Owly and Mice!!  Notice the tiny baby on Mooma Mouse’s back…I don’t think they’re coming out tonight!!  O_o

Okay, so it’s pretty much impossible to get accurate photos of everything, but here’s the general idea.  I’m usually staring at different trees, but you guys won’t know the difference.  Only one of my classes has a window anyway…

Trees outside Dow

 More extra-Dow trees

Another incarnation of Mouse-drawn trees.  At least these were done during Environmental Science!!

I’ve left out the most obvious employment, which would be knitting.  Photos later!!  This is my only week off, so hopefully I’ll get those out here tonight or tomorrow.  As of Saturday, I have sold my soul to the most problematic production I’ve seen in several years.  If only I weren’t magnetically attracted toward things that need help, my life would be so much easier.  Seriously, I need a second person in my head who can tell me when I’m making stupid decisions.  I guess that’s a problem for another day.

Last night around 12:30AM we traipsed over to campus to see the festivities.  We actually missed those (the “actual” festivities), but found instead that we were just in time to witness (and meet from the other direction!) a giant group of our fellow seniors parading onto the quad in a giant mob, singing “We Shall Overcome”.  Everyone milled about on the quad hugging each other and screaming, streaking, and in one case setting off flares in the middle of the quad–Security didn’t stop them!!

I probably should have gone to some of the spur-of-the moment parties, but instead I came home.  My classes might argue that it was the best decision, but I’m still not convinced…

<3 <3 <3

<:3 )~

It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I’m not really going to talk about it until I know what’s going on a little more, but I’ll give you a little hint:

It probably has something to do with my SIP.  (Senior Individualized Project, for those who don’t know.)

So, in order to avoid that, I’ve been looking at Free Spirit fabrics online.  I remembered how much I like some of the freshcut collection by Heather Bailey.

I also really like some of the Heather Ross Mendocino collection with the octopi, etc.

Finally, go here and click on Children’s Clothing.  Moom can tell you that I would have LOVED that pink smock dress.  Color and style aside,  I want to put those birds on everything I own, although at this point I just want the brown one in  an adult fit.  P.S. It has POCKETS.  I love pockets.

So, I have a lot of projects I need to show.  Like, a lot a lot.  At the moment I have very few on my camera, but I’ll work on amending that.  Maybe later today, maybe tomorrow?  For now I have these:

I’m ready to have curtains instead of blinds, thank you. I guess I’d better go work on my reading if I ever want to have a life.

*Exploding in the sense of “I’m going to be really busy”.

9:30 – SIP meeting

1:15 –Women in International Development

2:40 – Environmental Science

Tuesday

6:30 – Breakfast before fasting (for Ramadan, but we’re just doing one day)

10:30 – Production meeting

And then…NOTHING.  Hopefully I’ll be productive…

It doesn’t even matter that my proxy didn’t show up to register me…I have an apartment!! Rather than employing my time in a desperate cycle of worrying about housing followed by berating myself for wasting my time worrying about housing, I am now free to grouch away at the Kalamazoo registrar who are not answering my e-mails. I kind of need them to clear me so that I can, you know, have classes when I come home…

If they never do that, am I free to stay here through the end of the year? *wink wink*

(Before the actual post though, the man next to me in the cybercafé is singing loudly and smacking his lips with obnoxious frequency. It may not sound like much, but I’m about ready to turn around and cuff him about the head and shoulders until he stops. At least he’s not watching porn. Okay, onward.)

I’m new at housing searches. I’m just starting to figure out prices and different types of units and Obnoxious Realtors and all that good stuff. My latest discovery, which is sort of embarrassing because I probably should have known about it before, is that there are “efficiency” units available. Studio/efficiency…it just never occurred to me.

The word “efficiency” makes me giggle a little bit. I was digging through my pictures and thinking about housing and it occured to me that nothing could be more minimalist-and efficient-than a power line. It’s too bad I don’t have wings and can’t live off eating worms.

Unless you count flying bugs with day-long lifecycles, because they don’t need houses at all.

Unless…has anyone got a spare refrigerator box?? I could set it up outside the library and buy a little charcoal stove!! Someone bring me back to earth, please!

I could turn the act of stressing oneself out into a profession, as it seems to be what I do best. One of the most amazing thing about Sénégalese culture is that there are very few opportunities during which one can engage in such an act. Until…now.

It’s a shame that the idea of Going Home has to be present for the end of my stay here, because I’d really much rather not have to deal with it. I think the worst thing about study abroad at Kalamazoo is having to face another quarter of school, while you’re out of the country and can’t prepare for it in advance.

I have my classes more-or-less planned, but if I’m going to do a theatre performance SIP (large project equivalent to a senior thesis) I have to have a proposal ready by the end of April. That sounds like a lot of time but…I have no access to scripts. No books, and only so much time and money to waste in the cybercafé. That’s just the first stress-inducing factor.

My most pressing disaster is that my housing plans for spring sort of…uhm…collapsed in a giant heap of disastrous non-existence followed by my intended roommate ditching me. So. Uhm. Kalamazoo has to house me somehow, right?

Those are the two biggest concerns for the time, although I’m sure that I’ll continue to gather them with some sort of freakish black hole-like effect until my hair stands on end and my teeth ache. Life as usual.