aamcnamara (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aamcnamara) wrote2011-10-08 07:09 pm
aamcnamara) wrote2011-10-08 07:09 pm
Entry tags:
before the big plunge
Rumors fly about Mountain Day every year, but this year it seemed that there were more than usual. Having a week and a half of rain can do that. On Wednesday, the rain finally broke. It was sunny, and twenty-something (a high something) of my Facebook friends posted angrily about the lack of mountain in their day.
Thursday, however, actually was Mountain Day. We climbed Mount Holyoke! We got slightly lost, but getting slightly lost on Mount Holyoke means you accidentally find the road and have to follow it for a while before you come across another path through the woods. At the top, there was ice cream (none of us partook), free Mountain Day hats from the Alumnae Association, and the President.
This last was taking photos with students and generally hanging out--at one point, while my friends and I were sitting on some rocks, Lynn Pasquerella started singing the Alma Mater with some first-years. We joined in, but everyone gets a little muddled by the third- or second-to-last lines. The lure of the anti-Alma Mater is just too strong, and everyone starts slipping into "so from bedroom to barroom we stagger/and united in free love for all" instead of the charming and doubtless far more virtuous lyrics of the original.
...so then Lynn Pasquerella led us all in a round of the anti-Alma Mater. "You'll know all the lyrics by next year," she told the firsties around her, who mostly seemed to not quite know the words.
Walking back down the mountain, Kate spotted a big bird in one of the trees. We all stopped. While we watched, it took off--wingspan of a raptor gliding down into the next round of woods. Though we hurried after, we couldn't find it again.
When we got back to campus, it was of course time for our Lesbian Movie of the Week (But I'm a Cheerleader) and then making cookies. Gingerbread cookies. Er--well. Still-not-ginger -bread cookies, in honor of the Doctor and my sensitivity to ginger. We loaded them up with cinnamon and nutmeg, and cut them out in the shapes of ducks and owls.
While they baked, we worked on putting together my costume for the geek dance. I'm going to be Roranicus Pond/Rory the Roman/Centurion Rory, complete with breastplate, little leather flap skirt thing, tunic, and cloak. Most of the pieces were of course too big, so trimming and alterations and wild ideas were necessary. The fake leather foam stuff proved surprisingly tough to sew, but I managed to make it look decent, at least.
After the cookies were done, we made a quick glaze and decorated. Given the still-not-ginger nature of the cookies, Doctors seemed appropriate: there was an Eleventh Doctor duck cookie, with bowtie and hair; a Tenth Doctor duck, with necktie, wild hair and :D face; a Fourth Doctor owl with stripy scarf... (There was also a series of O RLY/YA RLY/NO WAI owls, for which I take full responsibility.)
And then I had to go to a physics review session for my midterm the next day! When I came back, we watched the third episode of the BBC Sherlock (to much flailing on the part of those who had not seen it before) and an episode of Xena. Somehow a lot of things about queer female slightly-older-than-me geek subculture make more sense now.
Standing in the main room of the apartment after that, Kate suddenly stiffened. "Possum!" A possum snuffled around one of the dogwood trees, finding the fallen kousa dogwood berries among the grass with its pointed muzzle. It went around and around the tree, making bigger circles, until finally it wandered off. Things to do, people to see.
Friday afternoon, after finishing my physics midterm (and buying a new writing/everything notebook for VP onwards), I felt like I got to breathe. I lay outside in October sunshine and... well, and realized that, oh, Viable Paradise is in two days. Thought about writing, about my life. Having the space to do that is important, and I lack that sometimes these days. Going to the REU was a good thing, but I ended up without all that much time to just sit and be this summer. As my former Special Collections boss said in sympathy, there just isn't time to read.
Now I'm partway toward VP already. Tomorrow I go the rest of the way, and will submerge into that world for a week. I hope that the writer part of my brain wakes up. I hope that I learn, and write, and read, and make friends. I hope I get to explore the island. And I hope that all my plans for getting back to MHC on Friday night work out. Hold my breath and cross my fingers, and that's all that I can do.
Thursday, however, actually was Mountain Day. We climbed Mount Holyoke! We got slightly lost, but getting slightly lost on Mount Holyoke means you accidentally find the road and have to follow it for a while before you come across another path through the woods. At the top, there was ice cream (none of us partook), free Mountain Day hats from the Alumnae Association, and the President.
This last was taking photos with students and generally hanging out--at one point, while my friends and I were sitting on some rocks, Lynn Pasquerella started singing the Alma Mater with some first-years. We joined in, but everyone gets a little muddled by the third- or second-to-last lines. The lure of the anti-Alma Mater is just too strong, and everyone starts slipping into "so from bedroom to barroom we stagger/and united in free love for all" instead of the charming and doubtless far more virtuous lyrics of the original.
...so then Lynn Pasquerella led us all in a round of the anti-Alma Mater. "You'll know all the lyrics by next year," she told the firsties around her, who mostly seemed to not quite know the words.
Walking back down the mountain, Kate spotted a big bird in one of the trees. We all stopped. While we watched, it took off--wingspan of a raptor gliding down into the next round of woods. Though we hurried after, we couldn't find it again.
When we got back to campus, it was of course time for our Lesbian Movie of the Week (But I'm a Cheerleader) and then making cookies. Gingerbread cookies. Er--well. Still-not-ginger -bread cookies, in honor of the Doctor and my sensitivity to ginger. We loaded them up with cinnamon and nutmeg, and cut them out in the shapes of ducks and owls.
While they baked, we worked on putting together my costume for the geek dance. I'm going to be Roranicus Pond/Rory the Roman/Centurion Rory, complete with breastplate, little leather flap skirt thing, tunic, and cloak. Most of the pieces were of course too big, so trimming and alterations and wild ideas were necessary. The fake leather foam stuff proved surprisingly tough to sew, but I managed to make it look decent, at least.
After the cookies were done, we made a quick glaze and decorated. Given the still-not-ginger nature of the cookies, Doctors seemed appropriate: there was an Eleventh Doctor duck cookie, with bowtie and hair; a Tenth Doctor duck, with necktie, wild hair and :D face; a Fourth Doctor owl with stripy scarf... (There was also a series of O RLY/YA RLY/NO WAI owls, for which I take full responsibility.)
And then I had to go to a physics review session for my midterm the next day! When I came back, we watched the third episode of the BBC Sherlock (to much flailing on the part of those who had not seen it before) and an episode of Xena. Somehow a lot of things about queer female slightly-older-than-me geek subculture make more sense now.
Standing in the main room of the apartment after that, Kate suddenly stiffened. "Possum!" A possum snuffled around one of the dogwood trees, finding the fallen kousa dogwood berries among the grass with its pointed muzzle. It went around and around the tree, making bigger circles, until finally it wandered off. Things to do, people to see.
Friday afternoon, after finishing my physics midterm (and buying a new writing/everything notebook for VP onwards), I felt like I got to breathe. I lay outside in October sunshine and... well, and realized that, oh, Viable Paradise is in two days. Thought about writing, about my life. Having the space to do that is important, and I lack that sometimes these days. Going to the REU was a good thing, but I ended up without all that much time to just sit and be this summer. As my former Special Collections boss said in sympathy, there just isn't time to read.
Now I'm partway toward VP already. Tomorrow I go the rest of the way, and will submerge into that world for a week. I hope that the writer part of my brain wakes up. I hope that I learn, and write, and read, and make friends. I hope I get to explore the island. And I hope that all my plans for getting back to MHC on Friday night work out. Hold my breath and cross my fingers, and that's all that I can do.