this smiley has a straight line for a mouth

feeling strange. before my father can accuse me of negativity: not bad, or upset. just slightly bemused. i have no idea where the rest of the semester will take me.

sunday we all went to great adventure. i say all, i mean the freshmen, i suppose. i spent the whole day with the arcade king (henceforth the parent of the chair, or the poc) and my roommate, who are both extreme roller coaster freaks. they had their own scale of one to ten, on which the scream machine was a...6? the scream machine? some people are born with stomachs of steel.

but i went on every single roller coaster they did and did not chicken out once. nor did i puke or anything. admittedly i did some name calling. knowing people's middle names comes in extremely handy when you find yourself hurtling down about 500 ft at 120 mph (as the poc helpfully pointed out over and over) on your stomach.

altogether it was probably the most fun i've ever had at an amusement park (somewhere my mom is outraged). i believe my favorite part was the water ride. we spent pretty much the whole time attempting to shield all four of the poc's cell phones (which look like calculators and ring more or less every five minutes) with our bodies, and i think that induced the most terror, too.

on the bus ride home, my roommate fell asleep on my shoulder, and i was half-asleep myself, when this feeling of strangeness hit me. my roommate is moving out next week. she is the only one i have finally gotten comfortable around, and she won't be here when i come home anymore. i know it sounds absurd, how attached i get to people in three weeks of knowing them, but when life is so abnormal, it's the consistincies, the people who you can talk to about the little things, that keep you moving. my father says that if i trust people so completely i'm bound to get hurt or disappointed, but i honestly don't see how else i can cope. it is very well to do your own thing. but coming to this city, i have forgotten what my own thing is. i haven't written a line since i got here, and i can't even remember what i used to dream about.

it's my life. i'm not used to that. i am so good at making up lives for other people i really have no idea what to do with my own.

so the roommate is moving out, and the poc i will apparently be seeing very seldomly. orientation is over, so there aren't many activities where the two campuses do stuff together, especially because the student councils apparently don't get along so well this year. even if they did, he's a very busy person (and that's without eating or sleeping). i'm sure i'll run into him now and then, but still. they're two of my favorite people in the college and i won't see either of them that much anymore. puts a damper on your whatsit, your monday.

i think mondays are purely theoretical. good mondays, doubly so.

so that is the reason for my detachment. today is student elections. it is also the day of my audition at the radio, of which my roommate has just commented that my program sounds like an english assignment. joy. i don't know, i sort of wanted to use songs to tell a story...just lining them up in such a way that if you listened, it would be like some kind of musical plot line. however, apparently (Gasp), not everyone thinks the way i do, and i fear i do sound like an english teacher when i attempt to explain myself. i'll have to think more on the dreaded shuttle. i really am scared about going up there by myself. i've never been uptown before.

but hey, at least i keep myself busy, right?

i think the station manager will be there. she's cool. she'll tell me what to do.

tomorrow night is the meeting for next edition of the newspaper; i had a humor column in last edition's, which is what i have decided to call it in a desperate attempt to grant it some dignity. it was actually more like, 'hey new york, you're wack because you don't sell crispix. sincerely, an out of towner.' but what can you do?

the poc also says there is a debate going on tomorrow, but i don't know where. i'll look into that, maybe. it sounds interesting.

for the rents who fear i am evading school work, i am also writing a paper for wednesday. there. that was as interesting as chalk.

as for the rest...eh, shabbos. it was alright. i guess one just gets depressed when they are pinned in the corner of the room between the table and the wall, while various girls explain to each other who they're marrying and why. there is no escape. there is no food. it wears on you.

btw, for those of you who think, like my father, that i am brooding through college and having a miserable time, i am NOT having a miserable time. geez, weren't you the people who so encouraging before i left? 'oh, freshman year is awful.' 'oh, you'll get so homesick you won't be able to sleep at night!' 'nobody likes freshman year!' it's not that i'm miserable. but the only time i write blog entries is when i have to talk through what i'm worrying about, and i have precious few confidantes. so you get dumped on. what can you do.

ok i'll admit today's entry is coming out bleak.

my roommate is homesick and also regular sick at the moment. she's asleep right now, but i wish there was more i could do for her. i know it's not my place, but i'm a little concerned about the people i like here. they don't eat and they don't sleep. some one should form a comittee. they'll hate me forever if i act like their mother, but man, sometimes i have to sit on my hands...

ok, signing off....