Loji and Chee

Loji woke to find a lark perched on his forehead yelling about something.

“GET UP GET UP GET UP!” it squeaked.

“What is it friend?” Loji said sleepily. “Hm, you’re not from my grove.”

“GET UP GE-- OH you’re up!” it said excitedly.

“That I am.” he said, “What’s the rumpus?” Now that he looked, the forest did seem to be a little uneasy today.

“Chee’s family! Chee was away! Overnight, Talc turned!” The lark was frothing himself into a panic.

“What?” Talc’s been turned?” Loji sprung to the top of the nearest tree and the lark fluttered up after him.

Indeed, across the burn scar he could see an air of corruption drifting up from the heart of Talc’s grove. He’d heard about this sort of thing. It wasn’t good.

“When did this happen?” he asked the lark.

“Chee doesn’t know!”

“Stop talking about yourself in third person, it’s weird.”

“Che-- ah, sorry.” said Chee, “Ch- I get excited...”

“That’s ok Chee, we all do.” said Loji. “Anyway, what were you saying?”

“Right!” said Chee, “I was out visiting an old friend in another grove overnight, when I came back awhile ago I saw the corruption from afar! I came as fast as I could.”

Down below, a fox poked her head out of a nearby hole, “What’s going on Loji?” she called.

“Talc’s been turned.” he called back.

“Uh-oh.” she climbed out of her den and strode over to the base of their tree. “I heard the corruption burnt out years ago?”

“Uh-oh is right.” said Loji as he drifted back down from the tree, “ And I thought so, but that was before I can remember... looks like I chose a bad day to sleep in.”

“You sleep in every day.” said the fox. Loji ignored her.

“What are we going to do?” said Chee, panic creeping back into his voice.

Loji looked wistfully at that patch of shade where he’d been sleeping peacefully moments before. “I guess we’ll go tell Ada.”

“We?” said Chee, aghast, “Ada scares me. You go.”

Loji laughed, “Come on, it’s your grove we’re telling her about! Plus Ada isn’t that scary, she’d just intense.”

---

Ada is kinda scary, thought Loji as he looked up at the wizened dryad glowering down at him.

He sat cross legged amongst the massive aspens at the heart of Ada’s grove. When he and Chee told her she had first been shocked, but now she was mad they hadn’t told her earlier.

“The moment I found out I flew as fast as I could to Loji.” said Chee.

“I know.” said Ada, “You did what you should have.” Chee let out a bird pitched sigh of relief. “But Loji, Talc’s heart is closest to yours, and you have a clear view because of the burn scar. Why didn’t you notice sooner?”

Loji shrugged.

“He was asleep!” offered Chee.

“Haha, what? You don’t know that...” said Loji, turning to Ada, “He wasn’t even there!”

“I knew it!” said Ada, “Loji, you are laziest dryad I’ve ever heard of.”

“Hey-hey, woah hold on, you’re, uh... pretty old.” said Loji, “You’ve probably heard of a whole bunch of dryads.”

“And you’re the laziest!” snapped Ada.

“Oh.” said Loji.

Ada turned away from them and began pacing between her trees.

“So... what are we gonna do?” asked Loji.

“You’re going to go back to your grove and keep an eye on Talc from afar.” She said. “Even though he won’t make a move yet try not to fall asleep.”

“I-- oh alright.” said Loji. As he stood, Chee, who had been perched on his shoulder, squaked in protest and puffed out his yellow feathered chest.

“Meanwhile I’ll call the others for a meeting this evening.” said Ada.

“You’re having a meeting without me?” said Loji.

“Yes.” said Ada, “Don’t look so indignant.”

“Well then.” said Loji. He turned and, followed by Chee, bounded out of Ada’s heart, trying to look as indignant as he possibly could.

I kind of like the name "Winter in the Dorms

As the title of the blob, it was literally what the blog was going to be about. But now I'm starting to like the idea of it as the name for just a general blog.

Which is what I think I'll turn this into. I'll just post whatever here.

Running in the cold

Right around this time last year I was training for the Colfax Marathon. It was part of a high school project, and fortunately I had the class it was for during first period. So for a long time, every other day I would run 10k to school. It was great fun, but hella cold. Like, snowstorm cold. So I bought some leggings and a good long sleeved running shirt.

The shirt and leggings haven't seen much use recently thoug, because the weather's been pretty nice, and I've kind of avoided running in bad weather.

So today, when I donned my cold weather garb thinking that since there's snow on the ground it was cold enough to warrant it, I was in for a surprise.

I ended up being hot. Thankfully there was a sort of critical mass of hotness, where my sweat was cooling me down enough to keep me just under "uncomfortably hot".

That's what I did today.

The checklist

I've found that when I don't have any outside obligations, it's kinda hard to make myself do anything at all. This was kind of a problem, because I want to do lots of stuff, but man, that bed just looks soooo comfy...

I meditated on this and decid- nah, kidding. It took me 20 seconds to come up with a half assed checklist including such difficult tasks as "Take a shower" and "Make lunch".

But showering and making lunch weren't things I was making the checklist for. I'm more concerned with the "Run 5 miles," "Write blog post," and, "write at minimum one page."

Dr. Todd's adventure

The strange creature snapped up Dr. Todd and trotted off with him clutched between its jaws.

"Oh dear." groaned the doctor after realizing his predicament, "Wouldn't you kindly put me down?"

The creature said nothing. Its humid breath rushed around his shell and fogged in the cold air. Doctor Todd suspected that he might have gagged if he was possessed of a better sense of smell.

"Hold on a minute!" said the doctor to himself suddenly, "I've studied these creatures: It must be a penguin who has mistaken me for a rock, and now plans to add me to his nest!"

"I'm not a penguin." said the penguin.

"AAH!" screamed Todd, "A talking penguin!"

"Are you done Todd?" asked the penguin which insisted it wasn't.

"Are we not in fact in the arctic?" asked doctor Todd.

"No. We're in new England. Also I'm not a penguin." said the penguin

"No... I'm quite certain we are in the arctic, and that you're a penguin." said the doctor indignantly, "I do have a PhD you know."

"Penguins live in the Antarctic, Todd"

"Yes alright Jerry." snapped Todd. "Can't I have a little fun every once in awhile? Christ."

Jerry chuckled and trotted back to their yard. On the porch a worried looking boy was peering into the flower pots

The boy looked up, "There you are Jerry! Good boy! What have you got there?"

Jerry dropped Dr. Todd on the porch. The boy shrieked with excitement.

"Mom! Look! Jerry found the doctor!" yelled the boy through the screen door.

"It's a good thing we have Jerry." called back his mother, "That turtle gets lost so often it's like he thinks he's an adventurer or something!"

Jerry wagged his tail, and watched as the happy boy carried Todd, who was grumbling something about how he WAS an adventurer, inside.

I went to Texas.

Sorry, I think I forgot to mention that I was going to Texas for the week...

but I did write some short stories while I was there, so I'll be posting those tomorrow and the day after.

Rations

My roommate and I shared a kitchen with one other pair of roommates. I was the only one of the four who stayed, so I've got the kitchen to myself now. Which is nice I suppose. But while I do like and know how to cook. I've never been in a situation quite like this. I have to buy all my own food. Also, I have to plan actual meals! How weird!

Joking aside, it really is weird for me. My girlfriend and I went shopping and bought some stuff on sale.

• Cheap pancake mix. (It's like $2 for a whole box with 14 servings)
• Stuff for tuna salad. (there was some pricing shenanigans going on there.)
• Some frozen shrimp.
• Some other stuff

Aside from what we bought I have all the stuff laying around:

• Some squash.
• A sweet potato. 
• A whole bunch of peanut butter and other assorted things of that nature (jam, honey)
• And my multivitamin protein mix thing that I bought awhile ago.

With the tuna, we were about to get a larger tin rather than several smaller tins, but we looked again at the prices and realized that the exact same amount of tuna in smaller tins would cost half as much as one large tin. Needless to say we bought the smaller tins, and they were priced quite well for about 50 cents each.

Next time I go shopping I think I'll swing by hMart and pick up a box of their bulk noodles. Even though they're imported they are far cheaper than the stuff offered in most stores around. Each box has like 30 packs, and I think the boxes are about $8. However, now that I think about it that sounds too good to be true, so I'll have to report back on that. Other than that, I think I'll pick up a container of their kimchi and go with the not super budget type of pancake mix. You know, the type which calls for milk and eggs, not just water. Plus then I'll have eggs milk! The milk will make smoothies with all that frozen fruit I have much easier. Also some beans, and rice.

Like Harry in Hogwarts.

Although finals have been over for about a week now, this is only the end of my second day or so in the dorms. I spent thanksgiving at my grandmother's house in a nearby city and have only recently returned. I've only been here two days, and I'm already bored enough to write a blog about living in the dorms. It just goes to show how much free time I have. Which, come to think of it, doesn't bode well for how interesting a read this will turn out to be.

I thought about doing a vlog. Then I realized that I don't have a webcam on my desktop, and my laptop sucks so I avoid using it whenever possible.

So that was out the window.

Now, here I am, starting a blog. Something I've done four times now. Hopefully this will go better than the last ones.

My first attempt at a blog was begotten out of boredom in a 9th grade AP human geography course. It was on the strategies being used in the lower leagues of StarCraft II. I try not to think about it.

Then I tried to use a blog as a memory bank during my time as a foreign exchange student in Switzerland. And while some of the stuff on there is alright (I might copy and paste my favorite stuff into later posts), I ended up totally falling off with my writing because I got so sucked into life there.

Finally, I started a blog as part of a high school project in order to chronicle my progress in training for a marathon. As with all the other ones, I started off strong, but then fell off in my posts, which isnt to say I fell off in my training. In fact, even though I didn't meet the virtual goal of posting every time I ran, I did meet the goal of running the marathon. Marathons are hard guys.

I hope this has instilled confidence in you, dear readers, that I'll manage to keep up the updates.

Which is obviously a joke, because my track record indicates that exactly the opposite will happen. But I have faith in myself here, because I seriously have a lot of free time and nothing to do. There's no one around, and the eerie silence of the dorms is made almost oppressive by the cold, snowy weather outside. I need something to do to occupy my time, so I might as well do something productive. I want to write during the whole six week break (5 weeks left at this point.) Maybe I'll improve, maybe I'll just get used to writing every day. Either way, it'll help with the two writing classes I'm taking next quarter.

In addition to writing this blog, I'm just going to write. Short stories, maybe I'll post them here. I dunno.

Part of the reason I wanted to stay was that Harry Potter stayed in the dorms over winter break in the books. So here I am, Harry Potter in my Hogwarts. Except I'm not named Harry. I'm not a wizard: I'm an economics student. And this isn't a cozy castle: it's a silent, Orwellian looking tower with low ceilings, and narrow corridors dimly lit with flickering florescent tubes.