Here Comes the Sun

Last week I was wondering if Rachael was alive. Turns out, she was, and presumably still is. (Speaking of Rachael, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Yes, I have all of your birthdays, plus those of several other people, written down in my calendar. I need not use an electronic crutch for such things.) Well, this week another member of our cast has gone AWOL, although I am less inclined to think that he has died than I am to think that he simply forgot to post. Rich, please come back. We miss you.

A small number of hours after I posted last week, I attended a lecture given by guest speaker Jackson Katz entitled "The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help." The first thing I want to say about this is that one of the captains of the women's track team was instrumental in bringing this speaker to Middlebury and she therefore encouraged everyone on the team to go. The second thing I would like to say about this is that I would not have gone were it not for this pressure. The third thing I am going to say about this is that I would not have gone, not because I don't think issues of sexual violence are important, but because I had, surprise, a ton of work that night, which in that regard makes it a wholly unremarkable night.
So I went to the lecture that was scheduled to take an hour. It took two hours. Yay, feminism. I realize two or three of you are likely disappointed by my lack of enthusiasm; all I have to say in response to that is that those two hours served to remind me of things I already knew.

See them stairs? Them stairs go up.

Sometime after that lecture and before right now I found a room on campus I had never been to before. There is something of a lounge on the top floor of the Gifford Building, and in the middle of this lounge stands a steep staircase, as you can see in the images that I have so graciously produced for you.

Looking down from the loft.

Me being the exploratory explorer that I am, I explored exploratatively. Here meaning climbed up and found a cozy little crow's nest from which I could see the Adirondacks across the New York state line if it so pleased me to look. Which isn't saying much because you can see the Adirondacks from ground level here, but it sounded impressive, right? I chose not to include a picture because it wouldn't do it justice.
Moral of the story: Derek found something new. Derek's mental map of Middlebury grew. Derek happy.

And while we're on the subject of Derek happy, I ought to mention another case of Derek happy that occurred since our last chat.
On Wednesday the Ducks absolutely demolished the evil (and I mean that) Detroit Red Wings, 4-0. Immensely satisfying. But consecutive losses since then have further doomed the Quack Attack to an early summer. Also, I'm calling Nashville and Pittsburgh in the Stanley Cup Final. You heard it here first. Actually, call me Cassandra, I first predicted that back in January. We'll find out in early June.

Ah, June. A warm month, yes? Well, so is March. For the first time since . . . ever? . . . the temperature in Middlebury, Vermont is warmer than that in Newport Beach, California. It's supposed to be in the 70s every day this week, something that I know we all used to take for granted back home. What has been most striking, however, about this change in the weather, is how the people here react to it. Even after living through what was an admittedly mild yet still subzero Vermont winter, I still don't think of nice weather as such a big deal. But the other kids here, I mean wow. Sun comes out and everybody's outside. Studying outside, eating outside, lounging outside, talking outside, sleeping outside, being outside. Seemingly overnight we went from hurrying across campus with our hatted heads tucked against the wind and our gloved hands deep in the pockets of our fourth-layer jacket to t-shirts and shorts. I may not be as ecstatic about the turning of the seasons as those who have lived their entire lives like this are, but I'm certainly not complaining either.

It seems I don't have to fly back to California to bask in the sunlight, but that's not about to stop me from doing so anyway. Nor will it stop the rest of the track team, all of whom, in case you've been missing this from previous posts, will be flying to San Diego at the end of this week, where we will be racing on Saturday the 24th and again on Saturday the 31st.

In the Bible.

In other news, someone's phone went off in class the other day, and the ringtone was Bach's First Cello Suite.

The Bible is pretty crazy, as usual. We've moved on from Solomon, Ahab, Elijah (Wood?), and all those other dudes; now we're reading the poetry of the fifteen latter prophets, including Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Joel (Ishii?), Amos (Diggory?), and ten other guys. Very bloody.

British history is chugging along like . . . the Chunnel? Yes, like the Chunnel. James I to Charles I to Charles II to James I, and that's where we are right now. The so-called Glorious Revolution lies in wait somewhere in this week's lectures.

Last Tuesday our World Lit professor showed us clips from several renditions of Endgame, one of which had David Thewlis and Michael Gambon in the two leading roles. Very unlike the movies for which those two actors are best known to our generation, watching Endgame was more entertaining than reading it.
For the same class, I read Roger McGough's 2009 English re-imagining of Moliere's 1673 comedy Le Malade imaginaire, or The Imaginary Invalid, or, in the case of McGough's version, The Hypochondriac. The play was, if nothing else, a whole lot easier to understand than Endgame. I think Rich would play a great Argan, but he'll likely never know that unless he reappears in our virtual lives.

And then there's physics. Oh, relativity, you sly dog. Now that we've finally stopped rehashing classical physics and moved on to modern physics, well, things have gotten interesting. I'm not going to try to explain it here, but I'd love to talk about it when you (plural) and I reacquaint ourselves this summer. Which raises the question, are you guys taking or planning on taking any classes involving that sort of stuff? I know Jason and Rich are all about the biochemistry stuff or whatever you call it, and I know Nicole's dealing with environmental science, and Rachael's taking classes about how to save the world, but none of those things are about modern physics. I can't accept that Rich and Jason aren't going to at some point take classes on this stuff because it seems like stuff that they should know more about then I do, so I assume that situation will be remedied.
We spent today's interesting lecture discussing time dilation, which was a very interesting thing to spend today's lecture discussing. If you want to understand this stuff, you could start here. Yes, it is difficult to wrap your mind around.
If you want to see my professor be really boring on Youtube, click here. No, he's not normally this boring in class. And no, he's not normally this young either.

Relativity by M.C. Escher, 1953

Eventually the time came for the weekend. Or at least, according to my frame of reference, the time came for the weekend. Relativistically speaking. Friday night was Monopoly night. Some of you may know that I really don't like Monopoly that much, but hey, nothing wrong with a board game once in a while. For a small period of time I owned houses on Pacific, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, which would have been awesome IF ANYBODY HAD LANDED ON THEM EXCEPT ME. WHICH I DID. TWICE. AND NOBODY ELSE DID. EVER. So eventually (well, relatively soon) I lost. It just so happened that we were playing in Bi Hall (The science building, remember? Also the second largest building in the state of Vermont.) and someone had drawn an extremely realistic brain on the gigantinormousoitous chalkboard that dominates the north wall of the Great Hall. Well, before I got out of Monopoly, another member of our little group started drawing sea creatures on the board. Once I was relieved of my capitalist duties in game form, I took it upon myself to add to the collection with a couple of sea creatures of my own. The fact that one of them was a dotted yellow square with human facial features and the other a blue-green octopus with a frown is completely coincidental. (Yes, an octopus. According to this reputable source, he is, in fact, an octopus. Squid don't have big round heads, remember?)
As of today my drawing remain in the Great Hall.
When I returned to my dorm later that night, I found that a handle of vodka had been hidden in one of my drawers, so I returned it to the person who had decided it was safer in my cabinet than in his, though they be only ten feet apart, and then I went to bed. When I got up the next morning I discovered that some of it had spilled on my desk so I cleaned it up with a wet paper towel.

You are all probably aware that St. Patrick's Day was on Saturday. All of you who are aware that St. Patrick's Day was on Saturday are probably equally aware of what that means to a great number of college students. Let us forgo the details and simply acknowledge that many people on my campus, as well as all of your campuses I am sure, plumbed the depths of questionable decision making.
Well, we don't have to forgo all of the details. Just one little anecdote? Yes, I think that will do nicely.
This story involves three inebriated member of the track team, none of whom are me. I will refer to them as, oh let's see here, how about names from the subject matter I am studying this semester? Let's call them Cromwell, Einstein, and Moses.
Cromwell has a plate full of ice cream. Why he is eating it from a plate and not a bowl or a cone I do not know. That inability to make a logical decision may have something to do with the other things he had consumed earlier in the evening. Then again, maybe he just likes plates.
Regardless of why Cromwell's eating ice cream from a plate, Einstein walks up to him and grabs a chunk of ice cream with his bare hands and holds it in front of Cromwell, signifying victory. Now Cromwell isn't taking any of that; he grabs Einstein's hand, the one grasping the ice cream, and slams it into Einstein's face. Now we've got Einstein with ice cream all over his face, and both Einstein and Cromwell with ice cream all over their hands.
In comes Moses. With a pie.
Moses sets the pie down, and Einstein comes up with the idea to pie him. Einstein grabs the pie and promptly introduces it to Moses' face. Moses, taking exception to this, somehow produces another pie almost immediately, and proceeds to return the favor.
I saw all of this take place and therefore I know that it is true. What follows is what I was told occurred afterwards, and though I did not see it happen myself I assume it also to be true.
When, shortly after the ice cream and pie incident, Moses went back to his room to shower in order to remove the bits of pie that had splattered across his face and dripped down everywhere else, Einstein and Cromwell surprised him by throwing a ham sandwich at him after he had undressed.
And that's a little slice (geddit?) of St. Patty's at Middlebury.

Hmmm. I have three papers due at the end of this week. I wish I could transfer all the writing I've done today for this blog into writing for those papers. But I can't. Unlike Isaac Newton and Charles II, I do not believe in alchemy.

Now we have but two matter to discuss ere we part for the week, both of which interest me significantly more than they interest you. For this next item, I would like you to open another window or tab and follow along. Please humor me in this; it is important to me. And it actually has to do directly with me, not just with random ski resorts you don't care about. Once you have this new window or tab open, go to this website: http://skimap.org/. You should be on a page that looks very similar to the one below, although the image at the top likely isn't one of Canyons as it is on mine, simply due to the fact that the site rotates images.

Simply put, this is the most complete trail map collection in existence. You will see a horizontal blue menu bar in the upper portion of the webpage which has the options "home", "maps", "add", etc. Please click on "maps". You'll then see something that looks like this: 
Keeping up? Good. Now click on the first option, "find maps by ski area". I'm not going to do the screenshot thing anymore because I'm pretty sure you can figure it out. The next page greets you with a list of continents. You can click on a continent and explore all the ski resorts in it (which I have of course done), or you can focus your attention on what I want you to focus it on; namely, the section entitled "Fantasy Land". Once you click on that little piece of magic, you'll discover a relatively small collection of ski resort that do not exist, two of which were thought of, drawn up, and uploaded to this site by yours truly. Please note that I've been drawing these things for years, since way before this site existed, and that I only discovered this section of the website and uploaded these two maps last week; both maps were created before I knew such a place existed on the internet. Oh, and do ignore the fact that the website currently lists both of my resorts as having "0 maps". You'll have to pick through the so-called mapless mountains to find mine, and they do indeed have maps.
So there you have it. Two of my little babies, preserved forever on skimap.org. Those are, by the way, the only two that I have with me in Vermont. I may well upload some of my older creations in late May when I have access to them.


And now we have come full circle. Quiz time.
Before I update the leaderboard, I'd like to clarify a couple of things. First off, last time I specifically stated that "I would rather you try to be specific and get it wrong then you being vague and getting it right." Which means I want to award Jason for guessing Yellowstone on the picture of Jasper, even though he's technically incorrect, and I don't want to award Nicole for guessing California on the picture of the Back Bay. What I'm trying to say is that I am conflicted about scoring, but I guess the right thing to do is reward accuracy with points and precision with love. So here's the leaderboard:
Cole: 3 points, no love.
Nicole: 2, points, no love.
Jason: 0 points, 1 love.
Rachael: 0 points, no love.
Rich: has not played.
Miss T: has not played.
Simmon: I guess 3 points for Earth, Earth, Earth, but negative love for anti-precision.

Let the games begin.

These first two pictures were taken in more or less the same place, so I'm counting them as one entry. Same goes for E.

A

still A

B

C

D

E

still E

F