not falling down

Okay! So! Babies!

Actually just one baby. Talking about Zoe reminded me that I still have my Chicago pictures and I’ve been meaning to post them forever; I was saving them for a rainy no-idea day, but lately the only time I’m not posting is when I’m working on stuff I’m going to post. So pictures! (Which open in a separate window.)

• The one that inspired this whole post: There was this baby, and his name was Big Man, and he was the sweetest little bowling ball-sized human I’ve ever met. Naturally, I tried to eat his brains.
• In all my time as a Crummy fan, it never occurred to me what a great band name The Cautious Mad Scientists would be.
• Did you know they make lawnmowers you have to plug in? I didn’t, which is maybe why I find this team effort so funny.
• Me and Eric, in the only extant picture of me playing frisbee.
• Briefly, during one of the big group shots on the beach, I got to make mine a metacamera.
• Something about me takes a deep joy in the vision of a sign that a) acknowledges the existence of and b) simultaneously tries to prevent peddlin’.
• I was taking a perfectly nice close-range picture of my thumb until Kat got in the way.
• Witness my first, second and third complete failures to get a picture of the shot-shy EmilyR. Who then posed quite nicely for all the obligatory group shots.
• Oh, and lastly, having played basketball against stiff competition in inner-city Chicago, I believe I’m allowed to ask it: Who wants some?

Today is the day I plug Mindy in the blog. Mindy Mindy Mindy! Mindy is a frosher, only she’s not because the year is over, only she still IS because that’s who she is in my head. And yes, Mindy reads this and wanted to be name-checked like Emily and Strother and whoever else. Congratulations, Mindy: approximately five more people have now read your name.

What I really (still) want is for all my friends to get blogs, or Livejournals, or their own sites, or something. The presence of my crew on the interweb is disappointingly low. I want to check in on them and read about their love lives and be fascinated by the way they think, especially when I’m exiled to Richmond, but they stubbornly persist in their absence. Get blogs, all of you! I promise to link you if you do!

Oh, that means I should talk about Sara. Sara is a (former) frosher with a blog! You could all take a page from her cyber-book, other friends.

I’m still going through the sum of all my belongings, sorting and repacking things for the great exodus to Louisville, and yesterday I found three items of interest. The first is a piece of paper from last summer, on which is scrawled the following:

If I die, and somebody goes to a vanity press or something and has a posthumous collection of my work published, and it’s not called Destroy the Evidence, I shall be very angry and want an explanation.

And you know, it’s still true.

The second was the package of pictures I took in Brazil, all twelve of them. It’s very strange to me that it’s been four years since I was there. I slept on a mattress one inch thick in the same room as Tiago, the world’s biggest Goons and Hoses fan, and ate a lot of beans and rice and lost probably thirty pounds. I started watching Dawson’s Creek for the first time, and was surprised to find that I liked it, and pined for home and Erika too much.

I had an incredibly sweet host sister named Joana, who tried to reach out to me any way she could: we played Quake II together, and she introduced me to cocoa in condensed milk. I saw a giant Jesus and many, many streetside orange vendors. I went to Mass with my host grandmother, who spoke no English at all but who smiled and patted my hand the way my own grandmother would have. I took showers that froze me, burned me and gave me some nasty electric shocks.

Along with the blue acrylic painting I bought at an art fair (still one of my favorite possessions), those pictures are the only souvenirs I still have from Brazil. The Rio pin I used to have was lost with my first bucket hat, fall term of my first year at Centre; I think the futbol calendar Tiago gave me is packed away somewhere in the attic, probably for a long time. It was a very self-centered time for me, and I wish now that it had been otherwise. I should have learned some Portuguese, I should have thrown myself into life there instead of trying to live here in my head, and I should definitely have played less Pokemon.

No regrets, though. I Went There, and I Came Back.

The third thing will have to wait, probably for quite a while, as I want to make it a part of this site and I’m going to have to write some code to do it. Right now I have to lug bags of potato chips over to Emily R’s house for a pre-Chicago Trip meeting. My life is filled with travel.

My brother and I need haircuts. We have both nearly attained mullet status. I feel like I should be playing hockey.

Two new (old) experiences last night, courtesy of Audrey: dinner at Miyako, a hibachi grill, and the first time I’ve seen The Blues Brothers. I say new (old) because I feel like everyone and her duck has already had these experiences and there’s little I could rave about that hasn’t already been raved about a million times. All the same, they were totally sweet. Audrey and I are going to write a buddy cop movie about hibachi chefs–the old, grizzled chef who’s losing his edge, and the young, flashy chef who’s a “loose cannon.” They’ll have to have a final showdown with the rival chef from across town, which they will win because of the value of teamwork. Also, the old chef should be played by AlPacino.

It’s going to take me a little while to snap out of this writing style because I just read The Perks of Being a Wallflower again,and it’s one of those books that does that to you. I started reading it at around 4:00, when we picked Ian up in Louisville, and again it surprised me how much content it goes through for such ashort book. I think I’m going to loan it to Emily R tomorrow (I’m going to start mentioning her name now, because I’m probably going to link her like mad if I can manage to get a Keenspace account for her).

Speaking of people of whom I’ve spoken, Summer and I don’t really talk anymore, but I guess that’s a good thing because she’s really honestly happy where she is. I put a quote from Perks on the inside cover of her mix CD, and I was going to make her read it too, if she ever came back to Centre.

She won’t, but Katie K will, starting with the winter term in a few weeks, which is also when I start my internship. I’m really looking forward to that, even if it does mean more work than I’d normally be doing. And I’m looking forwardto the internship too.

Update 2317 hrs: I just found out that it’s actually supposed to be teppanyaki, not hibachi,but that the two are now pretty much interchangeable. Also, I know somebody who’s gonna be famous!

Emily R kind of got lost and I was worried she’d be the second Fifth Street shooting victim, but allturned out well even though I didn’t get to see her. I didn’t have to build a set, but I did spendan awful lot of time taking clothes off and putting them on in different configurations.

And the dance was in the dining hall, of course, and the punch was bad, and the band was awful, andit was the most fun ever. This would have been about the best weekend ever, actually, if it hadn’tbeen for the Emily panic (which was not her fault) and another situation that came up with somemutual friends and a mutual not-so-friend (which is his fault) and made Sunday night suck alittle.

But, y’know. Audrey.

Speaking of which, cam = best mullet yet!

Today I have spent a lot of time investigating and applying and not doing my homework. In this, itseems, I have something in common with ETS:

• “Complete the Authorization Voucher Request Form found in the Bulletin.

• Mail the fee and voucher request form in the CBT envelope to the address printed on thevoucher.”

A curious proposition, to say the least, as I’m filling out the voucher request to get avoucher. These are the people who wrote the tests that will determine whether I’m allowed into gradschool! Trust!

(I can’t believeI’m linking to “Wonderwall”)

I think that as of this week I have reached Critical Busy Mass. I’m scraping together the stuff towork at the family biz for my winterinternship, to take the GRE (I’m so poor it’s free!), and of course figure out if and where I wantto do the grad school thing. And that’s the long-term stuff. There’s also still the play, and theother play, and the job, and the other job, and I just remembered I have to run (literally) down tothe flower shop to pick up a corsage. Yow!

I’ve pretty much had to quit running, thanks to the frigid weather (I have no cold-running gear)and the fact that what used to be my afternoon time slot is now usually filled with other stuff.I’m keeping the weight off with sheer nervous energy, I think, but I miss it. The exercise, thatis, not the weight. It’s too bad Halo doesn’t burn calories.

Today: Corsage! Build set! Visit Emily R from Richmond! Hang out / eat / dance with Audrey! It’s amad house.

In the middle of the street.