Zombie Survival Kit

H-A-Double-L-O-W-Double-E-N.

I've slacked on reporting an entire week of Halloween free-for-all. Sarah and I had a blast decorating our awesome house with purple lights and spider webs. We spent an entire evening carving pumpkins and baking the scariest damn cake that anyone has ever seen.
Halloween is indisputably the greatest holiday ever (besides my birthday) but no one can argue with a solid week of Halloween. It hasn't even come yet and we're all still freaking out to the best of our ability.

Friday the TKEs had Graveyard, their annual Halloween party. There's nothing like falling in love with your friends all over again when you realize how shamelessly creative they are. (And the ones who aren't creative, well, at least their still shameless.) The boys work so, so hard every year to make thier house look like a place you wouldn't go into EVER, unless you were a dumb teenager in a horror film.

However it may seem, it was more fun than even pictures can convey. I went as France, complete with Eiffel Towers hanging from my ears, a tattoo of the french motto (Egalite, Liberte, Fraternite), ballet shoes and a button with "J'aime TKE" on it. I'll admit that from the shoulders up I looked more like a girl-scout, well past her age group, but I felt cute and french-ish. <--- That's me with Amber, who was Hermione Granger. Tim was Lance Armstong and anytime anyone asked what he was he would turn around and point to the seven on his back, flexing: "LANCE ARMSTRONG, SEVEN-TIME WINNER!" He was very excited, despite the fact that neither of us are particularly interested in Lance Armstrong for any reason whatsoever. It was a good time to be had by all.


I went to Faust last night with Carrie and Ashley. We got to be French nerds together without baing made fun of. Yes, Faust is an opera in French, even though the most famous Faust is in German. Get off my back, I didn't write it. Anyway, I was unaware that an opera could have subtitles and that I would have better french skills than someone who was paid to translate subtitles for an opera, but it's true.

It was my first opera and now I know that I like opera even if it is, ahem, sort of, bizarre in this case. (They switched the order of the acts around and, well, danced around a lot.)

Anyway, today is free. I have to enjoy my free day since next weekend Tim's moving into a new place. Someone broke into his other house and it's just the absolute last straw. It's also Rhapsody next weekend. But for now, it's still Halloween weekend. Happy birthday Dad!
And Happy Halloween tomorrow!

(If you're really sadistic you can check out the pictures by clicking here)

Don't Call me Woody

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Two of these birds live in the Pine tree outside of window. This is a Red-Bellied Woodpecker. I heard one of them tapping the other day when I walked home from class and today I can hear them talking to each other. If you can get an awesome bird to be your neighbor I totally recommend it.

I like that they sound like they're saying "Cha cha cha."
I wish I knew what to feed them.

Man, I'm glad they're not yellow-bellied sapsuckers. Har har.

Support the bird nerds at Cornell University!

The Bad with the Good

It always happens this way.

Today I got the news that a friend of mine passed away. Sarge was my boss at the Renaissance festival, and I'm sorry if this sounds cheesy but it's true; it's more of a family than you'll ever know if you've never worked there. A large, disfunctional, costume-wearing family, but a family none-the-less.

Sarge worked with his wife, Anna, in the back kitchen in the booth singularly known as "Sarge and Anna's." They traveled all year long so they could work at different festivals around the country. Sarge had large hands like paws, which he would wrap around your own hands in a warm greeting that was entirely his own. He was enormously sweet and absolutely friendly all the time, to everyone. Two summers ago he brought in a box of hand-woven pieces for everyone in the booth (I suspect) based entirely on the fact that Alsn also likes to weave. He was so much like an adopted grandfather and even when he was obstinant he was still funny and good. I just plain liked him. I think everyone did.

Maybe I'm a snob but I don't think I would have liked working anywhere else nearly as much as I enjoyed working at Sarge and Anna's. What's worse is that they're the kind of people you never expect to go away because they're just essential to the whole idea of the "The Ren Faire." I don't know if Anna will do another faire, not without Sarge. I don't know if I want to do another faire without Sarge and Anna, and Alsn, who seems to think she can go to Japan without me.

My heart goes out to Anna and her whole family. I wish there was a way to make it to the service. If my heart hurts, I can't imagine what they're going through.

But I suppose it's standard that while horrible things happen, good ones happen too.

My mom just finished another big part of her school and is that much closer to being an around-the-clock drug abuse/domestic violence councilor. She's been working on this since I was in high school and what she's done for herself is definitly something to be proud of.

More big things have happened this year than I can ever remember happening in such a short amount of time. Death, marriage, travel, natural disasters, and upheaval... slow down, please. Slow down.

icantbackoutcauseiloveyoutoomuchbaby

I'm just going to get this out of my system now:

I LOVE MY NEW COMPUTER.

It's unholy. This is the computer I've wanted since I knew computers existed back when the only colors on our 5"x5" screen were orange and black and the only program I had was a Garfield greeting card maker.

I shouldn't brag because, well, people have computers. It's not like I gave birth to it myself. Also, if I'm rude about it God will take it away from me; I'll spill RC Cola on it, it will get beat up by gang members, a tank will run over it. You know, standard nerd disasters.

Perhaps it's sad that this is all I have to talk about.

Everyone else: "How are you, Roxie?"
Me: "I LOVE MATERIAL OBJECTS!!!"
Everyone else: "I remember when you were an actual human-being with a soul."
Me: "I LOVE MY SHINY MATERIAL OBJECTS!!!"

I also love pictures of kittens. I hope that's enough to save me.

There's Beauty in the Breakdown

Funny story: I sign up for a committee to help out my friend Patrick. It's the Administrative Planning Committee, which sounds boring and has been for about two years now. But this year they're stepping it up a notch or three, meaning that my tiny favor to a friend has become a serious commitment to the future of Centenary. This is what happens when you can't say no to an accolade. I need to learn to stop puffing up my resume and let myself have a life.

The worst part is when I complain about the added responibility and another friend, who doesn't get asked to be on "things like this" says: "that sounds awesome! That's the kind of awesome thing no one ever asks me to do." What channels do I go through to give it up? What do I have to do to stop being a postergirl for things like this and let someone else have a chance? If I sound like I'm complaining: I am. The grass is always greener.

There's one thing I can't complain about and wouldn't dare to. I just bought a new computer (an iBook) and I feel a little like that writer who scrimps and saves to buy a new typewriter, not another used one with a missing "k" or some piece of junk that won't write on the last lines of the page: a shiny new Underwood with a nice, new black ink ribbon. Except that this is a typewriter I can load all my CD's onto and edit my photographs on and pay off for the rest of my young life. It's supposed to be here within the next two weeks and I'm positively beaming. I can work on the newspaper at home! I can turn papers in on time! I can... waste hours playing Scrabble online and ditching work! Wait, not that last one.

Suffice it to say that I've never bought something this big new and I've never bought something this big for myself. I'm pleased to know that there will be a place for my stories to live where the files won't corrupt themselves or implode while I'm asleep.

In other news: I love fall break. I love the new bookstore. I love that people like to feed me (I love you Jared, ChristopherBen, and Tim). I've been getting a spree of emails from long-losts lately that reinforces my idea that I'm actually the center of the universe, so that's nice.

I hope everyone else's weekend is long and full of cat naps and dog walks. I'm going to go eat a tub of icecream and continue to not write my paper, because it's vacation and that's what vacationers do.

Failure is Imminent

Here's a fun exercise:

1) Go to www.google.com

2) Type in "failure"

3) Hit "I'm feeling lucky" (below the google search field)

3 1/2) Don't assume anything about Google, it's not their doing (but they're not doing anything to change it either).

Novelty Items: On Sale

What's black and white and red all over? The Conglomerate, covered with my blood and anguish from laying it out and making it readable for 13-straight hours every Wednesday.

I walked into my advisors office the other day to make some changes to my schedule and before I could sit down she says: "Something has to change. You can't go on like this." Was that really what she said? Did I hear her correctly? I took a quiz that said I was a candidate for heart disease because of my stress level. Can that be right?

The past six weeks have been a never-ending rollercoaster of commitment. I can count on the fingers of one hand the things I've done that didn't have a deadline: TKE Bid-week, Pirate party, hanging out with my Dad, seeing the Penguin movie, eating sushi with Sarah and Kacie.

But I think (hope, pray, wish, rejoice) that that may be changing. Last night I laid out THE PAPER in the Conglomerate office and lo-and-behold!!! 4:30!! It was done at 4:30 a.m.! I was in bed by five a.m.! What a relief to have a photographer who can modify pictures, an editor who can edit and an assistant who... assists. I've been terrified that the level to which the newspaper has risen is going to plummet into despair and degradation, but after last night, I really think that every thing is going to be okay. Why does cutting layout time down by an hour and a half matter?

When I left the office I felt great. Thanks to Erin, Curt, Ashley and Tim I felt less alienated by the whole thing and more like I can handle everything else. Oh yeah- and I dropped my Medieval Lit class, which was more of an Evil Lit class than anything else.

Fall break is coming up and all I want to do is clean my beautiful house, work on my women's lit paper (which I love, love, love, love with all my heart) and cook gumbo.

Red River Revelation

I've crossed over from tired into the zone of incoherence. Regardless, newsworthy things are happening. So.

Rita didn't destroy Centenary after all. It got Centenary rather damp, but was actually quite refreshing for those of us who just needed one day without electricity to force us into a state os pseudo-relaxation.

One pleasant byproduct was that Friday, at work in the bookstore (which is just so damned beautiful these days), lo-and-behold, who walks in but my old, old friends Ginger and Tammi. They're characters from back in the days when I lived with my Dad. Ginger was that awesome highschool friend I had in middleschool. Ginger, Tammi and their mom, Barb, were the ones who lat me stay at their house watching movies and eating Tamales all night when I came to close to forgetting that I'm a girl.

Anyway, they're all grown-up like and forced out of their homes by inclement weather. Ginger has a beautiful baby who drew on my coffee table with a red crayon and was adorable. Wait... B.A.B.Y. It makes me feel at once old and also somehow like that radical kid who has dirt of her face from falling out of trees. It was the nicest of all nice surprises to see them.

Unlike Jason and saul showing up at my house in their underwear, in the rain, which wasn't so much nice as just funny.

Anyhoo. My first day of work at the Revel was... long. I had a meagre 8-hour shift while Kacie had to work a full 12 hours at that funny farm. Selling turkey legs to people dressed like storm troopers in the Colorado summer is nothing, I mean nothing, like bartering with shreveport festival-goers for eight straight hours without a break and not getting paid. I thought Wal-Mart was where you go it you want to see people hit their kids. Oh no. No no no no no.

Working the coupon booth is where the Red River Revel is no longer an arts and music festival and becomes a beer and learning-how-to-count festival. I will be glad when the day comes that I can go back to being a patron. It's not that I don't enjoy volunteering: it's that I don't enjoy having to wait on a woman who hits her child, one child among four who are all covered with burn scars, while she breathes smoke in my face and trys to figure out what 50-cents plus 50-cents is. I want to kidnap her children, bake them a plate of cookies, give them a bath, read them a story and tell them that if anyone ever hits them again... to call. the. cops. Period.

I shouldn't complain about three more days when these people will have to live with it for the rest of their lives. But I miss selling hot meat to happy people.