Category: Girls

March 6, 2003 /

I kind of forgot to mention this, but I’m in Virginia. SETC again, and the 24-Hour Playfest again, and I’ve just finished the third draft of my play, which is pretty close to final. I’m an hour early, which may mean that (end-of-the-world joke of your choice).

I’ve got enough caffeine in me to power a small country for a week, so I need to be doing something or I’ll be fidgeting and bothering the senior playwright who’s going over my piece right now: thus the entry. I’m as nervous as I was last year, because there’s no safety net. Doing comedy is hard, but writing tragedy is harder, and I think I wrote a tragedy. Or at least something that hurts.

Tony called me out last year for only writing comedy; he said he thought I had it in me to write deeper, darker stuff. I don’t believe my comedies have any less depth just because their tone is different, but the challenge irked me anyway. They do that. So this year I wrote something with a bite to it. It’s the play I couldn’t write fall term, and if you were around you know what that means, and if you read the play you might figure it out.

Or you might not. I have to edit now, I think. I don’t want the ending to feel tagged on, especially because it wasn’t.

January 8, 2003 /

I’m living in a small apartment with some of my best friends, apprenticed in a trade I find fascinating, dating an amazing girl, working with a dream cast on a play that really excites me and playing in one of my favorite bands. It occurs to me that these are probably the best days of my life.

December 24, 2002 /

I wimped out on the Christmas lights this year–I got them on the tree, on the front hedge, and onthe giant mutant tree next to the driveway, but there they stop. Nothing like the usual electricity ‘n’ frustricity extravaganza, which involves between eight and twelve trees, lots of long extension cords and lots of short tempers. I don’t miss the aggravation, even if I do miss the look of the place.

But the lights are up, the oyster stew is downed, the comic is done and it’s only an hour and a half until midnight Mass. Christmas snuck up on me this year; I did all my shopping in two days, but that actually worked out pretty well. I’ve even conditioned myself well enough so that spending as much money as I did, even on other people, made me vaguely sick. Three cheers for my misguided conscience! If all goes well (and by “well” I mean “to grad school“), this time next year I won’t have a penny to my name, so I guess I should enjoy it now.

Audrey made me a quilt. Like a real quilt, and it’s incredibly warm and comfy. For the record, I’m in love.

November 20, 2002 /

I put a lot of my daily recorded life into correspondence with Audrey now, which means that I don’t write as much of it in here–partly because the urge to journal is satisfied, and partly because I’d feel guilty just writing the same things twice. I’ll try to make up for that soon; I think it’ll help once I (finally) write a backend interface for this thing so I don’t have to upload and update the SQL manually.

As seen camwise, I got Drew’s (old new) CD today, and what I’ve heard so far is shockingly good. I’ve mentioned his music in here before, and I always liked the cheesy low-quality mp3s from his old site, but the CD is high-res, listenable indie pop music. It’s kind of like a combination of the Flaming Lips and Rhythm Method. (What you say? You haven’t heard of Rhythm Method? Of course you haven’t! That’s part of the PLAN!)

Working backwards in time, the play is over and I have my evenings to myself again, which is as always a strange feeling. I’ll get back to my lazy habits soon enough, I’m sure, but right now I feel obligated to work from 7-10:00 out of sheer habit.

The final two shows were much better than Thursday and at least as good as Wednesday, and I came away from the end of the play so satisfied with what we’d done that I decided not to try out for the spring play. It’s going to be amazing, I know–it’s Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and it’s Patrick at the helm, so it’d be excitingly mad even if he weren’t adding enormous puppets and masks. Part of me regrets that Iwon’t be able to work under Patrick as an actor–it’s a hell of an experience–but I won’t act on that stage again. I had my time in the spot and I’m out. I’m really just looking forward to watching the show.

That pretty much brings us up to date. Anybody want a Swiss Cake Roll?

November 4, 2002 /

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 spend an 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, and it was the most fun ever. This would have been about the best weekend ever, actually, if it hadn’t been for the Emily panic (which was not her fault) and another situation that came up with some mutual friends and a mutual not-so-friend (which is his fault) and made Sunday night suck a little.

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, it seems, 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 a voucher. These are the people who wrote the tests that will determine whether I’m allowed into gradschool! Trust!

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

November 2, 2002 /

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 winter internship, to take the GRE (I’m so poor it’s free!), and of course figure out if and where I want to do the grad school thing. And that’s the long-term stuff. There’s also still the play, and the other play, and the job, and the other job, and I just remembered I have to run (literally) down to the 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, that is, 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 a mad house.

In the middle of the street.

October 25, 2002 /

Ben Folds was stunning, again, this time even more so because he was playing solo–just him and the piano (which I think is still the name of the tour)–and it didn’t feel like anything was missing. He got an almost unfair amount of music out of it: stomping the pedals like a kick drum, tapping on the mike in lieu of toms, and of course conducting the audience in place of strings or trumpets or whatever.

And that might be the best part. I went in planning to scream for Where’s Summer B.?, easily my favorite BF5 song and one I didn’t really expect to hear even upon request. And he DID play it! Without provocation, as like the fourth song! And we got to sing the best background vocals in any song ever!

So that was good. And then! Not only did I finally meet Jon’s friend Ana, who is unspeakably cool, but we met a bunch of UK friends at the Tolly Ho afterwards. These included my old friend Audrey, whom I hadn’t seen since spring (and before that not for probably two years), and her roommate Alden, whom I’d never met. It was a great time.

And then, the next day, Audrey and I were commenting (via email) about how much fun the whole thing was, and that we should hang out more often, and I asked her to the Centre fall dance and she totally said yeah!

The (large) part of me that is still a sophomore in high school is dancing for joy right now.

Anyway, the week has been work work rehearse rehearse other than that. This weekend’s Centre homecoming, and though it can’t possibly match my own for nostalgia, I’m sure it will surpass it in quantity of graduated friends. Or you could take Lisa’s hunch and predict that it’s going to be “mad drama.” Whatever. I’m just looking forward to sleeping in.

so she won’t sleep better alone
and they won’t feel better alone

October 13, 2002 /

We slept in the back of her SUV with the windows cracked and her sweater for a pillow. Around 8 or so I woke up and looked around, and there were three deer outside–two of them chasing each other, one just making its stately way across the field. They were maybe ten feet away. I thought about waking her up so she could see them, but she’d set her alarm for 9, and since we hadn’t actually gotten to sleep until around 5:30 (I think) I figured she could use another hour.

She’d scooted over in her sleep to the point where I was kind of crushed against the door. One of my arms was still asleep from where I’d had my head on it, and it was numbingly cold, especially since I’d given her most of the blanket. It had been less than nine hours since we met. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so comfortable.

The deer left, but by the time she woke up they were back.

September 20, 2002 /

I was wrong, incidentally.

Scent memories still freak me out a little sometimes. I know it’s really because long-term storage is next to the nose’s part of the hypothalamus, or whatever, but in practice it just works out so that even weak smells bring back really vivid scenes.

As it rained all night (during Homecoming! bastard rain!), and as we were dolled up for the occasion, Caitlan and I were sent with the rest of the candidates to wait in the library. As the library was locked, we hung out in the rear lobby of the Industrial Arts building downstairs.

The doors there were locked, too, but on the other side of one of them was the original MCHS CAD lab, the site of the first programming class I ever took. I’d messed around in BASIC since I was a kid, but that room was where I learned about Pascal, and about having a weird knack for it. Six years later I’m about to graduate with a BS in Comp Sci. The room still smells the same.

I wasn’t expecting much of a real homecoming, and in fact I only saw two other people from the class of 1999, one of whom recognized me. Instead I got memories of the game two years ago, when my brother was on court. I watched him and his friends stride around like giants who were still learning to shave. I was so proud and awed I thought my heart would burst. I had a girl on my arm with the biggest smile in the world.

I thought about Erika for the first time in a while tonight, and it was sharper than I thought it’d be. I thought about my brother, and how he’s felt lately. I wish I’d really known how to shave myself, so I could have shown him.

September 5, 2002 /

Apartment update: There’s no stopper for the kitchen sink, so I’ve been using a wad of Saran Wrapto plug up the drain in order to do dishes. If you were to conclude from this, without other information, that I’m living in a guys’ apartment, you’d be right. But, y’know, at least we are doing the dishes (which we only dirtied four days ago).

As is usually the case when there’s actually a lot happening in my life, I haven’t had time to write it down. I have literally not spent one continuous hour in leisure activity since Monday,when it became apparent that I was going to have to personally reset the speed and duplex mode on every single Ethernet card in Cheek / Evans. There are 109 students in Cheek / Evans, and almost all of them have computers. You can imagine the rest.

I’m also way way behind on the Cento web site, which is supposed to go live next Monday (this statement and the preceding paragraph are not unrelated). I’m really unhappy about this, plus of course the fact that the middle room is a disaster zone. A lifetime of Mom’s cleaning habits is starting to drive me out of my mind. I know I don’t have time to clean up all my junk, and I don’t even really want to, but if I don’t do it soon I’m going to start screaming at random. Thanks, Mom!(I’m kidding. Mostly.)

Also I got a girlfriend. You might have guessed that.

I think I’m really going to enjoy this year if I can ever catch up enough to notice that it’s happening.

so what! say what! for your own sake
do you have a headache or heartbreak?
P.S. Anthropology rocks!