Finished! At last, finished!

Well, I did it. I graded thirty ten-to-twelve page papers, I wrote a twenty-page paper and a ten-to-fourteen page paper, and took an exam. I also packed, finished my Christmas shopping, started to get close to and excited about a new girl, and finally saw some snow. I’m now in my tenth hour of travelling, in the middle of the last of three flights, this one from Vegas to Oakland. It’s 2:19 a.m. in Providence, and 11:19 in California, and 12:19 in Vegas. I’m not sure what time it is where I am. I assume the time zone change is at — that is, directly above — the California-Nevada border.

There are a number of things I’ve wanted to write about in the past week or so, but I managed to be at least somewhat disciplined, so I didn’t. Unfortunately, I think that there’s too much for me to go back to now. A few highlights:

Our BUGS (Brown University Gilbert & Sullivan) concert was the week before last. I’d planned, organized, music directed, and narrated the thing, so I guess it’s fair to say I was pretty intimately involved. It went, I think, well. Emily came from Boston to see it, which I appreciated very much, and she said that she was proud of me and that I do good things and that the chorus’s diction was very clear. I felt good about my own performance, too; I did Robin Oakapple, Grosvenor, and Wilfred Shadbolt, and good God, do I love to sing “Jealous Torments”.

The concert took a lot of my time, and was often stressful, but this funny thing happened near the end where I started to get comfortable around the people I’d been working with, and enjoyed their company. Sam is fun and gay and funny, and Jessica reminds me shockingly of Lauren, and Mirele is funny and random, and is starting to become more endearingly so than annoyingly so. And Audrey is interesting, intelligent, and a G&S fan, and very attractive. It turns out there might be chemistry, but of *course*, the universe showed that to me the week before I’m leaving town for six weeks.

Audrey is a Brown grad, but young — 20, because she started college after the tenth grade. She’s a staff member in the cognitive science at Brown department right now, but is in the process of applying for grad schools. She’s Russian, from upstate New York, thin, blonde (the gorgeous long straight kind), and an alto. The highlights of our relationship thus far:

• The two of us ditched the cast party for 45 minutes to get some food together
• We met for coffee last Friday, and we had coffee, and I walked her home, and she invited me in, and offered me tea (the last in her cupboard), and we talked for an hour and a half, and why am I so shy about making a move on a girl in such an obvious situation?, and I went home to work on a paper
• Enjoyable short emails back and forth about our common cognitive science interests, etc. Also a mutual reference to how it’s annoying that break is occurring when it is with respect to us
• She gave me a ride to the airport this afternoon. I leant her the Houston Mikado DVD, and gave her the video copy of the concert I’d made, and also gave her three boxes of tea from Whole Foods, wrapped in a cute red bow

Break is long, so I’ve no idea what to expect when I get back, but I think I like this girl, and I think she likes me, too.

Other stuff: I helped roommate Ben catch two plagiarizers for the course he’s TAing. One of them was even more egregious and obvious than the one I’d had earlier in the semester. She just printed two professional papers and put her name on them. I found them online; same font, page breaks, everything. Really, really obviously not written by an introductory undergrad. Stupid undergrads.

Ok, now it’s 5:00 a.m. in Providence and 2:00 a.m. in California, and I’m going to bed. More soon. Oh yeah, and answer to questions, also soon.