That's All, Folks [2013/05/29]

This is my last post.

I know, I know, it's days after my graduation, technically I probably shouldn't even be posting right now, but I wanted a better sense of closure than I really provided in my last post. For the past two and a half years, this blog has been a big part of my life — I know that for you, dear readers, it probably hasn't been more than a set of occasionally diverting words on a page, but you're also not the ones who have spent two and a half years thinking, "Oh, I could blog about this!" And you know what, I like to think I've left my mark — mostly in the fact that some of my ridiculous tags show up in the "most used tags" thing on the sidebar over there.

Writing for you has been a blast, ducklings, even if most of the time I don't actually know if anyone is even reading this. (If you have been, though, and you'd like to continue reading, feel free to keep up with my twitter, @alasallama. If I set up another blog, I’ll put it in my twitter bio.)

More than that, though, my four years at Wesleyan have meant a lot to me. But you know what, even that sounds like too much of an understatement. Certain songs mean a lot to me. Todd VanDerWerff’s reviews of season 3 of Community mean a lot to me. When friends of mine specifically seek me out to talk, it means a lot to me. Wesleyan, in contrast, has structured the past four years of my life. I have lived in Wesleyan, made friends with Wesleyan students, eaten at Wesleyan, taken classes at Wesleyan, worked at Wesleyan, been influenced by Wesleyan faculty and staff, watched plays that were funded by Wesleyan and performed in Wesleyan buildings, railed at Wesleyan policies, applied for internships through Wesleyan. For better or for worse, Wesleyan was my world, even when I was at home for break. And now, it is a place that used to be my world.

So what do I say to wrap up something like that? It’s been two days since graduation, and I’m not entirely sure I know. For a while, I thought about taking all the buildings on campus, and listing the best memories I have from each of them. Or maybe, I thought, I would take the question they asked the senior commencement speaker applicants to answer — “What has your Wesleyan experience meant to you?”, in a neat 200-250 word package — and write my own spin on it, like the commencement speech I could have given if I had bothered applying to be a commencement speaker in the first place.

And I started writing that, and then I started again, and then I started again, and then I gave up for a little while and went to sulk on the sofa and drink tea and try not to cough up most of my lungs, and then I deleted most of what I’d written and wrote other stuff about Wes being my world and my difficulty summing that up in prose form, which has gotten me this far.

[Under the cut: I try to figure out this whole "closure" thing. Also, pictures of fluffy animals.]

Prepare Yourself. [2013/05/24]

Today is the calm before the storm.

Not even today, actually — the next few hours. Then my family gets here, and then boom, it's time for taiko practice, and then my friends will be queueing up for the screening of Much Ado while I run off to shower and head to dinner with my family, and then tomorrow it's all departmental receptions and Phi Beta Kappa madness and some giant shindig with not only my family but the families of my housemates and then there's some sort of all-campus celebration thing going on? And packing, obviously, and then on Sunday it's graduation, and then — well. Then, it's time for the calm after the storm.

For now, though, it's just me and you, ducklings. And my housemates, as they move in and out of the common space.

[Under the cut: Musings.]

BE EXCITED, DARNIT [2013/05/09]

Hey, kiddos. So classes are done! That's, um. Exciting! Plenty of time for me to sit around and bake bread and watch hockey and — what was that? Redo my resume and find a job? Hmmm, wait, you're breaking up on me, I can't hear you, how odd —

Okay, okay, so I'm actually just typing and can't pull the "headed into a tunnel, gotta go!" trick. Unfortunately. Still, even though I keep stumbling into discussions about the future, there has to be something else we can talk about! Like the fact that Spring Fling is tomorrow! Or today, actually, since as I type this it is now officially Thursday. Kendrick Lamar is performing! It’ll be in the hockey rink instead of on Foss Hill for reasons of rain and misery! I find this very depressing but will probably try and go nonetheless as long as it doesn’t fill to capacity!



Or we could talk about how it was pouring rain today for precisely the four minutes it took me to get from the library to my house, but not immediately before or after! Or we could talk about how I went to the Star&Crescent this week for the first and the last time ever! Or we could talk about all the performances I went to this weekend! Or we could talk about how I just spent like forty-five minutes trying to remember a random CD-ROM game from the 90s that I used to play! Or we could talk about how I keep injuring myself in really inconvenient ways! Or we could debate about whether any injuries are really ever convenient! (For the record, the answer is yes!) Or we could talk about whether it would be possible to build a tiny castle out of pecan brownies!

…You know, as one does.

[Under the cut: Except I actually already had that particular conversation. Yes, for real. Also, pictures of food!]

Titles are for people who aren't sleepy. [2013/04/29]

Good afternoon, ducklings! It's shaping up to be a beautiful day, although currently I'm sitting inside my living room with the windows closed while my housemates discuss possible day trips we could go on during Senior Week as a house bonding thing.

For the record, in the Palace Theater, you can't bring your own alcohol inside, nor can you consume that alcohol in the parking lot. Which begs the question of WHY THEY NEED THAT RULE.

There are a lot of unexpectedly hilarious things in New England, though. I have a feeling we're probably going to find someplace with pretty scenery and just take a walk. (Not a hike. Certain somebodies among us do not like heights, for whatever value of “height” you can find in the alleged mountains of Connecticut.) I also want to see if I can drag them over to Wadsworth Falls at some point, because I’ve never been there before and I feel like I should go before I graduate.

…Okay, now it’s nighttime. IT’S LIKE I TIME TRAVELED OR SOMETHING. Or, you know, like I stopped writing in the middle of the day and then only got back to it much, much later.

(Also, for the record, tossing out ideas soon devolved into looking at our quote wall and seeing how much hilarity we could create by selectively replacing certain words with others. The answer, it turns out, is “a lot.” And I thought that I wouldn’t find stupid things as funny once theses were done!)

[Under the cut: Company, WesBurlesque, Foss Hill, and why my computer is trying to kill me.]

Helping Hands, etc. [2013/04/22]

(Before saying anything else, I want to express my sincere hope that you guys are okay after the incredibly shitty, awful, miserable events of this week.)

I can't believe that it's almost the end of April.

There, obligatory "holy crap I'm a graduating senior!" moment of existential panic out of the way, so I can get on with talking about the things I actually did this week. Because, for the first time in a while, I actually did things instead of cooping myself up in my house and metaphorically bashing my head against my laptop! Life is exciting, you guys.

Mostly I figured that since I now have free time — I mean, within reason; I have work, where I'm trying to make up for the hours I missed, and class, and I have a couple posts due for the geek blog I contribute to — and more sanity, I could use some of it in order to help out friends of mine who had more demanding schedules than mine.

[under the cut: fashion shows, theater stuff, etc. etc.]

An Open Letter to my Thesis [2013/04/05]

[Note: This was written a few nights ago, when I should have been writing my introduction. It is written somewhat facetiously. Sort of.]

[I'm also going to frontload you with cuteness here in the form of a picture of an adorable bunny rabbit. Just because.]



An open letter to my thesis:

I’m sorry I don’t love you. I should. I have been working on you, in one form or another, since September. I have been writing you since late November. I have been focusing all of my spare attention, every scrap I have to give, everything that is not being taken up by procrastination or class or the petty need to eat and sleep and cook, on you for months. I have spent more time on you than I have spent on any one thing in my life. I have complained about you so much that I suspect my housemates are beginning to fantasize about gagging me. I have allowed you to drive me insane.

I have given you most of me.

A Little Ray of Sunshine [2013/03/10]

[Note: Written on Saturday, during my "I am going to be productive by turning the internet off!" day; posted today.]

It has been a beautiful weekend, ducklings.

Well, okay, it’s been an unexpectedly snowy and then unexpectedly melty weekend, which has so far involved an awful lot of trudging through slush and getting my boots and socks absolutely soaked (and we all know that of life’s little inconveniences, wet socks are some of the worst), but! Why let that bring us down? The snow was beautiful, and now it is apparently fifty degrees outside, which is also beautiful because it means that hypothetically at some point we will actually get to that spring we were promised when Persephone agreed to leave the underworld for half the year. I have made delicious food, and subsequently dined on delicious food, and gotten my stitches out, and, okay, not been quite as thesis-ly productive as I wanted, but I have had some very positive meetings with my thesis advisor and my thesis mentor, so I’m feeling oddly at peace with the world right now.

It’s Spring Break, ducklings. Celebrate.



[Under the cut: The three states of thesis being and a LOT of food talk.]

This is a Thesis Post. (Run. Run Now.) [2013/02/22]

Happy Fridays, ducklings.

Yes, yes, I know, my last blog was on Tuesday; how can I have come up with anything interesting to say in the few days between then and now? But somehow, I do always manage to say quite a lot without actually saying anything at all, so I suspect I'll manage. And this time I haven't just woken up from a nap, which is already a step in the right direction.

It's true that I haven't done much over the past few days, but I suspect that my life right now is supposed to consist of not doing much. Not doing much except writing, that is, and even then, I'm behind where I should be, considering that I'm going to need as much time as possible to edit my thesis into some semblance of decency. How is it that I'm about 75 pages in and yet I don't feel like I've gotten to the heart of my topic yet?

I'm buckling down this weekend, though. There's supposed to be a snowstorm, plus I wounded myself on Wednesday and don't really feel like leaving the house ever*, which are good enough reasons to stay in, bake some bread, and write. A lot. I think I'm going to have to institute some rules like my end-of-term rules last semester: turning off Airport so I can't get distracted by the internet, and allowing myself to break only to do other productive things. I can stop writing in the middle of a paragraph if I'm going to read a chapter in a book or actually format my citations properly. (And, for example, I'm allowed to not be doing work right now because I'm writing this piece of gloriousness.)

[* She says, like she ever really feels like leaving the house.]

...I'm not even sure what I just wrote in this post. [2013/02/19]

Guess who closed her eyes at 4:15 today and only woke up two and a half hours later? If you said to yourself, "Wow, that sounds like the sort of ridiculous thing that would happen to Sasha," then you would be entirely correct. Congratulations. On the other hand, at least it wasn't like that one time when I closed my eyes at 8 pm and woke up at 1. Um.

Anyway! So I meant to write up a post over the weekend, and then I was distracted by thesis and work and procrastination, which means that you're getting my delightful company on Tuesday night instead. I've been sort of... scattered, recently.

[Under the cut: Let's see how well I can unscatter myself.]

SNOW. (I need sleep.) [2013/02/09]

Ducklings! Currently there is a wall of snow outside my back door. A wall. When you open the door there's at least four inches stacked up above the sill. Bear in mind that to get to my back door you have to CLIMB UP STAIRS. Our porch is also completely covered in snow, you can barely see my housemates' cars, we might have to sled down the stairs if we want to go outside, the street is no longer distinguishable from the sidewalk, and I have apple chips in the oven.

...What? It matters to me, okay.

So anyway, snow has occurred! My housemate is currently trying to convince me that going outside is a good idea. I am uncertain about her correctness.

Three hours later: I have changed my mind! Housemate Katie was correct. The snow was ridiculously deep (for the record, there's now a foot stacked up above the ledge on the back door and my housemates' cars are completely covered in snow), but some friends of ours were having a party and for some reason I thought being social might be sort of okay, so we and Previously Mentioned Housemate Natalia blazed our own trail through the snowy wilderness of Brainerd, which has not been plowed! At all! AT ALL. On our way back, I fell in the snow twice and looked like the abominable snowman, it was great. Plus I made a snow angel! Everything was fantastic.

[Under the cut: Words. (Look, it is 2:40 am and I am tired. I just want to write this and go to sleep and then wake up and make pancakes or something.)]

Like a Time Capsule But More Insane [2013/01/30]

Ducklings! Welcome to the new year, the spring semester, and my last semester at Wesleyan.

...Oh god.

I was going to write a post last weekend, I swear I was, and then somehow I got caught up in sulking around my room and flailing a lot about how it is my LAST SEMESTER EVER and THE FUTURE IS DRAWING NEARER and OH MY GOD WHAT IS DROP/ADD WHAT ARE CLASSES WHAT IS SANITY??? and let's be real, that is not something you guys need in your lives (that is not something I need in my life) and then I got distracted because I realised I had written a blog post all the way back in December, on the day I went home, and then never posted it. And it was sort of funny, looking back at it from a month later, so I thought you guys might be amused by a glimpse of my thought process (my INCREDIBLY SLEEP-DEPRIVED thought process) on Sunday, December 16th.

Am I cheating by not writing up something about this week? Hell yes I am. But it's for your sake, ducklings. It really is. Promise.

[Under the cut: Something that's more stream of consciousness than usual. Which for me is, you know, saying a lot.]

Time Keeps On Ticking, Ticking, Ticking... [2012/12/01]

...into the fuuuuuuture. (What? You don't occasionally get the urge to title posts after Steve Miller Band songs from the 70s?)

Anyway, ducklings, today marks the day on which there are only approximately seven more days of schooldays. Or yesterday did, I guess, since I'm writing this at 2 am on a Saturday, but no matter. The point is: classes end during the upcoming week. More to the point: HOMEWORK HOMEWORK HOMEWORK HOMEWORK.

And, you know, other end-of-term things. Like my performance for Beginning Taiko, which was tonight and was AWESOME. Because taiko is awesome.

[Under the cut: That performance in greater detail, my new thesis-writing regimen, and adorable animals. Oh, and something odd?]

Words. >:( [2012/11/11]

Words are useless. And hard. And dumb. And... dumb.

Really, really dumb.

(Aka, this weekend I started trying to write my thesis! And work on a short story for Intermediate Fiction! IT IS NOT GOING WELL.)

Buuuuut I like you guys a lot so I'm going to make an effort and will NOT be writing an entry in freeform poetry. I can probably hold off on that one until the end of the semester, at least.

[Under the Cut: Election night, senior events, homework stuff, and pictures of cute animals, which I prefer not to think of so much as bait to draw you guys in as it is a reward for anyone who actually dares read my crazed ramblings.]

titles are for the weak [2012/10/26]

Happy Halloweekend, ducklings! Well, Halloweekend #1, at least. Given that Halloween is on a Wednesday this year, people seem to be taking the unique opportunity to celebrate on both weekends, at least insofar as I am aware. Or maybe they're just planning stuff for this weekend on the chance that Hurricane Sandy is going to knock out our power on Halloween (again) and that we will once again have the chance to prove over the course of several days that, like celery, Wes students thrive in the dark.

(Yes. Celery.)

Hopefully not, though. The woodframes took almost a week longer to get power than Hi-Rise did last year.

Anyway, ducklings, on to the important stuff! ...Wait, no, sorry, I had this weird momentary delusion that I write about important stuff, instead of food, homework, and how I shaved off part of my eyebrow. What a hilarious idea.

[Under the cut: food, homework, and how I shaved off part of my eyebrow. Yes, really. Also a picture of a puppy, just because.]

The Mystery of the Missing Month [2012/10/01]

Did you know that it's October, ducklings? Are you ready for it to be October? Because I'm definitely not ready for it to be October. I wasn't even ready for it to be September, quite honestly.

This morning I woke up and smelled a distinctly autumnal tint to the air — well, no, that's a complete lie. This morning I woke up, groaned at my alarm clock, turned over and went to sleep again. Unfortunately, my alarm clock doesn't understand basic concepts like "decency" or "kindness," and mercilessly continued ringing until I was forced to crawl out from under my warm blankets into the pitiless open air. By that point, I was mostly just glad that the sky didn't look like it was going to rain buckets like it did for approximately half of yesterday.

(Me, to Housemate Katie yesterday when the day went from golden sunshine to thunderstorms: "I have a very important question for you."

Housemate Katie: "Hmm?"

Me: "WHEN DID IT START RAINING?!"

Housemate Katie: "...I'm going to go back to napping now."

Housemate Katie does not share my almost-journalistic devotion to uncovering the truth.)

[The adventures of Sasha the Super Sleuth will continue, under the cut!]

Bad Omens? [2012/09/15]

Hello, ducklings!

...Yes, I'm late. Whoops. I meant to write up a post two weeks ago, really I did! It was going to feature another "what I did over my summer vacation" comic*, and it was going to reassure regular readers that my brain did not actually explode after my last post**, and basically it was going to be REALLY REALLY GREAT and then I got distracted and didn't write it. This would not seem to be a great omen for the beginning of senior year as a whole. Oh well?

*Fun fact: if you're new to this blog/my life/etc. and feel like delving into the haze of absurdity that is my previous entries, you can find them all here, here, or just by clicking the "alamb" link at the top of this post or the "Sasha Lamb '13" button under "Categories." If you want a few highlights, I believe I can confidently say that the best things about my blog are the pictures of adorable animals [which are all tagged under adorable things because I am boring and/or cute fluffy things] and the fact that I can occasionally be persuaded to use photoshop to create very badly-drawn comics about mundane incidents in my life. Wait, when I put it that way, it doesn't sound nearly as appealing... If you're curious, though, my three favorite can be found here: one, two, three.

**I went a little insane in my last post. Or, um. A lot insane. But I'm totally better now! Life is great, man. No capslock necessary.***

***If you've gotten through all of these footnotes, then you may want to continue moving on to the rest of the post, which can be found under the cut:

THIS IS A POST [2012/05/14]

HELLO DUCKLINGS

TODAY I AM WRITING THIS POST IN ALL-CAPS TO SYMBOLIZE THE FACT THAT IT IS READING WEEK AND MY STRESS IS GETTING VERY LOUD INSIDE MY BRAIN

>:(

ON THE UPSIDE THERE WILL BE PICTURES OF FLUFFY ANIMALS

SO THERE'S THAT

[UNDER THE CUT: ...basically more of the same.]

The Emperor's New Title [2012/04/02]

[Because I'm pretending the post has a title, but it doesn't actually? Like the fable with — oh, whatever.]

So... Spring break is still over. My life is full of tragedy and woe.

I've had a pretty crazy week, though — or maybe it just feels crazy because usually my weeks are pretty slow. Who knows. I'm not built for such a hectic lifestyle.

The deal is that I really, really should have finished my creative writing paper over Spring Break, except then I didn't, so I had to write it all this past week and for some reason it was giving me a huge amount of trouble, and then I had other homework and then suddenly there were all these things that I needed to do and all these places that I was trying to be and —

...Basically, when I say I'm not built for a hectic lifestyle, I mean I'm not built for a lifestyle where I have due dates.

[Under the cut: My crazy week, another edition of My Life: Badly Drawn in Photoshop, and some photos of adorable animals. All the good stuff, basically.]

Tourism For Fun But Not Profit [2012/03/17]

Every time I tell people that my spring break is two weeks, they generally gape in awe and make some comment about what a long break that is — which, if I'm unlucky, is followed by an addendum about how tuition is more and more so students can be in school less and less. I've generally found that the best response to this is to say very sweetly, "Maybe they're just working us harder" — because while I appreciate the sympathy regarding the cost of 4 years of college, I don't come to your house and make implications about the quality of your education, do I?

But I digress. My original point was that while two weeks seems like a long time in theory, it actually feels far shorter from smack dab in the middle, especially when you have yet to finish a great deal of your assigned work. At the same time? Man, it's good to be home.

I'm Late! I'm Late! for a Very Important... Blog? [2012/02/27]

Because I am, at heart, a massive flake, I forgot to post this blog entry yesterday. I really need to go back to posting these on Saturdays; I'm so much more forgiving of myself if my late post is on a Sunday, rather than on a Monday, when the new week has already started to kick off.

It's funny, actually; even back in high school, I still felt like the week started on Sundays, calendar-wise. Now, though, Monday is definitely the start of the week, and Sunday is the catch-up day at the very end. Although this weekend I really should have done a little more catching-up and a little less Parks And Recreation-watching, seeing as I have a presentation, a response paper, and a test this week. Amy Poehler and her cast of lovable misfits can wait.

[Under the cut: Me attempting desperately to remember my week, along with brief ramble about social-ness, Mao: the Musical, and small fluffy animals.]