Prepoceros

The people I see every day have known this bit of news for a while, but I realized today that I never told the internet. I actually alluded to it a little over a month ago, but I thought it would be a huge post, so I never got around to writing it out. Sorry about that.

The reason I’m telling you now is that I have to be up hella early tomorrow to deliver holiday gifts to high school college counselors, so I don’t have time to drone on for hundreds and hundreds of words. Here’s the short version.

As far as the internet knows, I’m going back to Mudd in the spring to restart my junior year. This, however, is not the case. I’m transferring out of HMC, and I’ll probably never be a student there again. I’ve applied to the University of Houston, and I’m supposed to hear back from them in the next week or so. If I don’t get in, I’ll transfer to another local school. I am absolutely staying in Houston.

Oh, and I’ll be majoring in Classics. Or Linguistics. Or both.

But why, you ask. Wasn’t Mudd a great fit for you? Didn’t you love it there?

Well, yes, I did love being at Mudd. I loved Quiz Bowl. I loved tutoring. I loved hanging out with people who could talk all night about math and physics. I loved my professors. I loved the small size of the school and the sense of community.

But I did not love the workload. I did not love the stress. I did not love living in California. I did not love the restrictions on what classes I could take, especially the hum requirements. I chose Mudd (over CalTech), believe it or not, *for its humanities*. Not the HMC hum department, of course, but the ability to cross-register at four other colleges, which sounded fun and easy in all the promo material. Fun? Potentially. Easy? No. Sure, you can register for any off-campus class you want, but did we mention that we require seven on-campus hums? And that by “on-campus,” we mean “not in your fields of interest”?

I *could* do an off-campus major, in which case a few of the requirements would be waived, but what’s the point? If I’m going to be a Classics major, Mudd is not the place for me.

The one thing Mudd does have going for it is that, because of my atrocious GPA, it’s the only “rigorous” school that will let me in. I’d love to go to Rice, but it’s just not an option, by several tenths of a point. But what it all boils down to, in the end, is that I am not going to be a physicist when I grow up. (I didn’t realize this while I was at Mudd, or I might have left earlier.) I therefore don’t need to take on a stressful workload at a college designed to turn out hardcore scientists in a city I can’t stand fifteen hundred miles from home, and pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege of doing so. That’s just silly.

I feel like I’ve known for a while that this is what I would choose to do. It’s like many big decisions: I know what my gut is telling me, but I have to rationalize it somehow, and I’m afraid of what might happen if I make a bad choice, so I put off the actual decision-making as long as possible. This, however, is a topic for a whole nother gargantuan post, so I’ll stop here.

I know I’ve made the right choice—I love living here, and I’m so glad I get to stay. I’ll miss my Mudd friends and the whole atmosphere there, but I’ve been missing them for a year now, and most of them will be graduating in May, anyway. It’s sad to think about the fun I might have had if I’d gone back this spring, but in terms of the big picture, going back for one semester would be a waste of time and money. Sad face. But also happy face. Content face.

Sleepy face. That “short post” strategy clearly worked. Walk, then bed.

Guy who lives across from me: Your dog, like, never barks.
Me: Um, thanks?

ISEE tutoring student (5th grade boy): When do you have to leave?
Me: [looks at watch] In about 45 minutes.
Student: I don’t want you to leave. You’re cool.
Me: [melts]

Me (on a walk): Sammy, no. Hey. HEY. NO. That’s not your pizza.
[Sam picks up a slice bigger than his head]
Me: Drop the pizza. DROP IT.
Me: That is NOT YOURS. And it’s YUCKY. You don’t want that.
[Sam, now hanging by his collar, refuses to let go]
Me: Give me that. SAM. GIVE ME THE PIZZA.
[I manage to tear off half of the piece he has in his mouth and throw it into the bushes. Sam wolfs down the rest.]
Me: Ok, that’s the end of this walk. We’re going home.
[As we round the corner, Sam fakes like he’s going up the stairs, but then pivots and makes a dash for the bushes. I feel bad about nearly decapitating him, but if he hadn’t been running so fast…]
Me: Sam, do I *look* stupid? Good gracious, puppy.

I woke up this morning to a crying Sam and a kitchen floor splattered with bloody diarrhea. Poor Sammy-Sam. He seems ok now, but we’re on our way to the vet. Wish us luck.

UPDATE: The vet found Giardia in Sam’s stool sample. The good news is that he’s on medication now, and he seems to be just fine after sleeping it off for most of Saturday. The bad news is that Giardia is (a) disgusting, (b) contagious*, and (c) just as happy to chew up a person’s intestines as a dog’s.

I’ve been washing my hands OCD-style every time I pass a sink and bleaching the fuck out of the kitchen floor, but I’m worried that it might be too late for Fez, who took QUITE AN INTEREST in Sam’s ass the other night. (Our dogs are gay together. It’s adorable.) Time will tell.

I’m glad Sammy’s going to be ok, but at the same time I’m not thrilled that a dog I adopted a week ago is sick with parasites he probably already had when he was at the shelter. Don’t they test for those sorts of things? Grumble.

———
* C-O-N-T-A-G-I-O-U-S. Contiguous.

Last night I was going to write about what an awful day I was expecting today to be. But then I woke up on time this morning. And my toothache and swollen gums were gone*. And it was cold enough to wear my new cloak-blanket and a scarf. And my afternoon lesson called to cancel. And Wendy brought me bread she’d made. And I finished my SAT question-writing assignment on time. And I had enough time to prep for the first session of my new LSAT class, which wasn’t a total disaster. I think they learned some stuff, and we only got out *twenty* minutes early this time (my classes usually run WAY short).

All in all, not so bad. Stressful? YES. Horrible? No. I even had a pretty snowflake cookie. Yes, from Starbucks. Yes, it cost, like, a buck-fifty. Shut up. It was a pretty cookie.

Okay, one last potty walk, then sleepytime. Gonna freeze tonight. Wait wait [checks weather site]…nope, not yet. Still 34.

P.S. Sammy-Sam is so preciously tiny that I want to eat him all up. One big bite.

———
*To be precise, my gums were still there. The swelling was gone, though.

Somewhere close to my bedroom window, but out of my direct line of sight, there is a man with a jackhammer. The jackhammer has been running almost continuously since 8:55 this morning. I have no fucking idea what sort of massive stone structure could possibly take THREE HOURS to jackhammer apart. Perhaps they’re demolishing the building next door, brick by brick by brick.

Or maybe this is God’s way of telling me to get my lazy ass to work already. I’m going, I’m going. But it’s difficult to plan out my day, you see, when all I can think about is THE RATTLING. Sheesh.

In other news, I would really like some tater tots right now. I don’t know why. Mmm, tots.

1. My puppy, who, it turns out, *is* able to jump up onto the couch.
2. Sonic Raspberry Limeade
3. This clever bit of marketing from the 1930s (via Mr. Sun).

I especially enjoy page 2: I promise to eat my vegetables! And do everything my mother tells me! And drink Ovaltine every day! Awesome, dudes!

By the way, what’s up with looking both ways before crossing the street? Was that really necessary seventy years ago? Because I was under the impression that cars didn’t go that fast back then. I guess they went faster than five-year-olds, which is what counts.

This is probably just me being weird, but the little boy’s handwriting fascinates me. If he owned the book, he can’t have been older than eight or nine, but look how legible, even *neat*, his penmanship is! It’s not perfect, but still, I’ve met plenty of college graduates who couldn’t write that legibly to save their lives. I can hardly imagine what the girls’ handwriting must have looked like back then. Sigh. What has gotten into schools these days; they don’t teach proper handwriting, serve chik’n nuggets in the cafeteria, and lay soft wood chips underneath the plastic playground equipment—how cushy children’s lives have become. Harrumph.

But back to the Ovaltineys. Brilliant folks, those marketers. Today Ovaltine takes a back seat to all that fizzy crap, but back then it was apparently Power Rangers-popular. Click the link at the bottom of the page to see the whole collection of Ovaltiney propaganda. It feels creepy to me—like the Hitler Youth, but with less anti-Semitism and more malted chocolate.

I finally turned the heater back on for good today. A couple weeks ago it felt like it was about to start getting cold for real, but the sky was totally faking us out. The weatherfolks are saying we might even get our first *freeze* sometime this week. Egads!

Soon I’ll be able to wear a scarf in public without looking ridiculous. This is marvelous.

Most of you are probably shaking your heads right now because in your town it’s been winter for a solid month or two already, and all I have to say is this: y’all are bongoballs crazy in the head. Every last one of you.

Yes, snow is fun, but for months at a time? It’s cold! And wet! What sane person likes being cold and wet? Miserable!

Of course, people who live out on the tundra have heaters and parkas and mittens and fireplaces and those little packets of powder that get hot when you shake them, but what’s the fun in struggling into five layers of clothing, boots, and a ski mask just to fetch the morning paper?*

If humans were meant to live in the snow, WE WOULD BE FURRY. Furrier, anyway.

The only advantage I can see from here is the chance to wear *real* winter clothes. I love layers. Still, I’d rather have the *option* of layers than be forced to wear them. It takes me long enough to pick out a matching shirt/pants/shoes combo every morning; with seven extra articles of clothing to coordinate, I’d never make it to work before noon.

Apart from outright pain, cold is the physical sensation I most loathe. Okay, maybe it’s tied for second with electric shock, ANOTHER sensation brought on by winter weather (dry air + metal anything = oh god it’s everywhere make it stop). When I get too hot, I look for a cool glass of water and a nice nap, but when I get too cold, I feel close to death, as though I’ll never be warm again.

I realize this severely limits my grad school options, but I’d rather never leave the South again than wallow in misery for three or four months every year. I hate being cold I hate it I hate it. The fact that cities in the northern two-thirds of the US (not to mention Canada, good gracious) manage to maintain year-round populations confounds me. Masochists.

———
*Is this why they invented dogs?

The Kennedy Center Honors never fail to surprise me. Not in the choice of honorees (half of them are people I’ve never heard of, anyway), but in the fact that the Honors themselves are occuring. Again. So soon. Didn’t they just have those, like, a month ago?

This doesn’t happen with the Oscars, or the Emmys, or the Tonys. What is it about those rainbow necklaces that seems so familiar? I don’t get it. I *do* vaguely remember something about them always being in December, but I still can’t shake the feeling that we *just* got through with the last one. Maybe it’s because it’s in the middle of the holiday season, which tends to time-warp things anyway. Weird weird weird.

Puppy update: I’ve decided that his name is Samson. It goes with the crazy hair, and he really does look like a Sam. Plus, Samson’s got a lot of good variations to work with: Sam, Sammy, Sam-Sam, Sambo, Sam the Man, Sammich.

Tim Sam Wolfgang Jesus Laocoön Ajax Beowulf Marlowe Epsilon Hammurabi Anderson Max!

(Click me to see more pictures.)

I have no idea what my widdle puppy’s name should be, but isn’t he adorable?

I adopted him from Special Pals out in Katy, the same shelter Millie came from, but Tiny Tim (the name the shelter folks gave him) might as well be the anti-Millie. I’m afraid to let them be in the same room, lest they annihilate each other and turn into pure energy (the E=mc^2 kind, not the jumping-up-and-down kind).

When I walked past his cage at the shelter, he didn’t run up to me or bark like the other dogs did, but instead stood against the wall, shaking. Awwwwww. So of course I filled out the paperwork superfast, and we (Wendy, Michael, Tim-Tim, and I) were off to PetSmart to accessorize my new puppy.

I probably shouldn’t call him a puppy—they guessed he was about a year old. Someone found him about a month ago running the streets with a big ol’ Basset Hound, who was also at the shelter. He had an upper respiratory infection and sarcoptic mange, which made all the hair on his ears and hind legs fall out, but it’s mostly grown back now and, besides being generally scruffy, he’s healthy.

He’s apparently a Yorkie mix, but we don’t know with what. Wendy thinks his coloring looks like a Miniature Pinscher’s. His legs aren’t nearly as short as a Yorkie’s, so it must’ve been some normal-sized dog. He also has bristly, curly, sticky-outy hair…who knows where that came from. So he’s basically a mutt, but an adorable one.

I said I wanted a chill dog, and Timmy is by far the chillest I’ve ever met. Since we brought him home, he’s mostly kept to himself. He quietly explored the apartment, then quietly peed on the carpet, then quietly wandered around, looking as though he needed a nap but were afraid to go to sleep. He’s been sleeping off and on for the last couple of hours, just sprawled out in the middle of the floor. Every time someone makes noise outside or comes up the stairs I tense up, expecting him to flip out and bark at the door like Millie does, but he barely notices. I keep looking over at him every couple minutes to make sure he’s still there. Chill TO THE MAX.

I’m betting he’ll perk up in the next few days—today was a big, scary, exciting day for a wee lil dog, plus he was just neutered on Thursday, so he’s probably still a little sore.

I still can’t believe I have a dog. He’s my puppy! I get to keep him! God DAMN he’s adorable—I could just sit and stare at my Timmy-Tim all day. Mommy loves you so much already, sweetiepoo. Welcome home.

I have nothing to do. By that, I don’t mean that I actually have *nothing* to do, only that I have nothing to do that needs to be done *tonight*. I have the night off.

It’s strange. I feel a bit lost—there are so many things that I could or should be doing that I have no idea where to start. I baked a few cookies, but I could only eat half of them before I had to stop because I wasn’t hungry and couldn’t think of an excuse to keep eating. When I’m busy or have huge deadlines pending, I can’t ever think of a good reason to *stop* eating. I even picked up dinner at Chick-Fil-A on the way home tonight in an attempt to be “bad,” but I had to force down those waffle fries, and now I feel disgusting.

I can’t bear to waste time on anything like Minesweeping or blog-browsing, either. For the sake of doing *something*, I’m catching up on a few online “ethics workshops” for work. Right now I’m learning about violations of antitrust law, which is so relevant to my current position that I’m giving it a full third of my attention. Hey, remember that time I secretly agreed with one of our major competitors to fix prices with the intent of driving a smaller company out of business? Apparently that was illegal or something.

Maybe later I’ll start puppy-proofing the apartment, or catching up on paperwork, or sorting out the recycling, or filing my huge pile of old bills and crap, or reading. I almost can’t wait until I get sleepy enough to go to bed, so that I can get an early start on tomorrow.

I feel like I could be accomplishing so much in my spare time, like writing a book, or starting a company, or training for a marathon, or saving the world, or learning a new language, or reading great literature. But here I am, blogging through my boredom.

Maybe I have a problem with getting into the small-things-lead-to big-things mentality. Books don’t get written in a day, languages can’t be learned in a week, etc. I need to be able to set goals for myself, so that I have something to work towards, and to be able to break those goals down into steps and deadlines that I’ll actually take seriously.

Blah. I’m going to go play some piano and journal until (1) my hand falls off or (2) I come up with a useful task to which to apply myself.