things that people do that are awkward

1. When you're sitting in a room and, to make conversation, someone looking at a computer says, "Oh my god that's terrible!" The other people in the room exchange glances before someone inquires as to what is so horrible/great/hilarious. There's always the awkward pause when you think, maybe no one will ask, and then you'll never find out.

2. When you see someone that you sort of know in the bathroom, and you both sort of emit barely audible squeaking sounds. This is the least direct method of acknowledgement possible.

3. When you're doing something a little weird (e.g. buying lots of bananas to fill out a meal credit), and you see someone you know (weird things rarely go unnoticed). You make some self-deprecating comment (e.g. "I'm out of dining points! I have to use credits, and I don't want to waste them! I'm irresponsible!") and the other person agrees, and scolds you. (Being scolded in public, in general, is a weird thing.)

4. When you're waiting for cereal and the cafeteria workers are cleaning that counter, which is always covered in cereal. You wait for them to walk away (you smile so that they don't think you're being impatient), and then you pour your cereal and it goes everywhere. This is definitely because the bowls in the Ratty are so shallow, but you feel kind of bad.

Love always,
Clara

weird habits i've picked up lately

1) I've started working out again (that is not the weird part) (okay yeah, it's also kind of weird). I've been doing so in the Buxton workout room, which is much smaller, and I've never not been the only person in there. So now when I'm running (walking? fast?) and listening to music I sort of wave my arms about like a composer. No one can see me! Except when someone comes down the stairs and I have to make it look like I was reaching for my water bottle.

2) My new favorite food at the ratty is Lucky Charms, but I only eat the marshmallow bits.

David: What are you doing? It looks like you got two bowls of Alpha-Bits and ate none of them!
Val: Not Alpha-Bits. Lucky Charms! That's just what's left of them!

Val is opposed to this because I have to relocate the gross pieces to another bowl usually so that I can find the good pieces without making a mess. Obviously everything I do is in the interest of not making a mess.

3) I have become entirely dependent on the Providence Coffee Roasters' truck. It is dangerous to be so dependent on something that is inherently mobile.

Love always,
Clara

come at me

Last night a certain Daniel failed to accompany me to an orchestra concert and left his backpack in my room. Come on, Daniel. Get it together.

Then John and I ran around to a number of places to see what was going on. The first stop was the frat, of course, where people were standing outside disassembling the sukkah. The sororities were holding a tent party on the green, so Benny and I went in to show support or something (the proceeds went to battered women, in the event that they even broke even, which seems doubtful unfortunately). I bought a cupcake.

John called Andrew and discovered that things were happening in Barbour, so we headed over there. It turns out, the jujitsu club was having a party. There were a lot of people who like fighting, but no fights. Those of us who were accustomed to spending time in that apartment stayed in the kitchen for the most part, where we found party hats. I also went on a long rant about linguistics, to a poor girl who simply asked what it was. It turns out, I know this girl's cousin in a somewhat awkward high-school capacity, so we had a long talk about that as well (Hi Maggie).


Me: Should we check out the rest of the room?
Dan: We're wearing party hats. We should probably keep to ourselves.

Then we wandered back to the frat, where we found a number of the grad center kiddos. They were standing in the hall, and definitely not playing beirut (which is what John had hoped, I suppose. It's all the same to me. Good company is good company, and I'm not especially talented at throwing balls into cups.)

Me: Val, you're so Belle! You're pretty and bookish!
Val: No! She was so shallow! She was like, ew, beast, get away from me.
Me: But then she sees his personality and they fall in love!
Val: But I'd be like, whoa facial hair! Come at me!

That's what happened last night

Love always,
Clara

occupy skype

David: (In the middle of a story)
Me: Oh, I really like your hair right now, by the way. Sorry, I got distracted.
David: Thanks! No, I like it when my hair is girl-distractable.
Me: Yep.
David: (Points to head) This could be my cleavage!

I'm skyping with David. The nice thing about skype is that you can stare at yourself the whole time in the lower right corner.

David: The other day he tried to convince us that Lady Gaga was dating an eastern european philosopher.

David's Spanish teacher sounds certifiably mad. I'm glad Brown isn't the only Ivy to have completely insane professors. I was worried it was unique to us.

David: My mother had an opinion! She's giving those away like she's going out of business.

Moms do that. David and I discussed the fact that parents tend to have this ridiculous notion that they have a right to comment and exert control over our life choices. Hogwash! Balderdash! (Frankly, though, by the time they have kids in college, they need to just trust that they raised us with good judgment.)

David: I would support the Occupy Wall Street thing, with the compassionate addendum that they bathe.

I'm not sure how I feel about Occupy Wall Street. I'm glad someone is blaming someone other than Obama for the economic shitshow. I do agree that bathing is something everyone should do (If only the 1% bathed, the world would be a smelly place). I kind of wish they would define a position, but apparently the lack of focus is what makes the movement so cohesive, in a backwards way. If no one is expected to agree on anything, there can't really be infighting, and no one gets alienated.
I just don't know how long that can last.

David: Maybe I need to sprinkle some Descartes into my cauldron.

Love always,
Clara

"dragons are bad!"

Today I'm going to talk about dragons.

It turns out, the theme of the-hero-slaying-the-dragon happens all over the place in old mythologies. It makes sense, because stories need heros. Heros need to do heroic things, and they need to do indisputably heroic things. They need to kill someone that everyone wants killed.

That's where dragons come in.

Professor: These dragons are evil. Antisocial. Every single one. Just awful.

There's never a question whether a dragon is bad. If the hero killed an evil sorcerer or something, maybe the evil sorcerer has a family. Dragons are always bad.

On one occasion, the goddess Inaras overcomes Illuyanka [the dragon] by inviting him to a feast and getting him drunk (Watkins, 405). 
- Handout of 10/17

Naturally we were learning about these dragons in English class. It turns out that in most of these mythologies, dragon-slaying is described using archaic language (more similar to the original Indo-European). Who knew!

Love always,
Clara

moral: staple guns are actually really dangerous

Yesterday was full of excitement.

1) I met John's family in the Ratty. I had not expected to see them there (note: Why do parents seem to want to go to the Ratty when visiting Brown? If you want to pay 12 dollars for lunch, go somewhere with food that doesn't suck!), so I was entirely unprepared. My hair was wet, for heaven's sake. But David told me that they were around, and after a moment of fretting about the wetness of my hair and whatnot, I went over to say hello. It was only a little bit awkward, although I found out later that John's sister was standing right behind me while I fretted to David. Yikes.

2) Buxton had a little soiree last night, so we spent a good portion of the day setting up. Vivian and I were staple-gunning fabric to the walls (like curtains. Very classy), when somehow a staple ricocheted off of the molding and stabbed her hand.
Naturally the two of us dashed off to Health Services, not telling anyone where we were going or why (no time!), and they fixed her up. But in the mean time, excitement! Adrenaline! New friends! A bunch of us Buxton girls had dinner later on, so I'm kind of considering the whole experience to be a net positive, although it wasn't my hand.
(But Vivian really is fine.)
(Now I sound horrible.)

Today has been significantly less interesting.

Love always,
Clara

derby love

I went to the Brown Derbies Second Annual Best Family Weekend Concert Ever tonight. I always forget how much I like a cappella. It's like watching Glee happen in real life.

Lex: Girl, I've been in love with you ever since you first beat me at beer pong. When you sunk that last shot, I thought, damn, I've got to get a piece of that. And when you beat me two more times, in a row, and made me question my masculinity, well, I had to have you anyways. So this song is dedicated to you.



(Start that 45 seconds in or something)

Val, this kid is a catch.
Those two are great and I don't care who knows it.

Love always,
Clara

kabob friends

I was in the Post- office for most of the afternoon yesterday. It was a little frenzied but the magazine is at the printer and will exist in a physical way tomorrow, so all of that is quite exciting.

Sam: Did you know that they call this room the library?
Me: Really? Weird. Why?
Sam: I think it's all the books.

Regardless of all the books, our office is our office. The Herald should just accept that. They should also buy us a new computer, and pizza, and maybe a pony. That would be pretty cool.

Yesterday I managed to sound racist in Italian class, because my only Turkish friends in Switzerland were the guys down the street who worked at the kabob stand.

We really did have a great rapport, myself and the kabob stand guys. My german was just getting conversational, and they would make fun of my inability to differentiate "tisch" from "tasche" and they learned that I don't like peppers. We were friends, kind of!

That wasn't supposed to imply that I only talk to Turkish folks who make me kabobs - it's more indicative of the fact that I had like, five friends when I lived in Switzerland, and I think most of them were embassy brats in some way shape or form. I didn't even have any Swiss friends! Much less Turkish friends!

Anyway, all of these subtleties are pretty hard to convey in a foreign language.

Me: Avevo.... i kabob amici.
Katerina: Conosci i loro nomi?
Me: ... no.

Note to self: Learn future kabob-friends' names. Seriously. That would have helped a lot.

Love always,
Clara

i'm always so busy now

I'm not sure that I like the fact that I've been blogging with less regularity. In fact, I'm sure that I don't like it, but I also don't want to poop out some words if I have nothing to say.

On Sunday I went to Newport with John and Dan and Mark and Nicole and Laura. That was pretty awesome. The beach is great, and friends are great, and walking around new places is one of my favorite things. Also, eating seafood and employing screw-top bottles.

On Monday I mostly did work, but some of it was done outside on the quad, which was nice.
The girls from Italy and I met up for froyo on Monday night, and we sat around in the grass and updated each other on our lives. Caroline and Michelle had just come back from New York, where they had a casual encounter with Courtney Cox.
We reminisced like crazy.

Yesterday I severely overslept, went to italian, and pretty much did work-related things all day until I had to go to the magazine office. Post-'s family weekend issue comes out on friday, and thirty pages take a lot longer to lay out than eight. Imagine that.

Honestly, that's been it, pretty much. Maybe I'm spending too much time doing work, or maybe I'm not paying enough attention to the world, or maybe I just feel less compelled to blog about the conversations that do stick out in my mind. I don't like being in a creative rut, trust me. I feel like I need to jumpstart something, or set something on fire, or pick up some crazy new (metaphorical) hat to wear, but I also feel like I'm too busy and too generally content to do any of that.

But today there were puppies on the main green. That was pretty exciting.
(I fear I am becoming a boring person. I think this is unfounded, but I am not certain.)

Love always,
Clara

P.S. Now I am stalking PhD programs in England because I would like my life to fast forward to the glamorous-intellectual phase, I think.

things i have learned in human development

On Peers: "Peers! Can leave! Lifelong! Lasting! Scars!!! On you!!!"


On Unwanted Infants: "But you change your mind! It's like when you have a pet! You get the pet, you don't like the pet, you live with the pet, and then you like the pet!"

On Careers: "If I could do it again, I think i'd go into primatology because I think it is fun to play with chimpanzees."

On Animals who are Independent at Birth: "Have you observed the chickens that hatch out of the egg? It's so cute! They peck peck peck out of the shell!" 

On Hospitals: "Have you been to the hospital? Don't go there. Ever. But you never know."


On Temperament: "I'm well known in my family as OH too much arm moving around."


On Human Nature: "Luckily we're not like goats. We're not that simple."


On Vulnerability: "I thought, before i got rash, that I was immortal. . . . NO. It can strike anyone."


On the End of Times: "Particularly rats. I have no doubt that after humans are long gone, there will be rats on this planet."

Love always,
Clara

spooky leggys

This is all I have to say right now. This weekend is a three day weekend though, so that will be fun, and hopefully I can accumulate some fun stories to tell. For now, who is naming the daddy long legs?

Love always,
Clara

spotify, and my feelings

So you may have noticed I haven't posted any posts about songs being great lately. Songs have not ceased to be great, I promise, but I have a new way of going about listening to them. No longer must I commit to downloading songs to listen to them nonstop. I can listen to whatever I want. I'm using spotify.

I like Spotify a lot. I do. I'm listening to St. Vincent right now, and I'm not sure whether I like her or not, but I can get a better sense for whether I do by listening to her whole new album than listening to a few one-minute simples of her most popular tracks. Which is what I would have otherwise done.

About a month ago I rediscovered Frightened Rabbit, and that rocked my world for a few weeks, and I would have told you all about it except
A) I was still on my blogging hiatus and
B) I didn't have to download any songs!
What would I have even done? Wrote a post saying "Hey guys, Frightened Rabbit is great, in general, and y'all should listen to them"? That seems like it makes less sense, for some reason, although I guess in the grand scheme of things the idea of posting the songs I'd downloaded didn't make a ton of sense either. At least it was concrete though.

So Spotify is great, but I sort of feel nostalgic for iTunes (which I do still use occasionally). I can still go back and see which songs I was downloading a year ago, which is exciting, but there will come a time when I can't do that, and that's going to be weird (although I suppose we'll always have Last.fm).

Love always,
Clara

how to go to a frat party

I'm like, a super expert now.

• Think about what you're going to wear. Is there a theme? You want to look "in the theme," but you also want to look "sexy" and "not trying too hard."
• Pregame. Sit on your friend's room's floor and play bananagrams, and drink when you have to draw a tile. Alternatively, play a drinking game based on the Vietnam War. Make sure you are at least buzzed before departing, because otherwise you'll get cold. These drinks "don't count."
• Walk to the party in a group of seven or more people. No more than three of them should be pretty girls. 
• Blink at the line. Decide there must be another option.
• Try to get in through the back door. Argue with a brother named Dan about getting in. Dan is not having it. If you shotgun this beer, right now, will Dan let you in, you ask? No, Dan says, but he will give you a high five, and then tell you to get in line.
• One of your friends just remembered that her older sister used to hook up with the ex-president of the frat. You're in!
• Wow there are a lot of people in here.
• Decide you want a drink. Spend ten minutes trying to wiggle towards the bar. Accidentally grope no fewer than four strangers. Spill some of your drink while trying to escape the madness. You will do this several more times.
• You have lost your friends. Dance. 
• Find your friends. This is the most exciting thing ever to happen! You thought they had all died!
• Lose your friends again. Repeat.
• Find that guy who used to be in that club that you're in. Talk about the current state of that club.
• Find that girl from your English class who is really very drunk and talk to her for a little while. Tell her that you know that her ex is a douche, because your ex was also a douche, and that's exactly how logic works. She will be so glad that someone understands.
• Realize that it's hotter than the sun on the dance floor. Step outside for fresh air, but end up standing in a crowd of people smoking cigarettes.
• Go back and dance. Feel sweaty, and consider the fact that sweat is neither "in the theme" or "sexy." 
• Sweat could be sexy, right?
• Leave around 1:30, so that you have time to get mozzarella sticks before the diner closes. See other sexy-sweaty-theme-dressed people. Nod knowingly. You are all cool party-attending people now.
• Tomorrow, when people ask how it was, say, "It was fun. You know, super crowded, but it was a good time." 

Foolproof.

Love always,
Clara