//------------------------------// // May 23 [Week Nine Begins] // Story: Silver Glow's Journal // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// May 23 Meghan was still holding my hoof when I woke up after a nightmareless night. I couldn't move around too much because of it, and I knew that nuzzling her armpit tickled her, so I just wiggled as close as I could and stretched my wing over her belly. The moment lasted until her telephone alarm sounded, then she had to let go so she could roll over and turn it off. But right after she had, she turned back on her side and brushed my mane back and then kissed me. She said that she'd dreamed that we were both in Equestria together, and I said that I hoped one day that would happen. I knew that I couldn't show her my home, but there was a lot of stuff in the village I think she would like. And it's only a couple days' train ride from Canterlot, which isn't all that far, especially since our trains go slower. She got out of bed and stretched, and I followed, fluffing out my wings and reverse-arching my back. Then I told her I was going to go flying, and she said she wished she could go with me. I told her that someday soon I was going to go skydiving and it would be fun if she came along. Her face got kinda pale, and when she said it sounded like fun, I don't think she was telling the truth. We kissed goodbye and I took my Bible back to my room then got dressed for flight. It was another perfect day outside, and I wanted to fly all the way up, but the grumpy man was on the radio again, and I didn't want to spoil his day by making him work too hard, so I kept low. I flew all the way out across the 131 highway and landed to get a drink of water at the Kal-Haven trail. Then right when I took off, I made a new friend: a little blackbird with yellow and red stripes on his wings landed on my back and rode on me all the way to Drake Road, then he flew off. I tried to tell him that if he wanted to go towards downtown Kalamazoo, I'd take him the rest of the way, but he just chirped politely and headed north. Ruth had gotten up a bit early, and I was a bit late, so I missed out on my normal shower slot. So I didn't get to go to breakfast at all, but I did have a can of anchovies and also ate two of Peggy's granola bars, then left a little note on her desk telling her that I'd get her new ones. I knew she wouldn't mind; she had already said that I could have some of her snack food if I wanted, but it was still polite to tell her I had. I was still damp when I sat down in math, but at least I wasn't late. When Sean sat down next to me he asked me why I'd missed breakfast, and I told him. He said that sometimes when they were in a hurry he and Christine took a shower together and I said that none of the girls in my dorm had been interested, but if he wanted me to join them I wouldn't mind. The showers next to his room were really big, not a little stall like we had in our dorm. His face got red and he said that he didn't mean it as an invitation, so I told him that he shouldn't have offered. I bet he would be mad if I just showed up one morning. And I bet Christine would think it was hilarious. Professor Sir Doctor Banerjee taught us fractal algorithms. He started with deterministic algorithms and then taught us random iteration algorithms, where the probabilities of points became important. Next he told us about the inverse problem, which was how to generate the equation from a fractal. He had to start by showing us the collage theorem, and since he had been explaining as he went I figured out how it worked before he got to the very end. That was really neat, because you could even do things with it like make a circle that turned into a four-part square. And then he spent the rest of class showing us how to reduce complicated fractals to only twenty-eight numbers. They had pizza for lunch, which was really nice. I broadened my horizons by trying a slice of pepperoni (I didn't want to take a whole slice because it looked really oily and I knew I wouldn't eat it all, but Peggy peeled a piece off hers and let me try it) and ate two pieces of my own: one had mushrooms and bell peppers; the other had olives and onions and broccoli. Broccoli isn't as good as a lot of flowers, and they hadn't done it any favors by overcooking it. I told Christine that Sean had invited me to shower with them, just to see what she would say. She raised an eyebrow and looked at Sean, who was shaking his head 'no.' Then she looked right back at me and said tomorrow at seven in Hoben, right by Sean's room. I told her that I had other plans for Tuesday morning, otherwise I would. And then I thought that since his showers were big enough, wouldn't it be fun to have a shower party? But I didn't think that anyone would be interested in that, so I kept my mouth shut. Joe said that group bathing was traditional in Japan, although the bath houses had a wall between the men's side and the women's side. He said that they were originally built because people didn't have water in their houses, but now they stayed popular because it was important for socialization. I'm glad that some people on Earth are still sensible about that stuff. I brought my partially-finished essay to Anthropology class. I wanted to make sure that I did well on it, so it was best that Professor Amy get a look at it right away before I got too far along. Or else I might waste a bunch of time writing something that wasn't any good at all. She talked about different classes in society, and how sometimes one class could do things that another couldn't, or wouldn't. She said that different cultures had different ways of approaching it, and then she said that in some societies immigrants did the menial jobs and sometimes that was a good deal for them and that started a bunch of debate. I think maybe she got bored with how many students weren't paying attention and so decided to say things that would get their attention. So we mostly spent class debating whether it was right to pay migrant workers less than proper citizens, and if offshore manufacturing was fair, and a bunch of other things I really didn't know anything about, but it was good to listen to. It's strange how students expect to be able to take up a different viewpoint than the teacher. I'd noticed in Conrad's class that people had different ideas about what a poem meant, and he didn't say whether anyone was right or wrong, but that was a poem. Something that spoke to the heart. This was supposed to be about fact, so wasn't there one fact that everyone agreed on? Math is so much simpler. Professor Amy said that my essay needed a lot of work. She said that I should focus more on the cultural significance of the traditions, rather than the historical context. She said while the historical context was important, it was more relevant why people were doing it the way they did it now, rather than how the tradition had originated. That was disappointing, but it was good to know that now instead of finding out when I got a bad grade. So I told her I'd fix it and asked if she minded if I kept on showing it to her. She said that nobody ever visited on her office hours that wasn't an anthropology major, and that I was welcome anytime. When I opened the door to our room, I saw Peggy was sitting at her desk wearing her little ear-speakers and I could see she was using her calculator, so I knew that she was doing her math, but what was really weird was that I could see her shoulders were bare and then I remembered that I had told her that math was easier naked and I wondered if she was actually trying it that way. Since she hadn't noticed me, I pulled the door back shut quietly and went to Ruth's room and knocked on the door and when she answered I asked to borrow her lounging pants. She got a big smile on her face and pulled her drawer open and even helped me put them on and rolled up the cuffs so that I wouldn't trip on them. I told her that I'd give them back after dinner, even though she said I could keep them for as long as I wanted. Then I went back to the room and got into my chair and had started setting out my homework before Peggy noticed that I was there. She wasn't naked, but she was just wearing her bra and panties. And she saw that I was wearing lounging pants, and we both started giggling about how we were trying something new in the hopes that it would make our work easier. I worked on my essay until dinnertime: I was going to have to check out those books again, and maybe some more, because I hadn't taken good enough notes. But now I knew what I didn't know, and that was important. And I didn't feel any smarter wearing lounging pants, and Peggy said that all she'd learned from doing math mostly naked was that it's chilly sitting around in underwear. So I guess our experiment was a failure. She got dressed and I got undressed and then we went to dinner together. They had pizza again. Christine said that she thought it was probably because they'd run short on money and couldn't afford to cook real food. Sean said that he didn't care, this was infinitely better than their buffalo wing soup and she agreed that was a good point. One thing that they never seemed to run out of was salads, and I liked that. They weren't creative and didn't involve much preparation beyond cutting up the vegetables, but there were lots of choices and nothing ever seemed to be out of season. I thought that if my tablemates liked salads better, they'd find that they were never lacking a good meal. I checked out the books I'd had before at the library. Their computer was smart enough to remember what I'd had, although I didn't know that until after I'd read off the book titles from my bibliography for the library page. I spent the rest of the evening working on my essay, until it was time to go to Durach. Aric came by to pick me up, and we wound up getting there first. He bought a bunch of chocolate-covered espresso seeds and offered me one. After I ate it, he offered me another, but I said if I did I wouldn't be able to sleep all night. He said that being a theatre major had spoiled him, and ate a handful. Then when people started showing up, he poured them out on the table and everyone grabbed for them until they were all gone. The one I ate must have helped me out, because I did really well at every game. I even went out of cards first once.