No, I didn't get buried alive down in LA. Just been absent-minded lately. Actually my computer narfed out for two weeks, but I got it fixed, yay! cell phone and landline phones are still being funky though. Hrm.

So, last Friday was the last day of senior finals, and I got everything in.
Done. Fin. It's a really weird feeling... rushing so hard to get everything in, and then there's just this calm. Even now when I think about it, I just smile. So I'm now in the 1-week dead period between the end of work and the end of college- graduation. My friends are going to Vegas, and I- being a winner- am going to OK City and DC. Not of my own free will, but to give presentations to the FAA on my clinic work. The FAA posse were actually quite impressed and excited about out project. It was cool that people who play with the big kids, so to speak, would take a look at the results of our work and be wowed. I actually should be packing right now, but eh- it'll still be there when I get to it.

I ran around in puddle jump on Friday. For the non HMC-ers, this is sort of a drunken run in a circuit around all of the fountains on the 5 claremont college campuses. When you get to a fountain, you splash around, and shout out an often lewd, always mean, and usually true rhyme made up about the students of one of the other 4 colleges. i.e. "I know a CMC guy who has great diction, it got him out of a rape conviction", or "I know a Scrippsie dressed in red, give her a dime and she'll give you head". Not really sure what the overall point is, but it's a fun pre/post finals week adventure. Though, in my brilliance I did it in a miniskirt and thong sandals-- the latter of which had to come off and I ran 90% of it barefoot. heheheh, reminiscent of my Shaolin Kenpo days, only the pavement was cool, so not nearly as bad. Speaking of kenpo, I hit the Dou a little too hard a few too many times today, and got this fat plum-size bruise on the lower knuckles of my left hand. It's kinda tender, but it makes me look badass- like I got in a fight and won ^.~* chu~

Also on Friday, I went to go see a windmill farm! It was cool, though the people that went were kinda weird physics-major easties, so I just didn't talk and slept in the car. I never knew how freakin huge they are!! 200 ft. tall with a 50 m. diameter, kinda noisy too. Here's a picture if you don't believe me:

<img Src="http://www3.hmc.edu/~aauld/temp/windmills.jpg">

(I'm the pink-clad one standing about 10 feet away from everyone else)

Went to brunch on Saturday with my girlfriends, and an interesting topic came up: Scrippsies. Now, I feel as though I should explain why I hate them, and it's really nothing personal. As a matter, I don't have any friends at Scripps at present (the one friend I could claim was a pretty awesome chica, but she graduated already) I suspect that they're in general pretty cool, artsy, offbeat, and whatever. For background, Scripps is an all-female art college that is literally across the street from my techie school. As we have an excess of weird boys, and they're sorta desperate--an interesting love-hate relationship has developed between the two schools. It's a common conception that mudd girls hate scrippsies, but that people think it's from jealousy is utterly wrong. Sure they're cute, but that isn't the point. The point is that, as an entity, they make my life a lot harder. I consider myself as a feminist--not the butchie shoe wearing, SWE going, male-bashing variety... but the person I am: who likes to wear coordinating eyeshadow and miniskirts while analyzing a 555 oscillator circuit. And until I can do both of these things without being mocked for either(and trust me, I am mocked quite regularly), I must consider myself as a feminist, though it was never my intention to do so.
Now, for an example, take the pair of Scrippsie girls that wandered into the tools shop, following some guy, when I was proctoring there the other day:
" Oooh, I want to watch you work, but I'm afraid to get too near that machiney-thing" (indicating a lathe)
"Wow, your lecture halls are weird... they're all sciency and stuff"
<insert copious amounts of giggling, hair tossing, and extend for 20 minutes until I caught their glance, gave them the eye, and they finally pranced out>
The whole time this conversation progressed, I wanted to deck the both of them upside the head and yell "Have you no goddamn dignity!?!?" This may indeed stroke the ego of a guy who may be getting his ass kicked by this place--hell, if I had two guys singing my praises while I was taking a shit I'd feel pretty damn accomplished. But after this, when said guy looks at me, he will see neither a girl nor an engineer: I couldn't be a girl because I know a router from a rotary arm saw and am thoroughly competent using either. I couldn't be an engineer either, because I curl my hair every morning and oogle designer handbags. You see why I don't like them now? The reinforcement of such blatant stereotypes everywhere around me makes any bit of respect I may have earned just that much more worthless. It's hard to explain, and if you haven't been there before, you'll probably think I'm insane. But I've seen what I've seen, and when you're entering a grad program that is all of 10% female, it really makes you think.


Now- I should probably find a book to read on the plane, mebbe I'll read one of those hum-soc books that I "read". Nicomachean Ethics, 40 Studies that Changed Psychology, Introduction to Special Relativity... damnit, I think I'll just buy a paperbook at the airport-

- over and out