Things that make me sad about Synergy:

• occasional self-righteous political correctness, "liberal"ism, veganism, etc.
• when there's not enough dinner for all of us and our EAs and our friends

Yep. I think those are the only things that I can come up with for now. And they're more than overridden by amazing things like last night, which I'm almost afraid to write about because, like putting a snowflake under a microscope, it would dispel the magic.

I'd been happily reading linguistics in the corner of our room behind the closet door for a couple of hours, and went downstairs to refill my Nalgene went next door to Tory and Betsy's room to take a break. Betsy was off to an oxygen bar (whatever on earth that is...) in SF, but Tory got the rest of us off our bums and to put on white shirts and head downstairs to Lauren and David's blacklight party.

They'd completely covered their walls in swirls and squiggles and words in glow-in-the-dark chalk, and handed out bunches of highlighters for people to draw on each other. Princess crowns and war paint, weird Aramaic-ish characters, necklaces, and chicken pox drawn on all of the blank canvases of exposed skin. Derrek the cowboy/closet raver, doing crazy things with, in turn, highlighters, glow-in-the-dark frisbees, and socks. Wes with werewolfish fangs pouncing on people out of nowhere. Music, literally, from country to classic rock to '80s to electronica, and we danced to it all, having had perhaps a drink or too but mostly high on life.

Around one-thirty I'd been pretty much spent. My arms and feet were covered in fluorescence, and Molly'd crumbled chalk and sprinkled it over my hair. Walking up the stairs necessitates passing Orion's room, though, where there were a couple of people telling hilarious stories of good friends and road trips; I was drawn in. After a while we realized that there was no more sound coming from across the hall, and leapt up and toward the stairwell because that meant they were all downstairs feasting on fresh bread.

There we were, thirty people in the kitchen eating the fantastic bread that was the fruit of Anna's weekly job... someone—maybe Parker?—started drumming with a scraper; pretty soon loaf pans, cutting boards, ladles, pitchers, and glasses were all drafted into the giant, living, evolving ball of sound and energy centered around the kitchen island. After about fifteen minutes, there was a line snaking to the attic, where ringing pipes and hollow walls were also incorporated and we were there, making sound and energy, from probably one of the highest points on campus for a party. And then Anna came up with the nice message that some people downstairs were having trouble sleeping, so we switched modes almost immediately. A council around a candle, people sharing thoughts...

As I was leaving, I detoured to grab the glass that had cracked in half and placed in a corner out of harm's way. I found it rather violently after some groping and headed down the stairs, but didn't realize 'til I was almost in the kitchen that my palm was on the gushing side. Funnily enough, all the first aid indoctrination kicked in and I walked the rest of the way with my left hand grasped tightly in my right, held above my head. Stood over the sink for a while, waiting for the bleeding to slow so that I could use my right hand to find some sort of dressing for it; Mali and Daisy came in and cheered me up and made me do the things (i.e. pouring iodine over it) that I was going to rhetoricize myself out of. Shower with a plastic bag duct taped around my hand—though vestiges of orange highlighter are still vaguely visible on my cheeks—, and then scrambled up into bed around four in the morning. On the plus side, I didn't have to wash the glass =)

What a full day.