oceantheorem: (skydiving)
I have lots and lots to say. I'm keeping my paper journal updated, so I can give summaries in a few weeks when I'm back in Connecticut. But I've got Ann's computer for a few minutes, so I figured I might as well update. I'm alive. I'm in Santa Cruz. We're leaving this afternoon on our epic road trip.

I went to graduation today. It was profoundly weird. And deeply awkward. And exceedingly strange to be there. I definitely don't belong here anymore; even though part of me felt as though it were my graduation (all my hallmates from freshman year were graduating, and I was supposed to graduate this year) and I got a bit of closure from it, I also felt like I was an intruder sitting in on an experience I was supposed to have given up. I wanted to say goodbye to Jamie, because I'll probably never see him again (!!!!!!!!!! ... !), but he was surrounded by his family and his girlfriend, and I just couldn't bring myself to face his mother. Maybe if I hadn't liked his family I would have been able to slip past them to say goodbye without feeling weird, but they adopted me as their own during a time when my own family had forgotten about me. And then I broke their son's heart in a profoundly heartless and cruel way. I just couldn't bring myself to face them.
I can fling myself out of airplanes, but I can't talk to my ex's mother.

Speaking of airplanes... Ann and I went skydiving again yesterday. The jumpmasters all yelled at us for jumping tandem our third time. They wanted to know why we weren't getting certified to jump solo. If we'd had more time in Santa Cruz we definitely would have taken the certification class, but it just didn't fit into the schedule... Anyway, we did the jump and this time they let us pull our own parachute cords. It was frickin amazing. I love skydiving. I'll have to update about the experience more later; right now I'm gonna go pack up my stuff a little more neatly and try not to be all emo about having been to graduation today.

Ugh. Why do I always get so emotional about this crap? How come normal people can go to graduations and complain about the length of the ceremony and the excessive heat and all the other annoyances, and I go and sit alone and cry at the commencement speeches and think I've had some sort of momentous experience? Gaaaaaaaaahhhhh.
oceantheorem: (I shall not waste my days in trying to p)
GAH! SO BUSY THIS WEEK!

I've barely had time to sit in front of the computer at all this week, hence the lack of quotes. Wednesday I failed a French test, went climbing, worked on thesis, went to photo section. Thursday I went to photo class, worked on thesis, went climbing. Yesterday I went to French, had teacher yell at me about not doing homework, went climbing, worked on thesis, met with French partner. Today...

Today I went skydiving again! Yay!

This time was so much more fun than last year. Last year I was all freaked out and panicky and completely clueless, so a lot of my energy was spent trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. This time, I knew the drill and knew I would enjoy the fall, so I spent my energy on learning new stuff. My jumpmaster, the person they strapped me to, was a girl named Aviva who was really nice. She gave me an altimeter so I could monitor how high we were, and when we jumped out of the plane (we got to go first, ha!), we did somersaults. I'd asked to do them, but I still had a bit of sensory overload when we jumped, and it took me a second to figure out what was going on . My thought process: "Wow, pretty California! Oh, what's going on? Ground, plane, ground, plane, ground, plane, ground... Holy cow. AWESOME!" We got 66 seconds of freefall. She grabbed my arms and showed me how to turn. It's really neat that you can control your descent in freefall! I want to do it again! And then, under canopy, we got to do some fun little tight spirals, and the view was just absolutely gorgeous. It was quite relaxing. And the landing was super smooth too.

I can't wait to go again! I'm totally finding a place to go in Connecticut!

Ann, of course, went with me. She did a backflip right after jumping out of the plane. Her jumpmaster was really cool, he let her control the parachute. Afterwards, she and I went and got massages. Ahhh.... Can you say, "Perfect Day"?

Quotes for the last few days (in no particular order, since I lost track in the fray):
"A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." --Herman Melville in Moby-Dick
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." --William James
"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice." --Samuel Johnson
"To know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people." --Walter Pater
And today's, vellum:
"Il est plus facile de faire la guerre que la paix." --Georges Clemenceau

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oceantheorem

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