The Seven of Cups

The sun has pierced the clouds and the leaves are gently falling in front of my window.  My kettle has boiled and tea is steeping--I shall now rise from the depths of Google Scholar and Web of Science to regale you with tales of the past seven days.

Hello, everyone!  Hope your Thursday is going as swimmingly as mine (it's a joke because I just put 30 fish eggs into dishes full of chemicals hahaha).

First I want to tell you a story about my Monday night.  I was having a rough one (lots of work and reading) so I went to the little shop on campus to eat my feelings.  I saw my friend from lab over the summer there.  He's the editor of our campus newspaper, so I greeted him thusly: "Making some news" and he replied thisly: "You know it man!"  we chuckled and went about our ways.  I picked up some Gata (it's an armenian sweetbread, somewhat of a campus-wide addiction) and got in line to pay for it.

Up to this point, I can hear you all asking yourselves, "Rich, I don't care about what you fatten yourself with."  I reply, "I can't think of a way to both continue the tone I've been half-assedly shooting for and tell you to shut your mouth and wait."

Mick (editor of the Quest, first of his name, king of the andals and the first men, &c, &c) was in line in front of me with a Perrier (WHICH HE CALLED A PELLEGRINO).  I noticed now that the woman at the register, a student, was frantically writing on a pad of paper (they were about Post-It® size but without the Sticky-Shit®) with a Marks-A-Lot brand marker.  I have forgotten most of what was on the papers, but I'll reproduce as many phrases as I can below, one bullet per piece of paper.

• "Moly ---------- is crazy, but so are we all"
• "There will be a PARTY at ---------- on ----------"
• "There will be SINGING and DANCING (but don't let ANYONE dance with you if YOU don't want to dance with THEM)"
• "Bring a MUG [drawing of mug]"
• "Come dressed in a TUX [picture of bow ties, white and black]"
• "There will be VIDEO GAMES (I'm talking to you, 'nOg [sic])"
• "Audrey Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart are SEXY!"
• "The PAB [Performing Arts Building] sucks SHIT!"
• "FUCK Prexi [the building you'd go to to play piano before the PAB went up]!"

There were many, many more but these are all I remember.  She would occasionally stop to talk to Mick and I about her life/what she was writing about/how awful the Reed humor newspaper is.  At this point it became clear that she thought I was also an editor of the Quest, and she was writing this stack of papers for Mick to turn into a comic and publish.  I think it was an invitation to a party she was throwing?  Anyhow.  Whenever Mick tried to pick them up and tell her he'd publish them, she's say "I'M NOT DONE YET!  This is what's wrong with journalism these days."

After writing 30 or so of these little papers (stopping in-between to ring people up {which was one of her three jobs, apparently}) she said "Okay, take them now, I'm do--WAIT!" and got up and grabbed, out of one of her many pockets/hip-packs a DECK OF TAROT CARDS.  She said things such as "Oh, this one's perfect," "This is fucking perfect!" "No, no, yeah this one," while dealing about ten of the cards onto the pile of little papers.  She then handed Mick a card and said "This is for you." and handed me one while staring into my eyes and saying "I want you to keep this one--personally."  At this point, Mick and I were permitted to leave.  Our parting words: "That was AWESOME!"

Figure 1. My card is the seven of cups, which often appears when a difficult choice must be made, apparently.

I just did some research on this card to find out which one it is, and apparently it shows up when many tempting choices are apparent, only one of which is real.  I guess she knew I was having a hard time choosing between Gata or chips.

So yeah, that was what happened on Monday.  Uhh...other than that this week has just been me doing a lot research and work.  On Friday I'm going to go see the Fratellis (Chelsea Dagger) live, so that should be great.

I appreciate all your guys' input, from well-formatted lists to expectedly-blunt sentences.  I've set up a meeting with my awesome advisor and we'll get shit sorted out.

The sky is once more grey, and my cup is empty.  I'll see you all next Thursday.

-Rich