|.:.| polka dot zebra |.:.|

This blog has moved to www.margaretmaloney.com.

A— Age you got your first kiss: 14. On a Friday evening in March in Natick, MA.
B— Band listening to right now: Not a band, but Cab Calloway (ooh, and then Crosby, Stills & Nash came on!)
C— Crush: Plead the fifth?
D— Dad's name: Mark
E— Easiest person to talk to: At the moment, Sarah. Usually, Sam, but I think that's changing.
F— Favorite band at the moment: Don't have one.
G— Gummy worms or Gummy bears? Bears, but it's a HUGE tossup.
H— Hometown: Decatur, AL
I— Instruments: None. I sing, though.
J— Joints smoked: Um, none.
K— Kids: I LOVE KIDS. I even loved the horrible ones at camp two years ago.
L— Longest car ride ever: The LONG GREEN DRIVE of canola fields from Calgary to Winnipeg.
M— Mom's name: Gay
N— Nicknames: Mags, MDM, Maggie, Margo, Ma Malo, Ma Mo. Never Peg or Peggy.
O— One wish: to end up in a career that isn't a job.
P— Phobias: being alone.
Q— Quote: I just finished "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck, and I really liked this sentence: "There was only this perfect sympathy of movement, of turning this earth of theirs over and over to the sun, this earth which formed their home and fed their bodies and made their gods."
R— Reason to smile: I think I'm just going to keep that one private.
S— Song you sang last: "Wicked Little Town."
T— Time you woke up today: 6ish. I had to go to New Haven.
U— Unknown fact about me: I love romantic comedies. Especially those with John Cusack.
V— Vegetable you hate: cauliflower.
W— Worst habits: General procrastination, failure to motivate myself.
X— X-rays you've had: Teeth and ankle, so far as I know.
Y— Yummy food: fried okra, creme brulee, any combination of tomato, mozzarella and pesto, bananas foster, peanut butter (especially the delicious organic kind), diet coke
Z— Zodiac sign: Cancer.

And I bet none of you have any idea what this stuff means...

You Know You're From Alabama When...

You have a party or a barbeque whenever Alabama plays Auburn in football. You go to Gulf Shores every summer. You call the Atlanta Braves baseball team "us" like they're actually from Alabama. You would much rather visit Florida than California. You don't "take", you "carry" or "tote"... as in "You want me to carry you down to the 7-11?" A soft drink isn't soda, cola, or pop, it's Coke. You call it a "buggy" and not a shopping cart. You've said "fixin' to," "might could," or "usetacould" during the last week. Someone you know has used a football schedule to plan their wedding date. You know the meaning of the phrase "Fobbed again." You can properly pronounce Eufaula, Opelika, Bayou La Batre, and Oneonta. The Talladega 500 is the biggest sporting event of any sort during the entire year. You know exactly what chitlins and mountain oysters are, and you know someone who eats them anyway. You think that people who complain about the humidity in other states are sissies. You aren't surprised to find rental movies, groceries, ammunition and bait all in the same store. You've missed a wedding or a funeral to go to a football game. Asian food is always "CHINESE" regardless of the fact that it may actually be Korean or Japanese or Thai You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Alabama.

None of my LJ friends have commented on my new blog. So switch already! Look, I've even got an enticing photograph. Oooooooh....

Since I've moved my blog to margaretmaloney.com, I've created a syndicated feed for my friends on livejournal to use so they can still read my blog on their friends page. Just add polkadotzebra to your friends list.

Check out my (tentative) move to Typepad: http://www.ocherdraco.typepad.com/polkadotzebra/

This Friday night was the oh so wonderful HRG&SP Wine and Cheese which was hosted by the ever lovely Cambridge Ridley and where fun was had by all. Fun was had by me until I got a look at myself in Cambridge's bathroom mirror-- there was no denying it: I've gained weight! So, Saturday morning, I weighed myself for the first time in a good long while, and sure enough, there were about ten more pounds sitting on the scale than I had thought were there. That brings me back to where I was in the fall of my junior year of high school, before I lost forty pounds in the spring and summer. That time I did the Atkins diet (or a slightly less intense version, at least). But I've heard too many bad things about it between then and now, and besides, as my mother pointed out "it's not something you can live with." So, this time I've started with WeightWatchers, and if I'm lucky, it'll stick.

In other news, I'm thinking of switching my blog over to Typepad. It has a monthly fee ($4.95 for the lowest end service, and $8.95 for the middle one, which is what I'm thinking of switching to) but my inability to use some of the better things about blogging (things like TrackBack, and photo-hosting, and just a whole lot of other good things). So I'm going to set it up and try it out (they have a 30-day free trial) and we'll see in a little bit if I like it enough to switch or not.

It is very much a rather blustery day today here in Cambridge.

I saw Seamus Heaney in the bookstore this morning. It's kind of nice to see a really good poet walking around, appreciating my favorite bookstore as much as I do. While there today, I bought American Gods, a novel by Neil Gaiman which I've just started reading.

After the bookstore, I walked back to Dunster. To my great surprise, a large tree had split across the Dunster end of the Dunster-Leverett walkway. I miss trees very much when they die-- it's like there's a hole in the sky. The wind must have blown it down. The wind has been blowing tornadoes of leaves around in the courtyard all afternoon.

To quote Alexander:

It's been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I think I'll move to Australia [or maybe Canada].

Have you ever heard of a children's book called "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" by Judith Viorst? There were times today when I felt like Alexander.



The morning started off with a midterm (for "The Portrait") which didn't go all that badly (memorizing slides of art is something I do pretty well) but a midterm is really never a good beginning for a day. Then, I had a problem set due at five, so I couldn't go to the Ultimoose game, and botched the whole thing up pretty well in such a way that Dunster ended up forfeiting. After that, I was supposed to have a meeting with Mike and Alan to (finally) get the design for our set approved enough to get in a wood order, but I realized about an hour and a half beforehand that all my drafting tools were in Mike's room and that I wouldn't be able to do drawings of the flats in time.

I called Mary Alice. She helped me de-stress.

I went to my meeting, which turned out beautifully in the end (Alan even said "This seems really cool!" and said that he thought the Harvard Theater Archive would want to have my Hedda Gabler model from Griggs's class), and the tide turned. When I got back to my computer, there was a surprise. On my RSS news aggregator there was a new entry from Neil Gaiman's journal feed:

Short but sweet

After you said that you had written "positively the last word on iPod batteries (unless someone discovers that iPod batteries can cure cancer, transmute base metals into gold, or levitate frogs)," I couldn't help myself. Mosey on over to http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~mdmalon/images/levitation.gif to see the Neil Gaiman iPod Special Edition.

So I went and looked. You should too.

I had created the image in a momentary whim, and now everyone gets to see it. It's kind of nice when famous authors turn out to be quite exceptionally real and do things like respond to comments you make on their blogs.

And now it's time for the opening of the Dunster Grille...

Slide identification for my midterm:

Week: 01-07
Artist: Reber Company
Title: A Mozart Kugel, showing a portrait of Mozart
Date: 2004
Medium: Pistachio-flavoured marzipan, dipped in dark chocolate; polychromatic tinfoil.
Notes: Kosher, tasty.

Last night I went to the Veritones and Callbacks show in Sanders (the one for which I did the posters). I went with Jess Goldman, a friend of Cross's who is a visiting student from Wellesley and lives in Dunster. We sat with Sam's parents, who were in their own row since Sam's grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousin, and two little sisters took up an entire row in their own right. During the intermission, Mrs. Halpert and I talked about classes. "What are you doing in tutorial?" she asked me. "I'm studying a language called Penobscot." Her eyebrows jumped. "You don't mean my Penobscot?" For the first time since I began this class six weeks ago, it clicked in my head: Mrs. Halpert is from a small town in Maine that has a very small Native American population, to which her grandmother admitted being related on her deathbed. ("She wasn't ashamed of being Native American," said Mrs. Halpert, "She was ashamed of the illegitimacy.") Penobscot is the language of the penawahpskewi Indian Nation (I would link, but the website asks for express written permission for links-- just Google "penobscot nation" to find out more) who live on an island ("penawahpskiek" or, alternatively, "Indian Island") in the middle of the Penobscot River near Bangor, Maine. So, it just so happens that the one person in the world who studies the Penobscot language is a linguist in my department and that that language happens to be the language of my roommate's ancestors.

Weird, huh?

I went out to dinner this evening with Avonne and Bill Shelton, family friends from home (Avonne is the secretary at my parents' law firm, and so much more than that, as well). We went to an excellent Italian restaurant (İtalyan lokantası -- see, I'm learning Turkish!) called Teatro that's right next to the Loews Boston Common movie theater. Dinner was excellent. Teatro specializes in Northern Italian food, which is my favorite kind. All three of us had my favorite kind of pasta, carbonara, which is a cream sauce with prosciutto.

Here's the weird part: the entire time, without my realizing it until we got up to leave, we were sitting next to leleboo and her parents! She says hi to all the G&S people, incidentally.

And now for bed-- the earliest I've gone to bed all week...

And, just for a moment, all is right in the world.

I went to the square afterward, against my better judgment, and I had a great time-- lots of singing and dancing, the University Band, a random guy in a tux with a trumpet (I think he's Celia's friend Chrix). I took pictures and videos with my camera, and I've edited them together into a movie.

I love this town. :)

I am very pleased with life as usual lately. As I was explaining to Claire earlier today, I'm doing the same amount of work that I did last year, but I'm doing it for far fewer things, so it's less stressful, and done better, and so I'm much much happier with everything. General goodness: I'm really enjoying living with Paloma-- there's a lot more girl talk in my room this year, which is something I hadn't realized that I missed last year-- and she's just generally considerate in all those good roommate ways. I have a lot of new friends in Dunster (yay sophomores! yay Uroš!) which is making it feel like home more than ever. I'm regularly in touch with Mary Alice, my good friend from high school, and Clayton and Claire are there for me, as usual and as always.

Speaking of, the three of us plus Clayton's pseudo-roommate Peter Zoogman had dinner at the Kong tonight and it was very good. There was lots of talk about how Clayton is intellectually anarchist but has an inherent acknowledgement and apparent respect for authority but how Claire has problems with authority, the vagaries of absentee voting, and Clayton's new phone (which I eyed enviously). Peter insisted he pay for everyone since he had invited himself along, which impressed me greatly, especially since all three of us like Peter and enjoy hanging out with him-- it wasn't as if he was a burden! Afterward I went with Clayton to Tower Records where we proceeded to look at everything except the music.

I watched the Red Sox game tonight while doing Turkish homework, and very nearly missed the HRG&SP board meeting, but Mike called and summoned me. It was decided tonight that we're going to stage Princess Ida next semester, and that Jess Bloom and I will produce. It makes the most sense since I'll have a thesis to write next year and I have to produce once in the next three semesters. This does mean, of course, that (assuming Jess agrees) I can once again be poster designer. And the Ida poster can have a gorilla! (Weeping gorilla, anyone?)


And now I've just finished my Turkish homework and am going to bed.

Want to know what I did today? Then follow the white rabbit.

Now, if only Ramirez could catch that ball...

Yes, I am up at six thirty five. Why, you might ask? Because I've got a quiz in Turkish at nine, and immedieately after that a makeup tutorial that I haven't done any of the reading for yet, then meetings with Alan Symonds, theater demigod, and Paulette Curtis, academic minor demon (aka my senior tutor). I haven't had a day this week without a meeting; why stop now?

In other news, last night Mike Chiappa and I designed a really kickass set for Pirates. It rotates. Yes: rotates.

Now, off to academic self-immolation...

Tim Wakefield is my favorite knuckleballer ever. He was practically unhittable last night. Of course, that also means that he was practically uncatchable, which means that Jason Varitek is one of my favorite cathers ever for managing it!



And Ortiz... Ortiz just wins.

I did make it to Turkish at nine.

If you're my mother and father, your daughter is wide awake (yes, even though she has Turkish at nine).

She's been redesigning her website.