they're such at ease with themselves that talking to lots of people doesn't bother them in the least. I wish I could do that. I wish I could party with ease, be a social butterfly who's cool with myself. I'm so very jealous.
As for the plant, I still don't know what the heck it is. I found out today, after the plant was dead, that if I put it in hot water, the blossoms would open and be bright red. Dangit. Yeah, so I went to the Hunt library today, to the special top floor that's expensively furnished with high security. Even those botanists weren't too sure exactly what my dumb purple sprig of something was. "It's a fruit plant" is all I got. Thanks, like I didn't know that. So then I spent an hour sitting in the library, accompanied by a librarian the whole time. Nice guy, very shy though. Apparently, I'm not allowed to bring anything but a pencil and paper in, and I'm not allowed to browse. I have to tell them what I want and sit quietly and wait. He couldn't find anything though and the only botanist that might know won't be in for a while. How frustrating. So I am going to go to a strange "whole foods" store in East Liberty. I might find it there. I figure the place caters to vegans and people who are into strange exotic foods. I have a feeling a sprig might cost $50 or something. If it does, I'm definitely complaining to the teacher..

Hi, I just realized how I haven't updated at all, since Sunday. Wow, and I was on such a roll too. But yeah, it's been really busy, with all the classes starting up. I already managed to doze off in history - which I hope doesn't happen tomorrow, being that it's going to be a much smaller class. So why have I been so busy, you ask. Well, I like to call it, the studio of doom, where all the poor archies sit for hours everyday, trying to understand the meaning behind the assignment, and what the assignment actually is. I spent much of Wednesday trying to figure out what kind of plant was given to me to draw and understand. Yes, understand. I think the plant is called a bromelia, but it's not mature yet, so I couldn't indentify it. I hate botany...
O, hey, so here's something depressing, sort of. I did my laundry today. For the most part, I did a great job. Unfortunately, while I was checking the pockets of my favorite khaki shorts, I didn't find one little piece of yellow paper. Now there's a huge yellow spot the exact color of a pee-stain on the right leg of my shorts! Wahhh!!!!!! Does anyone have any advice on how to get rid of that? Should I ignore the "do not bleach" instructions and bleach anyway? Or perhaps, find a nifty cool patch to sew over it?

I have decided upon two things. 1) I shall never drink soda again (that is, until for some strange reason it sounds really appetizing) and 2) I shall never take long walks in anything other than sneakers again.

Today, I got thoroughly lost. My roomate and decided around 1:45 that it was time to eat. And we also decided not to eat on campus as the food here is too darned expensive. So we decided to kill two birds with one stone. We'd explore Oakland and find a place to eat there. We finally decided on a KFC there, a good meal (entirely too much for me) for less than $5. Happy.
So then, after that, we decided to explore Oakland, so we went to 5th Ave. which is parallel to Forbes, where "home" is. Following that, we got thoroughly lost, wandering into Shadyside, and walking in the wrong direction for god knows how long. I just know we just got back and now it's 4:30. The good thing? We found some shops, and lots of pretty houses. Also, we saw a nice old lady walking a 16 year old Whippet (I only know this because my roomie is a dog expert.) Anyway, the old lady was so surprised my roomie knew that it was a whippet that my roomie was offered a sort of kind of job of letting the dog out once in a while. And hey, I'm extremely thirsty, even though I drank a whole ton of water and I feel waterlogged. Darn, that sucks.

Would you like to know what I did this evening? I have just returned from about the most interesting night time excursion I have ever been on, which means that I either (a) have never had a night time excursion before, or (b) I'm just not that interesting.
So, my roomie found this lovely ad in misc.market, which is like an online classified ad for CMU students. It was for a fridge for $40. Great deal. So we went down around 8:30 to what is basically the opposite side of campus and waited till 9 for the guy. Poor guy had indigestion, so he was occupied for a while. And when he came, he said he wanted to clean it first. So we let him clean away, until 9:30 where we paid up. And then we hauled it all the way back to the dorm. Boy was that fun. We took breaks every few minutes and what really annoyed me was that tons of groups of guys walked by and no one offered to help. It was only when we got back to our hall that one of our neighbors ran up and helped. Geez, so much for chivalry. It seems to have died and festered under a rock somewhere on campus. So hey, I found it quite interesting. And the fridge seems to be working wonderfully, so I'm a happy person.

Well, Pittsburg is not as tame as I thought. So my floormates and I went in a Donner 2W/Hamerschlag mixer to an ice cream store. They said it was the best ice cream ever. For me - well, on a scale of 1-10, I'd say.....a 4. Yes, below average. I didn't like it, but then, I was very full and my tummy's been bothering me incessantly. And it's difficult to enjoy a cone when there's boys everywhere.
But hey, on my way back with a group of my floormates, we saw a guy standing on a corner and he asked us for eight bucks so he could get his stuff from the pharmacy. Well, being that he was a stranger, and the term "pharmacy" could be used in several different ways, like "street pharmacy," we just kinda looked confused and kept walking. Now the creepy thing is that as we walked, he kind of growled and said, "You better be careful in this city." Scary....
And right now? My room smells like woodsmoke. There is a "Bond" fire burning merrily away on the lawn right outside. Apparently they didn't even bother with camping precautions and just piled a ton of sticks on and set it on fire. And of course, it's nice and big but the grass catches on fire. Okay, so they can do logarithms in their heads. But you ask them to set a fire, and they forget about clearing the grass and surrounding the wood with rocks. Very disappointing, very very...

Soo, I have gone from being extremely hungry to extremely queasy. This morning, I woke up around 7 and just lay there thinking, "Am I going to throw up?" For a few moments, I thought I really was going to (of course, bed isn't a good place for throwing up. Anyway, I felt somewhat better, and know what? I found the perfect place to go to the bathroom in total and complete privacy!!! It's clean! It's spacious! It doesn't have a scary automatic flusher! Woohoo!!!! Yes, I know, that is a strange thing to be happy about.
Anyway, the atmosphere is becoming more and more sorority-like. Tonight, our floor is going out to dinner with Hamerschlag House, which is entirely male. It's like a sorority/fraternity outing..........

I am extremely, extremely hungry. Ravenous. Blame it on my tummy. I don't think i travel well. In any event, since i've gotten here, my body's been on the fritz. But then, it could be dehydration, despite the fact that I am chugging my fifth bottle of water right now. Yes, number five, me the water hater. It's the humidity and the heat, i find myself sweating so much that i drip. It's never that bad in Danbury.
Speaking of Danbury, I miss it incredibly. I mostly miss my parents, the comforts and privacy of home and my closest friends. Homesick, very much so.
But CMU isn't bad. There's a bunch of nice people, lots of architecture students from CT, Norwalk, Greenwich and Middlebury, just to name a few. I talked with the one from Norwalk a lot, and we have lots in common which is nice. I feel a little inferior though. I tried for awhile to be the smiling, available happy asian girl, but I find that I'd rather sit in my room and chat with one or two familiar people than roam the parties. I think I'm destined to be a wallflower.

Well, well...I was looking at the calender yesterday and i realized that there were only 10 days till I left for college. Wow, it really crept up on me.
So, not too much in the way of interesting has happened to me. My sister is currently cosplaying (what a wierd thing to do, May) down in Baltimore with her friends. Of course, she hasn't so much as called or e-mailed to let us know that she wasn't killed/mugged/lost or anything of the sort (how inconsiderate of you, May). Ah, well, such is my family.
Actually, I did find an extremely interesting set of books, or rather, I decided to look in on one and I found - yes- sorta kinda sequels. I've looked around at a lot of astrology books, and I have to say, the only one that's ever really impressed me was The Secret Language of Birthdays. It does a very thorough job of describing the personality and whatnot of a person born on each day of the year. And now, happy me, they have a book dealing with relationships and another dealing with destinies. I can't help but wonder though, are these books really accurate or are they just feeding into lies I tell myself about me. Do I see myself as I really am?

To heck with it, I'm not very good with terms of endearments...
Anyway, I haven't updated in a long while, a little over a month actually. It's not like nothing's happened. I'm just enjoying my alone time. So why have I actually updated? Well, perhaps it's because I wanted to show off what I can do on this fabulous new computer of mine! Yes, I have a beautiful new Dell Dimension 2300 Desktop with a flat screen monitor! Or, perhaps it's because I got my wisdom teeth yanked yesterday and I'm currently drugged up on Vicodin. I wonder how that stuff could possibly be addictive. Tastes like crud, very bitter, and it doesn't do a thing for the pain. My jaw is still throbbing like I got stomped on. But hey, lunch time. Let's see if I can manage some noodles!