my (lack of) living situation

So... honestly, I don't remember the last time I wrote. neither the time, nor the content, so I'm just going to ramble about how everything sucks. Or rather how the dorm people here suck. So this is what has been happening. I'll keep it short. And I'll just apologize beforehand for this post, as it's a full-grown rant with curse words and much anger.

Starting September, naive little me thought that I might start to find out what is going on with the dorms, and start worrying about getting myself a bed. So I went to the Komendant (the lady in charge of the dorm) and asked. She said return in a week. I returned in a week, but they said that since i'm 5th year and from Moscow, I should wait till next week, so the first years who haven't gotten their space yet can get theirs, because they're more important. Well, ok. So I return September 22nd, and I already have a problem. Friday at 8pm I have a class lasting till 9:15pm, and going to Moscow after that means I'll be in the streets of Moscow at 11pm, which is rather unpleasant and dangerous. Well, somehow, I managed, and found myself a place to bunk for the day. With high hopes, I return next week. And guess what. I'm sent packing again. My hopes are dashed. My nerves are slowly wearing thin. Luckily, Denis manages to get me a place for the weekend.

Once again, I return the following week, now having gotten promises that I'll finally get a room. A half-success happens. I get a key and a temporary pass into the building. All seems well, but this is given, only with the words that, should a first year come, and have need of a place, then I'll be kicked out. Well fuck that. But considering it's already 3 weeks into the school year, I have doubts. They tell me to wait until October. So, today, I go to the Komendant, ready with all the documents and all that. In the morning, of course, the electricity fails, just before I have class, so aside from the fact that I wasn't going to be able to pay for the dorm, and thus be officially moved in, I get a telling off. Apparently, Denis used a few untactful words yesterday when asking for a temporary pass, and now, aside from the Komendant keeping a watchful eye on any illegal activity (like Denis staying the night at my dorm, which is usually completely ignored by everyone) and expulsion from the dorms if it should happen. I was even threatened with not being given a place in the dorm at all. 

Fuck you all.

Really.

Fortunately, somehow, she consented to give me a room in the end, if I came back when there was light. I did, She was out. I had to skip two lessons because I was waiting for her (and only waiting, not even talking). And on a side note this is by far not the first time I had to do this. I've only been once at these two lectures, because of this GIANT clusterfuck of a situation. And guess what the result of that was? that's right. Come back next fucking week. Because the other dorm dude has not yet put my name into the system (and he's had a fucking month for that.) 

Screw them all thrice over in then ear!

On top of that, Denis is generic angry so he's decided to stay in bed and read all day (although the idiot also has lessons that he has to be at.) and because of that I haven't seen him all day so I can finally be properly angry at him. No! He, of course, decided to avoid it, and talk tomorrow. When I'll be tired, and the anger will be smoldering out. And I have a shitload of lessons to be at all day, and my neighbors will be home, as they don't. So this great meeting will happen somewhere around 8pm best case, and I don't see how anything good can come of anything this fucking week.

(as you can tell, I'm quite pissed. very very pissed.) 

Needless to say this month has been horribly stressful, and because of the imminent threat of hobo-life I've been having slight breakdowns about once a week. And the fact that on Thursday I'll have to talk to a lot of old academic people at my dad's defence is not helping, that and compounded with him being on his last nerves as well.

help?

Well, that's all I really have to say for now. I'll try to write something more normal soon...

summer?

Finally!

Finally I have finished my thesis, made a little book out of it, presented it to a bunch of old smart dudes (including an academic), and gotten an excellent grade for it (that part was obvious from the very beginning, but it's nice to finally have it in deed and not only theoretically.) So now I finally have completed my bachelor, and absolutely nothing changes.

Well, not really nothing. I get paid about 30 dollars a month for 'working' at my base now, and I'll be spending more time there than I will in the MIPT main campus, but overall it's all the same. Continuing education. but for now, it is summer, and I get to watch the Tour de France and the Universiade (where Russia is currently beating everyone really really badly.) I actually watched the opening ceremony. Like the vice-president of the Russian swimming federation and member of the IOC said. "What will Sochi be like?" basically they made a huge deal out of it. It seemed more like a trial run for the Olympics than some weird Universiade that has existed for but 27 years. I'm thinking that this competition will become quite a big deal from now on. In short the opening ceremony was spectacular. complete with dragons, myths, golden wish fishes, dancers in a huge pool of water great singers and her and there some perfectly bizarre choreography and costumes. The ceremony lasted a whopping 6 hours.
But enough of that. aside from getting a fancy piece of paper, I've also done something terrible: I've spilled orange juice on my computer a while ago. So now my computer hates me. This, I have determined thus: usually the computer in on one of three states. It thinks that I'm continuously pressing the space bar, which I'm obviously not; it decides that I never press the spacebar, which makes typing a pain in the behind; or whenever you press any key, it goez berzerk and prints out the symbol about 300 times, which is terrible as well. I tried to clean the keyboard which, it turns out is actually quite difficulty, because sony has to have obscenely complicated buttons. And, of course the only thing we have to clean it with is home made vodka from the soviet days. The stench of the stuff was impossible. I don't even want to know what they distilled the disgusting liquid out of. ugh! so yeah. But that of course, wasn't the worst part. I had to write my diploma, and doing that when every half hour your computer decides to make fun of you in new and interesting ways, it is three times as frustrating than it would usually be.
Well, that aside there has also been a few good things in the mean time. As I'm sure you remember I went to the Ukraine - Kiev to be precise. So here’s a few words on that; it was awesome! The city is wonderful, much friendlier and cleaner and somehow nicer than Moscow. The air is much fresher, and smells of growing things, which I found quite surprising, especially the fact that the smell is really not uniform at all. In one place it is flowers, in another something like the sea, and then an old car goes by and you remember that you’re in a city. So, we walked about, and looked at a few of the church-y places. But the thing I probably remember the most vivid is the sheer size of the river. It’s… well, quite frankly I haven’t seen anything that size. D and I decided to take a walk and we walked through some park by the river, and as we came to the bridge, we decide to cross it. It didn't seem to far to the other side, so we started walking. Well, it turned out the that shore ways away was actually an island on the river. There was just as much river on the other side. It probably took us half an hour to reach what we now knew to be the actual shore. Well when we got there, the bridge ended, and there was a huge traffic knot, but then the whopper came when I saw another shore just as far as we had already come still ahead of us. Apparently, we were now on a bigger island, and the river is absurdly large. And consider, this is not even the widest part of it by far, you see further downstream it becomes so huge that, when on a boat in the middle you cannot see either shore… so, consider your horizons expanded - literally. And, of course there was the staircase of death. The institute, of course was on a hill, and there was a very long staircase, which also had this effect of fooling you. When you look up, you think, ok I can do this, it’s not too far. It’ll be fine. You start out, and it’s ok. Half way up, you drag your feet, panting, but you keep going because you’re half way there and you grind your teeth and squint through the bright sun and keep going, and finally you get there. And then you see that there is just as much to go. You see, at that point the slope changes in such a way that you can’t see the second half from the bottom, because it’s not as steep. You might think, hey isn't that good, the second half is half as hard, the worst is behind you, right. But the fact that you thought that you should have been done already weighs you down, so the second half is just as difficult as the first half. So basically the people who built the university have found the ideal way to torture their students, not only mentally, and psychologically, but also physically. But luckily we didn't go to the university even half as often as we should have, and the staircase was but a minor inconvenience.
Well, in other news I can reiterate my endless complaints about the weather here. Soon after the snow melted, the heat set in. and it’s been ridiculously hot for the past month. See, as I've probably already mentioned, Spring, doesn't exist here. There’s winter and summer, and a week’s transition during May-April and then a rainy gray miserable period that lasts all November. Apropos rain. There’s a ton of that too. Just recently we had a little rain shower which turned all the roads into little rivers over ankle deep. Oh Russia. You’re perfect just as you are, no need to imitate the tropics, silly thing. But then again in the tropics you get this adorable thing where you have gushing rain from 1:30-2:30 each day. Here it’s more sporadic, which makes it more inconvenient if anything.
 As for inconvenience, there’s another thing that’s really not something you want to do. Break the locks in the front door. I did that the day before yesterday after coming home from food shopping. My dad was out and when he came home, he realized that the door will not open no matter how long he jiggles his keys in them. In the end he had to come in through the window, which is rather comical if you've ever seen my dad. This morning we got up a bit earlier to attack the problem. We unscrewed the covers, juggled keys about, poked it with screwdrivers and did whatever we could think of. When all hope was lost, and my dad wanted to go out the window to buy drill bits to saw the thing out of the door one last attempt was made, he wanted to hammer the key in. who knows, it could help. Well the door opened smoothly. Apparently door locks are afraid of hammers… 
Ah, yes, there is one more interesting thing I’ve forgotten to tell you. In the past year or two I’ve developed an unpleasant tendency - if I’m in a stuffy hot enclosed space for a length of time - I faint. This usually happened in buses, but now I’ve managed the feat in the local train and the metro as well. This is probably due to my having low hemoglobin, so whenever a shitload of people stay in stagnant air for a length of time, I don’t get enough oxygen and I go ko. It’s an odd sensation, really. And you can feel it coming before hand. You get unreasonably hot first, and your head starts getting really slow and heavy,l you get very weak, and at some point you just can’t manage to stand anymore because you don’t have the strength. The odd thing being that as soon as you sit, it goes away. Same thing when you feel a cool breeze. Well, there had been an accident in the metro that day. The rails lost electricity and the train was stranded in the tunnel for 4 hours. No one was hurt or killed, of course, but no one was happy about this either. This had happened earlier in the day but apparently there were after effects, and the metro was so packed as I had never seen. When my train was stranded in the tunnel for half an hour between two stations (it normally takes 2-5 minutes to get from one station to another) at one point that happened, and someone sat me down and I got off the next stop. Luckily I could take the train from there and get to dgap, and didn’t have to walk, and as an added bonus I got a sitting spot in the train, which prevented an unpleasant relapse. btw, the photo really doesn't show the extent of the packed-ness there. Just take what you see and multiply the sensation by 20, and you get an idea.
well anyways that's about all of it. I’ll write again soon-ish. Toodles))

it finally happened!

So spring has finally, after so many seemingly endless days, reared its ugly head. This I know by two sure fire signs. First of all, my dad has begun sneezing. That means a southerly wind, from places over yonder where the trees have already begun to reproduce and make many baby trees via awkward long distance tree sex, as they are wont to do. And the second sign is first better illustrated and then elaborated upon.

These strange men are painting the curb. Alternating - black stone, white stone. And this is not the only thing they paint. All the fences are painted green and yellow, or blue and red, and all the trees are painted white (you can actually see one in the background.) and as if it wasn't eough, all the benches are painted, and (Oh, dear God, why?) the trashcans. Let it sink in. They are paid to paint trashcans... 
Why they do this seemingly pointless thing? My best guess is that there are so many of them, and they are paid to do something, so they use their immaginative powers to the fullest to come up with just one more poinltess task for to do so they can pretend that they are highly useful and none of them are dispenseable. I cannot, for the life of me, think of any other reason for this yearly invasion of the painting squads.

Well, that aside, on Tuesday I'll be going to the Ukraine. officially for some sort of seminar/school thing. But I'm really going just to see Kiev and have a bit of a vacation with the boyfriend, which I think will be a most welcome diversion beore the carnage begins at semester's end. I'm hoping to take some good photos, if not many, and I might even get around to posting them to fb. We shall see. But before I get to go play, I have so much work to do. I have an exam on Monday (read tomorrow, as it's almost 23:54 on Saturday). If that weren't enough, Tuesday morning, just before I leave I have to do a mini presentation on my bachelors thesis, which is totally, completely, and unfortunately lacking in actual original content. And the cherry on top of this miraculous banana split, is that the bf's birthday is on Monday, and since I'll be home then, passing exams, and feverishly trying to finish up my presentation, I shan't be able to see him. (On the other hand, he didn't come to me for my birthday, why should I make it so hard on myself? Of course, he was also in another town trying to get the army of his back. But same difference.)

So since I have some more time before the bf comes back from his weekly DnD session (yeah, he plays dungeons and dragons. Story of my life... no matter wher, you always end up with the same kind of people) I'll continue my ramblings. For lack of a better thing to talk about, I'll just tell you about my thesis. Here I give a heads up to any and all of you who hav no wish to know anything about Theoretical Physics as it's not really needed for anything except to predict whether thing A worts this way or that way, or some other unknown way.
So anyways. Like I said, theoretical physics. The group (2 people) I'm working with, are currently trying to advance the theory of charge transfer in condensed media. Sounds, fascinating, I know. Right now this is being done within the scope of some trans-russian OLED project. The main idea is that using the Fermi golden rule an equasion giving the reaction rate constant can be derived as a function of the density of states by energy. Similar theories have already been developed, however, the spin-boson theory, looks at a model consisting only of the initial and final states, and it does not take into account the local modes (the other energy levels). The generalized spin-boson does take into accound the local mondes, and better yet has the Marcus Theory as the high temperature limit, but the medium there is the same for all possible transitions, which is obviously not quite how it is in life. Therefore this new approach is being developed. It has the electron interacting with the local mode, and the local modes affected by the medium, and all should turn out just wonderfully. And it does. With the one exception, that we are trying to see what is happening at the low temperature limit. It is an experimental fact that reactions still occur at near 0K temperatures, though all models state that the limit of the rate constant as a function of temperature, as the teperature aproaches zero is zero. And we're hoping to kind of squeeze a sort of plateau out of our formulas. Except, that hasn't properly happened yet. So I'm a bit screwed for that presentation...

long overdue!

As the title suggests, there is a long overdue rant that I've never had the patience to write out in full for the sheer monstrosity of the rage and smoldering discontent it evokes in me. At this moment, I encourage you to take a closer look at the two photos. The first I took near my base, walking to the bus stop (the blurriness, btw is snow/ice flying about and right in your face). The second photo is of my apartment from the outside. (and again, the blurryness is snow/ice/wind/eeew) There's a car in the picture, I wonder if you can find it. It's red. I would also like to note that those heaps are actually about 2 meters high and that those half covered windows are not the basement, but the first floor. I happen to live on the first floor. These photos were taken on the same day. Guess the date....

If you were thinking December or January. You were wrong (there was less snow then, and more cold). If you know a bit of the Russian climate, you might even think November or even October or February  because winter sets in early and leaves late. But again you would be wrong. These photos I took on Monday, March 25th, 2013. Yesterday. I do wonder if March is aware of the fact that it's a spring month... in any case March is pretty much over, and it's finally getting warmer. It is now only 10 below freezing (in Celsius). Luckily, it actually does feel a bit like spring, you see, it doesn't get dark at 5 PM anymore, which is a nice change, and there is the odd day when  the sun actually shines. And when it does it's blinding. Literally. A bright sun, and all that brightness bounces off the whiteness all around you. There's no escaping it. However, the weather is a force that I can do nothing about, much like I can do absolutely nothing about the complete absence of computer sense that my bachelor diploma adviser has. It is indeed startling. He can't even access his email from home, because someone set up an ancient version of outlook for him at work, and he can't do the same at home. I even had to print out a pdf for him because he didn't get how do download it onto the computer from his email... well he's rather on the elderly side, so I guess he deserves a break, but still, he could make an effort. 

In other news I might be going to Ukraine in April for this conference type thing. Mostly because I miss being warm outside. I hope that goes well enough, and that both me and the bf will get green lights for that one. It'd be nice to have a little vacation. So, I'm tired, and I don't really feel like writing much more, so I guess this is it for the time being. 

From Russia with Love.

dogs are f-ing scary

So recently, I went to the store complex Rio not far from here (namely one train station away) to get a present for the bf for febuary 23rd  (big holiday, called day of the protector of the homeland, and all the girls are supposed to congratulate all the guys for bring guys. it's like march 8th only backwards.)
So, I ended up getting him a bunch of fancy teas, a little bit of 6 odd mixes, so if he doesn't like one of them he needn't torture himself through a whole 50 grams.
I ended up going during the day, and during an unfortunate one and a half hour break in the trains, so instead of waiting for the miserable thing, I decided that it would be a good idea to just walk back along the rails, as I occasionally do during the warmer months. The going was surprisingly easy, because the know made the way nice and even, But because of the flat landscape, it was a bit chilly from the wind.
All was well about two thirds of the way through, when I noticed some dogs up ahead, there were only two, so I thought nothing of it, and kept on trudging. One crossed the rails to the right, and the second one, a female (which I knew from her relieving herself right in the middle of the path), followed after she was done with her business. I noted only that the first dog was clearly the dominant one. As I approached the place they crossed my path, the dominant one started barking, I gave it little heed because that's what dogs do. They bark.
As I passed the clamor grew louder and diversified, and I came to realize that a pack of wild dogs were following me. And if I'd have kept walking they would attack. See dogs are odd creatures. I understand their psychology only a little, but enough to know that if a dog realizes you're afraid of it, or that you're fleeing, then you're totally screwed, because then you become prey, and prey is made to be killed and eaten. I stopped abruptly and turned. There were about 5 or 6 of them (all of a good golden retriever type size, and one had a face hideously similar to a bulldog, and was standing at the apex of a rough delta formation consisting of 4 dogs right in front of me, and was clearly the most fearsome of the pack.) I stared at them for a while. Taking in the sight, and the noise. They only grew louder, and inched closer.
To tell you the truth, I'm glad that I'm good at faking nerves of steel, I was getting quite antsy, and I felt an urge to run away from them as fast as I could, but cold and tired as I was, and with the sleek ice under my feet, I knew that that would mean blood, and probably mine. I wouldn't be able to fend off all of them on my own. Their advance reminded me of the situation I was in, and I made an inadvertent step back. They immediately closed the distance to but an arms length. My theory was confirmed. Running was not an option. 
I wreaked my brain in search of a solution. Luckily, I had a bag of groceries hanging on my arm, and I let it slip to my hand abruptly, by straightening my arm. The motion intimidated the wretches, and they jumped back a bit. I capitalized on my momentary gain, and took a few steps forward. They retreated. Still barking. I stamped my foot. They stared to quiet. another glare, and a few more hisses and stamps of feet from my end drove them away a good distance, still glaring at them over my shoulder, I turned slowly, and then proceeded to walk on at a steady pace.
As I walked, the adrenalin wore off. My knees became weaker, and I felt shaky, and drained. dogs are f-ing scary.

i yet live! muahahahahahahahahaha

Hello my dears!
again I am guilty of neglecting you all, but that was most;y because first I was way too busy with work, then way to busy with fun, and then there was to much busyness with sadness and lazing about, and now I finally am writing. In lieu of an apology there are pictures! Which I will explain. if you don't care, feel free to skip ahead to [***] The shiny wood things on the weird piece of paper (the one to the immediate right ----------------------------------------->), are, as you can probably guess, the wood carvings I did. A celtic knot type thing, and a fox type thing, just in case they confuse you, which I'm sure they do. The earrings (yes, those are earrings. and they're on a giant pile of real fir tree needles that I had made into a wreath, which turned into a pathetic tangle with a pile of needles underneath. and the snowflake is on that pathetic pile too.)  as well as the rose up top are presents I got. the roses are now happily dried and adorn my bookshelf. the snowflake was inspired by a VK post. I though it was cool and decided to try it out. I like how it turned out. this beauty --------------> is one of the multitudes of corsets that I am now a proud owner of. *yays* I'll spare you the glorious details because... well actually partially because over half of them are still in the US and it's probably be about a month before I get them, and I must content myself with but three pieces.

[***]

well, and now to the last unexplained picture. the one on the top right! I bet you can guess what it is! you got it! homework! theoretical physics to be exact. the thing that I am again procrastinating on. only this time I'm not studying for the exam >.< but I still have all day tomorrow, so I think I'll be good. I have printed out a mini version of the lectures for the material, and all that's left to do is find it in there, and look up any stuff that's not in the lectures and write it onto tiny pieces of paper that I will stick into a pocket, or a belt, or a boot. I haven't decided on that one yet. On the up side, this semester has been the best one grade wise ever. Aside from some random alternate course which I got a 3 on, because I hadn't been to a single lecture, all my grades have been 6 or higher, though I think this will change as soon as I am done with the theoretical physics exam, where 6 is probably the highest I could possibly get, because that's my rating for the seminars.  (holy shit, that's a long sentence!) But on the up side that also means that there's a 90% chance that a 4 is the lowest grade that they might give me. So school is going pretty well, I'd say. I'll just go ahead and blame that on "quality relaxation time."

Now about some more fun things!
Before D left for new years to talk to this dude at home about a pet project of his (which in the mean time has failed miserably since the guy never showed up, meaning the trip was kind of pointless, unless you count that I got to have a bit of a new years adventure as a positive outcome of said trip, which I will tell you about shortly.) we went to see the Hobbit! And we even ended up going on a bit of an unexpected journey of our own. Basically, I told him that either we'd need to see the movie before He left, or I'd simply go see it myself, because I've been waiting for it for... round about 10 years O_o (damn, I'm old!). But unfortunately it seemed like we wouldn't be able to do so, since neither of us had time with all the final projects and final tests that were happening at the time. But luckily one of my things got pushed back to the afternoon on a wednesday, which I, of course forgot. and managed to remember only on tuesday (the day before). Well, luckily, he found a movie theater that had it in the morning, and had tickets. But the location of that theater... oh my. Well... train, of course, then metro from one end of one line to the end of another line. and then a loooooooooong walk. That was something. When we went out of the metro we started heading towards a direction we thought was right. Then we asked random lady if we were going towards the MKAD (Moscow Circular Automobile Road - this huge circular highway around moscow where the cars move at snail's pace because of traffic jams.) and she told us it was the other way... well, turned out she was wrong... So after a long time of walking in weird circles and some unorthodox crossing of roads we ended up walking the same way we started, only we had lost about a half hour of time. Well, now at a quicker pace we walked... soon enough I felt that it was too hot, and ended up stuffing scarf, hat, and gloves into my bag. When we finally got to the MKAD (about 40 mins later), we walked along it, and soon enough came to the intersection one of those bridge types of the MKAD and some other large road. Note that by large road I mean 5 lanes in each direction. The MKAD had about 4 or 5 as well, though I didn't count. And we had to cross this monstrosity. We were so close to the theater, and yet so far. We ended up having to cross the road via bridge, descend from that via exit, then there was this little river that we had to cross. luckily there was a bridge there. A wooden path with concrete around it. Then up the steep bank, and along a snaky slippery path (remember this is winter and Russia, snow and ice everywhere.) with the road on one side and a steep fall towards the river on the other. And only then were you able to come to the mall, and there searching for an entrance, which took the aid of some random dudes in neon orange jackets, and then and only then we finally made it to that movie theater. We were quite happily tired when we finally arrived, though we did end up missing the first 10 or so minutes of the film. The movie itself was, of course, amazing. And aside from the bit about Azog, who according to Tolkien, is actually long since dead, I loved it all. All the addition wonderfully compliment the film and gave it a form that is so much more than the fairy tale version of Tolkien, and puts it into context with the great changes that would be triggered in that world. I'm already very excited for the continuation! After the movie, we ate, and then made the journey back. Only we were both very late to our respective thingies since the food in our stomachs sapped our strength, and the way back took us much longer. Through the woods and over the bridge to our base institutes we go! >.<

An now, the promised new years celebration! As I mentioned before D was away, so I ended up celebrating with my friend Lera. As always, we first planned to have just us two, but as things go here every year, three more girls ended up joining us. around 11pm we finally all assembled, and 15 minutes to midnight we had our heaps of food ready, which we left on the table to go see the fireworks and Putin talk, because that's what Russians do on new years. They listen to the president wishing them a happy new year. We grabbed our bottle of champagne (and to my delight I found that it didn't make me want to puke, as champagne always had done ever since halloween during first year, but rather it was quite good.) After the address, and the fireworks (which were organized by this, my tiny little, institute and lasted a whopping 15 minutes) we went back to the room to gorge ourselves on food and alcohol, which included salads, apples, pickles, tuna sandwiches, chocolate, red wine and vodka with some sort of berry juice. Once we were all well buzzed, and dancing around the room to crap music, we decided it was time to go dancing. Thus, we left for the dance party in one of the dorms. and we danced for a while, punching random dudes in the stomach with our elbows when they got to close. All was well, until this old guy crashed the party and broke it up because apparently someone was firing some sort of explosive device inside, and that was apparently a bad idea (I hadn't noticed it at all.) So we waited for the crowds to disperse as we sat on a couch, and disappointed that the evening should end so soon. Luckily, one of the girls had a way out of this dilemma. And after a while we went to another dorm, this time some room, and not the dorm club, and continued the partying. This time including free drinks! (mostly because we're girls and we're awesome.) So we drank and danced and danced until we were tired, at which point we moved to the kitchen, and ended up chatting with some of the locals. It turned out that one of the guys from my former German class lived in that apartment, and we had a good chat about all sorts of things, beginning with the language, and ending with life in general. At some point we sat and Lera joined us with some other guy I have no clear memory of, and we kept talking, at some point they all just went to bed, and Lera and I kept talking, and had a bit of a hear to heart, until about 5 30, and then went home because we were tired. I made it back to my room fine, but she, apparently, wandered around the dorm for several hours trying to find her room. And apparently she was so trashed, that she remembered little of the previous night. >.< for once, it wasn't I who had the memory gaps, and I got to tell her what had happened the next day.

So, friends, I think this is enough for one post. I haven't written a monster such as this in quite some time. But there you go. There was something to tell of this time around =) yays!

Happy New Year! Merry Christmases! Hanukkah! Kwanza! Whatever!  (insert any random holiday that gives you an excuse to have fun and/or drink!)

  

i'm alive!

The time for a new post has come and passed without me actually writing one, so now, instead of doing theoretical physics homework, which I won't be able to focus on anyways, I'm doing this. So first things first. The bf limbo is finally coming to an end. He's returning on Saturday  and all that business on his hospital end seems to be going well. So, yeah...
Otherwise, I've been feeling quite swamped with all my studies. Too much stuff to do, I guess. But I'll start with something positive. The saturday before last there was the annual open student's ball in honor of MIPT's birthday. I had been doubtful as to whether I wanted to go, but I ended up going, and I hadn't had so much fun since D and I spent a cold rainy night in a tent in the woods, which was at the very beginning of summer. There was lots of awesome dancing, and I mean REALLY awesome, both with guys and girls, because the organizers of this dance, are not homophobic, and appreciate a great lead, even when that person happens to be a girl. I danced almost continuously, got asked quite a number of times, which is always very pleasant, and have some photos to show for it. I also found out that waltzing when your calves are cramping is terribly uncomfortable and painful, and I couldn't walk without muscle pain for two days afterwards, but it was totally worth it. Last Saturday there was the small matter of my birthday. I didn't really celebrate, but my mom surprised me with a flower delivery which included an obnoxious balloon, singing happy birthday. But as cliche and kitchy it was it was nice. that day I also had a bit of a big presentation of my semester project. For some reason, I got a pretty good 'potential' grade on it. And here I say potential, because it's more of a trial run. the actual presentation is going to be two weeks from next saturday, and by next week I need to not only finish the project, but also have a paper ready to turn in for review. Also labs, and oh god theoretical physics. that's going to be my one big worry this year. the work at the base has been relaxed up till now, but is probably going to pick up soon, since half the allotted time is passing, and I have to have a literature review on the topic done by the 10th of December, which is a bit of a complicated matter, mostly because I still don't really know what I'll be doing. Well, enough of this. You get the gist of it. tons of work. And this, of course is the time that D has to come back. The busiest freaking time of the year. Well, he has reinstatement exams coming up too, so we'll both have stuff to do, but at least we'll be able to see each other now and then. Well, surprisingly this is really all that is happening, at the moment. lots of work, little else.
Oh, actually I've had two little wood carving projects, one I've made in the likeness of a fox, and the other is a very simplistic Celtic knot thing (a surprisingly thing to carve, actually. much more difficult than the fox - mostly because of the intersections and all the curves, etc.) The wood was obscenely hard, so I kind of killed my fingers a bit when I just started, but after spending 12 or so hours on it, the skin on the fingers becomes a bit tougher, and the pressure hurts much less, so I didn't even need band aids to save fingers from friction for the second piece. So yeah, all out of things to say for now, so cheers!
 I've now doused both in bergamot oil (mostly because it's the only type I have, but it has the plus of making them smell heavenly.) The idea that inspired this was, of course the upcoming holidays. so, as you can guess, these will be presents.)