Mon May 01 2006 13:49 PST What's going: on

(2) Wed May 03 2006 00:57 PST What else?: For some things there are no words.

And for others there are too many. Specifically the Schlieffen Plan. It was the first of the "terms" I answered (explain the historical significance and provide a relevant date) on the midterm I took yesterday. I had just finished squeezing in everything I thought was necessary to explain the historical significance of the Schlieffen Plan and was about the turn to the second page of my bluebook when PH eyed my prolific writing and asked, "Is that all one term?" rather loudly. I know how the rest of the class feels about me because I remember how I felt about the guy who announced casually last Wednesday to our research methods class that he had 6 pages of his rough draft.

These things are fun but school is taking a backseat right now. Everyone has been so nice & I think things will be waiting for me to pick them back up when I am ready.

(1) Wed May 03 2006 22:13 PST In perpetuity:
Anne: One word, Alyson
Leonard: I think that's two words, Anne.

And it doesn't mean what we thought it meant.

There's something wrong with everyone's hearing today. Me: I keep yawning and wanting to fall asleep.
Alyson: Did you say chocolate brownie icecream?

(1) Mon May 08 2006 13:04 PST Where we sing until dawn of our fears and our fates: My mom passed away last Friday in the afternoon. I was talking to her friend Sunny while Leonard, Alyson, and John were playing Settlers of Catan, and I was feeling tired, so I decided to take a book in and read next to mom. I was thinking I should get a pillow, too, when I looked at her and realised she was no longer breathing.

She had been sleeping peacefully, and we had a good night with her the night before she died, and a really good week. Leonard, Susie, my aunt Anne and my cousin Alyson have been here all week and we have made a lot of memories. We have been posting a lot on my mom's weblog.

I miss her so much already and I think the time ahead of me will be even harder than the time already past, but everyone has been very wonderful to me and I'm glad I don't have to do it alone.

This song has always reminded me of my mom and how she was always strong and full of hope above her troubles. This is getting a little bit cheesy but I think I'm allowed to maudlin.

If your life is a rough bed of brambles and nails
And your spirit's a slave to man's whips and man's jails
Where you thirst and you hunger for justice and right
And your heart is the pure flame of man's constant night

In your eyes faint as the singing of a lark
That somehow this black night
Feels warmer for the spark
Warmer for the spark
To hold us 'til the day
When fear will lose it's grip
And heaven has its way
And heaven has its way
When all will harmonise
And you know what's in our hearts
The dream will realise

Heaven knows no frontiers
And I've seen heaven in your eyes

(1) Tue May 16 2006 21:55 PST The way the light rose--rose that morning: Utah & back. Frantically cleaning, clearing, & packing house. I feel like I've missed a lot but haven't been missed... and that I'll never catch up.

(1) Mon May 22 2006 11:17 PST Like EU day, kinda: Last night I said to Becca, "How often to you get to celebrate an important event in European history when it actually happens?"

Is this a cause for celebration?....

Mon May 22 2006 21:36 PST: V tired & feel as though I've accomplished nothing. Tomorrow it starts all over again.

(4) Tue May 23 2006 19:35 PST Unrelated: Now I remember why I don't like Firefox. I can't scroll down by pressing the spacebar. This is why I deleted it last time I downloaded it after I discovered tabbed browsing in Safari.

(3) Tue May 23 2006 19:38 PST Tell me no...:

Let's read the trees and their autumn leaves,
As they fall like a dress undone
At the end of summers, love will find lovers
Who need the shadows of a winter sun

Don't tell me you're leaving we can hide in the evening
It's getting darker than it should
If we read the leaves as they blow in the breeze
Would it stop us now, my love

The moon is milk and the sky where it's split
Is magic, and we all need to believe, that we can
Wake up in the dream, it's not as hard as it seems
You know its harder to leave

I heard you say underneath your breath some kind of prayer
I heard you say underneath your breath that you never 
want to feel this way about anybody else

Time enough for hard questions
Time enough for all our fears
Time is tougher than we both know yet
Time enough for tears

Time enough for being braver
Time enough I love this time of year,
Time is tough, its running away from us,
Time enough for tears 

(2) Wed May 24 2006 22:17 PST Alone: Life is so sad & lonely now that I don't have an ice-cream scoop.

(2) Wed May 24 2006 22:22 PST There's always at least one idiot:

Yet if they do [practice abstinence] and they marry someone who has also abstained and they remain sexually faithful in marriage, their chance of contracting AIDS is 0 percent, and there is not even a need for a condom!

James Hansee in Newsweek

(1) Thu May 25 2006 16:36 PST Question: Is it okay to post-date a check for the billing due date but mail the check now?

Thu May 25 2006 22:29 PST Between the crosses, row on row: They have started a poppy appeal-ish thing here in the US now, too. At least I think they have started, it may not be new but it is the first time I have encountered it. There were a bunch of cute old veterans in the grocery store handing them out and I gave them a dollar.

I certainly don't mean to criticise, but I think it makes more sense to do the poppy appeal in November, because "In Flanders Field" was what started it all, and it's for the Veterans of Foreign wars. But on the other hand, I suppose all wars might result in poppies, and they do tend to bloom in spring, war or no. Perhaps they are planning on doing it again in Novemeber. We could do worse than having more remembrance.

In Britain the poppy appeal is a matter of social conciousness. Everywhere one goes there are young city bankers in their suits wearing poppies, quite pleasing to the eye and heart. The tube posters--a young mother and her child, widowed and orphaned by the First Gulf War, standing in a field of poppies--always brought tears to my eyes, and I thought to myself, as I did earlier today in the grocery store: I'm not against the men [and women] who fight wars, but the ones who make them. Tony Blair has a poppy on every night when he appears on the news. Rubert Grint was wearing one at the Harry Potter premier.

I think if ever I were to get a tattoo, it would be a Flanders poppy. That's how much of a nerd I am.

(2) Mon May 29 2006 08:46 PST History jokes can be funny part 7:
Why don't they do re-enactments of the Hundred Years' War?
Because it would take too long.

(2) Tue May 30 2006 23:57 PST The industry needs to be changed: Here is the problem with guidebooks. I have been puzzling and puzzling over which ones to buy for my upcoming trip. My dear friends at the bookstore gave me a nice basket of goodies when I came back to cheer me up, and in it was one on Serbia, so I am well covered in that respect. However... Eastern Europe doesn't have Greece or Turkey (explain that to me!), Europe on a shoestring has just about every country that could be remotely defined as European, but that means you have to pay about $30 and carry around 5 pounds of rainforest (nooo, lonely planet probably uses recycled paper) for four pages of information on Salonika (or whatever they call it these days). Mediterranean Europe has Greece and Turkey, but excludes Bosnia and Herzegovina and FYROM and includes Italy, France, Spain, Morroco, who needs them? Western Balkans is more detailed and reasonabley sized, but has neither Greece, Turkey, nor Bulgaria.

It seems to me that there is a very simple solution and I'm surprised no one has put it into action. All they have to do is bound each country cheaply (much easier to carry about in day packs that way) and have people pick out whichever ones they want, maybe getting them all bound together as an option. Or have them in a three-ring binder, what a concept. It could even be a supplement to their regular guide books, on a website somewhere, for people like me, who have very picky plans of where they want to go for very specific, obscure reasons... Although, really now, is it so hard to imagine wanting to visit both Croatia and Romania? Is it really such a strange concept to have a guide book encompassing all the Balkans? (Susie: "What's a Balkan?") Why just the "Western Balkans?" Is that more of the "Western bias"? (I doubt it; Romania and Bulgaria will surely join the EU long before Serbia and Bosnia will) Why not include Greece? They are part of the Balkans too, though they are loathe to admit it... Anyway, I can't imagine it being any more expensive than having to buy 3 or 4 different but over-lapping guide books.

The other thing they could do that would be a good idea is hire me.

(1) Wed May 31 2006 13:25 PST "I'm so relieved. It's like you're never officially going until you've bought your ticket, you know?":

Leave: July 13, 2006 
Depart 	01:58 PM	San Francisco Intl.,(SFO)
Arrive 	09:45 AM	Frankfurt Intl.,(FRA) 
Depart 	09:50 PM	Frankfurt Intl.,(FRA)
Arrive 	11:40 PM	Belgrade,(BEG)

Return: August 30, 2006 
Depart 	01:05 PM	Belgrade,(BEG)
Arrive 	02:35 PM	Munich,(MUC)
Depart 	03:50 PM	Munich,(MUC)
Arrive 	06:40 PM	San Francisco Intl.,(SFO)

What I really like about the ticket is the price, especially considering two stops, where most were much more than this one ended up being, and had three stops. What I didn't like was the fact that I don't get into Belgrade till nearly midnight, because of... "a twelve hour stop in Frankfurt?" But disgust quickly melted into a pleasing vision of myself running from the airplane, jumping into a taxi and yelling "go!" and trying to cram in as very much as I can. According to the website, central Frankfurt is only 20 or 30 minutes away from the airport. So I don't mind midnight in Belgrade quite so much.