esmenet | happy things about today, because I need a tangible reminder that life is pretty awesome

We started studying Islam in my World Religions class! Most of the religions have been quickly gone over, just the bare basics, but our teacher seems pretty excited about the Abrahamic religions and it feels like he's going into even more depth with Islam than he did with Judaism and Christianity. Or maybe that's just because I like Islam better, idk. (If I can find a good translation of the Quran, I may actually start reading holy texts! I already own a copy of the Bhagavad Gita and my aunt gave me a copy of the Lutheran Study Bible (which is half notes, and I appreciate that greatly) a few years ago, but I kind of want to start with the Quran.)

The weather has been pretty nice. Not so much earlier in the day, but the wind went down a little and the clouds thinned out, so I was able to spend a lot of time sitting outside in the sun.

My Japanese teacher gave me an eighth-grade Japanese textbook! It's designed for Japanese students living in foreign countries, so it's not too much above my level. It's full of pretty pictures as well as pretty text, and it has a section from Makura no Soushi (aka the Pillow Book). She opened it to that section and set it in front of me after I'd finished the kanji test; I couldn't understand too much of it right away, but reading it gave me a lovely feeling.

Actually, that class in general was full of warm fuzzies. One of my classmates (or possibly Sanae-sensei, I'm not sure) brought oranges, and my Taiwanese senpai (who is in our class, but way older than the rest of us) brought sesame-peanut candy, even though I ended up taking mine home to my mother. We learned ~のに, which is something I always wondered about but could never quite remember what it meant, and talked about various things.

I feel a little bit guilty for not hanging out/talking to my classmates and teacher more, because I like them (well, most of them) quite a bit, but right now it's the season where I can't stay inside school buildings for long because it's TOO DAMN DRY, and I can't wear my birkenstocks because it's TOO DAMN COLD to wear skirts, and all my jeans are long enough that it's either barefoot or (kickass awesome) heels, and heels are not made for walking around/sitting with my weight on them as much as I do. Or maybe it's my feet that are not suited for wearing heels and doing all that in.

I wore a necklace today! I should do that more often; it's fun.

My mother and I managed to make brownies, make soup, make broth for the soup, make broth for soup tomorrow, clean up (and have fun doing it!), put the brownies away, and have a sit-down dinner with my dad and brother in which no faces were made at the food. It's pretty nice to cook like that sometimes.

I can still enjoy ridiculous badly-spelled Inuyasha crossovers. (Incidentally, does anybody remember an Inuyasha/Ouran fic in which Sesshoumaru hires Kagome to take care of a shrine and she transfers to Ouran and makes friends with Kyouya? I read that fic ages ago and it was wonderful and believable and in-character and I can't find the damn thing at all now.)

Even though I haven't written anything at all for the past few days except the last couple of posts, I feel more confident about my writing. I mean, I have a Saionji fic to re-plot, an Ashita no Ousama fic to write, a bunch of Avatar fics to mess around with, some Taki ficlets to write because

littlebutfierce loves Taki as much as I do, a Harry Potter fic to plot out/start writing, ridiculous crossovers to plan, and a term paper to draft, but I'm pretty sure those will all get done eventually, and maybe it'll be hard but it'll be fun too.

It's a half-hour after I should be in bed, and yet I have managed not to scratch my scalp, face, or shoulders hardly at all, when for the past few day's I've been practically ripping them apart.

I still love Nujabes-style hip-hop.

Tomorrow: cookies!