"When there's nothing left to burn... you must close down your incinerator plant."

What up, my droogs? Let's start with a re-cap of today, because it is the most recent day that has happened and therefore is fresh in my memory. Onward? Onward!

Today has been a pleasant day, although Wednesdays are supposedly the worst part of my week. It's probably due to the fact that my two least favorite classes fall on Wednesday, with an addition of a 3 hour lab, Debate, and Zumba. Combine all those obligations, throw in some homework, and usually I am a little ball of easily-consolable chaos. But chaos none-the-less. However, today was lovely. True, my "18th Century Literature" class and "Scientific Approaches to Environmental Issues" were  unremarkable at best, but there were exceptionally hilarious statements made by my friend Bryan in the Environmental Issues class. Also, the lab portion of the class was more interesting than usual because we had a field trip which didn't entail tricking me into exercise! My lab section and I went to the Mid-Maine Waste Action Corporation, an incineration plant for 12 districts in Maine. Here are some of my friends getting pumped for the tour of the plant:

Burning shit is serious business.

The tour was fascinating. We got to see the crane in action as it lifted the heaps and heaps of trash into the incinerator, as well as the general process from garbage to ash. It reminded me a lot of Toy Story 3. And in fact, in the crane operating room, a figurine of one of the green toy aliens from the movie was placed on top of one of the machines. 

After the field trip, I hustled on over to debate practice, conversed with some of the debaters, and since practice was short, I then danced off to Commons for an early dinner (I move between places in odd ways, is what I'm saying). It was there that I learned that my last zumba class was cancelled and moved to April 1st, which is disappointing because I have a fancy debate-dinner/award ceremony event at the same time, so I'll miss the last class. Alas. I don't think I'll be too heartbroken, but I did enjoy my Zumba class.

At Commons today it was an adventure in dining: WAFFLE NIGHT. I made myself two chocolate chip, whipped cream, maple syrup sandwiches for dessert which I regretted almost immediately. Dinner was nice, spent with wonderful people I'm getting to know better. I then took a brief trip to the library but realized I did not actually feel like working at the library. I shuffled home in the rain with my friend Grace, talking about her cigarette preferences and trip to Europe. Once I reached my room the rain started to get heavier, and although I knew I should do some Environmental Ethics reading, I was inspired to do otherwise.

Remember that broken "Starry Night" umbrella I told you I was going to make into a skirt at some point?

What's great is it's waterproof.
 Also, it's a mother-clucking "Starry Night" skirt.

Well I made it and I'm pretty pleased with the results. I plan on wearing it way more often than I should. It's the perfect skirt for spring showers, because the water just falls right off while allowing me to still wear spring attire (although apparently it's supposed to snow again tonight, so the spring attire might have to wait a bit longer).

After I made my skirt, I realized the Language Arts Live event was starting in ten minutes and booked it   over (ha!) to the event where the writer Ron Currie Jr. read excerpts from his fiction novels. Ron wrote "Everything Matters!", which is one of  my friend's (Barbara) favorite books, so I decided to attend. I try to go to Language Arts Live events because it always inspires me to write and reminds me that literature is a great passion of mine. Anyways, I bought one of his books and got him to sign it even though I have an ereader because I'm still in love with non-electric books and one day want a library full of books I bought for myself that have memories (and signatures!) attached to them. I feel a little guilty about it, but both print books and ereaders have a place in my day-to-day life, so it's not like I'm ignoring either medias. I use both. I am large, I contain multitudes. Or something. 

Okay, onto the rest of my week. The past weekend was basically me working on a 10 page paper that I was extremely unenthused with, and then going to Gala, which is basically the one fancy dance/event of the year.  It was Monopoly (the game) themed. But yeah, leave it to a college that charges its students 55,000 dollars a year to spend a night celebrating capitalism. At a point in the night, the cardboard cut-out of Rich Uncle Pennybags was crowd surfing over the students and I just started yelling "it's a metaphor", but the music was loud so no one heard me (fortunately). Gala was fun though. 

Monday and Tuesday were pretty uneventful, actually. I've been enjoying my meals a lot lately, both when I'm eating alone and with my friends. I've been feeling particularly good about my friend choices lately. My friendship dynamics at college differ from high school in the sense that I have a very large pool of friends, but I'm not amazingly close to many of them like I was in high school, though there are a few  friends I am pretty tight with. Anyways,  the dynamic allows for a wonderful dining experience because there's almost always a table or two I can join comfortably for a meal. I love how much I get to laugh every meal. It's a weird thing to say, but eating with friends always puts me in high spirits. I bring this up randomly because I just recently noticed that this year, about 5 of the separate friend groups that were created last year just sort of melded into one giant orgy of friendship, so I'm getting to know a lot more people this year. I'm loving it. It's grand. People, man. 

For Spring Break, my plans have changed. I'll now be slumming it on Bates campus with my friends Mike and Victoria. Mike will have a car, so we plan on driving to Boston to visit some museums, go to the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation area, Range pond, and just read Vonnegut and Ron Currie jr. out in the (hopefully) sunny quad. I also plan on eating a lot of Thai and Indian food. And Chinese. And Japanese. Basically, I will refuse to eat Commons food over break. I want a break from it. Mike's car and the surrounding city will make that possible. I'm looking forward to it, but I still have quite a few obstacles before I get to the finish line. 

Alright, I should go to sleep or do some reading. 

These posts always take way longer than I expect. 

Godspeed you black emperor, 

Nicole