my life is boring, but at least it has a good soundtrack.

I'm back on a jazz kick...Today's Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey. Before that, I was listening to Patty Griffin all the time...v. different. Beautiful acoustic folk. Every song is a portrait. Thanks for introducing me, L.

Just when I thought I couldn't be a bigger nerd, I had to go and discover the wonder of chemistry. Just sitting in class on wed. learning about acid neutralizing capacity, and was suddenly bowled over in amazement at how seamless and elegant it all is. All these reactions taking place around and in us every moment, and we're not even aware of most of them. But it also amazes me that we know as much as we do, when we're so limited by our senses.

This was one of those weeks where I spent every waking hour doing schoolwork. And I had a lot of waking hours. I guess it's midterm week, aka hell week. Added to this, I volunteered to help plan an Earth Day event and "Road Rally", a community service competition, which took some time I didn't have. But I'm down to one take home test and the usual stack of required reading- I guess I have to do it, too. Last Wed. we had a term paper due in Restoration, and as a result almost no one had done the daily reading. The prof went through the list of papers, making us raise our hands if we'd read them. We didn't lie. So he berated us for awhile, threatened to assign more homework (because that will give us more time to read?), and sent us home early. Not pleasant to feel like a high schooler again, but he couldn't have picked a more welcome punishment.

Something that made my week... As I was walking to the parking lot, I caught a flash of color from the corner of my eye. It was a bluebird perched on a stop sign. Looked just like this. It didn't twitch as I approached to within a few feet. It just stared. As I went on my way, it flew off. A minute later, there was a blue fleck right above me on a telephone wire. Bird on a wire made a warbling chirp, a faint warbling chirp came back from a tree. I kept walking, and bluebird #2 was hopping around in an oak tree along the path. It was like being in a Disney movie. I spent some time last year keeping up bluebird houses, so they have a special place in my heart. Maybe the feeling's mutual. Check out NABS if you like them, too.

Quotage:
“Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
- -H. Jackson Brown, Jr., who writes quotes for a living (how can I get that job?)

"ouch."
- Sheela's response to the above quote