Snow, anyone?

I took this picture at about noon today. It's been snowing non-stop in Boulder for hours. Hence, I haven't set foot out the front door. All flights in and out of DIA are canceled and all of the roads are either closed or packed with cars. Ohhhhh, blizzards are so fun. I feel a little better about sitting around in a vicodan coma, because there's not a lot I could do outside the house, even if I wanted to. You'll note that the next picture looks a little weird, it's because I took it through the screen since I no longer have any desire to even poke my camera out the door.

Also, you'll note that the snow on the railing is about four inches deeper that in the first picture. That's what 2 hours in Colorado will do for you.

We may get 26 inches by noon tomorrow. If so, I'll take more pictures and post them for those of you who might not have seen snow since Valentine's Day, sophomore year.

Oh, hot cocoa and warm socks all day. Stay warm.

Oh, and the nuggets are still playing tonight for some reason. Good thing we traded for Allen Iverson but he's not playing... and Carmelo Anthony punched that dude so he's not playing either...

Cheeky Monkey

1.) I'm really excited because I got all A's this semester.

2.) In case you think I'm bragging, my cheeks are fat(ter than usual).

Two teeth, or not two teeth

Well, this in interesting. For the past two months or so I've collected "Wisdom Teeth" stories from everyone I know. I got everything from a friend whose tooth punch through his bone and he thought he ruptured his eardrum, to using a blindfold instead of general anesthesia, to multiple infections and general bad post-operation judgment calls like beer and hockey, or motorcycle rides. Then there are people like Tim who like to brag that their jaws are big enough, or they were born with no wisdom teeth at all.

So maybe it's too early to speak, since I just got mine out this morning and there's certainly a possibility that I'll spend Christmas day battling four dry sockets, but this has just been a generally been a very weird experience.

All night last night I had dreams about getting the surgery and when I woke up, I was convinced that it was over. It's a little like when you get a new job and you dream about it all night and wake up just when you're supposed to get off work in your dream, so you essentially work two shifts...

It wasn't nearly that exhausting though, just disappointing. I've never had general anesthesia before, and I don't care how many times people say "you don't even know you've fallen asleep and then you're done..." I was still freaking out a little inside until I met my doctor... who was AWESOME. He talked to me about finding more little solutions to get rid of my headaches one step at a time, and then the last thing I remember is him saying to the nurse, "that's flowing really well," as he poked me with the IV. My legs got warm, my arms felt number, and I woke up an hour later with a mouth full of dry blood (yum).

So, even though my jaw is really sore and I can't eat anything without bleeding (again, yum), my notion that dentists are the best people on earth has been reaffirmed. I love them. I can't wait to have dental insurance so I can go to the dentist every month. It sounds crazy, I'm sure, clean teeth make me happy and I'm fascinated with anesthesia now. Oh, and I got to ride in wheel chair for the first time. (NB: "getting" to ride in a wheelchair= nothing like "having" to ride in a wheelchair)

Anyway, my face is in pain but it's fine. My Dad's taking excellent care of me (he made me his AMAZING homemade Macaroni and Cheese) and got me two kinds of juice, soynog, ice cream, Fresca and popcicles to make everything all better.

It's awesome to be back in Colorado. I psyched about seeing my family and friends whom I haven't seen in six months or longer. It is weird to be without Tim though, I haven't gone a day without seeing him since last November, when my Grandfather passed away.

Christmas is so weird. Break is awesome. My laws feel like crap, but really, I can't complain.

Oh, except that I also miss Kristin and I expect her to bake me sympathy cookies when I return.

long, straight, curly, shaggy, oily, flaxen, waxen

Okay, I just have to share... when you look at the profile for the movie Hair on amazon...


As you scroll down, you eventually come to this...

I'm not entirely sure anyone at amazon has actually seen the movie... just a guess. I find this utterly fantastic.

the ability to create a chuck wagon out of a nickel

This is the christmas list I got in an email from my dad. It's too awesome not to share.

"Hey Kiddo,

All I want for xmas is a new super-power- choose from this list:

My list for super powers

1. The ability to throw a large cheese over the hedge and no one would see me, even if I go around the other side to see what happened.

2. The ability to know what someone got for someone else for Xmas.

3. The ability to count the number of cars in a car lot with no time limit, and somehow it’s still impressive.

4. The ability to take pictures without a camera or phone.

5. The ability to know whether or not a bear wants to eat me.

6. Complete understanding of the metric system, and how it was that Jesus convinced everyone Satan is the devil.

7. The ability to make people think I talk to the President.

8. The ability to choose a good retaurant without having to think about it.

9. The ability to hold my eyes closed tight for three seconds and nothing happens, except people ask if I am okay.

10. The ability to know whether or not a turtle wants to eat me.

11. The ability to see a hamster- even when there is no hamster there.

12. I’d like to be the only person in the world who knows how to speak a foreign language- and see how everyone feels about that.

Love,

Dad."

One Gold Star is Not Enough

What a bizarre culture we live in. I just spent an hour rating t-shirt designs on Threadless (which, in case you didn't notice, is preventing me from doing anything productive since about two weeks ago), and it occurred to me, everywhere you go, people ask you to rate things in these weird, semi-meaningless scales.

Rate t-shirts, rate songs in your iTunes, rate movies, give (and receive) grades on a scale from F to A, from 0.0 to 4.0.

"Rate your server on a scale from 1 to 5, five being the best service you've ever received"
"Rate your pain on a scale from 1 to 10, ten being the worst pain you've can imagine" (Complete with weird little frowny-face chart)
"Rate your level of volunteer experience from 0 to 5" (on grad school aps, as if you have any idea what 2, 3, or 4 actually signify, 0 being "heartless cad" and 5 being "living in hut in darfur, handing out MREs and AIDS meds")

We evaluate our courses and professors on a sliding scale; everyone knows those little "never, hardly ever, unknown, often, always" scales... How often do you listen to this music? How happy are you with your job? How likely are you to shop online? Haw satisfying was the cheesecake?

You know what? NONE of these sliding scales actually represent the way I feel about ANY of these things. They NEVER do. I'm done with sliding scales.

Seriously, I have the hardest time with these things. When you have a blinding migraine, and all you want is for someone to induce a coma, do you say 8.5 because you can imagine that yes, if you also had a broken leg and a burst apendix, it might be worse? What if I like the idea but the design is shit? How do professors destinguish between an 89 and 90? What's the difference between 2 1/2 stars and 3?

Bullox. That's what I say it is.
Somethings simply don't fit on a sliding scale. Some things have more dimensions than that. On a scale of 0 to 5, the quality of our qualifying system is about a 1, and it's tiresome.

That's it. That's all I have to go on about. This has been one of those funny little epiphanies that don't fit into of the shoeboxes where I keep the things that fascinate me.

Don't wanna forget, come daylight...

I decorated the christmas tree in the bookstore today. It's a hideous mess because there are two clashing sets of decorations and I put both of them on, just to be ornery. Mostly, I just started throwing stuff on the tree and couldn't stop.

That was the most exciting thing that happened today. Granted, the day isn't over, but so far the trend dictates that I'll be in bed by 11:00–a miracle of no short order.

Tim and I spent the week in Beaver's Bend, Oklahoma with his family, and thankfully didn't see a single beaver the entire time. I'm still convinced that the little bastards are pawns of the devil... beavers, that is. It's was great to go up there with everyone and just hike around and relax. Tim's family definately votes "yes" on relaxation: hiking, eating, and poker being the main events of the long weekend.

It was one of those rare and wonderful breaks where the days never seem to end and you can't believe you're still on vacation. It felt like class was canceled for a month, which is good because I needed to read "Middlemarch" (400 more pages under my considerable reading belt), and because my schedule this semester has been dastardly. I will never again wake up at 7:30 everyday. If that means creating my own job and never having children, that's fine with me. No obligation should begin before 10:00 a.m. and I should never be forced to go to bed before 2:00 a.m. If I was president, days would be 36 hours long and most of that time would be spent in leasure or personal persuits for the betterment of the world, starting with the self.

And eating.

Anyway, I've spent all day waxing philosophical about trees and influence and the meaning of life, and trying not to buy unnecessities on the internet. Our last newpaper meeting is tonight. Good riddance.

You're something like a phenomenon...

Alright... I've been composing an entry about those things for which I give thanks for a couple of weeks. It's largely stored in my head, but the thing is, there are so many things I'm thankful for: so many of them are obvious, and so many of them have much more meaning invested in them than is readily apparent.

There's no way to just write one of those exhausting (but by no means exhaustive) lists of "things I'm thankful for." It was a lot easier in elementary school when all anyone really expected was for everyone to say "mommy and daddy, my dog, my cat, my brother, and uncle stan," in some combination or another.

It's wierd, but it was an email from Marcus that made me start thinking about all this. Marcus edits the yearbook and he sent me an email with all these questions about what it's like to live off-campus. Hold that thought.

Now, in case you don't know, I'm HEAVILY prone to nostalgia. I LOVED highschool, and I think about how much freedom I had back them with a little bit (sometimes a lot) of feelings of... erosion... every now and then. All I did in highschool was paint, collect music, watch movies, write poems, act, staple things to my wall, draw, and run around in my panties with by two best friends. I didn't do my school work because it was so easy I didn't care. I ditched class every single day and passed with A's and B's. I somehow managed to balance my desire to be subversive (I was CONSTANTLY in detention or playing 'good cop/bad cop' in the pricipal's office with Trina–sorry Mr. Beard) with my need to feel like I was filling the world up with art and aquiring an other-worldly sort of knowledge. They couldn't hate me for ditching class and yelling at the teachers I thought were "ignorant" (sorry Mr. um... Interim Math Teacher?). I was in student government, I edited the Newspaper, I volunteered to tutor at the middle school, I went to every sporting event, I kept my boyfriend out of trouble.

In short, my highschool was the perfect environment for me because it gave me the time and the reason (however small and insignificant) to get passionate.

So this email from Marcus got me started thinking. Some mornings I wake up in my house and feel this remarkable feeling that this is the LAST place on earth that I belong. I haven't writen a poem since I was in France... I draw only when my headaches are too bad to do anything else. I never paint. BUT... BUT.

But people give me money to read books all day, to live in a house with great friends, to have dinner parties and sleep until noon if I want to. If I ever feel opressed by the amount of responsibility I have, I chose all that myself. And that choice is a luxury.

All the luxury of choice is what I'm thankful for. I had the choice to move into this beautiful house that overlooks my college, where I can learn whatever I want, where I am even free to disagree with what I'm told as long as I can produce evidence. I eat ramen only as an afterthought. If I run out money to pay my (luxurious cell phone and cable) bills, there are more loans available to me.

I may not have a car, but if I have an emergency, Tim won't be fired for leaving his job to take care of me. The hardest decision I make everyday is which t-shirt out of my collection of hundreds to wear. Oh. Oh the pain.

So if I don't have time to paint, draw, or lay around and think about the existencial crisis that much, it's my choice to be that way. I trade that for good grades and taking the time to learn the things my professors try to force-feed us everyday, despite our resistance.

And I live with Tim in a house with lots of windows, where people stop by everyday, and the porch swing is sometimes in the sun. That is a luxury, if anything.

Yesssssssir.

In case you're tired of looking at spore samples from pieworks.



and if that doesn't work, click on this link.

GO TO PIEWORKS ON PIERREMONT, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Look. Some people don't feel like it's worth it to drive all the way down line avenue to support the Pieworks on Pierremont and all of the Centenary people who work there (including my roommate and my boyfriend, and Jason, Mikey, David, Amy Burt, Shelly, etc...), especially when there's one right there on King's highway. Here's scientific proof that the Pieworks on King's Highway needs to clean their shit every once in a while.

My Biology partners and I took swabs of the inside door handles of eight restaurants and bars on King's highway. The Pieworks sample exploded with bacterial and fungal growth. In case you know how shady Li'l Joe's is, I put that up there as a comparison. Yup. One little spot.

That Pieworks sample is the most disgusting thing I've ever smelled in my whole life. Now, even though I can tell you that the bacteria we collected with a dry swab there are benign, I can also tell you that Tim got a staph infection while he worked there.

I'd be willing to bet money that the Pieworks on Pierremont is cleaner and a lot less scary. Maybe I'll take a swab and get back to you. But until then... it's prettier, and it's worth the drive to support our friends, you lazy, silly people. (It you already know that the Pieworks on Pierremont is better, ignore this admonition and have a nice day.)

Oh yeah, and as for the other restaurants we tested, The Cub and Murrel's were the next worst. George's sample grew a tiny brain, but was the best of the restaurants and Sharpie's grew nothing, which I'm convinced is a fluke. Gross.

I don't even want to know what my own kitchen's bacterial content looks like.

Oh sweet disappointment....

WARNING: NERD FARE BELOW. I'm pretty sure this isn't worth reading, but if you're bored/you like scary movies carry on.

So, I've been searching for this one movie... combing the internet to figure out what it was for months. (I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to have the poster on here, since it's copyrighted to the studio, but it links back to Wikipedia, sooooooo...)

Finally, today, I worked backwards through Wikipedia (ah, fine use of my time) until I FOUND IT. All I could remember was that there were five different stories... one involved a dead man whose wife wished for him to come back to life, which he did... after he was already embalmed, and she tries to re-kill him with a samuri sword, but he's doomed to live forever. The other was about a man who ran a home for the blind, but abused them until they put him in a dark basement full of razor blades and fed him to his own dog. Oh, and I distinctly remember a serial killer dressed as Santa Claus (and the little girl lets him in the house!).

It's got all Joan Collins in it, for whatever weird reason. Anyway, I'm so excited because it's like one of those puzzles you can't solve for days. And I couldn't find it even when I searched for "Tales from the Crypt" because the series got stupid after this one came out. However, all of my searching is for naught, because you can only get the stupid thing on VHS and I'm sure it will be at least 4 years before someone decides to put it on DVD.

Boooooo. This movie is awesome. And scary. And I'm glad I solved the puzzle, but I still won't get to see the movie unless my VCR magically resurrects itself. Boooooooo.

And yes, for whatever reason I did feel that this was worthy of going in my Blog. Yay Halloween.

ach-ay-double-ell-oh-double-ewe-double-ee-en

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Kacie took this picture of my pumpkin and it makes me SO happy.

We had a busy weekend carving pumpkins, carving more pumpkins and hanging out with Jared. Mat, Jared (plus the lovely Kakie), Meredith and a slew of other choir folk came to Shreveport for Rhapsody (Will's last!), and of course, Tacomania ensued, as well a night of weird gossip, which always happens.

Essentially, it was a good weekend.

And now it's Halloween AND my Dad's birthday, and I'm sure he'd just like everyone to know that Scorpios are FAR superior to everyone else and that checks can be made out to Howard Smith and mailed to our house.

Happy birthday Dad!

I'm currently dressed up for the Holiday as a hungry college-student/bookstore employee.

PAINT!

Holy crap. This video is seriously the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. Watch it twice. you must have Quicktime.

http://www.bravia-advert.com/paint/thead/

my shirt is an extension of my personality

THREADLESS IS HAVING A $$$$$$$$$$ (that's ten dollars) SALE.

So, um, go forth and wear t-shirts. I don't think I'll ever stop loving t-shirts with witty/beautiful things on them. We live in an era of wearable, inexpensive art. What do supermodels and designers wear on their day off? The same damn t-shirts as rock stars and joe shmoes.

Why do people like it? Because everyone can participate (the poor are especially deft at this, being the original "Goodwill" shoppers) and you can go your whole life without seeing the same t-shirt on more than 3 different people, because there are billions out there and it's all about finding the one. A t-shirt is like a lover for every day of the year. In cotton.

Oh, and I cut my hair. (and that t-shirt isn't mine.)

put this hotdog train in gear

It's probably never a good idea to post while you have a migraine, but I'm going to. Because I'm just that (insert adjective here, because I can't think of one).

See? This is going well already!

No really, I want to post today because it's been an eventful week and next week is going to be a homework death trap.

Last week was fall break and after Tim and I went a-camping, I took my first-ever trip to Michigan to attend an "information festival" (read: conference) at the Thomson-Shore book factory. I'm sure "book factory" isn't the technical term, but their not publishers... they build books. It was nerd paradise.

I'm really not sure if I learned anything I was supposed to learn, that is, anything that will help me layout and create books for the Tintamarre, but I did learn about some of the finer points of desktop publishing AND... AND...

I got to see how books are made! We actually walked through the whole process from beginning to end, from .pdf file to actaully, honest-to-god, hold-it-in-your-hand, finished book. And oh, that glue smells funky.

These are three of the books I actually got to watch them create. The Mexico Reader is what they call "perfect bound" which really just means it's a paperback. The other two are "case bound" which means that they're hard cover. We got to see the covers printed; the binding covered and stamped with foil; the pages printed, cut, folded, sorted, sewn, glued, notched, bound, dried, pressed, nipped, sealed, boxed and on their way. It. was. so. cool.

I completely understand why books are so expensive. Every little decision they make, from the weight of the cardboard in the cover, to the specific way the pages are stuck together... each one of those decisions has to fit together and they all cost money and take time. Even if the machines that they use to make books are a mile long, there's still that one step that someone has to do by hand. Their foil stamper was a 75 years-old lady, for god's sake. It was crazy and awesome.

And it was nice to see fall, even if it was just for 2 days.

I got back and I had tests to take, which would have been a problem if I wasn't taking, um, two 101 classes. These tests are little like being tested on, say, different flavors of ice cream, or state capitals. If you don't slip into a coma, the test's not that hard. (That's not to imply in any way that I'm some sort of genius and I know everything: I still have to study, it's just that the information is not analytical ANY way. It's fact regurgitation, which is good preparation for "Jeopardy.") Ahab was married to Jezabel, Gregor Mendel studied peas, etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.

The comes Graveyard. I'll post photos if I get to a point where I can walk up the stairs without feeling like death and pain and death. As usual, Graveyard was AWESOME. Who doesn't appreciate a good costume party? It's more than that though, it's so awesome to have everyone you really like in one place, at the same time, all happy and crazy and dressed as inexplicable bizarre things you'll never forget (even if you can't really define them)?

Amy made Cider and a bunch of (old) people came over to pre-party at our house. David and Nate were old men. Mikey and Jason were Jay and Silent Bob. Kacie was a cat burglar. Amy was the Loveshack (a little old place where we can get together), plus tin roof hat. Kristin was a 70's pornstar. I have no idea what Parham and Evan were, but it was disturbing. Blake was a bad doctor. Steph was a devil. Seth was "the Dude" from The Big Lebowski, complete with rug and White Russian. Tim was Iraq and it was hilarious.

I was a skeleton and my right shoe hurt my foot. The shoe hurting wasn't part of the costume, it's just a fact of the matter.

It was a really great night. It seemed short (perhaps because the party got shut down), but it was still great. I think about the fact that I should have graduated last year, and therefore would have missed it, a lot. I'm fairly sure I'll be more-than-satisfied with just five Graveyards in my life, but I'm still glad I got just one more.

This brings us to yesterday, when I made pancakes for a bunch of boys and couldn't cure my headache as hard as I tried. Kristin and I played in a Scrabble tournament (OH MY GOD!), and didn't win any money, but we did get 53 points for playing "SHITTY" on a triple-word-score. Needless to say, our 12 year-old opponants didn't stand a chance. Then Tim and I went on a date to the arcade on the boardwalk, and won enough tickets at skiball (and other sillynesses) to get a ring, a sticker, and two suckers.

We talked about religion and the quest for knowledge and human nature. And then we went to Li'l Joe's and talked about it some more. I really love him. He's a cheap date and I think that talking to him makes me a better person. It's a good balance between taking care of my material need to not spend any money and my spiritual need to be alive and engaged with changing perceptions of reality.

I'm 97% happy. I just wish this migraine would go away.

Posted: I Brake for Unicorns

Nous faisons du camping. Ooh la la.

You know you've had a good trip when you come back with a camera full of pictures of Tim looking truly hilarious and almost terrifying.

Fall break is here (thank sweet baby Jesus) which means that Tim and I had to take another one of our absurd vactions, where nothing makes sense and nothing normal happens. This time we thought it would be even more exciting if we threw nature into the mix and went camping. It was my idea (sound of trumpets, hailing my excellent idea), and it would have turned out exceedingly well if winter hadn't started fifteen minutes after we got out of Shreveport.

Even with the disasters (water leaked in the trunk, soaking clothes, bedding, supplies, etc.; it was rainy and overcast until the day we left; Tim put raw meat in the water supply [don't ask]; we couldn't find the campground until it was too dark to see your hand in front of your face, let alone put up a tent; the campground didn't sell firewood... so on and so forth), it was definately the best weekend I've had all semester, and it's not even Saturday yet.

Hot Springs (Arkansas) doesn't have much to offer in the way of mountains--I'm sorry, I'm a mountian snob, my mountains will always be better than anyone else's (get your mind out of the gutter)--but it was still beautiful. And even though it was cold, it was sort of refreshing. We camped right by a little creek, complete with raccoons digging in the mud at night (they have sensitive paws, according to Animal Planet), and there was a trailhead not more than 150 yards away.

To add to the joys of shish kabob on the grill and sleeping in 7 layers of clothes on the cold, hard, wonderful ground, Hot Springs actually has-- TA DA!-- hot springs. It's nothing like Glenwood, where there's a giant pool, or Buena Vista, where you can go to the natural springs, here they have these bath houses where you buy a bathing package and it's like a spa. It started out as a way to cure people of their various ills using the "natural healing properties of the springs": in the museum they had an "electrotherapy bath" where an electrical current was shot through the water. The springs there put out something like 85,000 gallons of water a day. I don't know if that's a lot, but it sounds impressive.

Anyway, after freezing to death all day yesterday and hiking it out anyway, today was utterly cloudless and Tim and I went to the Buckstaff, the only remaining opperational bathhouse in Hot Springs. There's a men's floor and a women's floor and they basically wrap you in a sheet and then give you all these different water treatments (a mineral whorlpool bath, a sitz bath, a steam bath, a needle shower, hotpacks) and then you get a massage. It. Was. Spectacular.

And, I had a Rueben for lunch. Beat that.

Anyway, we're back in Shreveport, which is absolutely not fun in any way, because it means stupid things like laundry and dishes and homework, but I do get to go to Michigan on Sunday for a conference on book-making, which is nerd heaven. Heaven for nerds. So it ain't all bad. And who could be cranky about coming back to Shreveport when Tim has officially entered his "baby penguin hair" phase (see photo to the right), which is Kristin's favorite, as well as my own and it's highly portable--it's fun no matter where you are.

Oh, and I have to mention that I haven't cared about a TV show since Pirates of Dark Water came on Cartoon Network the summer between 7th and 8th grade, but Mikey and I-don't-know-who-else have got me hooked on stupid Grey's Anatomy, which I shouldn't admit because there are definately NO pirates and no Alex Trebec on that show. Not that Alex was on Pirates of Dark Water, but I digress...

Maira Kalman Rocks my Grammatical World

I got really excited today because Maira Kalman, this crazy, non-sequiter artist and designer from New York (aren't they all?) has an art blog on NY Times Select. I had really hoped to link to it from here because it's all existential and artsy. She embroiders quotations from Faust on pieces of linen table cloth a makes it look cool instead of agoraphobic, which is how I would picture someone who embroiders quotations from Faust on anything.

Kalman released this illustrated version of Stunk and White's Elements of Style. This is my favorite illustration, the title of which is "Well, Susan, this is a fine mess you are in." Which is maybe, maybe, a stroke of genius.

I suppose I'll settle with linking to her website (you can click on "Susan" to the get there, if you're thusly inclined). Enjoy, Susan.

I have no idea why I think Kalman is so cool. It's mostly when she combines her weird illustrations with words that things really get exciting. My favorite thing on the website is one page from her children's book, What Pete Ate, which says, "The Twinkle Twins have a dog named Twinkie. Twinkie may look insane, but she does not eat their things."

Again, no idea why I find the whole thing hilarious, but I'm sad that her blog isn't public domain. Though if you have Time Select, I think you should kill some time looking at it.

What in the Sam Hell?

This really is the worst website I've ever seen in my entire life:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/kidsrabies/

The /kidsrabies/ part at the end there should be a sign.

I would say that they should be reported to the Government, except that it's A GOVERNMENT WEBSITE. The scientist-types who made this website have clearly never met a child before–though I suppose that if handling rabies-infected brains is what you do all day, you wouldn't have many chances to babysit, would you?

If you don't feel inclined to check it out, here's an overview: It's a children's website for rabies education. Except that the "activities" section has a lovely picture of a disected brain in petrie dish and the "warning signs" section (which has a very kid-friendly icon) features this enlightening list:

Signs of rabies in animals include:

• changes in an animal’s behavior
• general sickness
• problems swallowing
• an increase in drool or saliva
• wild animals that appear abnormally tame or sick
• animals that may bite at everything if excited
• difficulty moving or paralysis
• death

I'm sorry, what did you say Billy? Oh, you say you think the dog has rabies? Does he have any of the signs? Say, oh, general sickness or death? Death? I'm sure glad you played those fun rabies games online!

Sorry this post isn't about anything real... I seriously need to stop poking about on the internet.

Intelligent Design Envy

So this is my newly official favorite way to kill time.

http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/

On the outside, it's a nerdy website for people to argue about things like fonts and ppi (that's pixels per inch to you, missy).

On the inside it's this sexy combination of fantastic words and edgy art. To get right to the good stuff, click on this understated image by Ben Scott, and get your visual rhetoric on.

Fire Truck Terminology

So... my "Ranch Family" (i.e. My grandparents, my auntie Tanya and her four wee sprouts) sent me an eclectic cigar box full of fanciful pens to satiate my addiction. My absolute favorite is the one that looks like a match and says "Support the Crawford Volunteer Fire Department," half because it's clever and utilitarian and half because I know a lot of the people on the Volunteer Fire Department and they let me ride in the fire truck on my 18th birthday. I got to press the button for the siren: not the wailer, but the one that goes "bwooooop."

I think that's the technical name. "The One that goes Bwooooop."

The cigar box, is in fact, probably worth more than the pens inside it, but as a whole I'm pretty sure the whole deal is priceless.

So, I've been noticing an interesting thing lately. Over the past few semesters, in a lot of my classes, something has changed.

It used to be that when professors would ask non-traditional sorts of questions like "who plans to graduate and live in a nuclear family" and a million others that I won't go into, there were always at least a couple of people who raised their hands. Questions like "who thinks gay people shouldn't be able to adopt?" are greeted with silence, and I'm sure that not everyone at Centenary is that progressive.

It's wierd. I can't tell if it's because more and more liberal people are coming here, or that more people are just more liberal in general, or maybe that people with conservative ideologies are just not ready to play devil's advocate if they know they're going to be vehemently disagreed with.

I'm not sure I'd be up to it if I knew that people were going to shoot me down for saying that Intellegent Design makes sense, for example. It doesn't make sense to ME, but it makes me a little sad to think that instead of speaking up, there are people on campus who've basically been trained to just keep their mouths shut to avoid serious disagreements.

That's my thought for the day. Thanks for reading it.

Willy's All Time Bail Bonds

I have a problem. This is my confession. For years I've been trying to come up with a secret to send to Postsecret and I can never think of anything more serious than "I don't respect people who don't like trees." But that's not even really a secret. (oooooh, I blew my cover.)

But I've figured out my secret. My addiction. It's called bíromania.

I am absolutely addicted to pens.

I didn't realize it until the other day when Tim said "if you're going to have so many pens, can you at least make sure they work?" Since he went through ten and none of them were functional.

So this evening (because I clearly need to learn how to meditate or go jogging or something) I went through all of my pens and threw away the ones that didn't work. It took more than an hour. I threw away at least 75 pens. And after all that narrowing I still have at least a hundred more (and that's just the ones that aren't nestled in books, purses, drawers or drawing kits all over the house).

What's worse is that I remember where I got almost all of them. I have at least 7 that say "Icthus" on them, which I clearly stole from someone. I have one from "Willy's All Time Bail Bonds." There's a 20 year-old pen with an eraser from the Paonia Food Bank.

One says "Haliburton Employee Bank" on it. Now that's unfortunate.

I realize it's not hard to remember where a pen comes from if it's written on the pen. So what about the one I found at the Blockbuster on Line Avenue? Or the last one from a set of alien pens I bought for high school my senior year? Or the gel pen I bought at the Target in Grand Junction? Or the two pens I took from Tim in Finite Math (MATH 105) Sophomore year?

What's worse, is that now I realize that the first (THE FIRST) thing I do when I go to a hotel is look for the free pen with the hotel name and put it in my purse. That way if I'm staying with someone else they can't have it. And unlike soap, they don't put another pen in your room so you have to make sure to get the only one. I have at least 20 pens that I've taken from the pen cups at various places of employment. I'M THE REASON THE BOOKSTORE NEVER HAS A PEN.
I've always been able to spot a pen that belongs to me from across the room, and I will forceably take pens back if you borrow them from me. I am more than a little suspicious that I see pens that clearly don't belong to me and think they're mine. (How many black bic pens are there on this planet?) But one thing's for sure, I never look at someone else's pen and get all drooly and covetous unless I think the pen was at one point mine. By the way, if I used it once, ever, that means it's mine.

Don't ever, ever lend me a pen.

At least if I died today, no one could ever say I didn't have something to write with. If I've ever stolen a pen from you, I'm sorry. I probably still have it–though you're not getting it back. And if you ever stole a pen from me, I hope you realize the pain and anguish you've caused me.

I probably won't change any time soon. The last time we went to this restaurant in Boulder called "The Sink," the waiter brought the check and a red pen with their angel logo on it. I paused when I picked it up and Tim said, "just take it; I wondered how long it would take you to put it in your purse." That was two years ago and I still have it. Even though it doesn't write.

At least I don't kill people.

This Ship Has More Pirates than Sails

I'm beginning to think that the meaning of life for Human Beings is answering the question "what next?" Or "what now?" Or "What's for lunch?" Or any number of other questions, the general gist of which are "what's the next move I will make in my day/year/life?"

This semester has been so overwhelmingly busy already. This only happens when a) I actually really enjoy the reading assignments from my classes [good] and b) people who are supposed to do simple but meaningful things for the newspaper don't do them [bad]. None of that would be a problem if apathy was one of my stronger skills. Alas it is not, which, greekly speaking means that "pathy" is my curse. Complain, complain.

Actually, I said all that so I could get to a point and I suppose I ought to get there before I forget. I'm excited about 3 (probably more, but definately at least 3) things.

1.) In the past couple of weeks I decided that I'm not going to apply for grad school this semester. The reasoning behind this is solid: I have no idea what I would go for, and unlike undergrad, you can't just check the box after you get there. I don't know where I want to go. I am convinced that the GRE is the absolute antithesis of everything I learned in college about thinking critically. And I'm not excited about it. I'm just not. Well, I wasn't until about three days ago when I figured out what I (think) I want to go for. I would DIE to be able to study Gender for the rest of my life.

Dad, remember when you told everyone you wished I was a lesbian when I was a teenager. Well, I'm still not, sorry. Not even a little bit. Well, maybe a little on Wednesdays. But I do like to study Lesbians and minorities and men and history and society.

And here's the key: GENDER IS THE CONTEXT IN WHICH I THINK ABOUT EVERYTHING ELSE. ALL THE TIME. It's liberating really. Now if only I could find a school that offers Ph.Ds in Gender and not just Women's Studies, and YES, they are very different when you get your hands in the dirt.

2. I'm excited that Tim is Tim. Why? Because never in my life have I NOT been selfish. That is to say, I go where I want to go, when I want to go there, because I can. I love my parents more than sleep (which is major), but I never stayed one place or another just to make them happy. I couldn't. But I've decided that (within reason, sorry, I can't live in Texas or Arkansas) I will go with Tim wherever he decides to go next year. Hopefully we can find a place where I can study Lesbigays (tee hee), er, what I want to study, and he can become the President of Everything. Because even if we're not together forever, I can't imagine not being around him. He's most certainly the best thing since oxygen. And if you saw the sexy nerd books he bought today at the book bazaar, you would understand.

3. I'm excited that Warren Jeffs finally got arrested. I don't think jail will help him, but I hope to God that the fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (not to be confused with normal Mormons) gets a leader who isn't a pathological rapist.

As promised, I'm also excited about something else... Kacie and I have been going to lunch on Fridays (i.e. we did yesterday) and it's awesome to see her again. Screw summer and working all the time. I never thought I'd say that about summer. And I got my bride's maid dress for Kristin's wedding. Huzzah.

School will kill you in your face

School is killing me in my face. Well, not school actually, because I quite like my classes (is Bio 101 enough to justify going to grad-school for biology?), but all the other things that make me busy and tired. The newspaper hasn't even started and it's a CATASTROPHY. Though, I suppose it's still better than it has been.

Anyway, MEXICO PARTY 2006, was even more fantastic than MEXICO PARTY 2004 (not to be confused with the party that occured on the same night at the apartment complex formerly known as the Chi-O mansion, AKA Treasure Cove). We should open a business for people who want to have amazing parties.

If you were there, thanks for coming and being awesome. Thanks for leaving beer and money all over the house, and not breaking anything and not having any drama or getting in any fights.

If you weren't there, I wish you had been. Though, I suppose if you weren't here you didn't break anything in my house and you deserve thanks as well.

Anyway, here's to new TKE pledges, to Mikey for letting us kidnap him, to my roommates who rock me like a hurricane, and to school, for killing me in my face.

I wasn't prepaired for this.

There is no question that some lessons in life are nearly unbearable to learn. And there is some pain that has the potential to change your ability to feel pain or happiness at all. I’ve heard that “death is the great equalizer” because everyone is subject to it, but I certainly do not believe that death makes a life well-lived somehow much more similar to one lived in fear, greed, or anger. The only similarity may be, in fact, that all life ends in death.

It may be hard to fathom, or it may not, the difficulty with which I went home to Colorado this week. It seems like a simple enough thing to go to funeral, especially when the person who has passed has no direct relation to you and you haven’t spoken in a year (almost to the day). I’ll admit that when my best friend Trina called me on Thursday morning to tell me that her mom, Kathy, could die from a massive, and very unexpected, stroke, my first impulse was to go home. In one of those rare instances, my first impulse was exactly the last thing on earth I wanted to do.

All summer, the one thing that has underlined my every thought has been my desire to go home. But for so many reasons, not enough money, not enough time, I couldn’t. But I have found that death is, in fact, the great equalizer of all excuses. And that to stay here, in Shreveport, would mean two things: that I would not have to face one of the last things on earth anyone ever wants to face, and that there was no excuse not to face it.

I am probably not alone in this experience. Not the experience of death, but the experience of loving a family so much that even though you’re not really part of it, you make it your own. I’ve seen people do this with TV families, relating to them, worrying about their daily struggles., watching their lives with intent curiosity. I have had the great fortune of living in the North Fork Valley, where TV is as far from relevant as it is far from the truth, at least in my mind. And “family” is a term that applies both to those who share your blood, and to those whom you choose to share your life with.

For the past ten years I’ve had not the standard two families of a child with divorced parents, but four families who have played an undeniable and indescribable role in who I am. If I wasn’t being picked-on enough, Trina and Emily’s brothers were there. If I never had an older sister to wonder at and admire, Twyla was more than fascinating enough. I had parents for all occasions; my own for everything they’ve done for me, Jan Rogers (who kept an eye on my great grandmother from down the road) for silliness, excitement and songs, Butch Rogers for concern and still more silliness, Ed Schwarzer for bravado and to keep everyone’s ego from going all stuffy and over-inflated, and Kathy Schwarzer for adventure, faith and courage sometimes all at once. These families gave me experiences of kinship–not wholly dissimilar to mine, because we never lacked love–but of such a different color from my own two homes.

It may seem silly. I am fully aware that more often than not, people like to think that they are islands, beholden to and dependent on few, or no one. But I will freely admit that I need what the Schwarzers and Rogers gave and continue to give to me. And while I understand that I am not a part of their immediate families¬¬–in no way would I have belonged in that hospital room–they are part of the family that I chose to call my own.
All this comes in order to explain, in some insignificant and underwhelming way, why my heart was broken this week. There have been five deaths in my life this year. Some anticipated, the others not at all. Some deeply personal, the others only tragic because those distant characters who played a part in your life are not allowed to die. But they do, without your permission. When Kathy Schwarzer died it was both unexpected and more deeply personal than I would have expected it to be, had the thought of her disappearance ever crossed my mind before that day.

Kathy is the reason for so much in my life. She raised my first boyfriend (whom every girl remembers and whether you’re still friends, as Tyler and I are, or you never speak, you still think of from time to time. And to whom, whether you like it or not, you owe a certain debt of gratitude.) More importantly, she raised one of the two young women who taught me friendship and honesty at all costs. Trina Hobbs, Kathy’s youngest daughter, from the first moment we danced in the rain (while the others stayed on the bus), has been my sister and a better friend than most people could pray for in their lives.

Such fawning admiration comes only after years of agreements, disagreements, dances, perturbations, season tickets, fancy dresses and boxer shorts, boys, mix tapes, and boxes of macaroni and cheese. It’s a Counting Crows song from beginning to end, if such a friendship was possible to destroy (despite incredibly rough patches from time to time).

But you do not have to be Trina’s closest friend to know that she wants to be a good woman above all. And that to her, being a good daughter is as important as being a good Christian and being a good wife. Again, I know that to some that sounds naïve and somehow demeaning, but when your parents only want to be good parents, you believe in a good God and you have married a good man, it is the simplest way to make the world a better place.

When I got Trina’s message at 8:00 am on Thursday, my first thoughts were for her, and the singular relationship she had with her mother. From that moment to this one, thoughts of what has been lost weave their way into every other thought or activity. I cannot fathom Ed’s pain, especially knowing what they must have planned for the rest pf their lives. The thought of Tim’s path and my own diverging is enough to make me cry instantly. I cannot imagine if he simply not to exist any longer, or maybe I cannot because I do not want to. I cannot imagine building the kind of love that Ed and Kathy had for twenty years–it was exemplary in every way–and facing that kind of loss. The consolation of so very many memories is something I can’t touch to describe. I simply am not capable of describing this emotion.

Kathy was very much a cornerstone for her family. To know her children thoroughly and to equip them with the means to be sensual (that is, to live with their senses fully tuned), to be truthful, and to be driven not for someone else’s popular goals but for their own personal ones, that she did these things and did them well was apparent.

I did not agree with everything, all the time. And I am certain that she knew that, but I know that for someone who held such strong beliefs, Kathy was remarkably kind, understanding, and fair with me, not for my benefit, but for the benefit of her children, who love me as I love them.

I did not have a chance to stand up at her memorial and say even a fraction of what I have said here. Towards the end of the day, Trina said to me, “I don’t want to sound like I’m over everything but it’s hard to talk to all these people who are crying when I’ve made my peace with it. It’s not so unbearable that I can’t go on; I’m just really, really sad.” What I wanted to say, though I never got the chance, was that what those people needed exactly that. The people whom I saw approach Ed, Twyla, Tyler, Trina and Stephen, as well as Chris, Katie and Adam, needed to mourn for Kathy publicly and to mourn on their behalf, so that you, Trina, would know that everyone is there for you to the best of their ability, an ability with which, I believe, people in Crawford are capable of exceeding the expectations of all.

Beyond that we needed you to be strong and at peace in order to reassure us that this thing is not the end of the world.

I needed to go home to see and accept that. Largely because of Kathy, the Schwarzer home was never just a house, so much as it was a place where even the most bedraggled child could feel at home despite different philosophies and differences of opinion. I needed to go home and see that Ed had mown the grass and Stephen still cheers for the Broncos, that Tyler still sings and Twyla still smiles at everyone on instinct, that Tippy still prefers company over food and that Trina will always be sentimental and true (especially when I depend on her for sentimentality and truth), that Kathy’s touch will always be felt and there will always be milk in the fridge. That there is at least one family who is certain that every member is accounted for, even if someone can’t be seen.

"When the morning came
the bees flew down and wrapped themselves around me
and that's when I spoke the word
to have them trace your face for me in pollen.
But I wasn't prepared for this.
Come back to me my Darling."
-Eisley

fold this newspaper into a hat

When Abraham Lincoln was president, Washington D.C. had only two paved streets and absolutely not one Chipotle. And the Conglomerate will never be anything more than a bulletin and PR sheet for Centenary if we don't get more money and support and the power to hire writers, rather than praying for them.

These things I learned and more.

I won't talk a lot of newspaper semantics at you, but I'll admit that this trip to D.C. mostly made me long for resourses we don't have. Can you imagine a newspaper where the reporters are *gasp* required to find sources? What about one that the administration fears because it demands accountability.

There were people at this conference who attended 2-year schools and generated enough ad revenue to pay my tuition.

Had I know four years ago what I know now, I would have attacked this newspaper with such force. Instead I have 10 more issues, 18 credit hours and the responsibility of finding a grad school to take care of in the next four months.

My 22 year-old cousin just had her second baby. Talk about a pro-active decision-maker.

Anyway, I plan on milking the rest of the summer for all it's worth. I've wasted 80% of this summer working for minimum wage and feeling smothered by my lack of progress in anything that makes me feel great. The next week has got to be mine for the taking or I'll lose my mind before October.

If anyone knows how to conduct an interview and write a lede, give me a call. I'll give you a raise.

Old Glory

If you want to know anything about running a college newspaper ask me on Sunday afternoon and I'm sure I'll know. Curt and Versha and I spent about 12 hours getting here but we're in the nation's capitol making with the newspaper love.

The (second) best part of the day (after being in Washington D.C.) was having to stand up for the national anthem at noon in the Shreveport airport. That was colorful. As was the house long delay.

The worst part of the day was when the hydrolic system in our plane failed and we spent two hours parked in Detroit for them to fix it. Ah, small price to pay.

Our Hotel not only has a rooftop pool, it's also a beautiful 4 blocks from the Washington monument and it's not a bad place to spend a weekend, overall.

Wish you were here.

I wanna be this guy...

Juicing: Not just for professional athletes

So.... my Jack LeLanne Power Juicer (as seen on TV) came today–a birthday gift from my Dad–and it is truly second-to-none as far as kitchen appliances go. It came with four books about juicing and it is centerfugal. How many other appliances can claim to be centerfugal? (shut up washing machines, clothes driers and the blender...)

In other news, Tim, Carrie and I went to a Bastille Party at my French Prof.'s cabin on the lake, and celebrated french culture by eating barbequed American food and paddling around in the canoe. In true french fashion, we were going to play badminton but we were le tired.

Even though all my newpaper staffers always say "I'm not doing anything, call me anytime to work," Tim and I ended up shampooing the carpet in the Conglomerate office alone. It wouldn't have been so bad if the carpet had been cleaned anytime in the past, oh, say, ever. The first run with the carpet cleaner seemed really awesome because the dirty water looked like watered-down Hershey's syrup... however after 18 passes over the carpet and 8.5 hours later the water still looked like the exxon spill of '89... sans helpless seals.

Anyway, I feel like I haven't really seen either of my roommates in about 17 years and it's kind of making me wish that school would start again so we could hang out. I'm also ready for school to start again so that I can stop making my own schedule, which might sound nice, but in fact results in many hours of hitting the snooze button. I'm still fitting 9 hours of work in on a good day, but you know you've gone mad when you work 9 hours and think you had a good day.

Tomorrow is Chris Parham's birthday. I'm supposed to find him a hot, rich girl who's not mean or crazy, so if you know anyone like that, let me know.

Oh yeah, and we're about to start pulling books in the bookstore so send in your damn schedule. Unless you graduated and then, I hate you, have fun getting a job.

And another thing: Tim and I have been together for two and half years today, which is a little more than 1/10 of my life. And we still give eachother goosebumps and like to hang out. You can't ask for much more.

Make me an offer I can't resist...

This has been the epitome of awesome weeks. New Orleans has proven to be the perfect home for half of those people who graduated, even though I told them not to. Jared and Debbie have a great townhouse apartment just off of Magazine Street and a short walk from (ahhhhh...) Whole Foods. Everyone else lives around town and we all gathered at Debbie's house in Slidell for the fourth. This is a picture of Jared and me fishing in Debbie's back yard. I'm not joking. I can't even tell you how amazing it was to spend the day on the canal, tubing, canoeing, drinking, fishing, eating, boating, eating, swimming, and eating. And Kakie is a photographer in the making, as well as a fine fisher(wo?)man. She, Jared and I almost got killed by a six-foot allegator gar. We lived, but with no fish to show for it.

Because of this whole adventure I missed three days of work, but honestly, I can't say I really missed them. It seems like I've worked a lot in the past four days to make up for it, but I've still managed to see Pirates of the Caribbean, part deux, buy a spectacular bridesmaid dress for Kristin's wedding, have a taco salad party, fix my bike tires, nearly finish fixing the Conglomerate office and help Amy rearrange the living room.

And yesterday the boys who live over on Dudley St. had a Meat Festival, which featured 12 different kinds of meat. Normally, I would be at least a little opposed to that, for gastronomical reasons, if not just moral one, but it was irresistable. Darren, Ryan and Paul have turned grilling into a fine art. Les beaux arts de la viande.

This summer has gone so fast, it's almost unbelievable. Le bel art de l'été.

Oh yes, and here are my prize-winning grandparents, as well as Tim getting attacked by floozies in the parade (more of my relatives) at Pioneer Days.

Pardon Me, Do You Have Any Grey Poupon?

I certainly haven't been shopping for any new shoes
-And-
I certainly haven't been spreading myself around.
I still only travel by foot and by foot it's a slow climb,
But I'm good at being uncomfortable, so I can't stop changing all the time.
-F. Apple
----------------------------------

Oh, first summer away from Colorado, how weird thou art. I've been discovering all sorts of things about the nature of my own character since school let out and the summer of a million jobs commenced. Even Dr. Kim said to me today, "Speaking of Advisor stuff–I think you're working to much this summer." And it's true. After four years off the parental payroll, I've learned the one thing that I'm patently obsessed with, and distracted by, is getting paid. It's not that I'm addicted to gambling or robbing old ladies, it's just that I'm terrified of poverty and all of its traits.

Living without heat in the house sucked. Eating ramen everyday sucks. Not being able to spring for a movie ticket sucks. Not being able to afford a plane ticket home, that sucks more than anything. And I have no desire to ever live that way again (let alone now). Meanwhile I'm working myself into a froth and I still can't ever pay off that last bit of debt from Europe and this Computer. (Oh Mac, I love you and the financial ruin into which you threw me.) A lady doesn't talk about her finances, I'm sure, but you've probably already noticed that if you call and ask where I am at any given time I'll say, "At work," or "In bed–I have work tomorrow."

Bo-ring.

With financial aid cut back by $2,500 each semester this year, (no love for the fifth-year student), if you know anyone in the market for a kidney, I've got one (part of a set, lightly used).

Paying rent and electric and the phone bill is nice, and all that, but I've also learned this summer that what I really don't want to lose is my pantry. Being poor and eating nothing but hotdogs (no offence to the noble foodstuff) and canned soup is about the fastest way to make me miserable and cranky. I love looking at all of the random ingredients on that pantry shelf and knowing that, oh yes, one day I will have eaten them all. And it will have been glorious.

I lament that my (girly) roommates (which includes Kristin, even though she doesn't live here and has her own people to cook for) and I only cook together about once every six months, but I suppose they're in the same boat I am, as far as working and being a slave to the paycheck. Digital cable is expensive. But on the bright side, I'm also fortunate enough to live with people who are busy doing interesting, exciting things (like working at Red River Radio, coaching a kids' swim team, and writing a paper about the Iraqi voting system) in their "spare" time rather than scratching themselves and watching Kung Fu 24-7.

Shameless overachievers, the lot of them. (Though if you could scratch yourself and watch Kung Fu for a solid week, that should be considered an achievement as well.)

Please, if you have any exciting plans for Sunday, let me know. It's my only day off this two weeks and for God's sake I want to do something utterly pointless. Give me a call.

Colorful Colorado

Colorado was, and remains, a majestic towering state of glory. And thanks to Tim, my dad, my mom and my grandma, I had a great birthday that lasted for a week and about 2,500 miles.

Tim and I drove all the way and listened to some 12-odd hours of Moby Dick on CD. Talk about an experience... 15 hours in the car, Tim behind the wheel (because I'm a slouch with no driver's license), 500 coke cans and candy wrappers and the greatest story ever told about a whale, told by the most boring person to ever read a book-on-tape. It was alright though, Herman Melville had a sense of humor and Tim was sensitive to my car-ride narcolepsy. I'm lucky if I can stay awake on the drive to the Library so... here's to me never getting behind the wheel.

Anyway, Colorado is tall and green and amazing all the time. We spent two days in Boulder with my Dad and my grandma, who just had hip replacement surgury. She's a trooper. Interestingly, our last day there we went to the "Body Worlds" exibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science where we spent two hours looking at dead human bodies that have been plastinated. Among the exibits was a pelvis with a hip replacement in it. The exibit is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. You forget that they're real dead people until you get to the ones that still have skin. And then the combination of not having anything to eat all day, seeing body parts everywhere and standing up for two hours combines into a lovely shade of nausiated.

We didn't see a single dead body the whole time we were at my Mom's in Crawford. We bought day fishing licenses and caught approximately not one single fish. But we did get to watch the Pioneer Days fireworks and grill at the lake. My grandparent's were king and queen of Pioneer Days (which is my town's annual festival of firetrucks. Not really.), which makes me some sort of Duchess, I believe.

I'll publish pictures soon, I mean, it only took me a week and a half to write about it all.

OH MY GOD, I almost forgot. TIM GOT ME A LEMON TREE FOR MY BIRTHDAY.

I feel like we've adopted a charming and fashionable child from Asia or Africa ala Angelina Jolie. The Tree is a Meyer (Improved) Lemon, which is specially suited to living indoors, although it's also happy outdoors. It's a three-year-old, lovingly-raised tree that will bear fruit almost all year round and I AM SO EXCITED. OH MY GOD.

Seriously, I haven't been this excited about something since, like, a week ago when we left for Colorado.

Things have been great. Life feels good. I work all the time, but it's enjoyable. My house is full and summer allows me to be more of a hippy than ever. Come visit and see Tim's penthouse upstairs...

The Roof, The Roof, The Roof is on Fire...

Well, the Pussycat Palace is now, officially, The Pussycat + Tomcat Palace. We just got finished moving all of Tim's things into the house, upstairs into the space that I consistantly think of as "the loft" even though there's nothing remotely loft-like about it, other than that it occupies the second floor. We I say "we" moved Tim's things in, I mean Tim's family moved things in while I made room in the house for it all.

I just got finished jerry-rigging, and trumping up Tim's IKEA bed and I must say, three trips to Lowe's later, that bad boy is like a battleship of dependable comfort and style (Thanks for nothing, Sweden). I can't predict at all what it's going to be like for all four of us to live her, but I'm kind of glad that we're going to Colorado first. (Oh yeah, we're going to Colorado for the whole week for my birthday. Get out of my way, Texas and New Mexico.)

That way if it turns out that I really am a heinous nit-picking know-it-all and Tim is a terrible messy slouch, then at least it won't ruin our vacation. Cheery, eh? Optimism at it's finest.

Really, I think that it should be a blast. I'm glad that he lives closer now (a lot closer), but that we're not thrown into some little, lonely apartment somewhere away from everyone. I love living with Kacie and Amy and all the pink and purple frou-frou, crazy, hectic over-achieving and dish-ignoring, roof-sun-bathing glory.

Now it will just have a twist of sports trivia, Pearl Jam, piles-o-socks, chicken fingers glory as well.

The Right Honerable Admiral

Right now I'm grooving on this whole "empty campus" thing. Not that I dislike everyone, but I've always liked it when everyone went left campus to eat big meals with their families in Jesus' name we pray amen. However, summer.... ah, summer. This is pretty awesome.

Campus is all quite and still all day long: nothing but hop toads and robins who eat everything (and so we are kindred spirits). I went to the fitness center this afternoon and I was the one of 2 (two!) people in the whole facility. Nice.

It's kind of like living in Leeds castle and having this huge private garden party everyday. Except without black swans. But I'll talk to Dr. Leuck about that (he's a field biologist – they harmonize the species).

The library is also gloriously empty. So much so that it's the opposite of quiet because the library staff just yells back and forth when they need something or want to tell funny jokes about card catalogues and (tee-hee) the dewey decimal system.

I've been working in the library basebent arranging Dr. Kim's secret stockpile of articles about Virginia Woolf and Olive Schreiner. That's where I discovered that authors in the 16th century were so way badasser than authors now because they gave their books titles like this one:

The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries
of the English nation, Made by Sea or Ouer Land,
to the most remote and farthest distant Quarters of the earth at any time in the
compasse of these 1500 years: Diuided into three feuerall parts, according to the
positions of the Regions Whereunto they were directed.

Yes. The Da Vinci Code! Ha!

The adventurous discovery of the most holy of grailes
undertaken despite the abundance of frenchitude on the part
of a great symbologist for the gratification of morally unsound individuals
and the denuding of secret evile societies in tiny european cars,
in Jesus' name we pray amen good bread good meat good God let's eat.

Fit that on the bestseller list. My jobs are so rewarding.

Summer, will you marry me?

The Best things in Life:

1. Carona with lime on the dock at Jason's lake house (and dogs named Harold)
2. Balogna sandwiches
3. A clean sheepskin rug, right out of the dryer
4. Tim
5. Not having a migrain
6. Federal holidays
7. Everything the summer smells like
8. Books
9. Walter:

Papercuts + Poison Ivy = Paycheck

I've had the song "Suspicious Minds" by Elvis (of course) stuck in my mind for four days. For some reason, I always think of the line I'mcaughtinatrapandIcan'twalkoutbecauseIloveyoutoomuchBaby as one word. There's an insignificant bit of trivia for you there.

Lest you wonder why I haven't written anything in the Blog since graduation, it's because I've been working anywhere from eight to eleven hours every day for the past two weeks. I've felt a little guilty about not writing, just because it's summer and without live journals, how would anyone know every detail of everyone else's little Centenary lives?

Each day goes by so fast,
I turn around it's past
You don't get time to hang a sign on me... sayeth Sir George Harrison

And he's not so far off. It feels like I'm going at the speed of light every second that I'm awake. The day starts in the Arboretum, mulching things and stopping evil weeds in their quest to overtake the trees like viking hordes. Then I shower and eat lunch, which, for some reason, takes me two hours no matter how hard I try to conserve time. Then I count things at the bookstore and count them again (you thieves beware, we do take inventory once in a while).

Then I go through Dr. Kim's files and sort the wheat from the chaf. She's got folders from classes she taught at before she came to Centenary (which, granted, was that long ago) but to me, that still seems astonishing. It shouldn't: I have notebooks from elementary school, complete with backwards 5's and drawings that portray me as various animals. I haven't yet found any self-portraits of Kim as a panther, but I've got my eye out.

Then it's up to me whether I work on the Conglomerate office or eat and pass-out with a book over my face.

Tim's moving into mi casa this week and I'm excited about being able to open all the curtains upstairs again (Sarah's got a big sheet for a makeshift wall up there–understandably–to give herself privacy). Anyway I'm ready for him to be moved in and simultaniously bummed that he has to give up his apartment, which was pretty much perfect for him. I can't tell if Kacie and Amy are excited or upset about getting another roommate, but I'm pretty sure that like me, they're a mixture of both.

Summer kick's spring's ass .

hola senorita

Straight A's. Brag.

That's really all I have to say. It makes all the stress and turmoil seem... meh.

Boo.

So, I've been fine with this whole graduation thing for weeks. My friends, as they embark on all sorts of fantastic journeys--grad school, new jobs, (gasp) getting hitched--have become even more fascinating and exciting to me.

But this morning I realized what that meant: there is no longer anything "casual" about our friendships. No more meeting Jared in the SUB and going to Murrell's on a whim. No chance that on our way to Murrell's we'll bump into Patrick and Jason and plan a Jeopardy party on the spot. No way to invite six people to Jeopardy and have 26 show up. No way that all those 26 will head back to the TKE house and then on Lil' Joes for goth kareoke and mason jars full of beer.

And that's when I started crying. And I think that today is just going to be the day I cry all day. I wondered why I hadn't cried yet, but it's just today that I realized how spoiled and fortunate I've been for four years to have nearly everyone I love, admire and aspire to be like (no, for real) right outside my front door.

Congratulations everybody. I'm going to miss you so, so much. We have four couches and futon if you need somewhere to stay (on second thought, Jared claims the futon).

Fast Times at, you know, Ridgemont High

Everyone and their mom graduates tomorrow and it's one of the weirdest feeling EV-ER. You work towards something for four years; you eat, sleep and breathe a group of friends; and then everyone gets jobs, plans for grad school and moves on.

Meanwhile, I'm up to three campus jobs, possibly (hopefully) four, for the summer. All of them pay different (but equally crappy) wages, but it's work and it's within walking distance. I was depressed because I missed working for my Little 0ld Ladies in the summer, but I've gotten a job working in the Arboretum on campus, which doesn't involve little old ladies but it is a job working with plants and trees and dirt so it will hold me off until I make my triumphant return to the Boulder Old Ladies Who Need Garden Help circuit next year. I guarantee that no one in the Arboretum will give me any bottles of grape soda during my breaks or make me a tuna sandwich and tell me about their lives or their grandkids, but all that will have to wait.

Otherwise, I'm working in the bookstore and for the newspaper which needs, dare I say it, a crap ton of help. Being in our office is like being inside of a key-lime pie. The floor is brown, the walls are green and the ceiling is white. Thanks a lot, she-who-shall-remain-unspoken (not Lisa, Lisa never would have done something so abominable as paint the office that way).

So many horrible things have happened back home in the past two weeks that it's made finals a little hard to deal with. It's hard to care about the French Revolution when old friends are hurting. Although, I suppose all that work was a welcome distraction when I'm stuck here and there's not much I can do. I don't really want to talk about what's happened at home specifically because I don't want to make it any worse for anyone. Suffice is to say that my heart goes out in a million directions for these people and their families, who have suffered immeasurable loss and faced horribly difficult decisions.

Also, dating me is a curse. Just keep that in mind.

I'm going to go spend as much time with Jared Frank as I possibly can.

Veni, Vidi, Vici

This is may be the 70 millionth night in a row that I have stayed up until at least 3 o'clock in the A.M., doing whatever it is that I do.

I'm nearly finished with the semster (one more paper due, about the fascinating grammatical tool we grammarians like to call asyndeton. Sound smoooooooth, doesn't it?). I feel a little (ok, a lot) like my mind is going to explode. I'm in a sort of purgatory right now, wherein I've turned everything in but I still don't know if I'll get a 4.0 this semester.

You scoff, Scoffer, but this is a big deal for me. I was ranked like, 69th in a high school graduating class of 73 people, so the potential to get Summa Cum Laude pretty much gets me high. Yes, I realize I have another full year, and that one B will not be the end, sum, and judgement of my life's achievements, but I want to pay for grad school about as much as I want Pat Robertson lodged in my eye. (By the by, Pat Robertson's real name is Marion, just like John Wayne.)

Anyhoo, I've got a horrible case of homesickness and I'm ready for school to be over and for Tim to get a good job so that we can figure out his hours and schedule a trip home. Colorado, in all its resplendent glory, will have to wait.

Write a paper, win a prize.

Demain, dès l'aube

Demain, dès l'aube, à l'heure où blanchit la campagne,
Je partirai. Vois-tu, je sais que tu m'attends.
J'irai par la fôret, j'irai par la montagne.
Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

Je marcherai les yeax fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit.
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les main croisées,
Triste, et le jour pour moi sera comma la nuit.

Je ne regarderai ni l'or du soir qui tombe,
Ni les voiles au loin descendant vers Harfleur,
Et quand j'arriverai, je mettrai sur ta tombe
Un bouquet de houx vert et de bruyère en fleur.

-Victor Hugo

Tomorrow, at dawn, when the country side pales,
I will leave. You see, I know that you wait for me.
I will go by the forest, I will go by the mountains.
I cannot linger far from you for long.

I will walk with my eyes fixed on my thoughts,
Seeing nothing, hearing no sounds,
Alone, unknown, back hunched, hands crossed,
Sorrowful, and for me the day will become as night.

I will not see the gold of falling night,
Nor the sails descending towards Harfleur,
And when I arrive, I will place on your tombe
A bouquet of green holly and flowering heather.

Top Ten Reasons Why I'm Tired of College:

1. Because I am.
2. Because Louisiana is hot and stupid outside, and cold and boring inside.
3. Because writing a ten page paper every night for the next two weeks gives me hives.
4. Because I'm paying to go here, when, clearly, they should be paying me. Clearly.
5. Because I've been here 4 years and I'm still not finished.
6. Because high school had dances and I was smarter than all of my teachers.
7. Because it's fascism lite.
8. Because I haven't seen the mountains (not to mention my parents) in five months.
9. Because I'm so addicted to it.
10. Because all I really want to do with my life is grow plants and swim everyday, which doesn't require that I learn about the French Revolution in french, or that I can identify the gender iniquity of nations, or lable the improper use of reflexive pronouns, or define the geogenetic origins of religion. Trees, people. They require dirt, water and sun. Congratulations, those are the only answers on the final.




This is a picture of me SOOOO not thinking about college.

A Fine Squall

"He sought his own features in those of the life giver
and saw two worlds mirrored there: the hair was surf
curling around a sea-rock, the forehead a frowning river,

as they swirled in the estuary of a bewildered love,
and Time stood between them. The only interpreter
of their lips' joined babble, the river with the foam,"
-Darek Walkott, Omeros

I'll confess, revamping my live journal was about 900,000 times more fun than doing homework on the Friday of a break. I'm sort of a scumbag for not posting anything lately, since there's certainly a lot to talk about.
Using your magnificent skills of visual inferrence, I'm sure you can tell that we're wearing togas in this picture. The lovely Student Life office finally let the TKEs have their party after, oh, five weeks of chain yanking. In the end it was grand. A great time was had by all, as is wont to occur when everyone's wearing a toga.

Yes, tim cut all of his hair off... it was a great day in history. "Florence Henderson" is not a look easily pulled off by many college men. Fortunately, his head is a lovely shape, which is not something a lot of people can say for
themselves.

On Wednesday Kacie and I threw a crazy party for girls because, well, we never hang out with girls. I've decided that all I want in life is to be a party planner. I LOVE planning parties and THANK GOD I have enough friends that when I throw a party I'm not stuck on the couch, looking at the dip with a lonely tear in my eye.
This time we fancied up the house opium-den style, all pillows and pink lights and had an orgy. Just kidding. We sat around and ate until we were fat and happy. And then we ate some more.

Meanwhile, I'm shirking my homework duties, which are, as of this moment, to tell people about Hippolyte Taine in French (trust me, he's a royal bore) and to convince Dr. Otto that believing that loving the Beatles is really a religion.

I hope you like the new digs. I was tired of writing on a blog that looked like someone else's.

"Everything between the two events was but a series of gropings and blunders, and false rudiments of joy." -Nabokov, Lolita