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.]

We're All Mad Here [2013/05/18]

Oh ducklings. I keep trying to write these posts at a time that isn't the middle of the night, and then somehow time sneaks up on me and boom, it's 2 am and I'm thinking, "Hey, you know what I should do? Write a blog post."

As I write this, I've actually just gotten back from a joint bachelor/bachelorette party for my friends who are getting married in June. Quite honestly, I'm not sure whether I'm more amused that they're getting married in June or that they actually had a joint bachelor/bachelorette party. I mean, isn't the point of those supposed to be that the bride- and groom-to-be are separate for the evening?

I can't lie, the fact that I know 21- and 22-year-olds who are engaged and getting married (these two are among a few Wes couples in my graduating class who are getting married this summer, and a few of the kids I knew in high school are not engaged, which is hilarious to me because I knew them when they were titchy and unattractive thirteen-year-olds) is still sort of wiggly-weird, no matter how long I've had to get used to it. Not because of the couple, just because — well, marriage. That's growing up, isn't it? Marriage is essentially the legal way of saying, "I am going to be stepping into the future hand-in-hand with this person."

Commitment is a weird thing. I had a hard enough time just deciding what college to go to for four years. Actually, sometimes I have a hard time just deciding what I'm going to eat for dinner.

[Under the Cut: Thesis films, Hamlet in Wonderland, and... I don't know, stuff?]

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.]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [2013/04/15]

So first things first, ducklings: WesFest is this week! So if any of you are on campus and want to come hang out, you should absolutely hit me up. I swear I am actually way more normal than this blog probably makes me seem. And this isn't the sort of thing where I'm offering just for the sake of offering — trust me, that's not actually a thing I do. So if you're up for it, hit me up, either in the comments of this blog or on twitter (alasallama).

Oh, yeah, I have a twitter now! I haven't written a ton on it, but that might change now that my thesis is done and I no longer have to feel guilty about being on the internet.

...Oh, yeah. My thesis is done, too. That's... a thing.

Honestly, I have no idea how to feel about that. I know that some of my posts have been a bit doom and gloom about it, and I'm not going to lie, I still don't think I'll be ready to look at it again any time soon? I mean, it was a struggle forcing myself to reread it while I was editing it, which, you know, presented its own special challenges to the editing process. But at the same time, I was also right in that last post: it's amazing to think that I did that. I wrote something that's 150 pages, including the cover page and bibliography. I wrote something that requires not only a table of contents but an acknowledgements section.

(For the record? Writing the acknowledgements section might have been the most fun part of the entire process.)

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.

THESIS SMASH [2013/03/22]

Oh, ducklings. I have… written. I have written, and I’m tired.

Spring Break thus far has been an exciting exercise in “How long can Sasha work without accidentally trying to open up tumblr?” (best record: two hours; worst record: one sentence) and “How crazy will Sasha drive her family while she is home and working on her thesis?” (hint: a lot) and “How crazy will Sasha drive herself while she is home and working on her thesis?” (hint: ALSO A LOT) and “How much will Sasha hate everything she has written as soon as she finishes writing it?” (hint: REALLY REALLY A LOT) and lots of exciting other questions like that.

This all probably sounds really negative and like I’m whining again, but honestly I’ve almost been enjoying myself, in a very weird and probably masochistic way. There’s something very interesting about feeling as if you’re attached to a rope that’s slowly fraying. It’s sort of exciting. And it’s made for some very entertaining moments thus far over break.

[under the cut: Thesis stuff, a comic!!!! and the two things that made me laugh the hardest this week. Warning: this post contains profanity.]

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.]

Some Sort of Saying About Old Dogs and Learning Things [2013/03/01]

Well, ducklings, it has been a Week, hasn't it. And I don't mean that in the sense of, "Yes, it has been precisely seven days!" since I trust that all of you have been keeping up with the days of the week. Not that there's anything wrong with you if you haven't; that stuff is hard. I'm pretty sure that I wrote that today was the 28th of February instead of the 1st of March on at least two different documents today. And then signed them. Whoops.

On that note, happy March 1st?

It's been... I can't say that I'm sad this week is done, since as I mentioned earlier, it's been a Week. Not awful — I've definitely had worse weeks, all things told — but very draining, for some reason. But, you know, they do say that adversity builds character and teaches you lessons and all that good stuff, so. Here are some lessons I believe I have learned from this week:

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.]

Eat, Work, Sleep, Repeat (Most of the Time) [2012/12/12]

Seriously though, you guys. Finals.

People keep asking me, "How are your finals going?", which generally results (depending on the day/hour/minute/second) on me either laughing or staring at them with dead eyes until they start to feel uncomfortable. Which is silly, really, because my finals have actually been really spread out this year — I had my taiko performance a week before classes ended, all my fiction stuff due the next Tuesday, and now I only have a research paper for Commodity Consumption (yes, the class I'm TA-ing, people always seem very surprised about this) and then... the rest of my first thesis chapter. I have twenty pages so far. I am halfway through. We're not talking about that right now.

We can talk about all the things I've done/attended in the week and a half since I last updated my blog, though! These things include: the Worlds of Dance performance, Winter Formal, a reading by senior poets, The Tempest, Winter Dance, and other things that can be found under the cut.

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?]

My Mom Bugged Me Until I Posted This [2012/11/21]

[Note: For the sake of clarification, ducklings, this was written across Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday, and thus the inherent temporality may be... confused. Hopefully not too badly.]

[Note 2: My mom really did bug me until I posted this.]

It’s almost Thanksgiving, ducklings, a fact that is at once both relieving and terrifying to me. It’s a relief because to be honest I feel like I could use a few days of not having class, where I can just collapse onto my bed and sleep for hours at a time. Seven hours, even. Maybe — I know this is a lot to ask for — maybe even eight or nine.

…Sleep and I have been somewhat estranged this week, I don’t know if you can tell.

But, of course, the flip side to that is that in addition to seeing my family and sleeping and cooking delicious food, I need to use the available time in order to do work. A lot of work. Work that I may or may not have been sort of avoiding for the past few days.

But enough of that! Back to the recap of my week to date.

[Under the cut: Spring Awakening, Oh! Megan, the beginning of my sure-to-be-illustrious (not really) career in voice acting, and a minor — minor! — rant about the future.]

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.]

Rock You Like A Hurricane [2012/11/03]

[For the record, the title of the post? Yeah, I woke up to that song on Monday morning. Good times.]

I swear, at some point (maybe during finals week or right before my thesis is due, when I'm going crazy but don't feel like making another post entirely in capslock) I'm just going to write a post that's a response to all the spam comments we get on this blog, because some of them are hilarious. I was just clearing out the "pending" section, which ratio-wise is usually about 400 spam comments for every 1 non-spam comment, and I came across this gem:

"thanks to the author representing captivating his clock calculate proceeding this one."

No, Okna pcw drutex. Thank you.

But enough of that, ducklings; I'll save it for a time when I legitimately have no brain power left for anything other than frantically trying to finish work. I figure I'll know that time has come when conversations with my housemates end in anguished screaming, most likely on my part. Till that time, though, I'm still definitely okay enough to tell my loyal readers about my week.

[Under the cut: An anti-climactic unexpected holiday, the return of My Life: Badly Drawn in Photoshop, and a dragon cake. Because I am AWESOME.]