Weird-ass day. So weird. Do not really have words, but a quick example: I dreamed (spellcheck insists that “dreamt” is not the past tense there, but I think it is, or at least nicer than “dreamed”) that I was on a cruise from the UK to New York, and the Mariana Trench had recently collapsed, and it turned out it had done so because Cthulhu woke up, and he decided to stick his head up by the cruise ship, and he was really pretty magnificent, and then everyone went crazy and we eventually crashed into New York. It was, ah, very cinematic.

I need to see if there’s a plugin for Firefox that can rip music from Youtube stuff. Just the sound, plz. :D I finally got the iPod Shan gave me working again - I break everything I touch, it seems, so I copied over all its music and will slowly work through labelling it all. Or maybe I can sneak it back onto the iPod? I doubt it. Anyway, that’s working just in time to come along for my trip! I’ll be gone all next week, exploring the town I will be living in soon. I’m nervous like you would not believe. Making myself seriously sick with it, actually. Yesterday my back was so tense it was hard to breathe.

Anyway. 3am means time to try to sleep.

Tomorrow: pack toiletries, bring out bags, books, camera, Slimfast, clean up room, make sure laundry is done, bring curtains back out to RV, pack phone + charger, copy down phone numbers etc., pack iPod and FM thingy (and headphone and cable), alarm clock, jacket, and that curtain and rod thingy.

Going to visit college next week! It snuck up on me, eek. I’m trying not to think too hard about it while also preparing for it. Not sure how well that’s working.

Went to bed at midnight, after taking some sleep meds, and crashed for four hours. Woke up with this awful pain radiating out from just under my shoulder blades, and it’s not going away. It’s constricting my chest. I am really not enjoying it. I took some meds for that too, but it just keeps getting worse. Ugh. I want sleep and to be pain-free. Gonna try to lie down again, see how well that works.

To do today: Close DCU account, do laundry from RV, rent carpet cleaner?, pack, make shopping list for trip, write/print phone numbers and directions and map of campus, buy books?, grab tapes from upstairs.

I superheated water! XD Thankfully no one was in the kitchen when it exploded, but it made the most spectacular sounds! That was pretty freaking awesome. XD

I just started thinking of baklava. Indulgent, honeyed nuts and cinnamon. Syrupy, too-sweet, bottom layers thick and saturated, the top crisp and dainty. The taste of someone else’s time and kitchen, spelled out in a hundred layer of phyllo. Wrapped in tin, the honey puddles and oozes as if from the comb where it was made. Delicious.

So I found this article on Fark, right. About dinosaurs, which is cool. And it’s all like, “Hey, we can maybe turn chickens into pretend-dinosaurs, neato.” And I was like “hey yeah that is pretty neat, I can totally get into that,” and then it was all “cool man, oh and someone found soft tissue in a T. Rex femur but you didn’t hear it from me.” And I was like IT IS NOT APRIL FIRST. WHAT. IS THIS REAL. WHAT.

It is. Dr. Mary Schweitzer did indeed publish a (surprisingly readable) paper on finding soft tissue in a fossilized bone:

Many of the dinosaur vessels contain small round microstructures that vary from deep red to dark brown. The vessels and contents are similar in all respects to blood vessels recovered from extant ostrich bone.

I. I really cannot express the sheer glee and incredulity I am feeling right now. It’s apparently a fluke of preservation, although similar structures have been found in a couple other extraordinarily preserved dinosaurs. This one T. Rex just happens to have soft tissue impossibly preserved. The stuff is elastic! It hydrates! IT HAS THINGS THAT MIGHT BE BLOOD. I literally cannot express what I feel about this. I mean, recently the universe has been going HA HA EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT STARS IS WRONG and now the dinos are all HA HA EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT FOSSILIZATION IS WRONG. I love this universe! I love this planet! IT’S ALL SO COOL.

Things are falling together so wonderfully, it scares me half to death.

Dad got me a new schoolbag! It’s an Ubuntu messenger bag, with a pocket for EVERYTHING and then a few extra. XD Seriously, it is a Bag Of Holding. Now I just need a laptop to put in it! I should move the school supplies I got into it, too. They’re kinda living on my floor.

I keep wanting to pack up to get ready to move out. Can’t do it yet! Still more time to go! XD I hate waiting. So I picked up some money origami - I love origami, and I can fold paper cranes of pretty much any size. I once made one about two millimeters long, beak to tail, but then I lost it and got older with stubbier fingers. XD But yes, money origami! I made a shirt. XD It’s adorable. I wanna grab another bill and make a buck (ha, get it?!) which is like, insanely complex and also anatomically correct, wtf. There was this other thing I wanted to learn - a cat you make with the scrap left from turning A4 paper into a square. But first, the deer! XD I almost want to start leaving cash tips so I can fold it all pretty. But I don’t go out to eat anymore, so it doesn’t matter. I’m pretty good at having no money! XD I’m just bad at having more than the bare minimum needed for living expenses…

Been really heatsick. In hindsight, I was pretty stupid yesterday and really should have camped out in front of the A/C, but I was just not thinking right. I was dizzy all day and just generally ill, until the sun went down and it dipped below 90. I’m okay today, though! I just feel bad for the poor cats. Need to get the living and dining rooms cleared out so they can get some air conditioning too.

I feel bad for not doing housework the last week or so, but oh well. Can’t do it right now, I’d die, and I have been dealing with school stuff too. I guess they got my letter saying “here’s my deposit, please actually talk to me instead of ignoring me” because they’ve been pretty good about calling me back now. That amuses me. I still need to schedule a tour and talk to them about registering for classes, though.

Uuuuugh so hot. I need to eat something and get cool. I’m kinda annoyed about the food shopping yesterday - I didn’t go, so we ended up with things like watermelon and shrimp but no meals or lunch stuff. So I sat down with Hikage and made a meal plan for the next two weeks and a shopping list for this week. Sigh. I’m sure that trip cost about $200, but it’s just not gonna work. And just - why are there cans of kidney beans now? And four boxes of Hamburger Helper but no hamburger? And I hope to god that was not a can of creamed corn, because half of what got tossed out of the pantry was creamed corn. I keep feeling like I’m the only one with any common sense when it comes to food shopping. Even if you don’t have a list, you can stop and evaluate what’s in your cart and whether you have meals for the week. Sigh. Bitch bitch bitch whine whine whine. No one listens to me anymore so I feel like a nag. Get your stuff out of the downstairs! Make sure you get meals instead of junk! Wash the dishes! I don’t want to be the taskmaster, I really don’t. It’s just that no one does anything unless they’re told to do it, and I don’t have the authority to give orders, so I nag. If I could be the voice of God on high and say Do The Goddamn Dishes, Yes I Mean All Of Them you bet I would. So instead I explore the fine line between being too aggressive and too passive. If I get passive, nothing happens. If I get aggressive, I get told to fuck off and nothing happens. I keep trying to find the spot where things happen. It is a mythological place.

Today was fabulous. Got up at a fairly reasonable hour for once, hopped in the car with Dad and went to a chowder festival, which was fantastic because 1) I love long car rides and 2) CHOWDAH. :D :D There was only one stand with chowder worth eating, though. The others were far, far too rich and usually had lobster in. I do like lobster, but it is not the king of seafood. I love my clams, mmm. So there was car ride and chowder, okay, and the park was lovely and ancient and right freaking on the bay and the border to Maine, so I am sunburned and full of sea air after several long years without any salt hitting my lungs. Lord, I love the sea. It smells of all things right with the world. So then we explored the town a bit, and I marveled at the boot-scrapers mounted on all the old doorsteps, and we found a gorgeous little garden filled with these trees - I have no words for these trees. They were incredible - someone long ago carefully pruned them each time they branched, sculpting these gnarled zig-zags that arch gently over the paths. The lower bends were worn smooth, curious hands touching. They had just finished flowering, and they murmured as they swayed.

So after that we kinda headed home with a quick detour to clamber inside a submarine. :D It was teensy! I crawled into the bunks, they were pretty comfy. It was hard to get down, though. All the neat parts were locked up, though. Sigh. But it was fabulous. So then we got home and my sister reminded me that I had said I’d go to a friend’s graduation party, so we did, and that was a load of fun. There was a kiddie pool and squirt guns and grilled burgers and fake volleyball, and eventually there was Guitar Hero and glow-in-the-dark frisbee. I played Freebird on Medium! I got almost 80%, I think. Something absurdly good. Also there was this really cute guy there, but sadly he has a girlfriend and was hitting on someone else anyway. Infidelity is so not a turn-on.

So yes, now I am sitting here nursing a slight headache from all the sun and activity - I do like having a little bit of a sunburn on a hot day, it makes me feel better somehow. Sunburns and summer go together. XD And I meant to go to bed around midnight and somehow it’s now 2am, so time to do that, methinks.

I’m kinda blank and confused today. I feel awful. My room is usually a pretty good indicator of my mental health, and it’s been a mess for a while now. Dirt in the corners, no less than three bags of trash to go out, no more clean clothes… I just feel really apathetic. Just remembered I should have called the housing guy at college. A little late now. I really want to go down the trail and get some castings of the tracks by the water, especially with all the mud lately, but I can’t find the energy to do it. I know if I get up earlier I’ll get the energy to do things, which will make me feel better, but I can’t seem to wake up. I keep saying I’ll go to bed early and then realizing it’s 3am. But last time I checked it was 9! I was only gonna be a few minutes! Sigh. Just feel really bleh.

My current mental to-do list for the next, oh, two weeks: Call housing guy, call campus tour people, talk to someone about registering for classes during the visit, get an N-95 respirator, clean out moldy boxes from basement, do laundry, clean room thoroughly, empty out those two damn rooms upstairs, bully someone into washing those rooms, bully someone into doing the goddamn dishes, wash out cabinets, organize kitchen, get stuff for new apartment, set up yard sale, get haircut, move Dad’s home office upstairs, do something for mental health, write down list of things needed for school (physical exam, health insurance, sheets, plates, etc.). Huh, no wonder I feel overwhelmed.