I don't know what to say to you but I smile anyhow.

I hope this is an omen.

I want to go to the University of Chicago. Of all the places I've visited, I like Chicago the most. It feels right to me. It's old, and modern, and large, and infinitely diverse. The University of Chicago is everything I want in a school--it's a big school, with beautiful buildings in a nice neighborhood fairly close to downtown. It has brilliant academics, tons of resources, and programs in anything I'd conceivably want to study (and I'm sure I could make up something if they didn't have an established program for what I eventually decide on.)

So, back to the possible omen:

1. I loved Barack Obama from the first time I heard about him, as a young senator from Chicago who could possibly run for president. I've since read his book The Audacity of Hope, and decided that, even in cases that I don't agree with him, I would trust him with the fate of America. While reading the book, I discovered that he had taught at the University of Chicago.

2. I compulsively buy books. If there are books for sale, especially if they are a dollar or less, I will stop and pick up a few if any interest me, which is one of the chief reasons why my visits to major bookseller chains are fairly rare. Once, a teacher at the university near my house was out front selling off some of her old books for dirt cheap. I bought some and she let me take home others for no charge, so I was quite happy. Amongst them were a few academic readers, filled with essays about various subjects, mostly in the liberal arts. I opened up one of them (Subject and Strategy: A Rhetoric Reader, Fifth Edition) and flipped through the table of contents. A number of essays were circled, presumably by a previous owner who had to use the book for class. A couple of the circled ones caught my eye, for no reason I can divine. One of them was by Mortimer J. Adler, a high school dropout who got a PhD without actually getting any other degrees. He traveled around a lot, but he also worked, and taught, at the University of Chicago. (By the way, Adler is awesome, and has a library of works that I've not even begun to dip into.)

3. I just purchased a reader for one of my classes this semester. Since receiving it earlier today, I have read four essays. One of them was written by a former student at (guess where,) now a literature teacher, and the other is a professor of English, the humanities and literature at that same school.

In the past several months, I have to have seen more references to that school than any other except for those in this city, where, of course, references abound.

I really hope it's a good omen.

So I've sold my soul. Or at least 5.13 gigabytes of it. Yesterday, after seeing an advertisement, I finally broke down and signed up for the free ten-day trial demo of World of Warcraft. I like Blizzard, and I liked Warcraft III (in gameplay much more than storyline.) I then began the long and arduous process of downloading World of Warcraft. I downloaded the file that would download the installer (Blizzard has set up a cool BitTorrent-esque system for this, too, which impressed me,) and began doing other things while it downloaded. Hours later, I was exhausted, but the download was still going, so I went to bed. I awoke to find that it had crashed at some point in the night and there was still data left to download. Thankfully, it let me pick up the download where it had left off, so I didn't delete everything in a rage.

Before continuing, let me state for anybody who doesn't know: I don't like MMORPGs. There's often very little of the fourth and fifth letters, so they degenerate into a process of kill-collect-sell-level-kill-collect-sell. I want to interact, to take part in a story, not to run around trying to level up. That's why I don't like MMORPGs. But yet I broke down anyway.

After finally installing the thing, and waiting for a series of patch downloads and updates, I was in. I selected an RP server, of course (they tend to have the fewest idiots) and was set up with Moon Guard.
Okay, sure, that's a cool name. So now it's time to create a character. In spite of having the full 5.13 gigabyte game on my hard drive, I can't play Dranei or Blood Elves. I'm fine with that; Blood Elves are sexy, but I had already made up my mind to play either a gnome or an undead warlock (and I didn't expect to have everything for the trial, but 5.13 gigabyte games tend to make me overly critical.) So I chose the side of the walking dead and arose from the grave to slaughter the living.

How's it going? Okay. There's notably little actual roleplaying where I am, at least, and I haven't actually slaughtered any of the living yet besides a rat. At the moment, I want my gigabytes back. But I'm only level two, so I will wait out the end of my trial period before passing judgment. If anybody plays WoW, I can pop in sometime and say hi. I do not expect to continue past this trial period (unless I start a new one,) so the offer is up after the ten days are over. As I've said, I don't like MMORPGs. The only one I'm even remotely interested in is the World of Darkness game being made by the creator of EVE Online (which I might actually play.) Coincidentally, EVE Online is releasing a "Mac/Linux" (Unix-based?) client in the near future. I'll get to try it out then. Yay.

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It's been a long day. I woke up about fourteen hours ago, went to the local PrideFest, which was today. What followed was a crazed whirlwind of angst, rain, sunburn and the smallest puppy I've ever seen. There wasn't too much angst, actually; I just felt like it made a good component for a crazed whirlwind. But there was a puppy, and I think my neck is sunburned.

First, a prologue: This morning, it was kind of cloudy and drizzly. So, just after I left, it rained a little. I miscalculated the traction I'd have on one part of my ride, and took a spill. I got there fine, but I have this scrape just over the muscle just below my thumb, that hurts a LOT worse than it is. At Pride, I hung out with people, followed around this girl I've been madly crushing on, met people, ate Tootsie Rolls (aka "chocolate crack"), met more people, and hung out. It was all fine and dandy, minus my being anxious due to said crush (I always get like that -.-.) Then the clouds rolled in again. The weather service said to look out for very, very bad weather. So all the booths packed up early. Everybody else hung around, because the performances were continuing until it actually got bad and there were nice people there to talk to. I went to Steak 'n Shake with some friends to eat. It never got really bad, so we came back. More hangings out, and I met some more people. I got even more anxious, and it was starting to get chilly. Then it started to rain, torrentially. Everybody hid in the tents. I was freezing, having worn only a t-shirt (because it was hot earlier.) Proximity to some friends calmed my nerves a bit. It got less rainy, eventually, and people began venturing out. Then there was a dance (gay events I go to seem to always have dances.) I sat around and watched. Then I came home. Riding my bike always makes me introspective, so I got well and truly contemplative on the way home. And here I am.

Grr. Why are women so beautiful? I mean, I know what I like about them. They're pretty, and soft, and nice, and I can click with them on an emotional level. But I don't know why I like them. It's just such a basic thing that I can't possibly imagine it any other way.

I've been single way too long. I need to attach myself to people emotionally, and I don't have anyone to do that to. (The chief problem: I attach myself to females. Presumably it's not exclusive, but I'm pretty sure it's almost exclusive. I haven't found any guys, anyway. Most of the girls I want to attach myself to like girls. So I have a bit of a harder time finding suitable people to attach to.)

I'm sorry I haven't updated in forever. I've meant to. I have this thing where I'll often write a LiveJournal post about recent events in my head, so I've been blogging internally almost every day since my last post.

About my tonsils: I had some more trouble with them, then finally got them surgically removed. It was great, except for the holes in my throat. Over the next week, it hurt a lot. Week two was better, though I still couldn't drink very acidic drinks. During this whole period, I was feeling a lot better. Now, I feel an example is necessary to indicate just how much better I was feeling, so I will tell you that, according to my surgeon, my tonsils had become gross, abscessed, and sickly, possibly even before I came down with strep in the first case (I have a genetic history of bad tonsils and it's quite possible that they were subtly poisoning me for a while; they were certainly prone to infection on a yearly basis.)

That's it for now. I'll probably post more later today.

I'm in one of those places where I can't seem to do anything. There's too much in my head, and I need to get off my ass and take a walk or ride my bike to clear it if I want to either be able to do anything productive or even sleep. The only problem is that it's currently raining. It doesn't sound like much, but it's cold, too. And I'm still sick, though I'm a bit better.

In other news...I can swallow without pain! It feels so, so good to swallow. I want to never forget how good it feels to swallow. And I can talk normally now. And I feel almost well. ^.^

I'm seriously annoyed about school. I've missed a lot of it, I'm not doing as well as I should be, and none of my teachers have responded to the messages I sent them explaining my absence.

And yeah, I made a lot of blanket generalizations in my last post. Politely ignore them. I tend to be very level-headed until something ticks me off about something in particular and then I need to rant about it and get that out of my system. It's a very nice way of venting. Basically, I think I have this big control system set up, in my head. I don't get all overly emotional about anything (unless said emotions are good ones, like happiness.) This allows me to analyze stuff objectively. Shit hits the fan and I don't get depressed. My brain works overtime, trying to solve the problem. Then I'll build up enough of the stored-away emotion and experience it all at once. Sadness, anger, panic. Occasionally, I have lost control totally. This has always left me in tears for no reason at all, just an overflowing of pent-up emotion. I think, over the years, I've set up the store and release system I mentioned earlier, so that I'll rarely, if ever, have such explosions.

So yeah, when I'm venting, my brain disposes with logic and technicalities and political correctness and it just goes. Not all suburbs are like what I've mentioned, and not all suburban people are irritating. It was probably mostly that lady. ^.^

I'm going to go put on my coat and see if I can go outside. If not, I'll never get to sleep.

EDIT: Okay...
Interesting. I have just gotten back from my walk and shall add an addendum to this LJ post. And I shall call it...

"Wait. What?"
So I went outside. It was cold, but not rainy any more (thank God.) I stood for a moment on my porch looking up at the sky, because the clouds were moving really fast. And I mean really fast, travelling due west. So I walked down my driveway to the sidewalk to get a better view and the weirdest thing happened: as I turned to look northward, I swear I saw a thin streak of light travel north and vanish behind a cloud. It wasn't a helecopter or a plane, since the clouds were moving too fast to obscure anything travelling in a straight line for long. No, it was definitely what pieces of rock look like burning up in the atmosphere. So then I walked to the convenience store near my house, bought a fifty-cent bag of peanuts, and came back. This is seriously the weirdest night (and day) I've had in a while. I'm not saying that the clouds or the meteor are omens or anything. They're just weird. Oh well; now I can get to sleep. The walk and these peanuts are just what I needed. Good night.

Because I feel like ranting like an urbanophiliac madwoman, it's Anecdote Time. Last time I was in Chicago, I got on a bus. Having not ridden a Chicago bus in forever (and never by myself) I took half a second to sort out which end of the card I inserted where (the CTA cards of which I speak are otherwise worthless pieces of paper that you get from vending machines and put money on.) So I got on the bus, found my seat, and looked towards the front of the bus to observe fellow newcomers. There was this lady, and her husband, and one or two kids (I wasn't paying attention to the children.) She was watching as the bus driver showed her where to insert her card. As she gingerly withdrew the card, she giggled nervously and said, "Can't you tell we're from the suburbs?"

I almost killed her. In my mind, not in real life, which is probably a good thing. I certainly wanted to go up and yell at her that just living in the suburbs of Chicago was no reason to not go into Chicago on a regular basis (like every day? ^.^) I, at least, had a reason, living a full eight hours away from the place.

Anyway, I hate suburbs. Gated communities, too. (Have you seen that episode of the X-Files, with the gated community that has something that kills anyone who violates the rules? It's a good episode.) Sure, there might be some intelligent people there, but the entire premise is dedicated to perpetuating the 1950s small-town status quo. (Another good thing to see: Pleasantville. It's a movie about two kids who enter a black-and-white sitcom from the 50s. Rent it sometime.) I hate yards where the grass isn't allowed to grow out a little. I hate the whole idea of dad working 9-5 while mom stays home and gossips with her friends, who also have nothing to do.

Speaking of things I hate, there's the episode of SVU about fraternity brutality. The whole system of fraternities and sororities strikes me in exactly the same way that gated communities do. >.>

Oh, and I have acute tonsillitis. For nearly two months, my throat has been terribly infected. Antibiotics have helped, but only for a time. Then I'd finish up with them and it would come back. Now I'm on my third prescription, with two shots of an IV antibiotic (as opposed to being admitted and having it pumped into me constantly.) I'm starting to improve, a little. It's just a teeny bit less swelling, I can open my mouth about a millimeter wider, and it hurts a little less to swallow. My recovery will speed up tomorrow and the next day. Then, when I'm all (temporarily) better, I'm going to go to an ear, nose and throat doctor (my doctor put in a referral) and have my tonsils excised. Then I will be free! I hope. That's what happened with my mom, and my aunt, when they were both younger than I.

Oh, and my body hurts now. Not much, just I'm sore all over. I wasn't like this earlier. It might be me combating the infection. It probably means I should go to sleep.

I fucking love lesbians. Mostly in the forceful, emphasizing meaning of the word, and occasionally in the more carnal meaning, of course. You see, there's the world, and it's kind of weird. There are a bunch of little particles and they bounce off things and allow me to perceive the things. And there are electromagnetic fields, which hold things together and repel other things, and by repelling things in calculated directions, you can move them. Then there are the molecules that slide into various receptors and the waves that beat on eardums. It's weird, yes? But then there are these strange and wonderful creatures called girls. They're cute and funny and soft. Fucking beautiful, these girls. And they have these weird fat deposits that the evolutional pragmatist in me might describe as unwieldy and perhaps even a tad grotesque, but that a far deeper, more intuitive sense sees as some of the most beautiful things on the planet. It's really odd. Then you put two of these magical beings together and gah. It's just awesome. And one of the best things about me: I'm one of them. ^.^

I have a new userpic. I cropped it and lightened up some dark parts. I love it, and she looks so badass in that adorable hat.

Anyway, I'll attempt to post more. See you later.

Well, this is most queer. I have had the good fortune to discover that I have saved the files on the school computer network. So now I've uploaded them to the Internet. Woohoo! I'm less screwed now! Also, I've found my mp3 player. It's sitting on a table, visible through the front window of the GLO, but nobody was there, so I couldn't get in. But I know where it is now, and I've contacted a facilitator who should be able to let me in later on today.

That said, I'll still have to work my ass off, but I have a nice starting point now. The rest of the paper I could write in a day, with this, and I have two. Plus I have a bunch of new StepMania songs to play during breaks (or to listen to while writing.)

Fuck. I think someone stole my mp3 player. I had it with my stuff, at GLO, and then I got my stuff and it wasn't there. But then, I was probably careless. I left it with my stuff, maybe visible, and I didn't wear fucking cargo pants (of which I desperately need more, so that I can actually carry my stuff around.) So I have no music to listen to. Big deal, right? It wasn't too high-end, and if I got a job I could earn the money to get it back in no time. Every track on it was off of this computer, which isn't going anywhere. The kicker is what else was on there: my research paper for school. What little of it I had written, and it's gone. I was transporting stuff from the school computer home to work on, but never got to copying all of the stuff. Goddammit. The paper's due Friday and I have to re-write and re-annotate a bibliography, as well as re-writing that which I had already done. I was already struggling with it, and now this! I can't do it tonight, because I'm so fucking depressed from losing it that there's no hope of getting any work done. That leaves me tomorrow and Thursday. My grandfather on my dad's side died yesterday morning, and his funeral's on Friday, so I can't work on it on Friday. I have a makeup speech tomorrow and a final on Thursday, too.

Fuck. I have to work my ass off, but I could make it. Do one of those things where I write something and turn it in with little to no revision. See, this is where I could use someone to help me. Someone to cry on. Someone to talk to while I desperately figure out what to write.

The best I can hope for is to attempt to contact someone with a key to GLO and get them to unlock the door tomorrow morning and let me look around. If I can't find it, I'm screwed. I was going to do some more writing tonight, but I can't do shit when I'm depressed.

Everything comes to an end. So it is fitting that that end come to the tune of music. Music speaks to us. It helps us communicate, both with others and ourselves. The complex interplay of emotions and melodies can help us see new sides of ourselves, and release feelings long pent up. Many creation myths posit that reality began with a song. Whatever the real beginning of existence, this may not be far off, whether the song be the thrumming of matter and antimatter as it speeds in all directions from where it had seconds before been an infinitely small clump of matter or the purest songs of the angels in praise of God. Certainly, a song makes for a plausible creative tool for whatever force molded our universe. The prevalence of music in just that small corner of it that we percieve seems to add credibility to plausibility. There are songs of beginning and songs of ending. Songs of opening and songs of closing. Songs of happiness and songs of joy. Songs of anger and songs of triumph and songs that don't even know what emotion they invoke.

I myself get lost in music. I let myself get carried away within it. The right song can make me happy, or sad, or angry, or calm. This doesn't work terribly well with music too discordant with my mood, but a wide enough array of tunes works wonders. But I digress. Let us go back to the subject of endings.

This conference, Creating Change 2006, is ending. In the next twelve hours, it will be over. Those who travelled here from all corners of the United States will go back to whence they came, or in some cases will continue on their journey to wherever they are to alight next. Tonight, the goings-on ended with a party, for the myriad youth who had attended the conference. It was interesting. With the exception of a couple of songs, it was all good. The lighting was wonderful. A perfect variety of patterns and colours, changing every now and then so as not to get repetitive. I sat for several minutes and watched the ceiling, which seemed to pulse with the music as if a living thing. The cause, of course, was a series of flashes of near-total darkness, where all the main lights were turned off for an instant. This was imperceptible to the human eye when one looked at the dance floor, because the immediate shift to a new colour of light made the eye completely forget about the blackness. It was visible only in two ways that I could tell: either you saw the ceiling pulse and comprehended why or you were sitting further out and could notice the flashes of black (don't ask me exactly why that is. I'm no lighting technician. As for the pulsing, darkness makes things seem smaller. Whenever the darkness flashed, the room seemed smaller for an instant. If I'm wrong, please correct me.)

I guess it's also fitting that I wasn't really partipating for the first hour or so. I sat outside, watching the people dance. Watching old friends and new friends comingle. I eventually joined in, of course, and it was fun. It wasn't as fun as I'd have liked it to be, but it was decently fun anyhow. It'd have been better if I had someone to dance with. I did for a moment, here and there, but such is the nature of the dance floor that groups of friends oft get dispersed unless they have a driving reason to stick together. Like love. There were a few couples on the dance floor, celebrating the closing of this meeting together and only together. Naturally, my eye caught most on the lesbians. Meh. I'll not go into that. It'll only make me feel lonely again.

So thus it was with music and comraderie amongst the youth of the GLBT community that the Saturday of the conference drew to a close. Meanwhile, I stood awkwardly around the edge while my muse narrated into my brain much of that which I have here written. I would really feel better in the middle, without her narrating to me so immediately, but rather telling the LiveJournal database the whole story from scratch later on so that others might peruse it if they see fit. Such is my lot in life, I guess. Perhaps it will change when I get estrogen in my body and grow breasts and all that. Perhaps I will feel bolder, more confidant. Perhaps not. I would feel better, anyway.

I'm dying for some sort of social interaction. I'll probably go and talk to those friends I came here with, since everybody else seems to either be asleep or busy. I guess that is to be expected at two in the morning. The lobby is still full of people, but many of them I don't know and the rest I don't feel like talking to. All of the ones I did feel like interacting with have left the public area and I don't know if anything is currently going on in any hotel rooms.

I guess I'll sign off here. To those of you who have left comments recently, I promise to say something back to you when I get home, which will be tomorrow in the early evening.