timeripple | quae mihi subrepens imos ut torpor in artus

Feel v. drunk. The hell? Lassitude creeping through the depths of my limbs like, well, lassitude; prone to misquoting Catullus and writing flowery prose... yup, definitely feel drunk. Am not actually drunk. Possibly, now that I think of it, am suffering from severe blood-sugar drop. Let’s find out why...

Monday, July 9, 2007
Apparently there are sneak previews of OotP happening just down the street, but as I really don’t feel like walking home alone at 3 am, I shall not be attending. Alas.

No, that red mark on my neck is not what you’re thinking. I have a vampire spider or mosquito infestation, or something. How embarrassing.

Have been inspired to actually read Brideshead Revisited. Oh, Sebastian. Call me! We can drink wine and eat the wonderfully cheap strawberries I just happen to have in my fridge and bitch about how ashamed we are of being unhappy. Bring Aloysius too.

That makes... hmm, six books in progress. It would be seven, but I’m not actually reading The Singing Bourgeouis: Songs of the Victorian Drawing-Room and Parlor. I just got it out in the hopes that it would have easy piano sheet music, which it doesn’t. And The Interpretation of Dreams is all very well for airports, but I have less scholarly things handy. Anyway I hardly require assistance to discern that my dreams indicate a strong desire to be elsewhere, to have gotten that damn paper back, and a certain denial of adulthood that is not altogether unexpected. Sorry, Freud. We’ll catch up some other time, when I don’t have lovely angsty alcoholic teddy-bear-wielding aristocrats breaking the door down, shall we?

Thursday, July 12, 2007
Been looking at the online GRE stuff. Re: essays: what are we, high school students? WHY?!?!?!

Saturday, July 14, 2007
Went to La Brea Tar Pits this morning. MADE OF AWESOME. Lake of black, black asphault and greeny-brown water bubbling, bubbling. Smelled like, well, like asphault. Lots of fantastical skeletons. Sadly nobody working in the fishbowl room, where people clean and polish and catalog things and are stared at, but still v. cool. If I’m ever trapped in this godforsaken city again, I shall see about volunteering there.

Went next door to LA County Museum of Art, which was awesome in its own non-tarry way. Bought a plastic-wrapped brownie for lunch, brown and crumbly on top, tar-dark and gooey beneath. Ate nothing else all day, which perhaps explains my sudden blood-sugar drop. But never mind. Get this – five huge relief panels from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud!!!! I almost fainted from squee. And several narrow-bladed Iranian daggers! And a gorgeous illustration of Esfandiyar attacking a rainbow-colored Simurgh!

The Japanese Art Pavilion was almost even better. A beautiful lacquered blue suit of armor, a long sword and short sword in beautiful matching sparkly scabbards, raku tea bowls and some lovely paintings. The pavilion itself was specifically designed to display Japanese art, white screen-inspired wall-and-ceiling panels for light, tea-green and gray walls, ascending spiral walkways, subtle track lighting, clear plastic tube handrails. Lovely.

I have been assigned my pieces for piano juries! Minuet in D minor (Bach), and the Russian Dance from The Nutcracker. That piece cracks me up, and I keep wanting to play Aaron Copland’s Rodeo: Hoedown instead. Also, the left hand part of Minuet in D is totally badass.