nawl

The past few days have been a record-length streak of end-of-semester, going away, graduating, Christmas, solstice, and birthday parties.

The mystery of the pumpkin impaled on the spike on top of the campanile my freshman year is finally solved. I heard the story of how it was done secondhand from someone at Thursday's party who is regularly involved in pumpkin shenanigans on campus around Halloween. The feat was accomplished about how you'd expect: a lock was smashed (which normally goes against the code of honor for this sort of thing), and the culprit was an expert climber.

At Sophia's "Is there a doctor in the house?" party on Friday, every guest was introduced to the fourth-generation asian leopard cat/housecat hybrid. They must be the newest fad in fashionable pets. It was very beautiful and very soft, and the fur was covered in gorgeous reddish-orange swirls that are not usually associated with domestic cats. The poor thing didn't seem too happy about having to meet so many strangers, though.

Gaskell's on Saturday was full of women in red dresses. I was feeling understated, and dancing seemed to take more of a toll than usual after such a long period of inactivity. Pictures were taken, perhaps to be posted later. It was suggested as I was dressing that I do my hair Princess Leia style, but the attempt morphed into a tight coil of braid. It looked sort of like a flower, and stayed in remarkably well.

Sunday we went to see Return of the King at the Metreon. The power was out in that part of San Francisco: stores were closed, there were no traffic lights, BART wasn't stopping at Powell or Civic Center, and so on. The Metreon, however, was having no such difficulties. Movies were running, video games clanging, the image of a perfect temple to consumerism and electronic frivolity rising above the chaos outside. They must have their own backup generators.

Later on, a solstice party at Beatrice and Kragen's. We stayed past 11:04 to properly fete the solstice.