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| I doubt anyone actually reads this thing anymore, but I just felt the need to write something. It probably won't be long since I'm pretty sleepy and planning on getting up in time for brunch. I've been thinking about Reid a lot lately. I'm not sure why, but something I was talking about with my roommate for the summer made me think of him and feel a lot of things all over again. I can't believe that was over 6 years ago. So much has happened since then and it's been such an influence on my life. I talked about it with my roommate tonight, and it was nice to be able to put things into words, though I don't think I did a very good job. I never really know how to lead in to the topic. I tried to give a general background, but who knows if she got a good idea of what it was like.
Looking back on junior high and high school now is really weird. I feel so distant from it. I look at conversations I had with people on aim back then and I was a completely different person. I don't know if it's the environment (probably a lot of it) or the experiences I've had (math camp, Stanford), or the people I've been around, or all of it. In some ways I feel like I've lost some things from that period of my life - I don't really do any of the theatre or clarinet stuff I used to, which was such a big part of my life then, but I've gained things, too. I'm a lot more confident and comfortable with being in leadership positions (section leading, this peer mentor thing I've signed myself up for), and even a bit more outgoing in some ways. I'll probably never be a party type person, but at least I can join a table of people I don't know very well and have a decent conversation at dinner. I've started being proactive about getting people to come play games with me, which is something I've missed as a regular part of life.
Anyway, I don't really know what I was trying to say, but I'm starting to fall asleep so I think I'll drop it for the night.
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| So clearly, I should write something. Junior year has been... busy. Fun things have happened, like learning to social dance and going to Viennese Ball, going to see Wicked (it was awesome), playing the Roble Game (the scavenger hunt type game), having a games night birthday party gathering (in which we played board, card, and domino games)... and some other stuff, but those were the highlights from the top of my head.
Unfortunately, some not so fun things have also happened, mostly in the form of taking too many (or too hard) classes each quarter. The worst thing, however, happened on April 29th. I was in my social dance 2 class, doing the Schottische. We were learning how to do pivots during the "step hop step hop step hop step hop" half, and after about the third step hop I hopped on to my left foot, managing to land or roll onto the outside edge of my foot. I heard a pop/crack sound and stumbled a bit, though I think my partner caught me and kept me from falling. I tried to recover and start again, only to find that putting any sort of weight on that foot hurt too much, so with the help of my partner, I hobbled over to the piano bench and sat out the remaining 10 minutes of the class. I figured it was probably a sprain or something, but wasn't really sure.
Luckily for me, someone from my dorm (Kirsten, our house manager) was in the class. She gave me a piggy back ride out to my bike, and I managed to bike back by only using my right foot. The class ends at 11, so when I got back, I just stayed downstairs until lunch. Kirsten fixed me up with some ice, and later wrapped my ankle for me. I have a class right after lunch on Tuesdays and I was considering trying the same biking trick, but I noticed that by then, my ankle was already a little swollen and hurting more. My RA insisted that I go to Vaden (the clinic on campus) instead of trying to get to class. She lent me some crutches (which only went down to 5'10'', so I just had to hold them out really far) to get me to the car.
We got to Vaden and after a few minutes I got in to see a nurse, who had me try to stand on my foot (ouch!) and made me an appointment for about 2 hours later. She also rewrapped my foot with a different kind of wrap and gave me some loaner crutches (this time the right height). I got back to the dorm and had my first experience going up the stairs (I live on the third floor) with the crutches. 2 hours later I got to try going down. I got to Vaden for my appointment, had some small talk with the doctor about how I'm a cs major doing nlp research this summer and he seemed to know a lot about nlp, which was kinda cool. Then, after looking at it and asking me a few questions, he said, "well, let's get an X-ray just in case."
So, I went and waited for an X-ray for about 30 minutes. I finally got in, had to put my foot in a few uncomfortable (actually, painful) positions, and after about the second one, the technician proclaimed (actually just muttered almost incoherently) "looks like you broke it." I wasn't entirely sure that's what she said, but after the doctor came back, I was pretty sure. He just walked up with a frown and made a motion like breaking a stick in half. Then he showed me (and Ali, who had driven me there and waited the whole time) the X-ray. There was a very thin line through the tip (about an inch or so from the bottom) of the fibula (the outside lower leg bone).
At that point people started trying to set up appointments for me to go in and get a permanent cast, and in the mean time, they gave me a splint, which was kinda neat. They just cut a long strip of some stuff that was about an inch thick, wet it down, then put it along my leg so that it folded under my heel and ran up the sides of my leg. Then they wrapped it and told me that it would harden into that position, but that it was flexible enough that I could take it off if I needed to, to shower and such.
Then, as I was leaving, they set me up with an appointment to go get a cast on Friday (3 days away) in the orthopedic clinic at the med school. They said that the next day (Wednesday) was full, but they'd try to squeeze me in so that I didn't have to have the splint for too long. As it turned out, they did fit me in for Wednesday, so I went to the med school, this time with Kirsten, the one who helped me home from class.
The people there weren't terribly friendly, and the doctor barely spoke to me. She just said that I should keep it elevated as much as possible and then got her assistant to come put a "boot" on me. It's a big fuzzy black thing with lots of velcro straps so that you can completely undo it up the front. It's also got air pockets that you can inflate by pressing a little blue bubble on the front or deflate by loosening a knob. Oh, the doctor also told me not to put any weight on it until at least my next visit (which is scheduled for June 4th). And to take acetaminophen rather than ibuprofen (apparently the latter can stunt bone growth?). She didn't prescribe me any stronger pain pills or anything, though.
So, yeah. I've got a broken ankle. Turns out, it's hard to get around. And it's hard to hold stuff and walk at the same time. I usually just stuff everything into a backpack, but that doesn't work so well for things like plates of food. Luckily I have several very nice friends, a boyfriend, and random housemates who feel sorry for me and get plates for me, open doors, and carry various things. The worst part is getting around campus. Walking places isn't very feasible since I can't exactly walk. I'm actually about as fast or faster on the crutches as my normal walking pace, but it starts hurting my hands pretty quickly. I can't bike for obvious reasons, so all that's left is... well, golf carts. I was given a prescription to rent one, but it turns out you need to have a driver's licence to drive a golf cart around. Also, it costs around $200 a month to rent them. However, there is a disability golf cart service available 8am-5pm Monday - Friday, which gets me to most of the places I need to be. There are a few things I need to do after 5, but I've mostly worked those out by getting car rides (which is a little awkward on campus, but better than nothing), or having the things relocated (the section I lead now meets in my dorm).
That weekend (May 4th) was Ali's birthday, and she had all her friends go to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. They gave me a loaner wheelchair, which was kinda fun to play around with. Annoying sometimes, but fun for the short time I used it. I think I got almost as much entertainment from that as from the exhibits. Afterward, everyone else went into the Tactile Dome, which is apparently completely dark and you just feel your way around - not really something I was up to just then. They all said it was great, so I'll have to go back some day when I'm not on crutches.
As we were driving back, I realized that I no longer had my keys, or my wallet-type thing (I keep them together on a carabiner). So, I lost my room key, my P.O. Box key, my inactive Gates key (Gates is the CS building), my Texas state ID, my Stanford ID, my debit card, a couple of less important cards, and some cash. I called the Exploratorium a few times that week hoping they'd be found, but they never turned up. I got the debit card canceled and a new one ordered right away, but I waited until the end of the week to get a new Stanford ID and get my room re-keyed. I got a new P.O. Box key the next week, which is also when the new debit card came in. I'm still working on the Texas State ID. I might get a California ID instead. Not sure about that one yet. I also caught a cold/stomach bug from Ali on the weekend of her birthday, but luckily I got over it in time for my birthday (the 11th, exactly a week after Ali's).
As I mentioned, I had a board/card game party for my birthday. It was actually the night before, but several people stayed until after midnight. Especially Edward and Patrick, who stayed until about 6am playing 42 with me and Ilya (everyone else left by 2am). Probably one of my best birthday parties ever, in that a bunch of people came and I was doing something I really enjoy. The part about having a broken ankle did sorta make things less pleasant, in that my foot got a bit swollen by then end since I wasn't keeping it above my heart (though I was putting up to some extent).
There were more things I was going to write about, but this has taken a long time already so I'm going to stop here for now. Maybe more later. | | |
| Until this week, it had been nearly 7 months since I'd been home... In some ways, nothing's changed, but a few things have, mainly having to do with the house itself. The front porch has been closed off (complete surprise to me, no one even mentioned they were doing it), there's a door in the doorway between the kitchen and the little back room (where the washer and dryer are - they're eventually going to expand it, I think), and they pulled up the tiles from the kitchen floor, exposing the hardwood floor under it. The weirdest part is the fact that there are now two doors to go through to get in or out of the house from either side, though the kitchen looks really different. Also, my bed was given away, and now I have a dinky twin bed on wheels. I can make the bed move just by wiggling. My old bed went to my mom's stepmother. My mom's dad and his wife recently moved to Seymour from the Dallas area. They were living in our house for a while (when I wasn't here) but have gotten a house of their own a block or two away. I don't really know them, especially Edith, so it's a little weird. My mom's dad, Eddie, has been coming around to help with all the random building type stuff, and I've only been over to their house once so far, earlier today.
Since I've been home, I've read hp7 (quick read-through) and I've since gone back and read books 1-3, and am a little over half-way through book 4. I'm not sure what I'll do once I've run out of Harry Potter to read. Probably try to go to the library in Wichita Falls and get some things, since the Seymour library isn't likely to have any of the things I'm interested (mainly scifi stuff).
Also, on Wednesday, we (my mom's mom, my parents, matt, and I) went to Canyon to see the musical "Texas." Our friend Phillip Nix was performing in it (he's the brother of my brother's best friend, but I spent a lot of high school bumming rides off him). It was really pretty awesome - the story's not all that intricate or deep, but the music and the dancing and the special effects (not to mention the setting) are really neat. It's out in the middle of the Palo Duro Canyon, outdoors, and they bring horses and wagons through, simulate a thunderstorm (which was interesting given that it had actually been storming just before it started), a brushfire, and various other things. We stayed in a hotel in Canyon that night, and went to a museum about the history of the area the next morning.
hmm... well, I think that's all for the moment. | | |
| So, last night I had a strange dream in which I went with a group (either Math Camp or a Stanford dorm, it wasn't clear) to see Wicked, except some of the cast was missing for some reason so we had to stand in. I was trying to be Elphaba, but I just knew the songs and none of the lines, so I was really embarrassed. The end. | | |
| I guess I've sortof dropped off the face of the Xanga world lately. Hmm... What interesting things have happened to me recently? Well, the whole Leslie Lamport dinner thing eventually happened (as did the class on Mathematica/LaTeX which was the reason behind it). Mostly.. he talked about something physics-y with one friend/class member (except not really, he was just there for fun - Douglas) that went waaaay over my head. Also some about Godel (I don't know how to make the little double dots off the top of my head, but I could in LaTeX!), which I understood a bit more, since I was taking classes centering on incompleteness and such at the time.
Over the course of this year, Ilya and I found a small group of friends, closer than any that we made last year. We call ourselves "Ling Party" because the first few times we all hung out together, 3 of the 5 of us (Ilya, Aman, and Alison, or Ali) were there to do Ling homework. A Ilya, Aman, and I also worked on Philosophy, by which we mean logic, but apparently this was not important enough. The 5th person, John, was the roommate of Aman, whose room we took over to have these Ling Parties. We had a lot of talks over the year which really made me think about what I should or shouldn't be doing with my life and how I can help... well, just generally help people at large. I still don't know, but at least I'm thinking about it. I have also realized recently that I should pay more attention to things going on in the world, not just the things going on in my dorm or even just at Stanford - big things are happening all the time and I just don't hear about them, because I don't seek them out. Anyone have good suggestions about what (probably internet) sources I should try looking at?
Anyway, Ilya, Aman, and I entered the housing draw together (Ali's taking her 5th year next year and so she doesn't have on-campus housing, and John's going overseas in the fall, so he couldn't draw with us either). In the Stanford housing draw, everyone gets assigned a number, either between 1 and 2000 or between 2000 and 3000, depending on whether you use a "preferred year." Everyone gets two preferred years and one unpreferred for the 3 upperclass years (Freshmen are assigned differently). If you live in FroSoCo, which is a special dorm program, your sophomore year, you don't have to enter the draw (if you fill out the right forms), so you don't have to use your unpreferred year (you still only get 2 more years of housing, though). Anyway, all 3 of us lived in FroSoCo, so we used a preferred year (the whole group has to have the same choice, since the only thing that makes a group a group is that they all get the same number). We happened to get the number 30. This meant that we could pretty much choose to live anywhere on campus that we wanted, except places like frats, theme dorms where you pretty much need to get priority, etc. So, we chose "Bob," which is a Row House - a street full of houses. There are two types of houses: self-ops and co-ops. In co-ops, everyone has to take turns doing chores and cooking, etc. and in self-ops, there is a chef and people who clean for you, though you still have to do a few smaller chores. Bob is a self-op. Even though it's called a house, it's still got dorm-like rooms and furniture, but the rooms are generally a bit bigger and the common spaces are pretty nice. It has a bit of a reputation as a party house, which is a little worrying, but we'll see how things turn out.
Classes this year were... well, maybe not really all that hard, but I think I took a few too many, considering that I was also doing section leading (about 15 hours a week). I ended up doing pretty well, bringing my GPA up from last year, including my first ever Stanford 4.0 quarter, but I got majorly burnt out by the end of Spring quarter, since I was staying up all hours of the night trying to finish assignments due at 9 in the morning, sometimes just not sleeping for a night. Also, this spring I did a lot of weekend activities - all of which were very fun, but which meant that I couldn't always use the weekend to catch up on sleep debt, and sometimes they even made things worse. We played two "Game"s (that is, the Bay Area Game, a sort of treasure hunt, going from one clue to another, solving some sort of puzzle - usually using something like morse code or braille in a particularly confusing sort of way, but sometimes trying to decipher audio or video clips and the like), went on BAWK 2.0 (a Section leader thing, which was somewhat similar to a Game, but with much more driving and only a few clues), went to Yosemite, and generally went around wearing ourselves out.
Of course, immediately following the end of school, we flew to Houston for one day and then drove to camp. I haven't really quite competely caught on to the fact that school is over yet, though in some senses I have. I'm really ready for a few weeks of sleep, rereading all the Harry Potter books, then reading the new one, watching episodes of old favorite shows, and generally veging out. But first, two more weeks of Camp! | | |
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