It's a three-day weekend! I'm delighted. It's just what the doctor ordered (or at least should have ordered). Now maybe I can get some sleep. Hopefully, I won't have to hang out with anyone. I was all set to make myself tea and settle in for the evening reading Crime and Punishment and poetry and the like, but then bless my soul, if Allie didn't call me and Sonia off to go see the school play! So we did, and it was cute (though very sparsely attended), and then we went to Sonia's house and ate cheesecake and drank tea and talked about sine curves and had a jolly old time. So I guess it all turned out. But I did want to spend my life in solitary seclusion as well.
Dad has gotten an injury on his elbow, and it's infected, and quite disgusting. It's made him even more irritable than usual, and apparently, incapable of doing anything without loud grunts, groans, outcries, and complaints of the unfairness of the world at large. Which is, you know, not too far off from the normal. But still. We tried to get him to go see a doctor yesterday, but he wouldn't do it. He wanted to inject tea tree oil into his arm instead, and when we eventually dissuaded him of the notion, he declared he was going to use one of our sharp kitchen knives to perform a surgical operation. This grossed all of us out, so Mom put a poultice on him and he's forbidden to change it by himself lest he try to effect some unorthodox natural remedy on it. He's disappointed by the staid-ness of it all, but on the whole, I think not too ill-pleased, since his boil cover is made of clay and charcoal and stuff like that. Very natural. I think he may have missed his true calling as a homeopathic herbalist.
Zac, along with his quintet, has won the JCM competition and is going on the radio. They're making a podcast, and it's all terribly fancy and important sounding. I was hoping his piece would air in the middle of one of my students' lessons so I could make them listen to it and still charge them, but I had no such luck. Too bad. Maybe I'll get the podcast and make them listen to that. Zac had no idea what to call his group, and texted us frantically half an hour before they were all supposed to go on. It just goes to show you have wonderfully organized musicians are. I thought they should call themselves the Fellowship of the String, but for some reason, they didn't like the idea. Silly people. They went with the name Quintessentials instead, which makes them sound a bit like a superhero team, or maybe a mediocre jazz band that plays at cheesy clubs, but I'm not one to judge. After all, they might potentially save me from some amount of teaching.
Oh dear. My nails are truly ghastly. They look like I've just used them (and only them) to break out of the Bastille. Maybe I should stop picking at my cuticles? I wish I could paint them, but I'm terrible at maintaining manicures, and it looks sloppy to have chipped off nail polish all over your fingers. Plus, I have festivals coming up, so I'd just have to take it off anyway. Oh damn. Festivals. What am I going to do? I hate festivals. They're so awkward. I have to text random people whom I don't really like just so I won't look like the loneliest and awkwardest of Alfonso Durpenhogens, and then when people (read: Fish Face) see me standing over in the corner like some kind of melancholy trash can, they feel the need to come talk kindly to me. Which, you know, succeeds in making me feel even more awkward. I mean, it's bad enough to be the requisite outcast of the group, but when people start talking to you out of pity, well-p, that's where the rubber meets the road! Or do I mean something else? I rather think I do, but let's not be vulgar here. It's bad enough being Alfonso. I just don't know what I'm going to do about tour. I mean, we have a whole free day of wandering around San Francisco by ourselves! If I were with any other group, that would be like a penguin massage, but with these people, I just don't know how I'm going to manage. We're supposed to be in groups of three or more, you see, otherwise I would fade off by myself and have a grand old time. Or maybe I wouldn't. I'd probably get lost, and then where would I be? (Both literally and figuratively) (that transcended the meaning of lame, ugh) Nah, but I probably would. I really want to see The Girl with the Pearl Earring, since it's there, and it's going to be there when we go, but I don't think any of the philistines I call choir mates would care to accompany me. No one actually likes art, you know? Even at CSSSA, when we went to the Getty, only Evan and I really liked looking at the exhibits. Everyone else went because it was cheap. Oh no, now I sound like I think I'm more cultured than everyone else. I'm not a faux snob, though, really! Or am I? Damn, I think I am. Goes along with the territory of being a plebeian and all. Maybe I should take up a really humbling and demeaning activity so that I can become one with the masses. Like, I don't know, basketball. That would be humbling, all right. I would become the very definition of a benchwarmer as soon as I set foot on the court. Although, maybe I could finally learn the rules of the game from my vantage point. One never knows.
I read part of a truly awful book today. It was from the 1920s or so, but it wasn't about the war or the Lost Generation, or even Prohibition. Nope, it was about this girl who goes to college, but drops out because she's bad at algebra. She has the incredibly admirable goal of becoming a writer, so she decides that she needs no education (which, if the story is autobiographical, could potentially explain everything), and goes off to Europe. She would be having a lovely time there, except she can't speak any language besides English (since she needed no education, see), and she's constantly pining over her ex-boyfriend, Joe, whom she cheated on while he was away at Harvard. So, you see, life isn't beautiful for her. Then she goes to Italy and meets this super sexy hottie who speaks three languages fluently, knows everything there is to know about culture, and can sing seemingly every opera he has a mind to. He falls in love with her, but she turns him down cold because she still loves Joe (who is spectacularly boring and unpleasant, besides being white and rather unatractive-sounding). Then, for no adequately explored reason, Joe turns up in Europe and starts putting ads in the paper for her saying that he still loves her, too, and they should get married. Betsy is so happy that she gives up all pretense of education (as well as all her dreams of being a writer), goes home to Minnesota on the first ship she can find, marries her loverboy, and settles down in her podunk town to raise a brood of children and mend Joe's underwear for the rest of her life. I mean, like, wat. Is that what passed for literature in those days? It was horribly depressing, and left me with no faith in the human race until I went off to read some nice, wholesome, Dostoevsky. Maybe that's why the Great Depression hit- people were too busy flunking out of college and getting married to actually do something with their lives and contribute to society, and because of the lack of available human capital, the economy went plummeting as fast as Betsy's GPA. I figured it out! All of humanity's ills can be attributed to stupidity. Wait, I think I already knew that. Oh well. This is an example of the truth, then.
This happened about a week ago, but I think I forgot to say anything. Anyway, I got a 14000 dollar scholarship (renewable each year) to Ohio State, and now tuition will be like a Cal State, even with the out-of-state charge. Dude! What if I don't even need FAFSA? That would be so awesome. Although, once I think about it, 14 grand isn't really a lot. Sure, it helps with tuition and stuff, but I still have to get books, and I guess I need a plane ticket (unless Allie gets into Michigan, and we can drive down together). And I need to buy a rice cooker and a laptop and sundry other such important items of living. So I'm not really sure how far the money will go. Over spring break, I think I'm going to make a budget for myself, or at least a rough one, and I'll refine it as time goes on. It'll be good practice for when I decide to join to OMB or something. Actually, that might be a good idea. I could write such excellent tax codes that the president couldn't help but notice me and nominate me for the Supreme Court, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, struck by my pecuniary judiciousness, would approve me on the spot. I don't know who would write the tax codes after that, but surely they would be able to find someone. Hopeful young economists abound in Washington (or at least they do in Atlas Shrugged, though come to think of it, I don't really want anyone like that in charge of the money system either). I have such good ideas sometimes that I just want to cry.
Speaking of crying, I really should finish my Crime and Punishment questions (the end of the novel, when Rasky says goodbye to Dounia, it just really makes you cry, see). Whee! You know, I actually quite like the book. It's full of angst and violence and crazy Russian people, but it's so interesting too. And some of the characters just make you so mad that you have to go on reading to see if anything terrible happens to them. It's kind of like a reality show, only with more symbolism. For sure, it's a whole hell of a lot better than Hamlet. Anyway, better go write about the imagery evoked by Sonia's diction. Goodnight for now, my love!
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