Who knows?

mood: content, for the first time all week
music: "Kiss Me" - Sweeney Todd
random word: nightingale

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So, all week I've been really high-strung and moody and irritable and incapable of shaking a constant feeling of panic. I've been snapping at people over crossword puzzles and freaking out in bowling alleys and breaking down crying at least once a day over mounting responsibilities or looming fears or my mom or family tensions or, you know, moving to a different hemisphere. And silly things like getting shots and having trouble understanding the Chilean accent at the consulate and finding a tick in my leg and getting random nosebleeds and having ten thousand mosquito bites aren't helping things. Poor Sidney has been a trooper of a shoulder. Anyway, altogether it's just been a hard state of mind to snap out of.

But then, tonight was my going away party. Sara made a few phone calls, burnt some CDs and bought some burgers, and within a few days she managed to put together one of the nicest get-togethers I've been to all summer. After a round or two of pickup volleyball and an intense game of Sharks and Minnows, the founding of the "Blue Club" by Sara's 7-year-old sister Mary ("You can be in if you're wearing blue, except no boys allowed. It's boy-proof. But Sid can be honorary helper because he's a DOCTOR."), the staged blowing out of non-candles on a cake that read "Buena Suerte en Chile!" after the hit song "HavagoodtimeinChile, Lau-ra! HavagoodtimeinChile, Lau-ra!", and lively arguments about whether the fact that some "chick" offered C a Jell-O Snack Pack means that "she wants me" and whether the water really does spiral in a different direction in Chile and how exactly it would be possible to change the speed of the Earth's rotation with a shitload of windmills and whether it's actually creepy to facebook Tyler Hinman (some other Wordplay fans are following suit) and whether you can use the math word "orthogonal" to describe two points of view and whether you could make liquid pants with water and an antigravity force field or shoot cake instead of coke ("Frost my veins!") or change the polarity of water to make it dry and put the towel companies out of business or tan faster with liquid lenses instead of sunscreen, I felt completely content. These were my high school friends. This was High Tech. And even though we rarely see each other during the year, there is something so natural about the way we fall back together and can be the same dorks we've always been. I laughed the whole night long.

It's nice to know that people care about me. And that I have amazing, irreplaceable groups of friends to fall back on. And that maybe, just maybe, I can continue this pattern in another world that's even more different than quaint little liberal artsy Middlebury was from geeky, gawky High Tech High School. Although, when you think about it, sitting around a table late at night and chatting about everything and nothing with a bunch of quirky kids who love each other, Middlebury and High Tech are not so different. And hey, maybe Chile won't be, either.