This is why birthdays in early September suck

So, grad school orientation has started, and I've been mostly avoiding it despite offers of free food, because I don't think I could handle it. It's like the first week of college, except for the part where everything is new and exciting, leaving behind only the awkward and a bunch of new people you don't care much about. Also, shitty icebreakers.

There's a barbecue later today. I would go, except for that thing where I feel nauseous just thinking about it.

I mean, I know where everything is, and I know a good number of the undergrads, and this all is really just a waste of my time. I miss being in dorms, where you had enough people around that it was hard to feel isolated. I love my roommates, but they go in and out a lot, and we have bad tendencies to hole up in our rooms. I visited TH on Tuesday and hung out with some of the other TAs who are back early, and that was soothing, to say the least.

Part of my anxiety over this, I feel, is that I need to figure out who I'll be working with on my Master's project. And I don't really have a "field" so much as a great appreciation for how much smarter everyone else is from me. I don't know. I get that as a Master's student, I am basically free labor to a lot of profs around here, since they don't need to fund me. At the same time, I have Issues with approaching people about Things and that makes it hard for me to just shoot an e-mail to a professor to arrange a meeting to talk about things.

Argh.

Also, it's my birthday. I might be setting up a DRABBLERAMA -- zulu style -- later, but right now I have to TeX up a million documents and write a section on pivot tables in Excel.

DRABBLERAMA: Parrot's Goddamn Birthday Edition

So, yes. It's my birthday, and despite a bad start, it has muchly improved by good food and good company. But still, my days are always made brighter with more fic.

So yes, a lot of you know how this goes, especially if you follow zulu's journal, but here's the rules:

1. If you write me a few words/sentence/drabble/ficlet about Spock Prime being awesome (in TOS or Reboot or wherever the hell else you want to put him. Crossovers welcome.)

2. And post it in the comments here.

3. I will write a ficlet of the same length or greater based on a prompt of your choosing.

I am pretty flexible on slash/gen/het. Obv, I favor Kirk/Spock a teensy bit, but really, anything goes.

a list of things that I like that may help inspire you:
- funny hats
- Spock's rocket boots from Star Trek V
- lightsaber battles
- robots
- random Shakespeare quotes
- the TARDIS
- cookies
- Kirk's sadface
- cool aliens