On the weekends I don't have to go into work, which is nice I guess. I still take some walks through the biomes though, just for fun. There's no classes afterall, and it's a nice way to take a break from homework. Except sometimes a break turns into a much-too-long digression, since I find it so hard to resist fiddling with the plants I pass. Can you really fault me for it? Ignoring a cry for help is just unthinkable! And what cry is more pitiful than that of a hosta besieged by slugs? Than a peach tree with drowning roots? Than a succulent with sun scorch? Than a semi-carnivorous-Venus-curse-trap with a tummy ache? Even if I don't have my safety gear on or my work equipment on hand, I have to try to do SOMETHING for these poor babies. A lack of voice is not a lack of life! Though if you believe that transfer student from Oklahoma, everything actually does possess a voice. According to him, doors are always shrieking. It'd be weird to be him for a day, don't you think? I wonder if earplugs help, or if those would talk too.

For part of my walk today I sat with the one Dodona tree again, the one with the weeping canker. Even if the Whispering Grove gives me anxiety and the creeps, this poor tree really needed some love and sympathy! It looks like its crying has been lessening a bit, but I kept having to wave away insects. That sweet sap is just magnetizing for those creepy crawlies. Which I guess is all fine and good in the grand scheme of the circle of life, blah blah natural balances blah blah flow of life blah blah blah. But Dodona trees... they're like belladonna nightshade, every part is dangerous! Just instead of poison in all its parts there's... I don't know the technical term. Future goop? Ask someone in Organic Chemistry of Paraspecies, they'd know I bet. Regardless, whatever the sap has in it that makes Dodona trees so loquacious is all throughout it, but especially concentrated in the sap. Seriously. Try to put that syrup on your pancakes and, assuming your head doesn't melt, you'll be doomed to live only perceiving the future(s) while still physically existing in the present. There's some cool case studies about that, but long story short we really don't need Psychic Saturated Beetles released into the ecosystem. The fauna around campus is screwy enough as is, especially if we're including the homo sapien varieties.

Eventually I left the Whispering Grove (but not before I got lucky and heard that there's a pop quiz in Synchronicity on Tuesday SPREAD THE WORD AND DO THE ASSIGNED READINGS!) because I promised my roommate that I'd go with her to the Floating Amphitheater. She really wanted to see some sporting competition that was being held there -- she's sporty like that. I'm not really big on the whole spectator experience, my personal preference being to avoid screaming crowds rather than merging with them. Bit too much like the brainwashing drills we did at my middle school. Lucky for me however, there was no hive mind engagement in the cards for today! Apparently one of the Amphitheaters went missing, Number 3, so the rest are all closed and tethered until they figure out what happened. My money is on the theory that it got loose in that storm from earlier in the week and got swept off eastward -- Occam's Razor and what have you. Of course, the campus calamity bookies said there's better odds on unauthorized dimension bubbling being the culprit, what with a student known for such an affinity going missing around the same time. All I'll say about that is I hope the Bubbler knows how to Pop such a Bubble. Otherwise it's going to be a long, lonely time until the campus security pins down their planar aneurysm. Ideally that theory is wrong; I've got $15 riding on this one!

It's always satisfying to realize you learned something. You know, that spontaneous recollection of a concept, recognized and applied into the real world like it was supposedly meant to. The more you learn about something, the more it changes your perception of reality around you. Like how learning more about physics makes acceleration events around you more apparent and logical. Or how tasseography brings a whole new dimension to the morning coffee at Spoonbenders. Information is weird like that; you don't know you didn't have it until you have what you didn't know. ...Well, there's probably a better way to word that. Maybe I'll leave the profound declarations to the soothsayers. I hear they're trying to form a club all about standing at the corner of the main quad and just... proclaiming. Like, on a set schedule with shifts, I guess. I don't know, I think we have too many clubs as is, but maybe it'd be cool to get regular updates of non-current events.

Oh, but anyways, I bring this all up because of my plant classes! I'm trying to take the whole series for Chlorokinesis. If I could I'd take those types of classes exclusively, but you know how it goes. Everyone has to take some calculus, and some history, and some succubus-and-possession-health class. Gen Ed requirements are so annoying. At least the Chlorokinesis classes I do get to take this semester are fascinating! The more I learn in Flora Fundamentals, the more I notice during walks around campus. Just today, after lunch, I realized that there are some significant mutations in the burning bush hedges outside the cafeteria. Like, at least ten of the bushes had spikes instead of ridges along their branches. I asked my teacher about it, and she said it's an empathic effect -- those bushes are planted along the side of the building closer to the Demonology departments. She said the spikes are probably a response to cultivated sentiments of aggression, danger, and emo-eyeliner-abuse that inevitably leak out and into the plants' auric field. Isn't that fascinating? And if we hadn't been studying mutations and significant signaling in class this week, I might have disregarded the anomaly entirely! It's really quite exciting, I think.

And I'm going have plenty of time to think. I accidentally posted my last journal before removing that stupid comment about Gradilly, and now my smart mouth (smart typing fingers?) has itself landed in detention tomorrow morning. This is why I'm shy in person... you can't say the wrong thing if you say nothing! Oh well, it's too late to change this. I mean, guess I could do what my roommate suggested and try to bribe the upperclassmen in the Time Department to "lend me a hand". She said she's done it before and it worked fine. But my roommate is a lot braver than me. That assembly we had last year about the dangers of unauthorized timeline editing still has me spooked. I can't remember the last time Dean Hammer looked like that. It must have been a new mask or something.

They say journaling helps with stress. And I haven't journaled in f-o-r-e-v-e-r-! So maybe there's a cause and effect there. I'm sure those called "They" meant journaling in a private diary, like the cute little leather books girls hide under their bed. But I'm trying to be more... what's the word... public? Outreaching? ...social? Yeah, I'm trying to be more social this semester, so instead of sequestering all these thoughts and experiences in the dark recesses of a closed book I'll spew them out onto this screen and into the teeming forum of classmates! I don't know if this is a good idea. But hey, at the very least it'll save some paper. And as one of the student employees at the Chlorokinetic Botanical Center based at Psychic High School, you better believe I like saving paper. We get some real attitude from our patients and dependents if they see us toting about unnecessary paper. Especially the tubers. They have eyes all over, you know.

Having a job while in school isn't for everyone. Especially when you take into account your clubs, sports, periodical world-ending catastrophes, and other standard high school busy-ness. I know my brother was really against working past summer. I guess sometimes it just spreads a person too thin, trying to do well in too many areas. It probably didn't help that he was trying to astral project to five different locations every Tuesday and Thursday evening. Honestly, he should have just rescheduled some things. Do you know how long it takes to re-condense a soul conglomerate thinned to the width of a number 3 pencil? Annoyingly long. Mother was beside herself.

But regardless of others' experiences, having a part-time job works well for me. Though I will admit, I got lucky with my position. For a chlorokinetic with some... well... shyness, a career submersed in the lovely, leafy seclusion of botany is perfection! Is there anything better than spending hours alone with the plant life, silently tending to their discolorations and epinasty? Unless you are enthusiastically agreeing with me, I am NOT interested in your answer to that rhetorical question.

Today I was in charge of checking on the Whispering Grove. We do routine check-ups of all the unique study biomes on campus, just to make sure there aren't any glaring issues. The Whispering Grove is the least popular, I think. Even me, who adores plants, gets unnerved in that place. Every tiny puff of air through the canopy sets the Dodona trees off -- on blustery days, it's a regular cacophony of portents and presages! Usually people are supposed to go in there with at least one other person, buddy-system style, to try and decrease the likelihood of POS Syndrome (Prophecy Over-Saturation Syndrome, if you're a baby freshman unfamiliar with the concept). But I work better alone, and my assigned buddy was skipping out on her shift again, so it was just me today.

Most everything was fine, of course. Like always, the thick, imposing trunks crowded up to the pathway, their gnarled branches above twining and twisting around and about in a pattern that only might be there. Their leaves always remind me of aspens, the way they flutter so urgently, beckoning and begging for your attention with flashes of pale green undersides. Though the size is much different than aspens -- Dodona leaves can get so very large. My boss said once she saw one the size of Mr. Grandilly's head -- as if anything could be as large as THAT. (Note to self, delete that joke before I post this journal so I don't get in trouble).

One of the Dodonas had a pretty bad canker on a major branch. It was weeping quite a bit, and some insects were already being attracted to the sap. As a distant relative of oaks, Dodona trees have a sensitivity to Oak Wilt, so the Chlorokinetic Botanial Center has to take open wounds like that pretty seriously. The tests won't come back for a little bit, so until then it's just a matter of keeping the poor thing comfortable. I did what I could to console it and lessen the weeping, but sometimes a tree just needs to cry. Well... except Weeping Willows -- they need to quit being dramatic and just grow up!