We had a campus lockdown tonight.

I got evacuated from work mid phone conversation. I had no idea what was going on, aside from being told I needed to wrap up the conversation, so I was going to give the girl my info--and then I ended up rambling something about danger and needing to leave the building before hanging up and booking it out of there with my bag. I guess I should call the kid back, but when I do, should I tell her that I was evacuated from Mills Hall because of a double homicide and hostage situation, or should I bullshit something about a fire drill and talk about how safe campus is? Decisions, decisions, decisions....

There was a shooting just outside the back gate on Sunday as well, across the street from the elementary school that I work at on campus--I'm guessing, given that this was the general area we weren't supposed to go in tonight, that it's where all this shit went down.

Oakland...why did I think you'd be an ideal setting for an education?
At least I get to see a lot of helicopters, right? Right?

So tomorrow is Fall semester registration...and I don't have a clue what I intend to take yet. I went in and met with my adviser yesterday and mumbled something about psychology and ethnic studies and fiction workshops and then let him tell me all about the new academic planning online system that the psych department is testing and how exciting and fun computers are.

He got a new leather chair and matching couch for his office--I guess the old cozy chairs weren't classy enough, and maybe he wanted to be more true to the psych stereotype, or maybe the couch is just more conducive to his afternoon naps. The chair is comfortable enough so I'm not going to bitch--and he still has the nice hand made quilts and the framed hotel art.

Anyway, after he let me see some other student's academic records because I'm not in the new database yet (because I've been lazy about submitting my declaration), we talking about the process of registration and the online schedule...but no headway was made in regards to the classes I'll be taking.

This evening I gave a brilliant presentation in my German Poetry and Music class all about composers who contracted syphilis versus poets who did not. Well, that wasn't what I originally intended to discuss, but...after my interpretation of Klopstock's Early Graves the descent of my academic prowess was really inevitable.

Yes, I did in fact tell the class I thought the poem was about vampires. First we had the serious conversation about deeper meanings and Goethe and all that fancywhatnotwhosibbles and then...we were asked about alternate interpretations. There were maybe seven of us in class tonight--between my detailed explanation about how managed to warp this elegant evening poem to be about vampires and my ramblings about syphilitic geniuses....I don't know. I just don't know.

I think I just screwed myself over on a midterm.
I revised and revised and made fancy notecards and revised...and then was foiled by Human Memory of all things.
I can't seem to keep names and experimenters straight.
And the possible test coverage is so freaking broad that I can't even safely narrow down what to study, I have to go over everything and hope for the best.

Ugh...crash and burn.

But it's a queer dystopia that I'm creating....

I had my critique with my advanced fiction workshop today.

Like a rug that has been woven too tight, my piece is beginning to crack, but the shellac that it has been coated with (apparently) should protect it.
I'd like to the thank C. Garcia for that lovely imagery--and she's absolutely right, it's like I hand picked every single word for the draft that I submitted and the result is so sickly sweet and hard to penetrate that even my head wants to explode.
There were also references to repelling.

But, mostly, it seemed that everyone kind of liked it, at least a little bit.
Even the ones that thought I was talking about WWII.
And the ones that thought my character didn't have hands.
And the ones that got really confused and started talking about how my story made them want to write postcards--and where is the rest of it because it just doesn't seem to be complete?

I love it.
This is the first thing that I've written in ages that I've been even somewhat pleased with. It's a spin-off of something else, but in this incarnation everything is coming together.
It's coming together in a well paced and painfully disjointed fashion--but, hell, the bitch has rhythm.

And what amazed me was that some of them got it. I was terrified that I had really fucked it up and that it didn't actually make sense outside of my head.
One of my classmates, an older resumer student, wrote the most amazing notes on her copy and it was a little freaky because it felt like she was in my head, but overall indicated that I had managed to get my point across and show what was happening and where my character was, without going into some obscene amount of detail about the particular shade of the paint on the walls and the way in which the light from the window mocks his broken heart...etc.
I think she might be the only person that actually read it...well, read it before scribbling all over it and demanding to know who people were...and then realizing that I explained a page over.

Christ, it's one of those things that I look at a week after submitting it for critique and go 'wtf?! was I thinking?!' in regards to.
I mean, really, was I on some kind of crack?
Did I have too much caffeine? So much that writing something that no one can relate to seemed like a good idea? It's like a giant ego trip wherein I, the narrator, am grand and all knowing and can break people's spines and give them shitty childhoods and send them to war and have their best friends abandon them and then take away their basics like electricity and hot water and lock them in an apartment wherein eventually they will resort to gnawing off their own limbs in order to escape! And...yet, I can fuck them up so much that no one is actually sympathetic to their plight. Nice. Very nice indeed.

But...ultimately it was hard to read.
And it's different than what a lot of my peers are submitting! I think... or I like to think....
I have mixed feelings.
I love it, and I love my main character, and I want to fix him and at the same time beat him over the head--and I think that's good, because it means that I'm getting outside the world of too much perfection.
For all of it's pretentiousness and it's irritating tone of superiority, I think it's okay. I think I can work with it.

When I look at the things that I write, it makes me really glad that people like me don't go out for poli sci.

And, what I can't help but be amused by, and also thankful for, is that no one took the time to remark upon the fact that...all of my characters seem to be a little bit gay.... I don't do it on purpose, they're just born that way.

Dear College,

I'm so over you.
No more German Poetry and music analysis--please, no more.
I really don't want to sit through my creative writing critique tomorrow, can't I just...not show up?
Chiong, I love you, hey, you're all into dogs and old people and lady health...but these homework assignments that end up being ten pages long and only worth three points are killing me.
Psychology with your midterms and your papers and your readings and your experiments, what the hell kind of major do you think you are?
And the food, the price and the quality....
And the spiders in my dorm room and the noise at night from the crazy people playing loud classical music and the street sweeper that comes around 1.15 and Josefina cleaning the bathroom at eight and singing....
I can't take it.

Your faithful slave,
E. Harrison

1. Gave a reading
2. Had a long and fascinating conversation about The Cockettes
3. Had awkward conversations with drunkards
4. Fell in love with a woman old enough to be my mother

So...I told my mom that my brother couldn't stay with me tonight.

I feel kind of shitty about it, like I'm rejecting him or something, but the reality of it is that I don't feel comfortable spending an entire night with him by myself--and, my dorm room is not only trashed by cramped and not exactly guest friendly.
Unless, of course, my guests don't mind sharing a twin mattress with me and are totally comfortable with tripping over all of my clothes and books and miscellaneous items.

I love my brother, I really do, but he's a dick and he has some major anger issues that I'm not willing to deal with on my own. He makes me want to kick his ass. A lot.

My mom sounded disappointed, but I think she should have expected that my answer was going to be a nice solid no. I told her it was because I'm at a women's college and it would make people uncomfortable...and I may have implied it would be breaking some kind of rule (which is of course total crap because I've had guys over for the night). I also told her that someone might end up dead (and that's true).

It's better this way. It really is. The less contact I have with him, the less I feel like smashing in his face. I had a long day involving way too much time dealing with the bart and buses and different areas of the bay in search of a Magic 8 Ball. My patience is low. My tolerance for my brother hasn't been particularly high over the past few months either.
I'm in a face smashing mood.
And it's my sister's wedding, that's why everyone is in town, so killage is a definite no-go right now.

He's going to stay with our mutual older brother, which makes a lot more sense seeing as this older brother is not a college student in a cramped dorm room.
Seriously, I live in a box and I have one blanket and a mangy dorm carpet--I'm not even half as nice as a friggin' hostel!

And I have spiders.

Spiders and tiny frogs in my suite's bathroom, hoorah!

Spring break and I'm still at school.
Yes, I'm one of those people...one of the lonely bitches that gets stuck on campus while everyone else runs off to Puerto Rico and Fresno and Portland.

I've been talking to an old friend more than usual recently and I've found that I miss her like mad. I've been busybusybusy this semester and trying not to think about all my friends that transfered schools never to be heard from again and the people that didn't transfer but with whom I've managed to have falling outs with for various reasons...and I keep coming back to this chick. It's sad. Maybe if she'd stop calling me in the middle of the night...

Anyway...staying on campus.
I had a ride offer to go up north and then I could have at least seen some of the high school people (maybe), but I had to turn it down.
My sister is getting married on Friday so I have to be in the area. The rehearsal dinner is on Thursday and I have absolutely nothing to numb my mind with until then.
Except writing. And that's not going well.
And I should clean my room, it's trashed, I don't think I've cleaned it in...weeks, maybe creeping up on a month, like I said, I've been busy.

I thought about hitting up Berkeley today, the general city, not the University, because I have a check to deposit and I need new shoes--but I don't want to go alone...and I have no doubt that I'll somehow manage to spend more than I intend and then I'll be broke and waiting for my meager little paycheck again.

I thought about going into SF too, but I know for a fact that I'll spend a hell of a lot more money than I intend to and it's not any fun by myself.

I think, ultimately, before I can do anything else, phone up my friend who's a permanent area resident to hang out with, or try and work on my many papers and projects...I'm going to have to clean my room.
It's gotten to that point where I'm constantly stepping on things that shouldn't be stepped on--like clean clothes and textbooks that I should be reading, and calculators...and I can't find things anymore.
It's ridiculous.
It needs to end.

This morning I smashed my left index finger in a chair.
It hurts and it's all swollen and angry.
I also killed a spider. Now my room smells like Raid and my Betta fish is probably working on growing a third head.

I don't want to go to work, apparently I'm too lazy to want to sit in an office and call teenagers and lure them into the lesbo-trap that is Mills.

My Women's Health Issues Prof said "I see you're wearing your green!" to me today. She's been a long distance runner for the past 30 years and has incredible bone density thanks to all of that weight bearing exercise. She loves old women.

I tracked down the phone number that I lost yesterday, I found it in a pile of rubbish down at the student center, laying on the concrete waiting for me. I spoke on the phone in the library, found out work was canceled thanks to the Catholics, and then battled with the copy machine. 35 cents for two sheets of paper.

The girl I got the homework from, who was obscenely busy thanks to the six hundred papers she had due today, didn't show up to class. We had to make the circle closer. I got called out for being an ageist. It could have been worse.

So, last Thursday we had Sexual Health Educators come to my Women's Health Issues class and ramble on about boring things like pap smears and butt plugs, etc.

Throughout the lecture my professor repeatedly told us to pick up the homework on our way out.
I made a mental note to myself to pick up the homework.
She reminded us again.
And then...free condom time happened and suddenly, instead of picking up the homework I was snatching up free condoms. Lots and lots of fancily packaged shiny little rubbers.

Saturday morning as I was riding the Bart home from Richmond it occurred to me that while I had dozens of little condoms that I would never use, I didn't have my homework assignment--and of course my prof can't be reached at all on the weekends, and of course I don't know any of my classmates, and oh my god what am I going to do! So I panicked a little, and then I got over it, and then I figured I'd just scout campus for someone--anyone I recognized from class.
And I found someone! And I got her phone number! And I was going to get to make a copy of the assignment!

...and then...somewhere between walking to get food after Human Memory, and walking up the hill to my dorm room...I LOST THE CHICK'S NUMBER!
Good God, what is wrong with me?! Am I deliberately sabotaging myself?

So...my new plan is to scout the library for her (which is where I should supposedly be able to find her) and hope that she's around...because I was supposed to call around 6 to meet up--because I brilliantly planned this to coincide with when I'm supposed to be working...because, yeah, I'm so smart and skilled I can be in multiple places at the same time!

Someone, please, just put me out of my misery....

My college is a harbor for criminals--an isolated safe haven in the foothills of Oakland.

I'm a little bit in love with the new emergency notification system that my school has implemented this year, I get a phone call, and a text message, and an e-mail whenever something important or dangerous is going down on campus. Right now I can hear a chopper circling overhead and sirens--instead of attributing the law enforcement presence to the typical sounds of Oaklandia, I am thankfully aware that they're all here in honor of a strange man who is running around from the student union off to faculty village and into the bushes just a few short yards from my dorm room.

Seriously, what idiot would try and hide out at a school filled with big butch lesbos? It's fenced in, complete with razor wire, there's only one way out, once you're in you're trapped. But...he's not the first guy to try this. There was the guy with the gun last semester...and the other guy, and then there were a few last year too--and that was before we had this nifty system to tell us to hide in our rooms in case the scary man who probably just robbed the 7/11 up the road tries to kill us.

Days like this, I love Mills.
Though, this probably isn't the sort or thing I'm supposed to tell prospective students about at work.
But I might.

Dealing with them.

Am very displeased.

Apparently I can't watch KRON 4 anymore.
Damn San Francisco.

So, they're trying out a new caster, and I know him--and, though we aren't particularly close, I've spent too much time with him. Every time he comes on I burst into hysterical laughter and can't take anything that he reports seriously. It's the news, I should be paying attention to this sort of thing, but....I just can't get over seeing him in a suit, and the serious expression kills me.

A gay man reporting about 'baby bombs' how could I possibly put any stock in that?

I'm not into it.
I want a new dorm.

So, I took a biology midterm this morning, after I woke up feeling like shit and had to meet with some people about a group presentation I'm not even close to prepared for. But, I think I did pretty well, certainly better than the first midterm, and I even studied.

And on to the drama.

About a month ago I took a friend with me to an event that I was writing a report on for one of my classes, it was a bit on the extreme side, I told her everything I knew about it and what to expect. I was surprised that she agreed to come along with me, but she did, and we left when she started to feel uncomfortable as I had promised her we would do. She didn't like it, she made that very clear, and while I was a little upset that she was attacking me about having her go...I also knew that I really hadn't pushed her into it--I mean, we met up with another one of my friends at the BART station and went with her too, so it wasn't as though I wanted her to go because I didn't want to be by myself, I had just thought it would be an interesting experience. I apologized and assured her I wouldn't invite her to anything like that in the future.

I thought she was over it--we hadn't even discussed it in weeks, I honestly thought she had moved on.

Friday night we went to a Halloween party on campus with a mutual friend. I decided to cut out about an hour and a half into it and head back to my room because I was bored and a bunch of strange guys were showing up. Around one or so I hear her and our friend returning (this friend shares my suite), and I hear them talking in the hall. I'm in bed at this point, and my light is off, but she knocks on my door so I answer it and peek out only to find the two of them arguing.
I ask them what's going on, and they proceed to argue some more and then my friend starts to on a total rampage, tearing us both down, and bringing up where we went over a month ago and foisting off all of this blame for her behavior on us...our mutual friend tried to talk to her and I just stood there because I didn't have a clue what to say, and knew that trying to somehow defend myself wouldn't do much.

I ended up in tears and having no idea what had happened--or more importantly why I had been subjected to that kind of tirade late at night.
So, I spent the weekend hiding out and generally keeping to myself. I got a call on Sunday from her inviting me to hang out as though nothing had happened, my mom was in town so I declined--and was all nice and polite about it--but still not totally cool with how she had treated me. I was giving her space and honestly I was pretty hurt by her actions and just needed some time to cool off.

Monday morning we have class together and she acts as though everything is fine, and by then I'm ready to let go anyway--but I'm still feel cautious about the situation just because I don't want her pulling something like that on me again.
We have dinner with a bunch of friends that night and one of our friends brings up a question that had been talked about in her women's studies class and asks what our personal opinions on the issue are and we all respond. It seemed like a fairly innocuous question--but apparently my answer annoyed the friend that I'd been having some issues with earlier in the week and she proceed to go off about how she didn't feel it was an appropriate topic for discussion, etc. So I shut up for the rest of the meal, the fact that the conversation turned to pop culture and guys was probably a contributing factor in my being quiet as well.

So, yesterday it was all starting to get to me--just the whole weirdness of the situation, so I talked to one of my friends about it and asked her for advice. She told me to tell this friend how her actions were making me feel and that we discuss these issues we've been having, etc...common sense really. So I was going to today, because yesterday I was studying nonstop and then it was really late by the time I got back to my dorm. Well, she left me a voicemail while I was studying, and she sounded kind of upset and sort of apologized and then went off about how I wasn't answering her calls...which is total crap. But she was upset, and I'm a sucker when my friends are upset and I try to comfort them and check in--but it was late, so I figured I would do that this morning.

She denied the phonecall, completely denied leaving me a voicemail, and essentially, apologizing. I have caller ID and I recognize her phone voice, I'm not an idiot. But I just shut up and took my midterm.

And now I find she and the mutual friend that lives next to me are talking about me behind my back. Okay, actually they're facebooking about me, but I imagine words are being exchanged as well. Either way...I can't help but wonder how old we are--I mean, we're almost twenty, we're in college--this isn't friggin junior high and I didn't steal her online boyfriend or anything. I really wish that I hadn't managed to get myself involved and become the topic of their scrutiny.

I've been too stressed this semester to even begin to comprehend the point of this kind of behavior.
I'm really missing one of my friends who transferred, she was absolutely amazing and wonderful to talk to...and now I have to be satisfied with e-mails instead of baking muffins and watching bad movies and staying up all night.

I just don't need this weirdness right now. I want it to go away.

AH....long and rambly, just as it should be...but at least I feel a bit better.