Category: Undergrad Stories

today i had lunch with jill and chelsea at dimitri’s. even though we met at noon, i had already talked to chels two or three times on the phone before we got there. that’s still a little early for me, girls! we had such good wraps and talked. i miss hanging out with them so much. it’s good to be back with friends who just get me, and don’t mind too much if i cuddle with them at the table and make them help me decide what to order.

then we decided to go to the mall, so we all drove seperately to chelsea’s house, in one of our typically discombobulated schemes, and while i looked for artifacts from my car accident in chelsea’s front yard two and a half years ago, chels locked her keys in her house. oops. but off to the mall anyway, right? we saw ross in the parking lot, lauren on her way to work, tav and kelly, who is taking a semester off, and erin, jess and kristin all working at j.crew. then chelsea found her house keys in her pocket. when i dropped her off at home, we hugged and she said, “who am i kidding, i’m probably going to talk to you tonight.” well, twenty minutes after i got home, she called to say that next year, we should go to the mall together to find jobs. motivation in peer pressure. i have a feeling that might work.

but no retail job i get will ever match my high school gap gig. brian is coming to visit this week, but jen is in california, so she won’t get to see gap boy. those were the days. i remember that jen and i were really excited about black friday, and i remember that i worked every day of christmas week, except for the 25th and 26th, in 2001. it was so much fun though.

quote of the day: “christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.” – norman vincent peale

went to see mona lisa smile today with, ahem, toni, erin, whitmama, jill, em tortora and jess stathis. the movie was good, if only b/c it featured my two favorite actresses, julia roberts and julia stiles, and also b/c it was just really pretty. for all the gender inequality, the 1950’s was a very asthetic decade. everyone wore tea length skirts and polka dots and curled their hair and wore pearls and red lipstick.

in a more intellectual analysis, the film raised a lot of my women’s college issues. first of all, i’ll bet my pink zebra-print pajamas that some of the ladies at mount holyoke are going on and on about how relieved they are that their own dear school didn’t sell out to hollywood. i don’t think the movie should automatically be perceived as an intentional insult to all women’s schools. things have changed (though, not everything!) and i think the script itself made the point that wellesley is no longer the most conservative institution in the country – a lot has changed at most colleges in the country. secondly, i’ll bet my fluffy spa bathrobe that they believe mount holyoke and its students will never succumb to influences, traditions or values from the outside world, no matter what the era. mona lisa smile could just as easily have featured mount holyoke. students could have chased after, married or cried about boys from amherst. they could have slept with one professor and ridiculed another. they probably enrolled in etiquette courses for that easy A. they even could have rejected modern art and progressive ways of thinking. let’s be honest, lots of scandalous stuff has gone down in mount holyoke’s history. it isn’t perfect. why do you have to keep claiming that it is? it’s that elitist attitude that drives me crazy every time. there’s school pride and then there’s arrogance.

though it stirred up all these dissonant emotions about my all-women’s past (and future), the movie did feature a lot of positive references that i could associate with mount holyoke. the girls all wore beanies in their class color. they have traditions like hoop rolling and convocation. the dorms were beautiful (bricks and ivy and hardwood floors, naturally), and they had bell desks where male visitors could call. oh, the 1950’s were so chaste. i would have fit right in. except for the whole beanie thing; beanies aren’t for me in any decade.

quote of the day: “just remember, when a dream appears, you belong to me.” – you belong to me

everything outside is white. the sky is white, the trees are white, the ground is white. i think the air is white. people are brighter against pure whiteness. coats and scarves and flushed cheeks are bolder and sharper. i wanted to throw myself in the snow today. different ways to say white are: pearl, ivory, bone, vanilla, porcelain and snow. i like white linens, white ribbons, white frosting, and white angels. in other news, there was a fallen icicle on the ground today so big that i couldn’t have fit both hands around it. winter doesn’t get enough credit. there are natural wonders out there!

my food supplies are all unbalanced. i have milk but no cookies. crackers and no hummus. mustard. mustard? mustard. i’m eating yogurt and grape nuts for dinner. i feel like splurging and ordering delivery. pizza with green peppers and some cheesy bread. but it’s not the same when there’s no one to share. i have a tendency to be stubborn.

quote of the day: “we are each of us angels with only one wing. and we can fly by embracing each other.” – luciane de crescenzo

i love exfoliating. yes, it could be interpreted as a metaphorical renewal, a catharsis, a ritual purification. it could rid your mind and soul of impurities, as well as your face. but really, exfoliating makes me happy just b/c it gets my skin soft. i used to use clinique’s exfoliating scrub, but have switched over to st. ives’ invigorating apricot scrub b/c it’s less expensive and has that organic element that is a given whenever you polish your face with something like crunched up fruit. after a good scrub, i rinse with clean & clear deep action cream cleanser, which soothes and smoothes everything. any day feels better when my face is clean.

tonight, lauren and i placated our boredom by inventing our very own games. that’s right, we are creative and self-sufficient. while we love it dearly, we don’t need someone else to organize games for us! (especially since someone called me names and reported me b/c i bumped their pawn back to start while i was playing ‘sorry’ today!) so lauren came up with ‘reality guess who,’ and we both ended up choosing rhs teachers from our past. then we tested the prototype of ‘aim hangman.’ after a brief fumble toward ‘afvnr,’ lauren guessed ‘silver bells’ and i guessed ‘you are my fire’ and then we called it a night. (note to self: aim hangman could use an upgrade.)

christmas seems to sneak up on me when i’m away at school and distracted by finals. i need to break out my holiday spirit. let’s start by listing my top five christmas songs, in no particular order: do you hear what i hear?, have yourself a merry little christmas, white christmas, o holy night, and christmas eve in sarajevo by the trans-siberian orchestra. and i won’t try to hide the fact that i do really enjoy madonna’s version of santa baby, as heard on a very special christmas volume one. now we can start celebrating.

quote of the day: “i’ve been an angel all year” – santa baby

not only did today, the ultimate friday, mark the end of classes for week, but the culmination of the entire semester. that’s right, my afternoon nap today should have been blissful. instead, it didn’t even exist! at this point, i would liken my head to a circus with the lights out; it’s a wild party in there, but it’s too dark to sort it all out! doesn’t translate well on paper, or into html as the case may be. i know it must have something to do with the fact that i haven’t been getting enough sleep. and i don’t just mean that i’ve been missing my nap every day! let’s see, i slept for about six hours last night, took a nap between six and eight am on thursday morning, and before that, i hadn’t slept since tuesday afternoon. i’m sore from trying to stay conscious.

on the upside, classes are over, and i have three days before my lit exam. i’m almost done. cj said we could play taboo this weekend. i also discovered classic boggle online, which i am holding out for so i can really enjoy it. and by this time next week, i’ll probably be home, safe and sound. that’s seven days, 168 hours, 10,080 minutes, 604,800 seconds. i think. i’m not really in a math state of mind right now. i don’t even know if i’m in a human state of mind!

quote of the day: “way to conjure!” – sabrina the teenaged witch

love always, em locke

nayomi came over today and asked me to help her decide whether or not to join this special kenya class. it was one of those decisions that had too many factors and subfactors to keep them all straight with just one brain, but i thought it was funny that she wanted me to help, since we all know i’m the worst decision maker in the new world. but i suggested that we make a pros and cons list just so she could organize her thoughts more tangibly so they wouldn’t just clank around in her head and drive her crazy.

minutes later, a sleepy cj wandered into my room and said, “did somebody say frozen cosmopolitans?” we just thought he was being a lush. but he finally explained himself when we met at the diner tonight – turns out he actually wanted to know, “no, really, did somebody say frozen cosmopolitans?” it’s true, the phrases sound quite similar. i counted to three and made him say “frozen cosmopolitans” while i said “pros and cons list” and they definitely match. try it with your friends. maybe over a round of cosmos?

two people told me i was cute today. both were girls. but they were right, i am really, really cute. feel free to comment further on this subject. and rach thinks i should create a new screen name: theOneAndOnlyEmLocke.

lauren and i decided that jen‘s hiatus didn’t count until she formally announced it, so i submitted the following official statement: “lauren and i wanted to let you know that we don’t think you can be officially on hiatus until you post an official hiatus notification. we think that would be appropriate (and would give us a little something to read while we’re not doing our work, which is a lot of the time.)” well, jen responded graciously with a new post, but gave someone else, some columbia guy credit for the hiatus protest! where’s the love, jen?

quote of the day: “there is always some madness in love; but there is also always some sense in madness” – nietzsche

love always, em locke

oh and also, eat at joe’s. that’s ahhhbviously some hype for lauren since i couldn’t figure out how to get the comment feature to look right until i copied her html action. nice work, lek, and thanks for letting me mooch.

i don’t think i’ve mentioned this before, but i love my room. when i walked in at 9:30 yesterday morning, after a four hour drive, i had forgotten how cute it is. i love the window with my curtains, the little shelf with my printer and my plant and my painting and my desk with the bulletin board and the bookshelf and the pull out writing desk. i love my bed with the duvet my mom made and my tapestry and the purple sheets and the wall with all the hooks and the purple christmas lights and my giant collage. i love having my guitar in the corner and my sunset chair under the window. i love that my bed has four tall posts (my bed at home actually felt short!) and my favorite furniture item ever, my wrought iron nightstand by my bed, with my african violet on it and all the drawers perfectly organized. i even love the carpeting, even though it’s, well, used. i got really lucky. i’m going to miss it.

but i’ll have other rooms. i’ll have my own rooms and rooms that i share with people i love and rooms that i get to keep for more than one year b/c i own them. maybe i’ll even design and build my rooms. in my future, i see hardwood floors, plush carpeting, tall, slender shelves and chests, romantic, luxurious beds, subtle lighting, giant chairs, and lots and lots of ecclectic and coordinated accessories. i want my bookcases to be home to books of all different shapes and sizes and colors and my linens to match. i want every room in my house to be a different, beautiful color – so different that you’re consciously aware of it. like, “wow, now i’m in the kitchen!” with emphasis.

quote of the day: “this is where i meet my muse…of all the rooms i’ve loved before, it’s you i love inside this room” – lisa loeb

love always, em locke

heading back to school tomorrow morning at fiiiiiiiiiive am! it sucks to get up so early, but it’s nice to have an extra night at home. lauren was home most of today, too, so we went to the patisse for vanilla chai. okay, no late night starbucks, but it was so so good to see lek and hang out for awhile. i love the patisserie for its independence and its frenchness and its cuteness. and its vanilla chai. and i love lauren!

after break we only have ten days of classes. i have two more jazz concert reports to write and a twelve page research paper on “my favorite artist” due next week. i have to write seven to twelve pages of something for lit, but it can be something more creative and personal. i have a psych paper and an exam and my final project for comp sci is a twenty page research paper translated into html (good thing i’m such an expert, right lek?). and when all that’s done, i don’t know what i’ll do with myself. goodness! i hope i can find a few finals to take!

quote of the day: “i’ve become a real believer in not defining every single thing. seems like everytime you think you’ve figured out what something is, it just becomes something else.” – “felicity”

love always, em locke

there is no more motivation here! i’m ready to hit ridgefield and do some laundry without quarters and challenge my dad’s snood scores. chelsea is going to london to visit friends but maybe i’ll see jill and melissa and jen wants to hang out with people on wednesday and i want to see toni and lauren and jess. i really want to experience peppermint hot chocolate and 24-hourness at starbucks and have a long conversation that is equally as goofy as it is deep. especially with someone who knows me beyond september. there’s something about the understood history between old friends.

it’s so silly that we have to wait until tuesday to go home. of course, i suppose i should be grateful. ricky goes to school in canada where, surprise, believe it or not, they don’t celebrate american thanksgiving and he doesn’t get any days off. so he has to stay at school and just come home for the weekend. that sucks for ricky and his number one female fan, who will be conveniently based in ridgefield this week.

quote of the day: “homeward bound, i wish i was homeward bound. home where my thought’s escaping, home where my music’s playing, home where my love lies waiting silently for me” – paul simon

love always, em locke

last night i went over to nayomi’s friends’ room in south to chill and watch tv. south is an incredible dorm. huge rooms, private bathrooms, fireplaces, big windows, it’s all beautiful. but it’s all quads, and friends, you know i love you, but all those warm fuzzy feelings would be fleeting if we ever had to live together. those rooms would be paradise if i could register to live with isabellephant, muggsy and maggie zelda. but it’s a nice place to visit and we chilled out and watched tv.

after a while cj showed up and we played taboo, which is one of those games that freaks you out until you forget all the words you ever knew. it’s like creative mental excercise. so confusing, but really fun.

today is kelsey’s birthday so we’re going out to applebee‘s later on. i’m so in the mood for a nap, but i’m going to hold out for some quesadillas and cheesecake.

quote of day: “if you can walk, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing.” – african proverb

love always, em locke