let's play catch up

Still living that sick lyfe (a weird throat thing from after my birthday became a nose thing and then suddenly an entire body thing), but managed to get a lot of homework done over the weekend by taking work off and remaining indoors. I needed it. I needed a catch-up, away from work, my internship, clubs, and going out with friends, and it came to me disguised as built up mucus in my nose and a fever. It's 5th week and I spent the first month of it NOT reading ANYTHING, watching every episode of Louie, worrying about dates with boys, being hopelessly in love with a boy who I was not going on any dates with, and being generally lazy and apathetic. I guess turning the quarter around right before midterms is pretty okay, better than trying to do it in 8th week or something.

Today, after my sci-fi class, I had a spontaneous study sesh with Maddie in the Young Research Library. I was looking for a book on the top floor there yesterday, my first time in the actual library part and not the study rooms, and the combination of the heavy silence, heater blasting, seemingly hundreds of narrow rows of seemingly millions of books made me feel as though I could die there and not be found until weeks later, by body rotting very slowly in front of French reference books. Naturally, I suggested we go up there and find a place to settle down after seeing everything on the first floor was taken. (MIDTERMS, amirite?)

Maddie taking in the view of campus.

It was good move, as we found rows and rows of graffitied desks lining the windows, populated only by the occasional sleeping student. It was so profoundly quiet, my feet tingled with tension. Blowing my nose felt like a mortal sin. Maddie and I found ourselves communicating through Facebook messenger rather than disturbing the peace with our whispers. At several points, we ended up making each other restrain violent laughter. (By sending links like these.) I'd completely forgotten the feeling of trying to stifle laughter. If you were to put that on some sort of line graph with my own personal growth, I think it'd be a generally good thing. But stifling laughter, holding back large howls of happiness, feels so intensely pleasurable. Something to do with the forbidden, probably.

My new office space. V start-up-y, no?

I received a very, very undeserving A for a paper today. Is it worse to get a grade higher than you deserve than lower? Absolutely fucking not. But it's motivated me to blow my second paper out of the water and make my TA rethink me entirely. (Also, I've been posting pictures of The Rock with every response I am required to post in the class forums and my TA has said NOTHING to me about it????) So I worked on that as well as reading The Floating World by Cynthia Kadohata, which is the second book I've read of hers, the first being Kira-Kira for a children's lit class. If you've ever been curious about Japanese American history outside of Hawaii or California, pick her up. If you've ever been curious about Asian Americans period, pick her up. For my homework, I wrote about how Kadohata is basically making Asian Southern Gothic and it's rad as hell.

Happy with how much work I have done. Nothing close to being on top of my shit, but I'm getting there. And, needless to say, the top floor of YRL is my new spot. Catch me there if you wanna have lively Facebook messenger discussion while seated next to me. I leave you with wisdom from some desk graffiti: