Reasons for wanting to hit Harlan Ellison
Old: Writing things with titles like
New: Just being a jerk.
Category: People
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 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.
So last night I accomplished one of my life goals: playing music, live, with both members of Grandma’s Genius! Jon and I have played together for years, of course, and Chris and I played several times during GSP 2001, but last night was the first time we’d all played together (literally–we went on sans practice).
We actually sounded really good, especially on the Guster covers (Demons and Airport Song). We all wished there was a way to record it, but none of us had the equipment handy (or in fact at all). I kind of messed up myfavorite Jon song, Tennessee, by trying to play keyboard on it; it may have been an omen when the sustain pedal on my piano broke a few hours before we went on.
Even so, there was nothing that sounded bad and quite a lot that sounded good. I think they might even hire me as their touring drummer! (Note that by “hire” I mean “permit.”)
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
The heat appears to operate entirely independent of my control, turning itself on sometime around 10 am and turning itself off around 10 pm. The knobs on some of the radiators don’t turn at all,and the ones that do turn have no effect. I wasn’t under the impression that this was how radiators worked! Evening is interesting, at least, as I have to open windows around 6 and turn the space heater on again by 11.
Things that have distracted me lately:
- “…our machines have to keep grinding over it, the grit in their backwash sandblasting the blood away.”
- “Ah, it’s just someone sitting there, because you don’t see dead bodies, you just don’t.”
- The same girl who recommended
- Also, they have a song about Lion-O.
- As the only one of my friends still here for the break, I’m taking care not only of Idaho but of Meghan’s turtle and Ken’s red-bellied frogs (plus their cricket-based food source). The resulting situation can be seen camwards.
And that’s the news from Kentucky.
There’s a part in The Perks of Being A Wallflower that describes riding in a truck at night with people you love, watching traffic lights and listening to “Asleep” by the Smiths. The narrator calls it feeling infinite.
Coming back from dinner and the music store tonight, we took the back way around Danville. Jon had just bought the new Flaming Lips album, and it was playing, and he and Amanda were silhouetted by red and white lights and I was in the back and for a few minutes everything was right with the world.
It’s a good feeling.
Today is my brother Ian’s birthday! Happy birthday, Ian! Ian is no longer a teenager, and if he were predictable he’d probably stop stealing people’s lawn ornaments now. Ian is anything but predictable, though, so he may or may not continue stealing lawn ornaments. He’s a madman!
(I’d link you to his website there, but he currently has a beautifully written and really sweet piece about me on his front page and I’m too embarrassed. Remind me again another time. It’s a neat site, and has dinosaurs and spacemen.)
More ways in which the world is a wonderful place: Ken blew me a new fishbowl! Out of glass! Ken can do anything. The bowl is huge and perfect, and Idaho tends to get lost in it and do backflips. Were I to spontaneously develop gills, I think I’d move in next to him.
ALSO! As you may have noticed from the link above, Ken finally obeyed my
Whoops. I put together the entry just before this, about an hour ago, thinking that I didn’t have much besides internet stuff to talk about. I completely forgot that yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my very first online journal entry.
That does make it by far the longest-running journal of any kind I’ve had, but then the next longest was about four months, so it’s been that for a while. And of course I can’t say it was the first NFD entry, because it wasn’t NFD then, just the journal I put together for kicks and hid behind my webcam pic. The interface was pretty awful, but then I was modeling it almost exactly on Emma’s. Also, I was young.
Anyway, yeah, wow, a year. One hundred forty-six entries, for just over four tenths of an entry per day. Since I was trying for one every other day, that’s not too bad.
I’ve fallen down a few times recently, but at least now it’s for different reasons. Maybe running is the art of not slowing down, and walking is the art of just getting up. I haven’t kept anything going this long before, and I’m still going now, and there’s something to be said for that.
Here’s to a year.
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.