Les said, the better II

Left in this year

I got one ten page paper due monday where I must apply critical theory to Joan of Arc. I will be relying heavily on Cixous and talking about how, while with the French army, Joan of Arc escaped binary oppositions about gender. I got one 20 page paper due May 14th, which is a research paper applying critical (feminist?) theory to Christine de Pizan’s poem about Joan of Arc. And I’ve got to do my documentation of the electronic music studio + test utlities for setting up 4 channel audio, prolly also by the 14th. and some sort of installation for a parking garage muzak system by the first week of may. that’s it. then I’m done. till next year. My plan is, of course, to finish this all as early as possible so as to coast thru the last few weeks. or leave early.

all the undergrad thesises (thesi?) were due tuesday, as were many of the graduate thesi. Isaac, tho, is still working on his, although he can sometimes be spotted on the porch of India House, taking a smoke break.

but class has been a bit relaxed as a result of so many folks being done. Especially in the one with the prof whose still out sick.
Tom, who just turned in 70 pages single spaced, and whose concert is sunday, participates in a class discussion and installation artists.
And I took some time yesterday to finally get a haircut. Issac was nice enough to take my picture afterwards.
If I look like I’ve been rained on, it’s cuz it was pouring yesterday. connecticut doesn’t go half assed with this weather thing.

rainy day

but happy anyway. In fact, when I went to my see my shrink, I’ve been so chill lately that she told me not to schedule another appointment unless something came up. Apparently, the Wesleyan student health services has deemed me sane. Or sane enough, at least. Part of the reason I was in such a good mood is because Cola sent me a CD of an Oakland-based duo called The Coup. Cool stuff. Also jelly beans and dark chocolate. Cola is awesome.

So yeah, I’m not a game show host. I’m not gleeful 24/7. But damn, I’m doing better than I was in February when I had devised a plan on how to harm myself. Um, yeah. A plan I decided not to execute. Would have gone to a hospital instead. Didn’t want the world to know what a loser I was. Didn’t want to hurt my dad. Also knew that I would probably feel better later. But I did think about it. Bad times. I wouldn’t be blogging this unless it was 100% past tense.
So damn, what a year. There’s only three weeks of school left, but I have a paper due May 14th. I’m actually starting to really like school, now that it’s almost ending. Not that I’m not anxious to get home for the summer. Xena will be going to dog summer camp in Kentucky with Angela. I have two offers for house checking up, but no offers for subletting. Alas. I was thinking I should drive across the country, but Sophie points out this would take a week and flying is faster and cheaper. So… do I really need all the gear I was going to haul around? My desktop is excellent for running protools, except it doesn’t work. And I’ve barely run protools all year. Do I really need it for the summer? What if I just had my laptop, my bass guitar and some clothes? Maybe my basshead too, cuz it’s small. I keep thinking I should bring my drum machine, but I can’t think why. I mean, it needs MIDI to work and I have no MIDI on my laptop. Why is my drum machine calling to me? Maybe I could have discussed this with my shrink today. She wanted to know what’s been bugging me lately. Same old stuff, you know, but not so much I can’t just annoy my friends or feel better by the next morning. Couldn’t think of much to talk about. She said, “can’t you dig up some anguish?”
I got rythm, I got music. You’re wondering what a basshead is. Some bass amps are in two parts, the amplifier and a seperate speaker. I have an insanely huge speaker cabinet because some boy was giving me grief about my rig and I caved into peer pressure and now I have gigantic speaker that I don’t ever want to move anyplace. the head is a seperate part that actually does all the electronic amplification. It has a power cord. the speaker does not. Most people, despite what peer-pressuring boy says about “professional” bassists, have these peices joined together in a combo amp. the electronics are at the top of the amp and the speaker is below. I have helpfully taken a photo of my basshead sitting on my ludicrously large speaker. It will come in handy if I play in a too-loud punk band next term…

augh

protools is not working on my desktop. it crashes the computer with an evil hard bad crash. everything has been sketchy on that system since i went to 10.3 instead of 10.2. now i can’t run my most important application, basically the main thing i use the desktop for. can’t run protools on my laptop because it requires a pci card. double plus ungood.

pictures

what better way to distract myself from my woes than posting bad pictures of my campus?
That building is called the music studios. It actually has windows on the other side. there are practice rooms in the basement, then a bunch of classrooms and offices upstairs. There’s also a computer lab upstairs, but i don’t have any classes in that building this term, so i only go in the lab when i need to print.
That’s the big concert hall. It slopes downward into the earth. the stage is two floors below gournd level. It’s a nicer concert hall than Mills has, but there is not quite enough seating. It was built with some 70’s idealist goal of not having enough seating to turn a profit, so that it would always remian unblemished by commercialism. it’s pretty reverberant with all that cement, but they’ve got some wood stuff inside, which makes it ok for concerts.
That’s the rehersal hall, where I spend too much of my life. the concert hall is directly to the right of it. They’re connected underground. There’s a windowless classroom two stories down where we get to hear long lectures about random subjects once a week. On the surface level, the left window is the Electronic Music Studio.
I take classes in other buildings, but i spend most of my time in the music area. If somebody tells me to go to another building, I may stare blankly and ask them where it is. Which reminds me that I haven’t done any reading for my mom-music class tommorrow… dern it.

Give me feedback

on my resume. Or pass it along to you work’s audio department. Everyone is always looking for interns cuz we work cheep and it’s short term and companies will hire interns even as they’re laying off real employees. alas.

when acronyms go too far

I was just looking at the calendar for “wesfest,” a bunch of events organized for perspective students:

Queer Issues Panel
Curious about queer life at wes? Come talk to members of the LGBTTQQIPFAGBDSM etc. community about dating, coming out, bathrooms, activism, and anything else that suites your fancy.
Location: PAC – PAC 004

Is this a joke?

Um, so yeah

I’m trying to post everyday, but there’s not stuff I want to post about happening every day. “Had granola for breakfast. Went to class. Hadn’t done half the reading. Went home. Gooffed around and IMed people. Walked dog. Went to bed.” yay. I could write a CGI script to post that for me every day.

happy easter

Today is somehwat interesting automatically as it is the holiest day in the xtain calendar. I went to Easter brunch at Emily’s house. Emily is an ethno student studying drum and bass. She’s exciting. Nick, another ethno student, brought champage and mimosas were made.

Show and tell

That’s wlater and Chris. Walter is a grad student. He plays piano and improvises and is very good. He’s from Argentina. Chris is a sophomore undergrad. He’s the one that brought Peaches to class on tuesday, which is when I took this picture.

That’s the inside of my house before the Seder. My house is not as big in the part I’ve got than it looks in the picture of the whole thign from the outside. And the oven outside on the sidewalk is gone. yay.
This is David after supercollider class. He just got back from the left coast and he says he bought those glasses at a toystore in Portland Oregon, but couldn’t tell me which one. David is a geek. David is living on the wrong coast. When he was in SF last week, he was excitedly IMing me about “war driving.” Pull up on a side street, see whose wifi network is wide open. Get online. CT is not like that. no.
That’s the Olympia Diner. I went there after Supercollider class yesterday with Jess and Tom. Tom is possibly going insane from his thesis, but is very happy UConn won. I once flew on the same plane as the UConn women’s volleyball team. I asked them what school they went to. then I asked if they were from Canada or Alaska. Confusing school names.
And last, but not least, this is my housemate Aaron, who is very nifty.

Another letter

Date: Tue, 16 Mar 1999 15:07:46 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: hi
Dear Celeste,
I’m sorry we didn’t get up there for Christi’s mom’s crafts show. Dad
and Grandma came in Saturday afternoon . Dad was exhausted, and slept
until noon Sunday, then it started pouring rain, and Granddma didn’t
want to go out in it . We went out to dinner and she was very
uncomfortable. I hope the crafts sale was a big success.I would like
to have seen it.Remember the Wiener dog vest? We would probably have
bought sometthing.
When can you come for dinner again? This time we’ll call ahead for
reservations if you would still like to go to Fontana’s. yum.
I had some problems logging on to the email. Dad said the problem was
with Yahoo.
I love you. Love, Mom
PS, Grandma loves to see you both.

Christi’s mom made a vest for my mom with pictures of Mikey, the weiner dog I had as a kid on them. Reading these letters makes me happy. I don’t know why I’m posting them. We buried my mom in the weiner dog vest.

Even more letters from mom

Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 08:48:36 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: getting a cold
Dear Celeste and Christi,
I am coming down qith a cold. I ‘s not terrible but since you have
that commute you can’t afford to be feeling under par. Let me know if
you would like to poatpone it for a day or two.
Grandma appears better than she has in a long time. and is very upset
that Dad is selling her car and house and moving her into a home. She
is ready to kill Ruby because she says Ruby needlessly exagerated her
condition and caused Dad to panic for nothing.This after calling
several times a week telling Dad to find her a place. Unfortunately
she doesn’t remember that, and now Dad and Ruby are the bad guys. sigh

Let me know whether you guys will come today. I thought, since Paul
is coming, we could go to Fontana’s. Did you get my Welcome Home
email? Be sure to let me know how your trip was. Did you fight off any
more biker nuns? Love, Mom

Ruby is a relation of my grandma’s. I’m not sure how I’m related to her. Fontanas is an Italian place that we went to every single time I saw my parents after I finally said no more Hunan Palace, which is the place we went to every single time for the three previous years.

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 10:23:51 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: new job
Dear Celeste ,
I’m glad you are changing jobs. If you are unhappy in a
place, raising pay as a bribe to stay on won’t make it any better.
When do you staet at Netscape? I want to hear about tonight at dinner.
You,ll find Grandma better than she’s been in long time.It’ amazing.
Please excuse errors.
I’m
typing this without my glasses.
Ilove you. See you tonight. Love youu, Mom

Netscape and the doomed-seeming dot com got in a bidding war for me cuz i’m soooo coool. yes.

Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 21:41:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: thank you
Dear Christi and Celeste,
Thank you for coming tonight. It was particularly important to
Grandma.Didn’t you think she seemed better than before? Her new home
(if she likes it) will be Sunnyvale Retirement Inn, on Remington. It’s
acrosss from the Sunnyvale Rec Center, you know, with the park and
fountain. It will be very important to visit her frequently, keep
calling her, and invite her out often. so she won’t feel abandoned.
Thank you also, Christi, for salvaging my computer. I thought I had
ruined it forever.
Congratulations on your new job, celeste.
Love, Mom

and thus I began taking my grandma out for coffee at Cupertino’s Coffee Society once a week, especially since her new residence was near my new job.

Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 17:59:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: book
Dear Celeste,
Many thanks for the Feminine Mystique. It will make interesting
reading.It arrived today.
I spent until about midnight last night surfing the net. Thanks,
Christi, the computer is working better than ever now. It zips along.
Now I’m a cooooooool kitty from Kansas City.
love, mom

Um, so I decideed my mom wasn’t liberated enough and sent her a feminist classic from an online bookstore. And I would like to say that my mom was online in ’99, before your mom had even heard of the internet, because my mom was cooler than yours. neener neener.

Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 21:37:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: feminism
To the World’s Greatest Daughter,
Thank you for the Internet address for feminist materials. I’m
starting a folder for your incoming emails, to conserve information.
You may have noticed that I have reduced the number of emails sent. I
decided that 3 a day may develop a certain nuisance value, especially
since you were kind enough to reply to all of them. .
I have sent an email to Paul, suggesting that, since he and Chuck can
both burp the alphabet, they should have a contest. They would prepare
by drinking a carbonated drink. First to vomit is disqualified. So far
he has not responded.(strange, that)
I love you , Mom

hehehehe. chuck is my uncle: my mother’s brother. Apparently, I was still trying to liberate her. Um, and that’s enough emails for today, yes.

More letters from mom

Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1999 18:44:25 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: what is this?
Dear Celeste,
What is this? I don’t have any email!
What is happening re your work? I couldn’t ask on the phone.I am
anxious to hear what you are doing. Hope everything is OK. We’re
looking forward to seeing both of you tomorrow evening. Love, Mom

I was thinking about quitting my startup dot com job to go work at Netscape

Date: Sun, 28 Feb 1999 12:08:01 -0800 (PST)
From: Eileen Hutchins
Subject: welcome home
Hi, Celeste and Christi!
It’s Sunday noon, youre’ not back yet, but I want you to have message
waiting when you get home. Acctually, I’m sure this will be one of
many you’ll
have waiting.
I hope you had a wonderful trip. Wasn’t it great to
get away for awhile? Drive carefully on the way home
and watchfor those biker nuns! You can’t be too careful! I want to
hear about your trip when you get back. Don’t forget to come Tuesday.
Please call when you arrive in Berzerkley.
PAUL HAS REGISTERED AT DE ANZA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
HE’S taking 11 units of computer (2 classes) df programming. Please,
please encourage him. Now is the time for him to create his future.
I am now the new recording sacretary for the Volunteer
Committee at the Museum! Wowsah!
oops got to leave for Mass, and I’ not dressed
See you soon, love, Mom

Paul is my brother. De Anza is a junior college.