C for Calendars.

In my Japanese class, we occasionally play some memory games with kanji, just for the relief of playing games in class.

Frankly, I rock those.

I have a mildly photographic memory, so identifying pictograms is pretty thoughtless.  I haven’t lost once yet, and Japanese sweets are good enough to motivate me not to ever.   On occasion, though, the prize isn’t just amaimono.  I have two pieces of very pretty wrapping paper and a calendar, won from three separate games.

The calendar is ancient.  1968, made by the travel bureau; each month has a corresponding painting from prominent artists of the time.  I started cutting out the pictures, and I’m thinking I’ll make a collage for the extremely blank span of wall above my bed.

My favorite is one of red flowers.   I’m a sucker for red flowers, but not roses; I remember how sad I was that poppies had to be used for drugs.  Suddenly, I felt like I couldn’t like them as much since they were used for bad.  I think the red flowers are poppies, though I can’t find the picture right now.  If they are, if they aren’t, no matter, they’re going in the middle of the collage.

B for Bears.

Bears. Bears. Bears?

Among the ponderings of my mind is this sudden motif. It doesn’t help to have a friend semi-nicknamed “Bear” (in a way…that’s hard to explain) and to be reading Enchantment, the novel by Orson Scott Card of which I could gush for hours. If you’ve read the book, you know the importance of bears. If you don’t, consider this your sign to read it. Read it now.

Really. Read Orson Scott Card, in general. Until you get too far into the sequels to Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow. If you were wondering, yes, it really is only downhill from something as stunning as those books. But that doesn’t mean the man couldn’t write. It means he couldn’t write about Ender or Bean anymore.

Bears. Right.

In the back of my head I almost wonder if there is some strange meaning to this theme in my life. I’m sure I could dig up a whole bunch on it, but I probably wouldn’t end up believing it anyway.

Mostly, I just thought those links were amusing. And Enchantment. Read it.

Important edit:  I almost forgot.  Da Bears.  You know, the ones who are going to beat the Colts today.  Those Bears.    -Go Chicago!

…Mata ashita.

Everyone’s Doing It

Because I have seen this more than five times in the last five days, I’m doing this.

Once tagged by this entry, the assignment is to write a journal entry with six random facts about yourself. Then, pick six of your friends and tag them, no tag backs. This explanation should be included.

Tagged? Me? No. Bored? Me? Yes.

1. I love being surrounded by a big, knitted sweater. I consider the right sweater to be of utmost importance in life. But I’ve never found mine. The sleeves are never long enough, the waist too high, too baggy…

2. I never remember the obvious details about anything. I will remember what the font and placement of a piece of information looked like on the page, and the size and feel of a book. But I won’t remember the title, the author, chapter, page number. (Good thing I remember about where in the book the passage was.) …For an example. This happens with general memories. I might not remember the argument, but I remember the brochure on the top of the desk.

3. I want to read about everything. Most of the time my work takes too long because I keep reading, about everything I research/look up/etc.

4. I’m pretty much everything I wanted to be, when I thought about being my age. I haven’t thought much before about beyond now. When I was little all I wanted to be was here. I’m okay getting older, but I still agree for the most part with five-year-old me. (Coincidentally, my golden birthday was my fifth.)

5. I hate social occasions, for the most part. Loud parties, or places where you know too many of the people and can’t get away for a minute. (Good-bye, lounges.) I don’t like oversocializing. (Funny that I’m an extrovert?) But I love being with two or three people I love, surrounded by huge amounts of people I don’t know. (Foreign countries, Chicago, etc.) Basically, I need a sense of closed intimate, “this is my life, not theirs” sort of sense. And alone time, every once in a while. Especially beautiful at the Academy, where basically quiet doesn’t exist, most times of the day.

6.   Ah, six.  I hate the number six.  (Apparently…maybe I’ll just start now)

For real?  I.  Hate.  Spiders.  I don’t mean it in the, eww, spiders are gross, I’d rather not have them by me.  I mean the get it off me get it off me oh my God I’m going to die and suddenly I’m on the other side of the house type of don’t like them.  Completely irrational fear, but hell.  I just don’t like the things.  Applies to most types of bugs.  I’m completely not shivering right now.

Batter’s up.

To play Soy Sauce Baseball, you will need:

2 people
10-20 packets of soy sauce and/or duck sauce
1 ballet flat, or other shoe of choice, preferably flat
A cumulative year of dorm life or more, or other type of insanity.  (Alcohol allowable as a replacement)

How to play Soy Sauce Baseball:
Position the players at least 3 feet from each other (with proximity comes injury, be careful).  One player, the “pitcher” should have the packets of soy sauce.  The other player will stand in batting stance, holding the shoe as a bat.  Players should agree on a goal to aim the soy sauce for, though it is perfectly permissable for the batter to take over and simply aim for the pitcher.  The rest of the rules of baseball apply, as desired.

Should a packet explode on the carpet, wet a rag.  Do not rub, blot.

Have fun!

Would you like a delicious Mintimacy?

Apparently my site can be found by searching, “A word starting with M for friendship.” Hence the post title.

Seriously, I can’t think of one. The best I’ve got is “matrimony,” and…we’ll not get started on that one.

Mating
Motherly
Miserly
Macrame

Aaand I’m completely off target. Sure.

20 invisible bucks (or Monopoly money, two words which coincidentally start with “m”) for the first person to figure out an “M” word for friendship.

…Okay, scratch that.  If you’d been in my dorm room for the past half-hour, you’d know that a word starting with M that means friendship simply does not exist, and that this has now become a contest for “best/worst sounding word that starts with M that may or may not imply friendship.”  So, Monopoly money offer stands (if only for the cool M alliteration), but now, funniest sounding word wins.