So! School. Almost made honor roll for the semester but for a C+ in chemistry. But that’s chemistry, so I don’t really care. 96 on the Russian exam! Because I two solid days studying for it. (That doesn’t sound like a lot until you do it.)
Saw Lord of the Rings Sunday with Christine and a guy from D&D on Sunday - awesome movie! A perfectly beautiful work. Except that now I’ve got a case of the blues Caelia always gets after seeing a movie like that – I want to be there. I want to live in a place where things make that much sense. Where there are still immortal things and where people have places they fit into. But I know that even in that purest of stories, there has to be an end to it. The age of the elves has to end and men will be in charge of Middle Earth. It’s for that same reason I haven’t read Lloyd Alexander’s “The High King” in years. There can be princesses and fair folk and farmers and high kings, but all of it has to end eventually. Things so pure as myth never last, and eventually one must choose either to sail beyond the sea or to stay on Earth and become ordinary. I’ve gotten so it makes me just heartsick to think of it. So I’ve been appeasing myself by listening to Joni Mitchell and designing Fremothians. (They’re Nature’s creations. I’ve got a half-decent site on Ellara up now, so you can go figure it out.) They’re on a separate plane, so I never have to worry about them losing their beauty and becoming human. Nature wouldn’t have created Tolkien’s elves, anyway – she’s more realistic.

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star.

So today I went to D&D for the first time since before winter break. It turned out they hadn’t done much since then, so I hadn’t really missed anything. The DM, as always, was really late, so we sat around in the hall outside the Latin room. Christine showed me the story she's writing about the creation of Sarah Brightman and I showed her the sketch of two Fremothians that made me lose all pretense of paying attention to my history teacher on Monday. It's adorable. I love Fremothians.

So we did that and waited some more, and then I started doing Russian homework. There was a boy there who knew my Russian teacher, so we talked about him and then he helped me with my homework. He was from the Ukraine, so he knew a lot of words on a crossword puzzle the teacher hadn't taught us yet. Then the DM finally got there and we got a little farther in the campaign. Actually, we really just got Slater's character (who is now an eight-foot mantis, since his last character got eaten by it) to knock down some goblin watchtowers.

After that, I went with two girls from school to the fabric store. The three of us are doing costumes for the spring play this year. It's set in China, so we had to go find patterns for mandarin collars and such. We ended up sitting in the fabric store leafing through McCall's and Simplicity pattern catalogues for about an hour. Only about a third of this was actually spent looking for Chinese clothes.
"I need to learn to sew better so I can make myself a skirt like that."
"She's waaaay too old to be wearing that dress."
"These pajama pants might work if we did them in a stiff canvas."
"I think I've got a pajama pattern at home, though. I need to make myself some pajamas. The ones in the store never fit me. I'm too tall."
"I've got the same problem, but I'm too short."
"Look at those sleeves! I wish we could do something medeival instead of all these Chinese peasants."
"Hey, he's hot. But that's a really bad shirt they've got him wearing."
"Oh my gosh, the wedding dresses! I wonder if that would work for prom . . . If I did it in blue or something . . . "

Because that's what happens when you put three teenaged girls in a fabric store. They either get lost in the calico section or they spend the whole time looking at wedding dresses.

I like this color. It’s a good one for February. I have a sweater this color, and so does Christine. And then it will be March again, so I won’t have to work out a new color for every month anymore.

January 27
February 14