I ' M L O O K I N G F O R W A R D T O T O M O RR O W ' S
B O N F I R E .

M Y M O M AN D I E V E N W E N T S H O PP I N G F O R
A S P E C I A L O U T F I T ! I T ' S G O T S P E C I A L
C A M O Q U A L I T Y S O I C A N B E TT E R T R A C K
T H E W I L D B O U N C E H O U S E! I ' V E A LW A Y S
W A N T E D T O H U N T O NE O F T H O S E .

S O RR Y I F T H I S P O S T I S H A R D TO R EA D. I
T OO K A B E T T H A T I C O U L D N ' T S P E A K
A N D W R I T E I N S I G I L S F O R A
W H O L E D A Y . I T ' S N O T T H AT H A R D --
A T L E A S T, N O T F O R K I D S L I K E M E
W H O C A N V E R B A L I Z E L A N G U A G E
S Y M B O L S . T H A N K G O O D N E S S I T OO K
T H A T " O B S C U R E C O M M U N I C A T I O N S"
C L A SS . I T W A S O N L Y A H A L F
S E M E S T E R , B U T I T H A S C O M E I N
H A N D Y A L O T .

A S L O N G A S I D ON ' T A C T I V A T E T H E
S I G I L S I T ' S F I N E . M I R A N D A D I D
E A R L I E R ON A C C I D E N T , B U T S I N C E
I ' M U S I N G T H E S E A S L A N G U A G E
I N S T E A D O F T OO L S H O P E FU LLY
N O T H I N G W I L L H A PP E N . I W O N D E R I F
T H E S E C O M P U T E R S C A N E V E N
T R A N S L A T E S I G I L S ? I K N O W P S Y H I G H
I S A LL A B OU T I N C L U S I V E NESS , B U T
E V E N I T M U S T H A V E I T ' S L I M I T S .

I ' LL J U S T P O S T T H I S A N D S EE W H A T
H A PP E N S . I C A N ' T W A I T T OO S EE H O W
M E SS E D U P T H I S G E T S .

I've been watching the ants and the flies. They're planning something, I just know it. If you readjust your wavelength receiver to their decibels, it's a constant insistent chatter. What could possibly be so important? Are the ants trying to marry off their queen to the Lord of the Flies? I know it's not my place to speak of the matters of insect monarchies, but that relationship would not last a year.

Back to school has been a drag, which is predictable. Syllabi, seating charts, arbitrary class rules ("and under no circumstances are you to have chewing gum in my class! I know you kids cheat using the different flavors and temporarily induced synesthesia"), and a pile of waivers. I got at least five from the Abstract Dissections teacher. That's how you know a class is going to be really good.

I've been receiving all sorts of messages from clubs and such about when our first meetings are, when we'll reach out to/kidnap potential new inductees, when we'll have elections, yada yada yada. My resonance stone actually went dead after picking up too many signals at once. Looks like first semester is going to be busy.

At least there's the cake walk to look forward to. My cake has great poise already.

Did Psyhigh seriously hire hall monitors this year? Ugh, I hope not. I know kids haven't been following curfew and other stuff but COME ON. Hall monitors are the worst. One of them just "dress coded" me for frowning too much and not wearing my Frondcorset. I don't even know what that is, but apparently I'll get a detention if the guy catches me again without one.

My advice? Avoid the third floor of buildings if you can. That's where that strict guy always hangs out from what I can tell. Seems like he teleports between them... I wonder if he can only teleport on a x-axis or z-axis and not y-axis? Anyway, the hall monitors on the first and fourth floors are way more chill, if you stick on those floors and don't explode anything you'll probably be fine.

No hall monitors on any second-floors, for obvious reasons.

Still not convinced they're hall monitors though. They don't have a school badge or anything. Maybe they're hyper-nervous parents who are taking it upon themselves to dish out vigilante hallway justice? Wouldn't be the first time. Rumor has it that Super-Mom's old cape is still fluttering lonesome-ly on one of the rooftops, even after all these years....

Every so often today I'll be doing something and think, "hmm, that's odd, why is this thing on my hand?" Then I remember, "Oh, that's a splint. For my finger. Because it's broken." *sigh*

I've had quite a few injuries in my lifetime -- concussions are highly common in those who play with other forms of sight -- but this is my first broken bone. I know I'm super lucky that it's just a finger. And @Dr Krimsborg, DPM said that if the break had been bad enough I could've needed surgery. Yet I can't help but feel... unbalanced with this thing hanging on my hand. Guess I'm just a whiny baby, huh?

That's what I get for joining the Student Volunteer Brigade. They deployed me and some others to go see what was happening in the quad, because there was lots of chanting and rumbling. Last time that happened, a portal was opened in the ground and some underclassmen got indentured to a transcendent being as farm hands. Remember that? The quad had sigils burned into it for weeks! I hear the kids will get released soon, but that might be a rumor. They've only been gone two and a half years after all.

Oops, I'm rambling again. Back to the matter, surprisingly this time it wasn't a summoning circle but a crowd chanting "FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT" as a @Rather Large Rabbit and @JJ Cricket confronted each other. JJ was hopping mad (not surprising) but Rabbit looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. Young astrologers don't typically like being cornered. Especially if they're cornered by angry horoscope followers.

Poor Rabbit wasn't being charged with misinterpreting the retrograde of Mercury though. From all the shouting, it seemed like people think he's responsible for the mysterious destruction of the mushroom village last night. Now, I don't know who's responsible for that or if it was right of them to do it, but I do know a scared rabbit when I see one. Some jerk had put up an invincible energy field to keep the two "fighters" inside the "ring" (seriously guys? I thought we were psychics, not WWE wrestlers.), so I pushed my way over to one of the energy stones and disputed its connection to the others. As soon as Rabbit sensed the field drop, he was GONE. And in the chaos that followed, I got pushed down and jammed my finger funny when I landed. It hurt slightly less than the pain of your voodoo doll being pricked with a needle. In other words: OUCH.

I haven't seen any rabbits or crickets since, so I hope that everyone has calmed down. There are rumors that Dean Hammer is going to have a school assembly soon to address the incident and encourage "student body personality cohesiveness" or something like that. The hive minds here would just LOVE to hear that... boring old conformists....

Ah, sorry, I didn't mean that! Sorry, sorry, this injury just put me in a bad mood. It didn't help that the whole time I was at Dr. Krimsborg's he was trying to convince me to drop Abstract Dissections. I don't intend to do that -- I'm too excited for it -- but I may stop by his clinic again. This splint is really bugging me. Maybe it's the accelerated healing salve he put on it? I hope I'm not allergic. The last thing I need right now is for my Other Eyes to start watering....

Attention to all Student Volunteers:

Head Volunteer Ricky asks that all available students transport/teleport/manifest themselves to the Volunteer Base tent. There's a fungus infestation we need to address immediately. It's still up for debate if we're going to eradicate the fungi or bring it picnic baskets, so if you feel strongly you better get here and state your case. And hurry, it looks like it's already grown into a small village....

Ricky apologizes that he couldn't send this message himself, but the newly-arrived fungi village residents (@Bimpliboos they call themselves?) stole his laptop and are using it for adorable antics. Disregard any messages you receive from him, no matter how endearing or enticing.

-Klarya, Student Volunteer

Picked up my schedule last night when the stars of Scientia, Occultus, and Spiritus aligned, aka one of the only time the doors to the Student Records Archives open to those of us who aren't paperwork golems. Of course, Scientia, Occultus, and Spiritus aren't REALLY stars -- just artificial ones created by the school as a marker of events like this -- but it's easier to say "stars" than use the official twenty-six syllable term for them.

Schedule pick up is always kind of a mess. People are so bossy and rude to the golems, just because they weren't made with emotions. Everyone acts like they're the only person who matters, and that their schedule needs to be perfect right now, and they need a special meeting with the counselors about this class, and that it's not fair that they have to have Mr. Swamp Monster as a teacher again, and blah blah blah.

(And for the record, Mr. S is a good teacher. As long as you have bug spray and something to block out the smell of swamp, it isn't even a big deal. Chill out guys.)

My schedule had a mistake, and I was put in Abstract Dissections instead of Intro to Levitation. It's not a big deal though, because I kind of took Levitation as a senior blow-off class. Ya know, for fun. But now I don't know if I want to switch back or keep Abstract Dissections. I mean, it could be interesting. I hear that first semester, you get to dissect a phobia -- and not just some old childhood fear kept preserved in a pickle jar, but a freshly captured from one of the Fear Traps in the school's forest! I hear those ones are feisty.

So pumped for GROTTO's Back-To-School party. Not so pumped to be going back to school. I get my schedule later this week I think. I'll have to start doing those sacrifices and rituals the Spongiform Unimind if I want to persuade it to put me in the same lunch hour as my friends.

I bet a bunch of you new freshmen don't even know about that. Some say it's all superstition, but isn't that what people said about banshees, selkies, and always leaving brooms sweeper-side-up? After the things I've come across at Psyhigh, I'm not going to dismiss things as "fairy tales" until I've investigated it myself. And trust me, this one's real. At least, I think so.

There's no real guidelines to the ritual. Well, there is, but Tulka (the guy in charge of Admissions) won't tell anyone. He's very tight lipped about it. And not just because he's mute; even those who communicate with him telepathically, through dance, or even the written word couldn't get so much as a hint on how to sway a unimind like our beloved Spongiform Unimind.

That being said, most kids attempting to appease the great Spongiform Unimind just kinda use whatever method they're most familiar with. I've seen people use burnt offerings, sacrificial lampreys, hand-knit sweaters using a pattern of runes from the traditional spongiform language, five paragraph persuasive essays... all sorts of stuff. The more desperate the student, the crazier the ritual. I'll be honest, some are downright hilarious to hear about.

It's hard to tell if any of the methods work though. The past two years I've actually gotten one or two of my requests granted, but how do I know it wasn't just coincidence? ...well, it's worth taking the chance. I think this year I'll send the Spongiform Unimind a nice meal. One of my ancient family recipes. If anything, it'll be a nice treat for our favorite subterranean dweller. Hopefully if I ask politely Tulka will deliver it for me.

I wonder how spongiforms feel about artificially animated eggplant?

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket" people always warn you. They never warn you about putting all your crystal balls in one basket. What a mess.

I signed up for that volunteer group, Student Volunteer Brigade, and they called me in to help some of the teachers set up classrooms and labs for the new school year. I was lucky, I didn't get assigned the teachers who have to teach in the spooky, dimly lit part of Psyhigh. You know, where the kids go to commune with the dead or learn necromancy or check if the shirt they bought at the concert is actually glow-in-the-dark.

I spent this morning helping The Missus Suzanne Jenune -- but most the student body calls her Ms. Clair. 'Cause she teaches a bunch of the Clair classes: Clairvoyance, Clairsentience, Clairaudience, Claircognizance, Clairalience, and Clairgustance. When I was a freshmen, some upperclassmen told me she also taught Clairclair, for those with heightened seventh senses, but looking back I think they were just pulling my leg.

Whoever is in charge of assigning teachers classrooms is not paying close attention, because Ms. Clair's room is up in one of the Towers of Know. How a little old lady with a hip replacement and cane is supposed to go up and down those stairs every day is beyond me, but she insists she'll be fine. Apparently she requested to be put up there. I think she's crazy, but it's very rare that Ms. Clair doesn't Know what she's doing.

It certainly is very pretty up there in the towers. You can see for miles around from the top level. And there's a different view out of each window of the tower, so as you climb the crumbling stone staircase you can watch people out on the quad from the 1910's play croquet, or see dinosaurs sauntering through a prehistoric forest, or witness an alternate dimension where the Fae Revolt of the third century was successful. Some of the views weren't even of outside: one looked directly in on someone's study. He looked like one of those famous authors English teachers tell you are important and influential, but I had no idea what his name was.

Things were going fine until Ms. Clair asked me to bring up her collection of crystal balls. I was so distracted by looking through all of the windows as I ascended -- can you blame me? -- that I didn't notice the crystals were knocking into each other. And cracking. Soon, all the mystical smoke and clouds and etc. Ms. Clair had trapped in them was suddenly pouring out. I panicked and dropped the whole basket. Bad move. That stuff is not good for the lungs.

Luckily, my Other Eyes could see through the fog and I got out of there. Ms. Clair said it was fine, but I could See she was kind of sad she lost all of that. So much for being a helpful student volunteer....

So yeah. Lesson for today kiddies: Don't put all of your eggs OR CRYSTAL BALLS in one basket.

*Yawn* Ugh, I'm exhausted. I went to the Extraterrestrial Television Show Viewing Party last night, and we were all up until 1 am laughing and guffawing at the weird signals @Big Jim was able to pick up. It's always a little jarring to remember just how differing other planets' sense of humor can be. The one where they filmed a rock sitting still for forty five minutes before the surprise twist kicked in, yeah, that one really got me. I almost choked on my APSA-Approved beverage I was laughing so hard.

That's not the only reason I'm tired though. Yesterday my mother had me make a list of the colleges I want to apply to, their deadlines, and their requirements. For whatever reason, looking at all of that stuff made me jumpy and I ended up writing four application essays back to back. My soul hurts.

They weren't final copies of course, just rough draft possibilities. It's so difficult to chose one topic to be the defining example of your character. Laying your essence out for examination like that is so stressful. I keep using my brother's old Refraction Mirror of Ohert, but the tangle of beliefs and experiences that make up me do more to confuse me than inspire me. Actually, that's what one of the essays I did write is about: how college application essays are challenging because you're suppose to pick one defining moment, when who you are is the interaction of a thousand different moments at once.

So yeah, thank goodness for that alien TV event. It was a much needed respite from my panic. I really should be more careful. This morning I found some scraps of my essence still smeared on the Refraction Mirror of Ohert. I'd been walking around without missing my stubbornness and a small chunk of the second layer of my aura!

My friends Herlio and Myuri and I went dorm room shopping today. Seeing as we're going into our senior year we don't really need to -- I know I've been using the same bedsheets and tiny wastebasket for the past six years I've attended boarding schools -- but it's just something we like to do together, for the fun of it. Sometimes we'll find some cool decoration or sketchy knick-knack to make the dorm room a little more interesting. I know Herlio always displays a collection of small antique garden gnomes in his room. He claims they have priceless attributes that ease hive-mind reticulum navigating. All I know is that he has more than ten of them now, and looking at them with my Other Eyes tells me that to some degree, several are alive.

We always say we're going to go to a new store to browse, but every year we end up back at The Missmeiro Family Gallery. It's just such a cool place. Every time you turn a corner you see something new -- sometimes literally, as the architecture of the building is constantly shifting to accommodate the tastes of the customers currently in the store. It's pretty exciting to see the walls open up and another display create itself, or the ceiling suddenly collapse down upon a section that's no longer needed. Once we found a whole aisle dedicated to different types of sunscreen for strange creatures who burn in sunlight. You know, like Vampires, Trolls, Shadow Demons, Red Heads, those guys. Wish we could've seen whoever it was looking for those. I've yet to meet someone from the Shadowlands Domain.

Speaking of fluctuating floor plans, have you guys heard about @Hector Penman's project? He's going to try to map out the school grounds. Talk about a big project, a 300 acre estate accessible to multiple dimensions is not easily mapped! Especially since some locations seem to appear and disappear between semesters, or get fed up with Psyhigh's union system and quit without even giving us a two-weeks advance notice. At least some things never change, like the Pineal Gland Vaults, the Dean's Tower, The Self-Aware Library (S-AL, as some have called it), the cellar of the Spongiform Unimind, the Spoon Benders ice cream vendor in the cafeteria.... Ah, such good memories.

Oh wait, I don't think students are supposed to know about the Pineal Gland Vaults. Uh... do me a solid and forget I told you about that, okay?