Hey, today is Presidents' Day! Who knew? Not me, certainly, and it took me until after I'd first been turned away from a computer lab and found the entire Anthropology building empty and the main office dark and shut to realize that, you know, maybe there was some sort of holiday going on. (In my defense, it's not terribly unusual for the computer lab to close for problems ranging from rebuilding to water on the stairs, so I didn't immediately leap to the conclusion that today was anything other than that.) And tomorrow is Mardi Gras! It is one of the goals of my life to eventually spend Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but I don't think I'm going to make it there by tomorrow.

Last night, I had dinner with the other first-years in my department. I've complained before that I never see any of these people; the problem is that Anthropology is divided into four fields (cultural, physical, linguistics, and archaeology) and given that I am the only archaeologist, I'm taking entirely different classes from the rest of them (nearly all cultural), spending time with different people in different places, and generally never so much as happening across them in the hallway. I've long been aware that there must be social activities going on that I was excluded from, because when people move to a new city where they know no one, it's natural to congregate together. But short of hunting down and assaulting a near stranger and demanding to be included, there wasn't much I could do about it.

Anyway, none of that matters, because clearly I've now managed to insert myself into the group. I probably would have appreciated this far more six months ago, when I would have been less inclined to notice how boring most of these people are, and if it would be rude yet to go home. Though I think I would have been less irritated if we had not managed to follow the "places in New York a 'petite, 120-pound white woman'* should not go alone" conversation with "women need boyfriends so they have someone to fix their computer". And it was women saying these things! Blah.

(Hahahaha! I'm sitting in my coffeeshop right now, and someone from this group just came over to say hello to me. Thankfully I'm reading Dinosaur Comics in another window, and had that maximized, so he did not see my evaluation of his interestingness. Though actually, his boyfriend was the coolest person there, and told me all about how he is learning to make cheese so that he will be able to support himself and trade for other goods once civilization collaspses. Why am I in so many discussions about the collapse of civilization recently? Hopefully none of them consistute accurate foretellings.)

Also, on Saturday I finally finished the Swordspoint story I've been writing forever, despite it really not being that complicated. Just pointing it out because I know I shouldn't post things at 3am if I want people to see them, but I was impatient.

*That would be a quote, not my phrase

It didn't snow very much; we didn't get much more than an inch, at most. It's been doing a bit of an off-and-on thing for the last few hours, so I suppose we might end up with a little more, though I don't expect much. Not that I'm surprised. Weather never seems to turn out as dramatically as the forecasts predict.

I haven't been in snow- actual snow, which has accumulated on the ground- for a long time, since Thanksgiving of '05, I think. It's funny how you forget little things, but which seem so familiar as soon as you experience them again. Like how walking in snow feels like walking in sand, that slight give and sink when you step into it, and the small extra effort it takes to step up and out, as compared to solid ground. Or the appropriate hop-skip-goose step motion for getting over the snow piled and plowed along curbs and at street corners.

Today I have discovered that my boots have a hole in the sole, which I'd known, actually, but had not realized how far it had penetrated; I'd thought they were still waterproof. This is the third pair of boots New York has destroyed in six months! Also, tiny children who don't even come up to your waist are nonetheless capable of having a powerful impact, in they happen to slam into you while escaping from snowballs.

The snow's very pretty. It's already turned to brown slush in the streets, but on roofs and balconies and in fenced gardens, it's still pure white. The sky has that low, solid quality where there's no way to distinguish one cloud from another or even tell where the sun is, every inch of it the same polished, shallow color. Grace Church, which is a lovely, small gothic-looking building built of stone, complete with flying buttresses and a tall, pointed spire, had the thinnest layer of snow along its ledges and the upper protrusions of the bigger squares of stone, like an outline to emphasize its distinctiveness from the gray sky and more modern buildings. Union Square was like some holiday postcard, all the plain, severe colors and look of winter: the black, straight line of trees and bare branches and the deep, wet green of the dome and rails of the subway station, above the flat, undisturbed blanket of snow, set off from the streets and traffic on all sides.

I'd walk up to Central Park, just to see it today, if I didn't have (another) paper to write for tomorrow. So, it's probably better if I stay in this warm coffeeshop, crowded with discarded scarves and coats and snow-melt bootprints on the wooden floor. Besides, it's Valentine's Day! I should stay here and tell you all how much I love you, and that you should have silly cards and chocolates and whatever else you like.

ETA: 'pdjskhdfhj what the hell, LJ; it took me five hours to be able to post this. Five hours which I have definitely not spent writing that paper. I fully expect free time or icons or something from this.

Oh, my coffeshop. I guess I understand the desire to have poets and musicians and whatever come and perform, but I'd really prefer it if you didn't. Particularly if they're going to read weirdly fetishized stories about white girls becoming geisha in 1860's Japan. I keep trying not to pay attention, and yet the terribleness of it distracts me every other sentence from the article I'm reading.

Though perhaps I'm just bitter because you kicked me out of the best seat in the place so that you could set up the stage. Or because you subsequently spent several minutes testing the sound system with what I'm convinced was an mp3 of the exact sound your skeleton imploding would create. Played at full volume. Even having my headphones on as loud as they would go didn't help escape from the deep bass feel of that; I cringed in time with everyone else in this place.

I could also be bitter because the university's network hates me and insists I'm not registered, thereby keeping me from accessing a site I need, or because it is 20 degrees out and supposed to snow over the weekend. Global warming, why have you forsaken me? It's one of those unbelievably clear and stark winter days, where the light glares and the sky is blue as paint or crayons, but the air's so cold it hurts your eyes.

sjfh;hjdfh;hdwhat. Poet-girl has just announced, "I was very reluctant to write about 9/11, you know? It just, it just feels so large, and I didn't want to take that on. It was like a movie." Man, I sympathize with not wanting to write about that event, and I can think of hundreds of reasons to be hesitant about it, but because it was like a movie is really, really not one of them.

I finally found a coffeeshop that I like. Which is as a good thing, as I was starting to worry for the state of New York's soul, if after a month I was unable to locate one single place where the most of the people were there in order to, you know, drink coffee and work.

I'm not picky- I think- but I like my regular hangouts to have certain features. I've been trying out every place I happened across, but inevitably they'd turned out to be showcases for people to display their new clothes, or new date, or new gossip; places that were more about seeing and being seen than about being there. I want an atmosphere that doesn't mind if you're there alone for long periods of time (with bonus points, in descending order, for free wifi, comfortable chairs/couches in addition to tables, and cheap coffee, but those are really extras).

So there's the first step accomplished; now I just need to find people to come here with me.