Considering it's been 5+ years since I last talked to her, I had pretty much given up on ever talking to Casey again, but she messaged me on Facebook this morning, to my utter surprise. We caught up for a couple hours, which was nice. I had to leave to go to the comic con I got tickets for from school, though, so I'll have to message her another time. I wonder if I'm going to start having the dreams again...

The comic con was... crowded. It was so crowded. And I spent money I really shouldn't have and got a bunch of socks and some comic books. I don't mean those wispy little single issue ones though, I mean the heavy duty ones that are like dozens to hundreds of pages long. My shoulders hurt so much from the weight of my bags when I finally got back to my room! But I don't regret any of my purchases, at least. It's pretty rare for me to regret buying comics, unless they're single issues that aren't very good. When you're paying $4-5 for just a few pages that aren't even that enjoyable, it feels like so much more of a waste.

I walked through the exhibitor tables on two floors of the con before deciding I'd had enough and leaving. On my way back I bought myself a chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream and shredded coconut on top. I really like that combination for some reason. My favorite cupcake in San Jose was that kind, too. I did feel a little bad about buying it after spending so much at the con, especially since I don't like to "treat" myself if I don't feel like I have a good reason. It doesn't feel good to needlessly indulge. But... it was a good cupcake, haha. I was surprised that I actually liked the frosting a lot. Usually I prefer the cake and feel okay at best with the frosting, but there wasn't an overwhelming amount and it actually balanced the not-super-sweet cake pretty well.

Let's see... school was serving one of my favorite dinners they have (grilled swordfish with olive butter, "brothy beans", and roasted green beans) in the cafeteria tonight, so I ate there. The swordfish was kinda fatty, but mostly good, although there wasn't as much olive butter as I would have liked on it. I also had a chocolate cream filled cream puff, which in retrospect was a bad idea since I had a cupcake earlier, but... ah... too late now. I think I should probably exercise more or eat a bit less... I'm almost positive I've gained fat and I'm not happy about it.

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Last night I had a pretty candid talk with a few of my classmates about some issues we have with one of the professors. That prof has been acting rather unprofessional and making us uncomfortable and we think she needs to take time off to deal with her own problems. I also opened up a little to one of my classmates about how it feels for me to be the only asian person in our cohort and how I am constantly aware of my minority status in relation to just about everyone else. I mentioned taking some time off this quarter and she said "I'll miss you," but later in the conversation she seemed like she had really thought about it and said "you know, I said I would miss you, but I don't even know you" and looked like she felt... troubled by it. This cohort has been pretty weird, everyone immediately acted like we were already close because we have to be together for two years, but I don't feel like we really know each other that well at all. I barely know anything about a lot of my classmates, and I haven't jumped on the "we're all such great buddies!" bandwagon because I don't feel comfortable acting that way when I honestly don't feel close to any of them.

Maybe I'm rationalizing this (since I have a long history of shyness), but I feel like certain formalities just don't fit with my values, so I don't observe them consistently. I do sometimes ask people how they're doing or how their weekend was, but it's often more out of a feeling of obligation than anything else, and if I'm not feeling particularly awkward that day I might just not ask, because well, I don't care how someone's weekend was if I don't know them and don't have a desire to get to know them. I feel like that sounds bad or unfriendly or something, but I just don't want to get to know everyone I come into contact with, and I don't want to spend energy talking to them when I don't care. It feels dishonest. And like, yeah, I know there's that whole "WHOOOAAA, YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT EVERYONE????" thing which for some reason is shocking to acknowledge, but I guess I feel like it's better to just be genuine in my interactions when I can get away with it. And maybe I've always felt this way. Like I didn't see the point in writing thank you notes for gifts I straight up didn't like or didn't want when I was a kid. That one was resolved more by learning to appreciate things and realizing what a difference it made to write someone a thank you card vs. just say thank you to them in person, but still. I know we have these formalities for a reason, and I can understand that there's a value and purpose in phatic communication, but I guess I don't care enough about engaging in the proper social signalling to bother with some things. Or maybe I'm just lazy and rude, who knows.

Really didn't mean to write so much about this, whoops.

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