As pointless as my life was yesterday, that's the beauty of it in itself - it can change at a moment's notice. After being up 'til 5 yesterday morning, bad girl that I am, I slept 'til 12, when Alisa called nine times to wake me up, without the slightest clue as to how few hours I'd actually been asleep... So I got up and answered the phone, remarkably good-natured if I do say so myself, and woke up Kira so we could not become too lackadaisical, and make breakfast. Unfortunately we'd pretty much eaten every worthy breakfast food in the house, and a lot of other things too, so I rustled up some milky scrambled eggs (everything I make these days is milky) and she made banana-almond yogurt and hot cocoa, and then I decided we needed some carbs, so I made coffee cake muffins in a cake pan, and just as we were eating the giant streudel-strewn muffin with melted butter and peach-apple marmalade, Alisa showed up for our hike. Yes, that's right. A hike. My first of the year, minus that illegal one in Hindi class which actually didn't count, even though it was raining and I got really bored of looking at mushrooms and more examples of some ground leaves of little significance in the long run... OK, so it wasn't that bad. I was just impatient because it was right before lunch and I'm strangely vehement about being back for lunch. It pretty much pisses everybody else off in our class, because they always want to take "cultural field trips" to eat in some restaurant in Buzz, and I'm always like, "Noooo..." So Kira and me rustled up some outfits and then we locked the house and went to Blick's to make a mess of the kitchen - I mean, a picnic lunch. It was really carby too - toasted mozzarella sandwiches (that's right, mozzarella) and cinnamon toast and fresh apple crumb cake, and some cranberry-kiwi-orange juice that looked really gross but tasted like gummy bears, and which I mixed myself. Then we walked all the way out on New Road almost to the village, but we decided we didn't want to go through village and around and struck straight up the khud, or mountainside. My problem is that I'm scared of heights, and I get dizzy and feel like I'm going to fall off, and it kinda frustrates Alisa because I slow her down, and she and Kira call me "Scara Clara" to make me move faster, but of course it doesn't work... But I survived with only a poky leaf stuck in my palm, and we were on top of the world! We hauled some rocks to the cliff by the ruins and set up three seats and a table of sorts, and ate our carby picnic which had, amazingly, stayed warm on Kira's back. And of course as soon as we got up there an immense fog rolled in on top of us, cloaking all the mountains and the sun sinking behind the winterline. So actually, for all our efforts for the fabulous view, we couldn't see much, and it was really cold... But it gave us a sense of satisfaction that we'd hiked all that way and climbed up the khud, and that we were sitting on the edge of a huge cliff in the Himalayas, by the remains of some old house that was probably reasonably haunted, just like the famous one next door. But we ate our warm sandwiches and toast and cake, and drank our gummy bear juice, and Kira told us a long and detailed story about the family who'd lived in the house, some rocks from which we were sitting on at that very moment, and the magic Macchu Picchu-esque city covering the next three hillsides that makes you forget your past upon entry. Naimi and Inigo and their mother, and Naimi's daughter Layla, and Naimi and Inigo's son, and the grandmother's late husband who died climbing down the khud at night, all lived in that little three-room house up there. It was getting really cold by the time she reached the end of the story - it was a good one, I'll admit, but it was just so cold... We decided it was about time to head down. And of course as soon as we'd decided that the clouds rolled back and we got a breathtakingly velvety magenta and creamsicle orange and chilling indigo sunset, and walked back arm in arm down the Woodstock road while darkness fell upon us like a down comforter. We pretty much have free reign in the kitchen; it took us awhile to get hungry enough to eat, but Ms. Aoki called and told us we'd better eat so we don't lose so much weight our parents would ask who was "taking care of us" this week. Which is totally wack, but OK... So I whipped up some milky Indian mac-n-cheese, with oregano and more milk than cheese, and Kira made some salt-n-pepper tomatoes and chai, and it wasn't half bad. But then I left it on the stove to keep warm, and it burnt to the bottom of the pan. By the time Ms. Aoki got home, we'd eaten and I'd scraped the black stuff off the bottom of the pan, and she thought we hadn't eaten at all. Hah. And then she thought I took the easy way out and cooked the ancient and probably buggy Kraft boxed mac-n-cheese from the cupboard. My butt. We are SO self-reliant and cool. :D Later on, as we threw a 3am dance party in the blue living room, I split my favorite red plaid pj pants right up the crotch choreographing our hypothetical routine for the talent show. He he he...