#Him falling asleep to Luigi's stories in The Thousand Year Door means absolutely nothing

[pianokantzart]

Man, Mario really is just kinda like that, huh?

[cosmosogler]

hi. fifteen minutes late getting started, but i caught up on some lecture notes.

i was getting ready for bed and then i spent like 25 minutes in the bathroom, which was really what i wanted to do with my evening, so i wasn’t even in bed until after 11:50. it took forever to fall asleep, but i guess i managed it, because i don’t remember the end of the bedtime story. i didn’t even try to get up until 8:20.

i’m really struggling with not being able to clearly remember my dreams whenever i try to. i guess it’s always been like that but i feel like there’s a common thread shared between all the dreams i’ve been having and i can’t figure out what it is and it’s bothering me.

today was a holiday (at least, the school was closed) so i put on some sweat pants. these ones have fantastic pockets that can actually hold my keys. i would wear them more, if it didn’t also feel like i was wearing pajamas all day.

i called the vet around 10 to let him know snoopy’s doing fine, eating and drinking and using her litterboxes. i then continued doing nothing for more time. i did some logic puzzles. eventually i made some “brunch” and got my lunch box ready. then i had a stomachache from brunch so i sat impatiently and waited to feel good enough to bike over to campus. i had the hiccups at that point but biking and panting seemed to help with that.

because biking was exhausting, yet again. you’d think after doing it like 40 times and also doing all that extra stuff all the time would make it easier. i am starting to actually believe that i am not going to get into any better shape than this.

so i got to campus just before 12 and then i talked to harrison for a while and took a little bit to get settled. i watered our plants and arranged my materials across my desk and an unused desk in my actual office, instead of suzanne’s office. now that i have tons of crap to do all the time my desk(s) has become a good base of operations while i take smaller projects over to suzanne’s office to work on one thing at a time if i want to be around people.

suzanne was in today, as well as harrison and ioannis. taylor came in later. that was it as far as students go. our classical teacher also was in for a while. he watched me struggle to unlock the side door to the building for a minute since we got in at the same time.

i made two grading rubrics, which gets me caught up to the current week, and arranged my labs that i need to grade. six and then i’ll be caught up. i was gonna grade today too but... i hung out for a while instead. 

after a work session harrison came in so i ate some snacks and talked with him for like... an hour and a half. eventually we got into sharing some photos. he said i am very, very good at photography. i smiled and told him i had thousands of videos on an external hard drive back at home because they don’t fit on my computer. and thousands of photos on my computer currently. 

i should clean out that folder sometime. i think there are some duplicates and some very blurry photos haha.

he shared some of his stuff. he was in europe for a year apparently and saw some really excellent castles that he took pictures of. i showed him my sedona area photos and a few phone pictures i took around flagstaff. at one point i mentioned that i took a painting class so then i guess i had to show him my paintings. 

at that point we had ended up in my art folder and he probably saw a whole bunch of thumbnails... he was like “photos, paintings, drawings... what aren’t you good at” and i didn’t know how to respond to that. i showed him some of my pencil work too but he had run out of what he called “unique responses” so he mostly ended up just saying “ok” a lot. to be fair i had shown him a ton of pictures... the “ok”s were nerve wracking but he didn’t seem to lose interest and he didn’t walk away so i just kept going. 

eventually i said “no more!!! leave!!! i need to cry for fifteen minutes” and he laughed and asked if he was that bad. i said no i just feel nervous sharing my art. he said “five minutes then.” i scooped up my laptop and my notebooks and went over to suzanne’s office to work on quantum. 

while i was working in there taylor, i think, mentioned that he’d had one of my students in his class during a make-up period. i think it was him; suzanne was also in the room (also near the doorway) and commenting on it so my memory is a little confused. taylor said that this student absolutely loved me as a teacher and basically only had good things to say. 

i didn’t know how to react to that either!!! i blushed and trailed off and looked at my desk and suzanne laughed. 

i don’t know what’s with all the positivity lately. between the symposium and the art and the teaching... i dunno. it’s overwhelming. it’s not that i’m angry that people like me and my work, it’s just... confusing. it’s like trying to hold wet soap in your hands in the shower except with thoughts. 

someone: compliments me

me: 

so yeah, that was really disorienting. i’m... glad my students like me. even though i mess up and get turned around a lot. i’m really invested in their success. i want them to like and respect physics as much as i do. because it’s a good way to feel.

according to suzanne i make a lot of the same mistakes that her fiance jake makes. (we also take notes the exact same way. i like when he sends me his notes because they are the easiest to follow out of the whole class.) mistakes as in, stuff that wastes time, i guess. making comments on everyone’s lab reports to help them do better next time. that kind of thing.

i finished a whole quantum assignment!!! i reached my goal for the day! the “bare minimum.” that’s something to take a deep breath about though. everything i do after that is stuff i don’t have to do tomorrow now.

i took some stuff home, hoping to do more work. i left just before 7 i think. i got home and poked in the corner store to buy a candy bar and made myself a banana smoothie for dinner. i didn’t explode the blender this time.

i was a lot more careful with the amount of ice, you see.

after that i finally filled in a maintenance request for the weird spots that have appeared on my wall. they were on two walls now. oh and i paid my tuition fees and sent some paperwork to my graduate advisor from the drc just to make sure everyone has everything they need. between the tuition fees and snoopy’s vet bill though i’m not sure how much money i’m gonna have for food this week. i might need to be careful. i’ve gotten better about how much stuff i am buying in one go though. haven’t overfilled my bags in two weeks now.

i just found out that i get 1 cent of interest on my savings account every month. nice.

i bummed around on youtube for a while and then realized that steven universe just aired like five new episodes. so i watched all those for an hour or so. i took some baby steps toward getting invested in the story again at least. peridot is always a delight. 

today i realized that i don’t really have a lot in common with my classmates, like, outside interest wise. none of them draw. they haven’t played any of my favorite games. only suzanne even remembers a bunch of tv shows i talk about. or when i make archaic references to floppy disks or whatever. only taylor has seen steven universe or jojo or homestuck and he’s kinda hard to talk to about it. harrison seemed like he didn’t know how to react to card crusher when i showed the video to him. i’m the main punster in the office. i haven’t been able to get anyone else to agree to thai food for dinner.

ehhh. it’s kinda lonely. and we don’t have time to get into each others��� interests, really. i mentioned we didn’t get to play any melee this week because keegan has gone out of town for the weekend. i’d meant to practice some short hops and stuff to try to keep up with him but i just ended up not having time. harrison said he wanted to practice too. i mean i’m never going to win with bowser anyway but it’s good to have those mechanics available to me.

at least it encourages keegan to branch out a bit so it’s not just fox beating up bowser or the ice climbers or luigi or samus every time we play. 

in a way it makes things easier. staying kinda, emotionally closed off, not having to share how much i love this stuff. talking about my art with harrison, and showing him even my best work, did give me a mild panic attack for a little while. mostly just shaking and tearing up, i pulled it together by the time i sat down to work on quantum 5-10 minutes later.

i do feel like i want to dig a hole in the ground and hide in it until people forget about me again though. 

so... yeah. that’s about it, i guess, unless i am laying in bed and realize i forgot to talk about something 45 minutes from now. i am still having trouble eating. mostly positive things happened today so i am not sure what to say in my “positivity” section here. i feel kinda conflicted about sharing my art with harrison, but mostly just confused about this stuff. i don’t know how to deal with this stuff any more. i’m used to even my fandom-related art getting complete silence haha.