Um, can't think of an appropriate title
So what I should be doing right now is packing, seeing as I'm leaving to come HOME in precisely 10 hours. My room is a complete disaster - it looks like it exploded. Kind of like Harvard when it thinks too hard. The GAME was today, and it was AMAZING! We of the Yale Precision Marching Band (the name being ironic, as we neiter march nor are precise) completely outperformed the pathetic Harvard band geeks in numbers, volume, quality, humor, intelligence, beauty, etc etc etc. We literally outnumbered their pathetic ranks 3 to 1. We played good music and they just looked constipated. Maybe it's because they have to go to school on Monday - HAH! Our halftime show was so funny and creative - theirs just paled in comparison. The moment I was conceived it was predestined that I would attend Yale, and was therefore born with the blood of Eli and an inherent hatred for any and all things Crimson (and could someone please tell me just what the hell a Cantab is?!?!?!). Harvard just plain sucks. And the funny thing is, they know it. This is an article published in the Harvard Crimson (their campus magazine) about how much better Yale is - no kidding, just read it! Especially the part "God and Man at this Awesome Kegger", cuz it talks about the YSO Halloween show!!! HAHAHAHA Huck Farvard!
- posted by Nicole @ 10:37 PM

 
Time to go home . . .
I can't believe I'm going to be home in two days - I'm so excited. And the break comes none too soon - though perhaps a day or two late - because I'm pretty sure one of my suitemates will bleed before the week is out. The complete self-absorption and utter lack of consideration for anyone or anything that exists outside of her personal sphere is astounding. I'm sorry: wailing on your guitar in the common room at 2:30 in the morning is unacceptable; I have a need and a right to sleep peacefully in my own bed in my suite, especially when I have class early the next morning. And we will have words the next time I see her, because I - and the rest of the suite - are sick of putting up with her crap. She will bleed . . . just like Harvard.
- posted by Nicole @ 10:45 AM

 
Happy Birthday, AL!
To my bestest friend in the whoooooooole world! Happy Birthday! Just think - you can legally cosume alcoholic beverage in Canada now! Hope you have an awesome day, and just because we're not together doesn't mean I'm not thinking about you, like, all day! Happy Birthday!
- posted by Nicole @ 12:26 PM

 
Master and Commander
The "Yale bubble" I heard so much about before coming here truly exists! This place is like its own little world, and finding out what goes on beyond it takes a bit of effort. One of the most frustrating examples is the lack of a movie theater within walking distance from campus (I mean, piss-poor urban planning - come on guys!). There actually is a theater within walking distance, but it only shows small, Indie, art films (which means it's basically worthless for those of us who have a taste for the slightly more mainstream elements of cinema); thus, I nearly fell over when I walked by it today and saw that they were showing Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Ok, so I'm the ultimate film geek and have been tracking this film almost since its inception (and I've read the first book of the series upon which its based . . . oh yeah, and Russell Crowe is an Australian hottie). I literally ran (completely sweaty and gross) from my Tae Kwon Do class to catch the 9:40 showing - still in uniform. (I can't even imagine what I looked like to the people around me!) But I was not disappointed! It was really well done - awesome visuals/cinematography and not a half bad story either - successfully jumping on the coattails of the new wave of nautical fiction films started by Pirates of the Caribbean. I nearly went crazy through the whole film though, because I knew that I'd seen the secondary main character in another movie and I COULD NOT FIGURE OUT WHAT IT WAS! But I checked IMDB when I got home and - aha! Paul Bettany (who plays a terrific character in this film) was also Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight's Tale (and, the best part of that film)! I love this guy - he's awesome. He's not really that well known, but he's a fabulous actor, with a great capacity for comedy!
- posted by Nicole @ 12:38 AM

 
Oh! And Women Astronauts!
JE (my res college) is hosting this HUGE event that began today. They've brought all these women from NASA (active astronauts, including one from Canada), a woman cosmonaut, and some people from the Air and Space Museum for a series of lectures, gala dinners, and master's teas appropriately titled Women in Space. I went to the first lecture today and it was one of the most fascinating "lectures" I've heard since I've been here! These women are SO cool! (some of them reminded me a lot of you, Leah) Not only have they broken the "glass ceiling" of the space program and participated in numerous space missions, they all have families on top of it. I just feel that when women accomplish great things they're twice as successful, because in addition, they raise children, and are able to balance their careers and their family life.

They had a lot of really cool things to say (especially the cosmonaut, who was about 65 years old, and - in fact - spoke in Russian with the aid of a translator!). One of the women, Rhea Seddon, said that after being in space, she views 3-dimensional spaces in a completely different way. Anna Fisher learned got her first flight assignment 2 weeks before she had her first child. They talked about how they came to be where they are and the different paths by which they came to the space program. They also talked about the importance of the space program for international relations and the vision that NASA has for the future (as well as the obstacles to those visions and how they may be overcome). It was just so interesting, and I feel liked I've described it really poorly, but it's really one of those "you had to be there"s. These women are so brilliant - the subjects of their doctoral theses might as well have been in Chinese, because I read them like three times and was no closer to understanding what they meant. (ex: Anna Fisher's degree was in the field of "X-ray crystallographic studies of mettallocarbonanes" ?!?!?!?!) And I won't even attempt to write about Dr. Janet Kavandi's research in porphyrin photoluminescence paints . . .

I actually get to have breakfast with them in about 7 hours . . .
- posted by Nicole @ 1:06 AM

 
Life is Grand!
I have been having an absolutely fabulous week since Monday, which stands in stark contrast to last week when I wanted to kill myself (see post in reference to a certain hampter). Because it finally seems like driving my head into the wall has indeed produced the desired results. For those of you who exist outside by mother's "bragging-sphere" (and my apologies to those of you who don't . . . hehe - just kidding, mom), I got an A- on my sociology midterm (and there was much rejoicing) and *drumroll* a 100% on my second IR midterm (and there was more rejoicing). I usually don't publicize this stuff, but since my family is basically the only ones who read this, I feel it's acceptable.

And I've gotta hand it to Mac - maybe they're good for something after all - because I sure didn't come up with the idea of legal music stealing (hooray for iTunes!!!!!!) I've been thoroughly enjoying all my new music. (www.itunes.com . . . no, Barb, I still haven't figured out how to do contextual links yet . . .)

Focus level is like ZERO tonight, so I finally decided to put the pol-sci away and mess around on the internet and steal songs and blog and send emails and . . .
- posted by Nicole @ 12:47 AM

 
Roshni
Tonight I foresook Tae Kwon Do to go see my suitemate in the South Asia Society's "Roshni" (which means light). The program included songs, poems, and - best of all - dances from the various South Asian countries, and it was so cool! The program was associated with the Hindu holiday Divali (which was a week or so ago). The dances were incredible - the music was so energized and upbeat! Those girls had some serious rhythm! (as did the guys that performed, but there were fewer of them) It was so exciting! And even though it completely shamed my pathetic belly-dancing capabilities, it was a really fun time - oh! and my suitemate, Ankita (who is Indian, but lives in Kuwait), was amazing! She choreographed her group's entire number. It was really cute!
- posted by Nicole @ 10:52 PM

 
The week from Hell
I did it. I actually survived the unsurvivable week from HELL! (week, as in started last Sunday and ended aroung roughly 2:30 today) I feel like I've aged at least 6 years. Why the week from hell, you say? Oh, sure - the weather was lovely and Halloween and all the fun and exciting things going on around campus were amazing - EXCEPT FOR THOSE OF US WHO WERE SHUT UP IN OUR ROOMS STUDYING FOR SOCIOLOGY MIDTERMS, IR MIDTERMS, WRITING MIDTERM FILM PAPERS, AND DOING DOUBLE LESSONS WEEK IN FRENCH ALL ON TOP OF THE REGULAR RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF READING! . . .Not that I'm bitter about the fact that for the first time in my life the weather on November 1st was above 60 degrees and I could only appreciate it by having my bedroom window open . . .But thankfully it's now all over, and I'm going to rent Emperor's New Groove tonight, get drunk, and laugh my head off (perhaps, not particularly in that order). . . the hampster, still breathing, barely . . .
- posted by Nicole @ 4:20 PM

 
IR
This is the funniest, most twisted version of IR I've ever seen. If you need a really good laugh, check it out! http://members.cox.net/impunity/endofworld.swf
- posted by Nicole @ 12:51 AM

 
YSO Halloween Show
Yet another amazing experience to add to the list! Every year for Halloween, the Yale Symophony Orchestra makes a silent film and then at midnight projects the film on a huge screen in Woolsey Hall and plays the acconpanying soundtrack to 3,000 screaming drunken college students. IT was so COOL! The movie was called "Indiana Jones and the Ring of Eli" (Eli, being Eli Yale), and was filmed around campus. It was so funny - there were all these inside "Yale" jokes, and even a live scene where the president of the university came on stage to ask Indiana Jones to recover the Ring of Eli (which has the power to open any door or gate on campus, cause grade inflation, and even get you into exclusive Berkeley dining hall!) lest it fall into the wrong hands - like Harvard (which, of course, resulted in 2 full minutes of the entire hall chanting "Harvard Sucks!") We played the craziest assortment of music in accompaniment, incluing the Raiders March (Indiana Jones Theme), Harry Potter, Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Schuman, Mozart, "Build Me Up Buttercup","Car Wash", Also Sprach Zarathrustra, the Infernal Dance, Berlioz, the Dies Irae theme, and tons of others. We even started by replicated the THX surround sound demo and the 20th Century Fox fanfare. It was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my entire life - and the audience absolutely loved it! OH! And we performed the whole thing in costume! The first violins were characters from Super Mario Bros, the 2nd violins were Alice in Wonderland characters, the violas wore bathrobes and towels, the celli were ninja turtles, the basses were pirates, the trumpets were Lord of the Rings characters, the clarinets were Harry Potter characters, and we of the flute and oboe sections were the Spice Girls (I was Ginger Spice). It was awesome!
- posted by Nicole @ 1:26 PM