My Sanity for a Wink

While I thought my last post was lacking in my old notes' usual sparkle, I believe this one more than makes up for it.

Ithaca gives off a small/college town feel. The city population is only around 30,000 (slightly smaller than Bothell). Cornell even has a vet school and an ice cream shop: trademarks of schools in rural/cow-infested areas. While most of the people I encounter are college students, a venture to the Ithaca mall shows the locals true colors: the kind of people who wear camouflage and trucker hats, the kind of people who knit, hipsters, or the kind of people who may or may not be homeless. Considering this, it was surprising for me to discover what an excellent environment I am in for the play of license plate bingo. Just on my walks from my dorm to west campus (roughly five blocks) I have seen (I think) license plates from at least the following places: New York, New Jersey, Alberta, New Hampshire, Vermont, Alabama, Texas, Ohio, California, Montana, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and my personal favorite: Alaska. To whomever drove here all the way from Alaska: you have some serious cojones, and I salute you.

As I mentioned, the people of Ithaca are an eclectic bunch. Living in a place full of eclectic people gives rise to an eclectic array of style choices. While many Cornellians go the classy “I go to an Ivy League institution and even though I walk miles up and down hills every day I am going to buy the cutest goddamn flats I can buy” route, the weather here leads to some discrepancies between what is attractive and what is practical. While half the year you don a puffy snow coat and boots, we are currently in the two months of the year when it is warm. An added bonus to these warm months is the occasional torrential rain. You know Ithaca is a place doomed to fashion faux pas, since at times wearing shorts with your rain boots is the most sensible clothing option. Unfortunately for the Ithacans who care about their appearance, the brand of weird caused by the shifting weather has yet to catch on in Paris and New York.

As a chemical engineer in training, I get to take all sorts of fun sounding classes. This you are well aware of, but what you may not have been aware of is the difficulty that is sometimes inherent in the shortening of these class names. While I can easily call differential equations “math” or “diff EQ”, shortening the class name “mass and energy balances” poses a more significant challenge. Should I call it M&E? No, that’s too close to E&M, which we use to shorten the physics class electricity and magnetism. Balances? Possibly, but balances is already a word in its own right, a verb in fact, and if I heard someone say balances I would say, “who balances what?” No, I know I can do better. Ah, yes, let’s try a spoof of the professor’s name, like my friend Sam who calls principles of biomolecular engineering with professor Varner the Chronicles of Varnia. The professor’s name: Susan Daniel. At first glance, a boring name. Not much to work with at all. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes evident that taking the first syllable from each of her names results in an excellent class nickname: Sudan. Clear availability for puns (i.e. I’m having so much trouble in Sudan), high potential for head-turns when discussing it (did you hear those people saying they hate Sudan? Did something happen there again?), and all this while still being a word I don’t use often enough to find confusing. Mission accomplished.

Few things are more satisfying in life than when you set a goal, or even just have a vague hope of something coming true, and having that goal or hope come to fruition. Last fall, I often sat next to a kid named Brian during math lecture since we both had a fondness for second row slightly to the left seats. We had talked occasionally, and I knew Brian was also a fellow chemE. It would probably be beneficial to you for me to mention that Brian is one of those people who you assume to be gay without bothering to ask. About a month after school started, I was still lacking in the friendship department (it takes a while) and I sent a pleading text to my brother: “how do you turn a sassy gay acquaintance into a sassy gay friend!?” I do not actually remember Joe’s response, but I still remember sending that text. This year, the chemE curriculum is becoming pretty standard for everyone in the major, so, naturally, I see Brian everywhere. Furthermore, I believe I have officially turned a sassy gay acquaintance into a sassy gay friend because Brian and I now have inside jokes. These include Brian’s aspirations of Olympic speed-walking (a goal he could reasonably achieve, since he walks at the speed of light), and his past as a child figure-skating prodigy (he’s actually the president of the figure skating club. Perhaps I should have mentioned that as further justification for the Brian-is-gay assumption). New friends: what a lovely thing.

Today was a day just like any other. I woke up a ridiculous amount of time before my alarm was set to go off (6:45 when the alarm was set for 7:30), showered, dressed in the most Ithaca-weather appropriate clothing I could find, and headed off to a leisurely breakfast before my 9:05 class. After viewing the license plates of many a state for a few blocks, I see a man a ways ahead of me. He is an older man, tall, with a bit of a paunch, and he is wearing a red polo shirt, to contrast with his long, white, and puffy hair and beard. As I passed him, we smiled at one another, and with his beautiful, blue, twinkling left eye he winked at me.
I know what you’re thinking: that if I wasn’t so incredibly awesome at describing things you would say I was severely overreacting to the wink of a creepy old man. I therefore must inform you that I do not believe this old man to be creepy because I am thoroughly, completely, and utterly convinced that he was Santa.
Do not try to tell me Santa isn’t real. Like you, I once believed the lies about how my parents made him up, but upon seeing him and receiving that so perfectly Santa-like wink, I know, without a doubt, that Santa is real and that he summers in Ithaca.
Contrary to popular media/Hallmark depiction of Santa summering in places full of beaches and palm trees, I believe it is much more likely that Santa spends his summers in a place like Ithaca. For a man accustomed to constant below-zero temperatures, a day at the beach in 95 degree weather would be tantamount to torture. Any sane person, especially one unused to the heat, would sweat a fair amount, but, knowing what we do about Santa’s body type and quantity of facial hair, we can safely assume that he would be sweating more than a fair amount: a lot more. In addition, I believe cool, refreshing treats like popsicles would be unable to satisfy the palette of a man who consumes cookies at the house of every child in the world in one night. Popsicles just don’t do it for cookie lovers, they don’t contain enough butter. Also, jumping in the water would be of minimal relief to our jolly fellow, since the water (at least in Hawaii) is still at an average of somewhere near 80 degrees in the summer. If people really understood Santa, they would know he would have a much better time in Ithaca, where the warmest it got in August this year was 89 degrees, and it still managed to drop to a comfortable 65 overnight.
In conclusion, I learned a few things about Santa today: he is real, vacations in Ithaca, is rather tall, has lost a significant amount of weight since the last time he was portrayed, and when he winks at you it instantly makes your day while simultaneously causing you to feel all of the magic of Christmas.

I hope you are enjoying yourself in the Hundred Acre Woodinville!

Much love,
Lola