i can't believe the difference a day makes. apparently blogger made me a Blog o' Note around 8/3. before that, i was averaging fewer than 20 visitors a day. immediately thereafter, the number jumped, and it's been escalating since: yesterday, the number was 340. over a thousand for the week. nuts! but exciting --

yesterday, my skool day ended at 12:35 and my weekend began. ross and i went back to the barn and made sandwiches to music and looked over pictures. i was near-giddy: it felt so good to leave campus, go to a house, pace through a kitchen, eat what you want, and sing, loudly. the glories of off-campus life.
the downside, of course, is that there are fewer social interactions. i decided to take some initiative to remedy that. i went back on campus and stayed there til 10:30, finding people to talk to and talking to them. jolly and kenny, a friend of ours from last year, bought me dinner in sharples, our dining hall, which strengthened my bond to our kitchen in the barn. god that place is a mess. i was always intimidated by the crowds and the noise. guess i'm such a bashful country girl at heart.
ruby's reading this as we speak -- he's next to me in the library. i scrolled down and showed him the descriptions of folk and he got so excited that he was in the cast of characters that his face turned salmon and he giggled. silly ruby.
i haven't seen too much of him this semester so far. between macking on the new freshman class and his 2-credit history seminar, i think he's been swamped. but we've run into each other and he always seems happy to see me, which i appreciate. i think b/c the barn-folk are so similar in a lot of ways, it's good for me to visit folk of a very different stripe. ruby is one; stefanie, who i got to chill w/ last nite, is another. she shares my birthday, i discovered. that's a first for me. i always thought the only such were edgar degas, lizzie borden, and george mcgovern. i was quite excited.
but apart from that, she's sweet and earnest and down-to-earth, which are some of the characteristics i admire so much in ben. a complete lack of pretense. last nite, when i returned from my long-ass stint on campus,
i capped off my Day of Communication w/ a stopin to see mariah and finally got back to the barn. ross and becca were playing Boggle, except w/ a 5-by-5 board. i hadn't played since i was 9 but jumped in anyway. i got trounced, of course. becca was raised in an intensely-competitive game playing family and ross is naturally excellent at them. i got upset after we finished. the competitiveness bothered me, as did losing, as did just generally not being good. but most of all the attitude. i tend to feel, whenever i play games w/ them, that they think i'm stupid. maybe it's projection. i think it's part-and-parcel of the whole them calling me the child of the family thing. i don't know. it made me very glad to have ben and it made me miss home.
but i slept over there (at ben's) and this morning, joe came to the barn. i remembered how much i like him: he's such a good guy. that's all i need to do, keep finding different people. keep my mind off of missing my friends at home, with whom i don't have to prove anything or even really try. in general, it's not hard to be happy. i am happy. and now i have to go shopping.