I found these glasses outside a bar in Columbus and altruistically pocketed them, anticipating creating a craigslist: lost and found post later that night. I imagined a romantic scene of some bookish, absentminded type, squinting at his computer monitor to learn that his beloved frames were not lost forever, that soon he could reunite his eyeballs with their better half.

I've gotten lots of responses to my post but so far no inquirer has been a match for the poor dejected specs (dejecs?). Every e-mail in my inbox seems a chance at ocular bliss, and after so many near misses, it's beginning to really bum me out.

Mostly, though, I'm surprised at how many people have responded to a post for glasses found on a specific night outside a specific bar. What the hell, Columbus? Why can't this town juggle drinking and corrective eyewear?

So getting into this one class was the difference between a summer in Athens to complete one stinking four credit hour class and a summer in Columbus rife with employment, productivity, happy hour patios, friends, and all the lovely things that accompany population density. I was turned away several times by the very irritable and curmudgeonly instructor last quarter. It felt a lot like trying to talk to the gatekeeper in Emerald City. He insisted the class was full. When I pointed out that the computer showed availability for the class, he looked puzzled, tapped at his keyboard for a moment, then turned to me to say, "Well, not anymore!" This happened several times and each time was more embarrassing and frustrating than the last. Who rang that bell?

So when I stood outside his office today for one last attempt to fenagle a spot on the class roster, I was steeling myself for an epic battle. Keeping in mind the loneliness and eye-scratching-out boredom that would accompany an Athens summer, I was prepared to make this visit as socially awkward as necessary to ensure enrollment. I'm talking curling up in fetal position on the floor until he signed my class permission slip. I'm talking plugging my ears and screaming and making raspberries, making myself throw up and then telling uncomfortable stories about my childhood.

So I walked in, introduced myself unnecessarily, and stated my rehearsed case. He smiled at me and said he was sure there was a spot for me in the class, and do I have a pink slip he can sign?

Really? Not to mix metaphors here, but it was like I walked into Dr. Jekyll's office having only met his other, less personable, self. Sitting in his office, I began to sweat. Am I trapped in one of my anxiety dreams right now? This shouldn't be so easy. I brought my crossbow with me for no reason.

So I got into the class. How about that? Now that's a horse of a different color!

My landlady lived in this house for many years; first with her partner and after they divorced she began renting out the spare rooms to grad students. When she first showed me the house last spring, she was weepy at the thought of leaving it at all, moving in with her new mate in Columbus, abandoning the house she put so much effort into (it was uncomfortable). But, really, it'd be remiss to say that she's abandoned this house because vestiges of her old life are everywhere, driftwood and fossils and weird hippie art still adorn the windowsills and mantel. The basement houses backpacking equipment, tents, and a banana seat bike among many, many other odd things. Because she and B are old friends, she feels comfortable occasionally "dropping by" on a weekend to gather up some of her things that have suddenly become necessary and commit random acts of yardwork. At times, it feels very much like I'm crashing at an estranged great aunt's house: so impermanent, and I'm hesitant to move any little baubles and trinkets around.

Because this is my first (last, but first) year living in this place, the changing of the seasons keeps taking me by surprise. Surprised by sugar maple set aflame overnight in pink leaves last fall. Surprised by the view of the hills from my bedroom once the trees in the backyard lost all their leaves. Today I returned to Athens to find hyacinths, tulips, and daffodills lining the front yard and what appears to be asparagus and rosemary keeping a toehold on the steep face of the side yard.

I feel like I'd have to live here for several years to really know this place at all. Still, driving back today, I was negativity and dread on four wheels, wanting anything but to stay for another three months in this godforsaken town.

Surprise produce is enough to snap me out of a sour mood. Hello, asparagus. I will broil you with lemon juice and olive oil and eat you in front of the TV.

Erin hosted a brilliant St. Morrissey Day Feast. Noisy tables and way too much food is what's making me dread the trip east on 33 tomorrow.

Take me out tonight/where there's music and there's people and they're young and alive

First attempt at lemon meringue pie: B+

I fantasize about how when I'm out of school I'll have time to bake things and read classics and go for long runs through as-yet-unseen neighborhoods. I really hope that happens.

This will be the first fall that I don't go "back to school". Even though I'm a nerd at heart, I can't help but find that fact to be exhilarating.

Another great place to find gezelligheid is at a dive bar where your friends' band is playing. Even if their name shares a phonemic resemblance to a popular brand of personal lubricant.

It's been a tough couple of days. I keep being reminded of that Woody Allen quote from Annie Hall; I think it's something like "life is full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness - and it's all over much too quickly."

What else is there to do but to surround yourself with gezelligheid and get in the storm cellar with your friends while the winds outside swirl everything all to hell.

And that's what I've been doing. Seeing Ana and Lauren was so good I wanted to melt them down and shoot them up between my toes.

I've been working in an airport bar/it's like Christmas on a submarine

I hung out at LAX for a while before I caught my flight, beer-ing, writing, and catching up with my mom on the phone.

After my flight from LA to Detroit, I will never complain about comparatively trivial airplane inconveniences ever again. This was truly the worst flight of my life and seeing Nick in his scrubs waiting for me outside the security gate in Columbus made me want to sob with relief.

I have to admit it's pretty weird to cross the country by plane, plant my feet on strange soil, put new pictures in my eyeballs and new air in my lungs, and still feel basically at home in the company of good friends.

Estate sale. Just rifling through a dead Armenian couple's earthly possessions. No big deal.

There's something quietly heartbreaking about getting to know a dead person while walking around his house, poring over jokey coffee mugs and shelves of books about the USSR, kite-making, and animal procreation.

Another resolution: donate at least a third of my stuff when I get home. Having stuff doesn't make you happy and you can't take it with you when you die.

Spring resolutions to take home from LA:

Keep fresh flowers in the house
Frequent the Athens farmer's market

I get to Los Angeles around 1:30 pm today and take a shared ride van to Los Feliz. Michelle has hidden the brass key to their building under a silver planter and the silver key to their apartment under a can of paint. I felt like I was following a treasure map, with X marking a cute, tidy, well-lit apartment.

Mark and Michelle were still at work so I got some writing done while the cats not-so-subtly spied on me from around corners, under chairs, etc.

FINALS: SLAYED.

Does seeing pictures in your beer foam carry the same soothsaying power as, say, seeing pictures in your tea dregs? Because I'm pretty sure the skull here means certain death.

This is how B deals with end-of-term stress, ashtrays blooming on both porches. I wonder if this is such a bad thing. Yeah, yeah, lung cancer, emphysema, but I bet he doesn't bite his nails til they bleed like a certain Nervous Nancy you may know.

My end-of-term stress shows up when my bedroom goes from "creatively functional disarray" to "a crazy person lives here".

Hell yeah, crocus. Way to be a self-starter. See if you can get some of your slacker friends to show up to work one of these days. Tulips, daffodills, I'm lookin' at you. We're not running a charity here.

So I'm going to California this week for the first time (Really? Really.) and I have to admit that my perception of L.A. life is kind of a cartoonish appropriation of that party scene in Annie Hall. You know, where Jeff Goldblum makes a phone call because he forgot his mantra. I feel like I should sort of "study" for my trip, so I've been listening to a lot of Gram Parsons and Beach Boys.

Los Angeles, brace yourself for my blinding paleness.

Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society...

It was good to catch a session of Science Reading Club, but the most important thing that happened today was that I captured on film the face of Jonnie Ryan after running into him at Bodega. I was pretty sure that after I clicked the shutter, the only thing that would show up in the image was a bluish burst of light.

Talking with Jonnie reminded me that I need to see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and generally reacquaint myself with Tennessee Williams. Something I appreciate about getting older is excitement about important cultural things I haven't yet experienced. Like, when I was a teenager, and I found out about some seminal band or poem previously unknown to me, I'd beat myself up over it. "I should know every Clash song and every Ginsberg poem and be able to adroitly reference them!" - the sort of spazzy mindset you have when you are someone with a curfew who must trench-crawl up the stairs when breaking it. Now that I'm a little more evened out, I'm just thrilled that there are a million cultural stones still unturned by me, enough to dazzle myself for several lifetimes.

A remarkably cute shot of Matt O. and Ana after a remarkably excellent Tin Armor show.

Dancing with friends was the perfect salve for the wound of getting my first ever speeding ticket heading west on 33. What an ugly blot on my once-immaculate driving escutcheon!

Carabar is sort of inconveniently located for wintertime revelry. I can't wait until it's warm enough that everyone can ride bikes all the way over to Olde Towne East in a big pack.

Signs like these little friends popping up and the sound of squirrels loudly figuring out how to have sex outside my window in the morning - that's what's got me singing that "Little April Showers" song from Bambi around the house when I think it's empty.

I think it's a shame that the weather as a conversation topic has been ghettoized into the realm of petty and uncreative. Sometimes the weather is what I want to discuss animatedly and passionately, even when I have "better" things to talk about.

Last night, OU's child welfare in Africa conference kicked off with an African dance recital. I was so captivated and moved by the whole thing that I decided that I think I want to take lessons in Columbus this summer. I know how absurd that sounds, considering I'm Easter-lily-white, regularly manage to "fall up" the stairs, and I'm pretty sure the silverware rattles in its drawer whenever I clomp through the kitchen. No weight of empirical evidence will stop me! Please concede to only laughing with me. I would appreciate it.

I was so swept up in the performance that it didn't occur to me to take any pictures, which is probably for the best. Have you seen that photograph of the Obamas at the inauguration ball where everyone in attendance is holding up their camera, watching their LCD display, instead of the First Couple? Sometimes you gotta just be somewhere.

This is green PBR from the bar later, where I celebrated B's admittance to doctoral school. Since I've never had the chance to celebrate St. Patty's Day the way most people in my peer group do, this was novel and hilarious to me. Everyone's amusement with my first encounter with green beer led to people continually buying beers for me, just to hear me cry "This beer is green!". Oy.

You know that Belle and Sebastian lyric "If I could do one near-perfect thing, I'd be happy"? Today's got me feeling so completely mediocre. Ever get struck by the thought that you are perhaps not special in any way? Blame it on finals week approaching, but what a drag.

I went out for drinks with my cohort tonight, an activity that happens every Wednesday that I've been mostly truant for this quarter for no particular reason. I got to the bar at around 7:30 and everyone looked up and enthusiastically said "Hey Evie!" and Mike grabbed a glass and poured me a beer. A chair was produced for me, and then someone said "We were just talking about how funny you were in class today!" Aw, man. Is there any better fix for a case of the poor-mes?

Sunday, Nick was judging debate rounds all day and I didn't really have any homework to worry about not doing. I sat on his roof, hardly reading over final paper requirements, wondering how to fill my time.

I pedaled over to Lauren's and we walked her dog, Sammy, around Como-Clinton Park and then biked to the Dube and met her and Andrew for lunch. Picking up Nick's "usual" as carryout, I met him at Page Hall with his cheese-y potato-y bounty and drew silly pictures on a napkin while sitting in on one of his debate rounds.

It felt like a day snatched out of my life from two years ago, presented for me to live again. It felt like I was cheating at the 3rd dimension, stealing back time that wasn't mine anymore. I hope I didn't accidentally engage in some Faustian bargain, cause my fiddle playing ain't so hot these days, and I was using this soul.

As part of my one man snail mail revival, I wrote a letter to my grandparents a few weeks ago. Honestly, with school deadlines and FutureStress/SadSounds all around me, I forgot that I even did it until I received a letter back from my grandma in today's mail. What a lovely thing getting a letter is; someone thinks of you in the past and their love is trapped in a sort of purgatory, passed between hands and sorted with machines, until it clunks in your mail slot in the present, often when you don't expect it (and really need it).

I thought it was funny that I, Bloggy McBlogerson 22-year-old who writes research reports on New Media, wrote my grandparents a letter on cute stationery in my intense chickenscratch (described by amateur graphologist friends as indicative of mental instability) and my tech-savvy 80-year-old grandma makes her own stationery by printing a cool nature image onto cardstock and types the whole thing, including the addressed envelope. How hip is she? The hippest.

Live from Nick's roof: Homework.

Not pictured: Tiny little nutella?-stuffed hippo candies from Spain because I ate them all.

This is Herman.

He found me and Ana on the way to Viking last night and he is the friendliest little devil you ever met.

Ana and I decided that a white cat crossing one's path does not necessarily mean good luck, but it does have the ability to negate bad luck.

My dad made the mistake of taking me to Germany with him when I was nine. I spent the first several days there with a sensory intake hangover, my little nine-year-old mental cogs whirring in cut time, flip-flip-flipping like a mechanical train schedule turning over. My worldview was being molded so quickly and intensely that it was visceral; it thudded in my gut at night when I tried to fall asleep in the sea of down comforters in Oma Anni's guest bedroom. The third day I was there I finally came to grasp that everything about my quotidian life, from the things I ate for breakfast to the things I learned in school, all of it was cultural, not some inflexible mandate of natural order. It had never occurred to me until then that I was part of any culture at all.

Since Dad took me to Meinerzhagen, the travel bug got its hooks in me deep and now it seems the only way to get me to stay still is with the promise of being on the go again soon.

I haven't been on a proper vacation since Nick and I stayed in a cabin in Asheville, North Carolina, whitewater rafting and eating every incarnation of soy protein the city had to offer. That was in early July - nearly eight months ago!

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm looking forward to seeing Mark and Michelle in L.A. so much that I'm even excited to wait in airports to get there.

You know what I love about warm weather? Every minor activity becomes exponentially more satisfying with the ability to do it outside. I'm gonna drink this beer...OUTSIDE. I'm gonna read this book...OUTSIDE. I'm gonna take a nap...OUTSIDE.

Nick and I played chess with open windows and cold drinks. Congratulations, Nick, you are the first boyfriend to successfully teach me chess. My younger self never had the patience to sit still long enough to bother. I am a chess-fiend right now so I am really going to need my friends to be up for chess games on porches with beers this spring.

Remember my big fat paper? I may have mentioned it. I TURNED IT IIIN YOU GUYS.

You know that opening scene in Adventures in Babysitting? Most of the time girls really don't spend stolen moments alone dancing around in their underwear, singing into hairbrushes, and mugging for the mirror. Those that do are probably performing (ha) some archetype of Sassy Independent Girls cobbled together from movies and TV shows. And Rob Fleming was right in his revelation that girls save their sexy underwear for nights they know they're going to sleep with somebody. Sorry, dudes without sisters. We really aren't strange adorable Soma cubes waiting for some sterling paladin to solve us.

That being said, I guess sometimes when I'm trying to avoid writing a paper I do indulge in trying on all kinds of ridiculous outfits and then leaving them all in a pile on my floor when I remember that I was boiling some water downstairs.

Elbow, interrupted: Dedicated to fourteen-year-old me who thought bruises were like, so beautiful.

So, Saturday night, a very sober me wiped out magnificently down the basement steps and not an hour later I very nearly fell down another set of steps but managed to catch myself on the handrail before I further bruised the quickly blooming bruise already on my ass. I have been subject to Dick Van Dyke-ian pratfalls left and right these days and can't for the life of me figure out why I can't cross a room without ending up like ice skating Bambi.

This morning in getting dressed and ready I rolled my ankle not once but twice walking around my room. My mother would say that this is because I have things all over the floor, but I reject that explanation because up until a couple of weeks ago I was very deft at maneuvering around all the things on my floor.

I asked Nick in December whether he would pick a winter made up of only ten-degree sunny days or forty-degree drizzly gray days. He would pick the first one, so would I, I mean, is there even really a choice to be made there? My indomitable spirit will not be crushed by a seven degree windchill when the sky is the most life-affirming, brilliant shade of blue.

At this point, Winter is kind of the creepy kid who hangs around the high school after he graduates, high-fiving the new seniors and schmoozing with the cool teachers. Give up the ghost, Winter. You're not in charge here anymore.

P.S. I need to remember that wearing sunglasses does not make me invisible, and that, yes, people can tell that I'm staring at them.

This sour cream slathered breakfast burrito was the highlight of my day.

I tried to participate in Ohio University's ride-sharing forum to get back to Columbus and it was by all estimates, a failure. Sjannie, shuttling back and forth between Athens and Columbus to see Ryan, takes passengers using Rideboard all the time and has found it to be a community-building way to afford gas and all that crunchy stuff.

Anyhow, my driver was an hour late to the agreed upon meeting spot of a McDonald's parking lot and I was crammed in the back of a two-door sports car with two other passengers while the driver flipped on his police-radar-detector-thing and generally drove like he had a death wish for us all. I couldn't help but think, "I'm gettin' too old for this shit." Oh yeah, and he charged EACH passenger FIFTEEN DOLLARS for gas one-way from Columbus to Athens. Forgive my righteous indignation, but THAT IS A RACKET. I sublimated my rage through passive-aggressive text messaging, of course. Text messaging that I was barely capable of performing given that the dude sitting next to/on me had his elbows in my lap. And he smelled like cat food.

Given this "negative energy" if you will indulge such terminology, I would like to construct a list of awesome things happening in the future to fix my mood:

-I just booked tickets to Los Angeles to see Mark and Michelle in three weeks.
-Erin is having a buttoned-up dinner party at the end of March. I enjoy the juxtaposition of acting like a crude jackass while I'm wearing heels.
-Garotas Suecas, most awesome Brazilian garage punk band ever, is playing in Athens, Ohio of all places, March 29th
-Nick and I are seeing Steven Patrick Morrissey in concert on April 1st. The sound you just heard was my sixteen-year-old heart exploding.
-Seeing LESLIE DAWN FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE LIKE CHRISTMAS at Sjanneke's bachelorette party in early May.

Okay, I feel much better. California sunshine, you are but three final papers away.