Have taken advantage of paid member status to make all my posts friends-only, mostly because I have too many family members wandering around online. Comment or let me know somehow if you want to be friended.

Apparently, the way to stop me angsting is to make me feel needed...in this case, solved by asking someone if they had work with which I could help or something I could proofread. Really, I'm just double checking things, but hey, I'll take it.

First Carmen rehearsal tonight! Very difficult, but lots of fun; I bounced around the house for practically the next hour (though some of that might have been singing happy birthday to one of my friends and eating cake and having shiny people around, but a lot of it was definitely from rehearsal). So yes, I need to spend massive amounts of time practicing, because it's difficult music and I'm definitely one of the most amateur players (most of the others are affiliated with the Berklee College of Music or the Boston Conservatory), but I'm really glad I'm doing it.

Watched four episodes of Buffy tonight after not watching any for a very long time, which made ealex292 happy. Also read 3 Nero Wolfe books; I blame my recent addiction to them entirely on my dad. Have been around shiny people a lot since I came back to MIT, which makes me very happy, but am feeling somewhat weird because I'm not doing a tech job this summer, which is really just my fault for not being on top of things earlier, and is not a problem in and of itself, except that I feel awkward when everyone else is talking about the tech stuff they're doing. Meh. 'Tis too early to make angsty posts, and besides, then I'd want to lock that post, and I don't feel like doing that. *sigh* I'm kind of bad at being angsty during the day/with other people, and then I end up being really angsty when I'm alone or really late at night (states that frequently go together). Meh. meh meh meh. *sigh* Using cute kitten icon because it makes me happy to see fluffy things.

Oh, yes, other shiny things! In addition to the new shiny people I've met recently, I also met a shiny person's dog, a very fluffy (i.e. long-haired) white puppy named Polar Bear, who is kind of awesome.

Fireworks are shiny. And bright and twinkly and awesome. Other things that are shiny: APO people and everyone else that showed up to Fulton's Folly, our spot on the Esplanade to watch the fireworks, so named because of the tradition of a small group staking out a spot around 5-5:30 am for everyone else.

In the vein of the very short explanation of today, I am declining to write up the family reunion right now (and as we all know, if I put off writing entries, they inevitably never get written unless I'm repeatedly poked to write them), but I will go through the checklist my cousin domtheknight previously posted and see how many we got.
( Family Reunion 2009 (Ways we are awesome/ridiculous) )
29.5/40. Not bad. domtheknight, any corrections? Also, we should figure out a list for the next reunion.

Have a slight headache but am otherwise very happy; saw family, enjoyed company most of the time, am now back home with awesome friends.

Edited to update checklist with domtheknight's added info.

As domtheknight pointed out, family reunion next week! She also helpfully typed up a checklist of things happening at our family reunions that we (domtheknight and I) created at a previous reunion. You can see the ridiculous awesomeness of us/our family here.

So I'm visiting CT home again, this time for the celebration of my mom's 25th year of ordination, i.e. she's been a pastor 25 years. It's especially exciting because her church is having her preach, which she hasn't done for ~6 months, since she went on disability leave. A whole bunch of retired pastors in the area whom she knows are coming, so it should be quite fun.

I also dragged one of my MIT friends home with me (my summer roommate, actually), which has been lots of fun. We cooked dinner last night (my parents had been invited to dinner somewhere else) and looked at maps and photo albums uncovered in the unpacking process (still going on, and will be going on for quite some time, I think). This morning, my aunt and uncle, randomly in the area for a friend's wedding, dropped by, which was nice, because their family is going to Japan instead of the family reunion. We drove four houses down to the farm in which my parents own a half share, which means they get fresh vegetables every week. We also went to the farmers' market/food festival/book sale/tag sale in town, which was small but fun; I got a bread machine there! We then went to Kent Falls and climbed all around until we were stopped by getting to the edge of the state park and reaching private property. We finished by going to a local production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which is much funnier as live theater than a movie. Seriously, it was really really amazing, and we were all laughing constantly, and the singing, acting, dancing, and set were all great. I <3 theater/music.

Sometime's it's far simpler to gracefully admit you could be wrong and imply that both parties might be at fault than to try and convince the other person that both parties were at fault. Or that there's no reason to continue the conversation because it's neither productive nor interesting.

Also, resisting the urge to comment on certain blogs for the same reason.

So...tooling has not really happened. On the other hand, the tropical fruit party was even more awesome than I thought it would be, and going to Walden Pond today was great. I, um, missed saferide and therefore the events going on at Tetazoo, but I'm okay if not happy about that, because it means I'm forced to tool. Yes, real soon now.

( Tropical Fruit Party! )

( Walden Pond! )

<3 <3 <3 MITSO. Seriously, so much awesome that it could not be contained. The concert went amazingly well; the soloist and the Shostakovich both received standing ovations. The Shostakovich was exhausting and exhilarating and apparently concerts make me extremely bouncy. Also, I got to see a friend who I hadn't seen in a year and only saw rarely before that, so that was awesome, and since she actually lives close by (as in, a subway ride), we're going to try and get together some time this summer.

Off to see what's going on downstairs (I saw board games), and in general be hyper and bouncy and happy all over the place.

ETA: No board games, but Monkey Island 3 until a couple of us started falling asleep! (The exclamation point is for MI3, not the falling asleep, though sleep is a good thing too.)

Wanted to add - one of the great parts of MITSO is getting all my friends to come so that when I come out afterward, I have a little circle of people waiting for me. This has happened at every concert this year, and there have been new people each concert, which is awesome. So yay for all my friends! Thank you to everyone who's come to a concert.

NB: when stacking things, it is more stable to put larger things at the bottom of a stack rather than the top; this is especially useful when stacking lots of pots/pans/bowls in the sink for someone to wash late, so that they don't knock everything over by accident.

Am kind of tired, and debating punting MITSO booth in Lobby 10 - we hand out free tickets the week before our concerts, and there's supposed to always be someone there, but I really don't want to be there for two hours. *sigh* I think there's someone signed up for the second hour I'm there; maybe I'll ask her if she minds me leaving.

Final two weeks of classes: test today, project due Thursday, concert Friday, project due Monday, then I can start studying for finals, which I have the week after. APO things in the middle of everything - initiation and initiation banquet Saturday, my qualifying run on the printing press on Sunday, and running Finals Coffeehouse, a study break every night Sun-Wed in the student center providing food and such. Those are all awesome, though.

Am strangely captivated by biology even though it's 9am, I'm fairly tired, and I have very little interest in studying bio further. Nerve cells!

Okay, off to MITSO booth, hopefully for only 1 hour.

ETA: Am now sitting in Lobby 10 and am much more awake. I guess even interesting biology can't take away from the effect of less sleep + sitting on a couch during lecture.

Arg. Mailing list confusion and massive fail on my part for not checking the lists more closely before I sent email out, though in my defense, it was reasonable to think the person giving me the list of lists had already checked them. Unfortunately, still my massive fail since I was the one who sent the emails out. *sigh*

Plane rides are quite good for introspection - I think I wrote something along the lines of six pages in my journal, a very rare occurrence both because I use LJ a lot more than a paper journal, and when I do have something I want to write down, it's usually fairly short. But then again, 3 hours on a plane where I didn't fall asleep = lots of writing time.

Among what I wrote:
Things that are awesome:
-recognizing islands in Boston Harbor from the air and seeing areas to which you've been
-islands disappearing as you pass through clouds
-clouds, because they're white and fluffy and fascinating shapes
Also Things to do, Things to do immediately, Positions I want to hold, Things I want to PC, Things that are broken, Commitments for next term, and Things to remember when being a big [sibling in a frat]. Apparently the theme for writing was lists of things.

( more introspection )

Am writing this on Dreamwidth and am curious to see how well it works crossposting to LJ, particularly with the cuts, since I used a Dreamwidth version of lj-cut that is about 3 characters shorter, but otherwise not much different. (I know the regular crossposting feature works fine, based on the number of "Look, it's a Dreamwidth crosspost!" posts appearing on my LJ friends page.)

ETA: Cool, the cuts crosspost just fine! Hm, do edits? Reverse edits, apparently, do not. (Which makes sense, but I wanted to try anyway.)

Uh, so I just found out that new episodes of Stargate:Atlantis are not only shown at the normal time of 10:00, which conflicts with Numb3rs, but also just after midnight. So much for sleep.

Edit: Also, I need more SGA icons.