In a week like this, Wednesday is easily my busiest day. I still made it to all my classes on time, though. I'm getting the hang of this.
Still, it was the first time I'd arrived so late to my behavior psychology class (due mainly to the fact that I kept forgetting last week that the class started at 9:30, not at 9:00... whoops). I was still able to find a seat, but it was a bit further back in the room than I usually go for. Maybe it's better to come earlier after all.
Class was fine. The only problem was, we have an assignment due Friday morning: a summary about the first four chapters of our textbook. We have two textbooks for that class, both of which have an author whose last name began with 'M', and I'd mixed them up and been reading the wrong textbook. Oops. I mean, I still had to read four chapters of both books by Friday, but I hadn't realized that we were supposed to have started the second text yet.
Luckily, I'd decided to put off writing my summary until today when I would have the time to mull over the prompt more and study all my notes again. It would've been annoying to write a report for the wrong book and then have to do a second one. That's all taken care of now, and my write-up is polished and submitted.
I also learned a fascinating few facts in my horticulture class that made me really excited to work on my fantasy novel about the intern foreign ambassador and the illegal witch again- the one tentatively nicknamed "Stars and Finches" until I finally pin down something more permanent. My teacher told us about monocot and dicot leaves. The leaves of monocots have parallel veins, while those of dicots spread out.
I stared at the example of the monocot leaf on the projector and thought about how the straight veins flowed like a river. Something straight that occurred naturally like that could probably be used by a practiced witch to summon, say, a straight blast of wind, or heal a broken bone. I think I'll definitely have to keep that information handy.
I've long wanted my witch to be a potion maker who takes forever to set things up precisely and can't do magic on command, and I didn't really want to go the route of mixing herbs and spices because that's been done so many times. But the patterns of natural things like plain, random leaves or the structure of feathers or curl of soft fur... that might be something I can work with.
I keep changing the details of my magic system around because every time I think I have something that works, I end up running across posts on the Internet about magic systems and how the one I'd picked is cliché for this or that reason or used by this other popular author here or there (the previews of that upcoming movie "Kubo and the Two Strings" really stabbed my heart with the placing of the tattoos on other people thing, which was my current system). Anyway, I'm not quite ready to redirect my attention to that story quite yet, but it's always hovering in the back of my mind and I thought the detail was interesting. I might just springboard something off from that.
The teacher of my chocolate class handed us all cocoa beans in tiny plastic bags today. When you open the bag and take a whiff, you can definitely pick up the chocolate smell. It was really strong. She told us as we were leaving that we could either take the beans with us or chuck them. I kept mine, figuring that I'd see if I could squeeze out as much of the smell as I could, just for fun. It was really good, after all.
