thoughts like this that catch my troubled head

last weekend i was in portland and, briefly, eugene. i went to portland to see margaret cho with shelby and stephanie, but of course also got to hang out with my lovely sister. on friday i went to pick her up at her school. it was the first time i’d been back to high school in at least four years. the weirdness about lockers and too many people and too much noise was actually worse than i remembered it, since her school contains about 500 girls, one quarter of whom were in a very narrow hallway making friday-afternoon noise about having to carry every single textbook home for the weekend. i got a tour, met some friends (“oh, you’re the librarian! awesome!”) and some teachers (“are you a student here too?” “um, no, i’m in grad school.”), and became totally jealous at how much cooler her school is than mine. they have a sci-fi and fantasy club (“i wish we had that at library school … oh wait, we are that at library school”) and they have a novel club where they read books and then talk about them and watch the movies – there were posters up for persuasion. when i was in high school i was friends with all five people who read jane austen. on their lockers (which there is apparently no need to lock) they have pictures of johnny depp and hobbits and john kerry and exploding dog pictures, and quotes from literature and good music and movies that don’t have hilary duff.
so now i understand why my sister is so awesome, but i still feel jealous that she gets to be this cool at sixteen, while i was a huge mess at that age.

this weekend is for housewarming party (tonight) and baseball game with chris and shan (sunday).

(song: “such great heights,” the postal service)