When I was a girl, I used to beg whatever entity controlled the universe for a flying car, because I hated riding the school bus.

I've noticed that my eyes are getting a lot worse. I sit in the third or fourth row in physics, and had a hard time reading the smaller numbers. Even now, with my computer on my lap and the screen just centimetres from my extended hand (with fingers pointed upwards) the words are awfully blurry.

Dolphy Day has happened. That was last Tuesday. I sat around in the quad with some friends and enjoyed the sun, because it was beautiful outside. This week, though, has been cold. It even snowed yesterday.

I'm so much more open lately, and I'm caught between liking it a lot and enjoying myself, and being terrified, because I've never connected with so many people. I'm sure it's a good thing, all in all, but it still feels...new I guess.

Writing this, I'm thinking about dinner tonight, sitting with Leo, Kandace, and a girl whose name I don't know. We were talking about books and movies and plays we liked or thought were awful. It was nice to know I wasn't the only person who really enjoys classics.

Today, I took a nap, because I had to get up at seven-thirty for work, and I was tired. I dreamt about Kyrkos going to dinner in the cafeteria and trying to talk to me. It made me cringe when I woke up. It made me think back to Dolphy Day, when Kyrkos found Kevin and I waiting in line for ice cream. He had said, "Hey, guys! How's your Dolphy Day going? Enjoying it?" which is friendly enough, and not something to complain about, but he's just creepy, somehow.

I want to go for a long walk, wandering around without any real direction, but I have a lot of work to do at the end of this week. Finals begin on the fifth, and I will have to stay until the eleventh, which is the last day, because my physics exam is at nine that day.

I don't really know what I'm going to do back in Columbia County. It feels like there are no real opportunities there for chemistry, and it's too late by now to apply for anything with a college. I really don't want to work as a waitress again this year, but it looks like I haven't much of a choice. But I don't think I'll work for Otto, if I can help it. He just upsets me a lot. It was really nice that he's given me a job since freshman year, but working for him is stressful in a way that working for another guy, Siba, was not. I plan to take one or two weeks off at the start of summer break though, so I'll have plenty of time to decide.

I've been playing around with taking and editing photos. My explorer book tells me to take photos of the things I encounter during my day that catch my eye. Here are some of those things.

Here's a glass chunk.

A cup lid I found whilst being late to Physics.

An airhorn can that was used on Dolphy Day.

In working with this photo, I've found that I kind of like taking photos where the subject itself is out of focus, and the background is in focus. I like the idea of really looking at the subject through the blurriness to find details.

Here's a white dandelion, with emphasis on the white, but still allowing other colours.

Here is the same dandelion. I played with different colour saturations, and found that when I played with blue and purple tones, they came out on the flower.

Plop Plop Plop Thud

Today, I took a nap, and I had a weird dream.

I lived in a castle, but not a very fancy one. The rooms were like the ones you would see in very ordinary houses, but the walls were fortified, so that I felt very secure. One evening, as I was getting ready to take a shower, I heard a boom, and then, the castle shook.

A cannon was being fired at the walls.

They very quickly began to crumble.

My father and my brother came into the room, and we decided to run. My father said he knew a restaurant where we would be safe. When I asked him why someone was firing a cannon at us, he said he had no idea.

So my brother picked up Dante, and I picked up my rats, and we started running. Somewhere, whilst on a stone path surround by walls, a blast hit my brother's leg, and he had to stop. Another shell fired towards him, but Dante jumped in the way of it, and he just disappeared. I remember looking around at the place where he was, or would have been, and then just everywhere, for some evidence that he had existed, and there wasn't anything.

Next thing I knew, I was being asked to win a race, and when I did not, I was chastised, and told that if I couldn't win one that simple, I would never amount to anything.

Finally, I found myself in a bookstore, like Barnes and Noble, but it was very dark and claustrophobic. There was a room that had even less lighting, with what appeared to be toys and very comfortable seating, but a door chain kept me from opening it. When I tried to break it, something warned me not to. I don't know where it came from.

There were authorities there, that make me think of the police in those cartoons where the characters go to alternate representations of their world. The kind that penalize you for really stupid things that no one really cares about. Here, the authorities yelled at me and the person I was with for wandering into the corners, for putting a book back in the wrong place, and something else. He gave us a ticket, and told us we were a shame to our families. He looked at me whilst he said it.

Then I woke up.

As David Lloyd, my creative writing professor, would say, there's a story in that, somewhere.

Like glass shards on the floor

and I just want someone to smile at me and tell me that really, I haven't done anything wrong.

But I also don't want to smile.

This office is clothes.