So for one of my homework assignments tonight I had to write a sonnet. It was an exercise in making sure we understand things like simile, antithesis, oxymorons, alliteration, etc. Personally, I would much rather have labeled all of these things in one of Shakespeare's sonnets instead of having to make up one of my own, especially since I had to re-read Julius Caesar* tonight for our quiz tomorrow and I still have to label all of my operatives in my scene so I can work with my scene group tomorrow. Oh, and for Thursday we have to read both Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra for quizzes. That's a good four or five hours of reading, at least. In other words, there is a whole lot of stuff that needs to be done for class before Thursday, and the addition of having to write a sonnet on top of it all made me feel thisclose to panic.
*Incidentally, Julius Caesar may be the title of the play, but he's so not the main speaking character. Caesar dies in the third act, in case you don't remember this fact from sophomore English class. I sure didn't. So just in case you ever find yourself in a situation where a whole group of people is going to read the entirity of Julius Caesar aloud in one sitting and study it for a quiz (and really, I don't know why you'd ever find yourself in that situation, but just in case), it's actually a wise idea to volunteer to be Caesar. 'Cause he dies and then you get to chill for two acts. You definitely don't want to be Brutus or Cassius because they talk in massive 20+ line chunks throughout the whole damn play. Guess who Liz and I were? Yeah. I was smart enough not to pick Brutus (actually, I don't think Liz picked Brutus either, I think he was just the only major character left by the time it was her turn to choose) but I'd forgotten how major Cassius is. Freakin' Cassius.
So anyway, I was not thrilled about having to write a sonnet, but it turns out that it's pretty easy to churn out a sonnet in less than half an hour if you're not at all concerned with being clever. The result:
I hate the hot heat of a summer's day,
The pavement is like coals beneath the feet.
I wish the month of June would go away,
For I do so prefer the winter sleet.
The cloud that brings the rain is a kind friend,
It gives sweet respite from a sun like fire,
But all too soon the drenching showers end,
And dark sun once again provokes my ire.
To some a heaven, I do think it hell:
The buzz of bees, the whir of sprinklers, all.
How long I'll take the heat I cannot tell,
I cannot wait each day for night to fall.
But since the summer never will be cool,
I'll spend the next months lying by the pool.
I'm now fairly certain I have a promising career as a poet. Ire and fire? Pretty good, huh? Ha. Haha. Anyway, it includes all the stuff we needed to include (which is partly why it's so awful...the cloud is a kind friend...that's some brilliant personification right there) so I'm golden. The theme of the sonnet had to be summer. My professor didn't specify that it had to be a positive poem about summer, so here's hoping it's okay that it's full of hate. And I don't really hate summer, I just needed the alliteration I could get by writing hate, hot, and heat in the same line.
So yeah. I'll try to post at least one more time before I actually leave the country, but if I don't get the chance you can just admire my sonnet skills until I get time to update from Stratford.
P.S.-Hi Mom! (And Dad, if you're actually going to read this...)
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Monday, June 05, 2006
I Wanna Know What Love Is...
What is it like to fall in love for a second time?
I really want to know. This is not a hypothetical question. I know that some people that read this have been in more than one very serious relationship, and if you are okay with sharing your experience with me, please do. I really do want to know someone else's experience with this.
'Cause see, it hasn't happened to me. I've only been in love once. I've only had one very serious relationship. I guess technically I've had two long-term relationships, but although the second one was long-lasting (almost 3 years of anything is definitely long-term) it was certainly always based pretty much on sex rather than on any sort of serious emotional connection and it was never a completely committed relationship, either. So there was definitely something in that second relationship, but not something I ever recognized or defined as real love. And any other relationship I've been in has been either completely physical and not emotional AT ALL (physical intimacy does not always equal love in my book, not even remotely) or has fizzled before either of us got too involved emotionally. So in terms of a serious, committed relationship based on mutual love and respect, I've only done that once.
And I was standing in the laundry room this afternoon folding my towels when it suddenly hit me: I kind of hate the idea that it's possible to have more than one real love.
I mean, in some ways it's a very liberating feeling. Just because I loved one person immensely, he's not necessarily the only person that I will ever love. This is a very reassuring feeling in the case of a break up, or the death of a loved one.
But in some ways I also just hate it. Because the way I see it right now, it seems like being able to be truly in love with more than one person devalues the emotion. Why is the love two people share so special and important if they can each find the exact same feeling of true love from someone else?
So how does it work? I'm sure it will happen for me again one of these days and I'll be able to figure it out for myself, but if you already know how it has worked out for you, could you give me a hint?
'Cause right now, I can't even imagine it. Is it sort of like having more than one child? Like, instead of transferring your love from old boyfriend to new you just get sort of an overall increase of love in your soul and you completely and entirely love the new person while still maintaining love for the old person? Like, it's a slightly different variation on your personal understanding of "love" but it's no worse or better than the love you felt for your last boyfriend?
Or do you absolutely have to devalue the love you once felt in order to fall in love again? Like, once I fall in love again will I automatically re-evaluate the relationship I had with Mike and recategorize it as something else like, say, puppy love, or will I go around saying things like, "I thought Mike was my true love until I met X and, wow, it turns out I had no IDEA what love really was until I met X!"? Because I really dislike that idea. Maybe it's just that I dislike being wrong, but I hate the idea that someday every deep feeling and soul connection (ha, how cheesy) I felt with Mike will turn out to have been not so very important and earth shattering after all. In that sense I'd like to be able to truly fall in love more than once, because I hate the idea that everything that has happened in my love life so far hasn't been the real thing.
Or do you think you really only get to fall in love once, and if I'm correct in thinking that I have already found true love once in my life, am I totally screwed and for the rest of my life will every other relationship I'm in just be a form of settling for second-best? I hate this idea most of all, but in order for this NOT to be true, won't I invariably have to devalue my relationship with Mike?
I guess maybe I already know that in order to fall in love again I'll have to admit that I wasn't truly in love before, or that I was but that old love wasn't as good or important as the current love. Which is sort of a hurtful feeling when my ex is in love with someone else and I'm currently not. I guess I've been devalued.
And hey, I accept that. I accept that because I'm optimistic enough to believe that I'll fall in love again, too (or TRULY fall in love for the first time, or whatever) and it will all work out evenly in the end. Just 'cause I wasn't the first to fall in love again and move on doesn't mean that it won't ever happen.
I guess what I'm saying is, I hate the idea of devaluing an old relationship for the sake of a new one, and I'd like someone to tell me it doesn't necessarily work that way. Then again, I'd like to know truthfully how it works and if that IS how it worked for you, then I'd like to know. So if you have first hand experience with having been in love more than once, or thinking you were in love the first time around and then having all your ideas of love totally blown out of the water by your next serious relationship, or whatever, please share. I'm just curious. Don't feel like you need to post in a comment, either, if you don't want to. I'd love thoughts on this by e-mail, too (AllieDream@aol.com or my "real" e-mail if you know that one, I'd rather not post it here since it uses my full name and it's also a spam-free address right now and I'd like to keep it that way). Consider this sort of an informal poll I'm conducting here. Also realize I don't ask for advice/tips much, so you people should be flattered!
Anyway, I don't know why I'm thinking about this today. To be totally honest in a too-much-information sort of way, it's probably because I'm in PMS mode right now and I tend to get all contemplative and emotional when I'm PMS-ing (which I guess is preferable to getting all irritable and rageful...I guess).
Also, don't think of this as any indication of my feelings about Mike right now. My feelings about my love life in general are actually very healthy at the moment. I kind of feel like I'm on the brink of something new, which is I guess why I'm wondering about all this in the first place. Given, whatever "new" thing is in my future is still a total unknown at this point, it's just a bit of intuition I've had lately. Intuition that could be totally and completely WRONG. Still, I'd rather lean towards optimism than pessimism.
The other day in class I said something to Liz and she retorted, "It's always 'Look on the bright side!' with you, isn't it?!" And I promised to attempt to be more of a pessimist while we're rooming together.* But actually, she's right. I'd much rather find the silver lining than focus on the rain.
*Liz has also informed me that "common sense has no place here". I think I'm in trouble...
I really want to know. This is not a hypothetical question. I know that some people that read this have been in more than one very serious relationship, and if you are okay with sharing your experience with me, please do. I really do want to know someone else's experience with this.
'Cause see, it hasn't happened to me. I've only been in love once. I've only had one very serious relationship. I guess technically I've had two long-term relationships, but although the second one was long-lasting (almost 3 years of anything is definitely long-term) it was certainly always based pretty much on sex rather than on any sort of serious emotional connection and it was never a completely committed relationship, either. So there was definitely something in that second relationship, but not something I ever recognized or defined as real love. And any other relationship I've been in has been either completely physical and not emotional AT ALL (physical intimacy does not always equal love in my book, not even remotely) or has fizzled before either of us got too involved emotionally. So in terms of a serious, committed relationship based on mutual love and respect, I've only done that once.
And I was standing in the laundry room this afternoon folding my towels when it suddenly hit me: I kind of hate the idea that it's possible to have more than one real love.
I mean, in some ways it's a very liberating feeling. Just because I loved one person immensely, he's not necessarily the only person that I will ever love. This is a very reassuring feeling in the case of a break up, or the death of a loved one.
But in some ways I also just hate it. Because the way I see it right now, it seems like being able to be truly in love with more than one person devalues the emotion. Why is the love two people share so special and important if they can each find the exact same feeling of true love from someone else?
So how does it work? I'm sure it will happen for me again one of these days and I'll be able to figure it out for myself, but if you already know how it has worked out for you, could you give me a hint?
'Cause right now, I can't even imagine it. Is it sort of like having more than one child? Like, instead of transferring your love from old boyfriend to new you just get sort of an overall increase of love in your soul and you completely and entirely love the new person while still maintaining love for the old person? Like, it's a slightly different variation on your personal understanding of "love" but it's no worse or better than the love you felt for your last boyfriend?
Or do you absolutely have to devalue the love you once felt in order to fall in love again? Like, once I fall in love again will I automatically re-evaluate the relationship I had with Mike and recategorize it as something else like, say, puppy love, or will I go around saying things like, "I thought Mike was my true love until I met X and, wow, it turns out I had no IDEA what love really was until I met X!"? Because I really dislike that idea. Maybe it's just that I dislike being wrong, but I hate the idea that someday every deep feeling and soul connection (ha, how cheesy) I felt with Mike will turn out to have been not so very important and earth shattering after all. In that sense I'd like to be able to truly fall in love more than once, because I hate the idea that everything that has happened in my love life so far hasn't been the real thing.
Or do you think you really only get to fall in love once, and if I'm correct in thinking that I have already found true love once in my life, am I totally screwed and for the rest of my life will every other relationship I'm in just be a form of settling for second-best? I hate this idea most of all, but in order for this NOT to be true, won't I invariably have to devalue my relationship with Mike?
I guess maybe I already know that in order to fall in love again I'll have to admit that I wasn't truly in love before, or that I was but that old love wasn't as good or important as the current love. Which is sort of a hurtful feeling when my ex is in love with someone else and I'm currently not. I guess I've been devalued.
And hey, I accept that. I accept that because I'm optimistic enough to believe that I'll fall in love again, too (or TRULY fall in love for the first time, or whatever) and it will all work out evenly in the end. Just 'cause I wasn't the first to fall in love again and move on doesn't mean that it won't ever happen.
I guess what I'm saying is, I hate the idea of devaluing an old relationship for the sake of a new one, and I'd like someone to tell me it doesn't necessarily work that way. Then again, I'd like to know truthfully how it works and if that IS how it worked for you, then I'd like to know. So if you have first hand experience with having been in love more than once, or thinking you were in love the first time around and then having all your ideas of love totally blown out of the water by your next serious relationship, or whatever, please share. I'm just curious. Don't feel like you need to post in a comment, either, if you don't want to. I'd love thoughts on this by e-mail, too (AllieDream@aol.com or my "real" e-mail if you know that one, I'd rather not post it here since it uses my full name and it's also a spam-free address right now and I'd like to keep it that way). Consider this sort of an informal poll I'm conducting here. Also realize I don't ask for advice/tips much, so you people should be flattered!
Anyway, I don't know why I'm thinking about this today. To be totally honest in a too-much-information sort of way, it's probably because I'm in PMS mode right now and I tend to get all contemplative and emotional when I'm PMS-ing (which I guess is preferable to getting all irritable and rageful...I guess).
Also, don't think of this as any indication of my feelings about Mike right now. My feelings about my love life in general are actually very healthy at the moment. I kind of feel like I'm on the brink of something new, which is I guess why I'm wondering about all this in the first place. Given, whatever "new" thing is in my future is still a total unknown at this point, it's just a bit of intuition I've had lately. Intuition that could be totally and completely WRONG. Still, I'd rather lean towards optimism than pessimism.
The other day in class I said something to Liz and she retorted, "It's always 'Look on the bright side!' with you, isn't it?!" And I promised to attempt to be more of a pessimist while we're rooming together.* But actually, she's right. I'd much rather find the silver lining than focus on the rain.
*Liz has also informed me that "common sense has no place here". I think I'm in trouble...
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Hedgehog is Talking
A week from today I'll be at the airport in Toronto, an hour away from boarding my flight to London Heathrow. From there it's a mini van ride to Stratford, where I'll be living for three weeks. Here, specifically. Did I mention that Liz, Amanda and I have a NINE HOUR layover in Toronto? Well, we do. We have to leave Houston at 6:30 in the morning, we get to Toronto around 10:30 AM, and then our flight to London doesn't leave until 7:30 that evening. I'm not sure what exactly we're going to do in Canda for nine hours. I'm not even sure that we'll be able to leave the airport, but I sure hope we will 'cause then I could add Toronto to the list of Places I Have Been.
(I have very specific rules about when I can add states/countries to my list. If I drive through a state/country and see a significant amount of it that counts, even if we don't actually stop anywhere other than gas stations. For example, I was able to add Utah to my list of states because I drove across a significant portion of it on my way from Colorado to Las Vegas when I was 16. However, layovers in airports don't count if you don't actually leave the airport since the airport is a neutral space. If airports counted, Ohio, Washington D.C., and Georgia would be on my list, but they're not. I can't add Canada to my list if I don't actually leave the airport, but if we do get to leave and, say, have lunch somewhere or even just walk around outside for a while off airport property, then it counts.)
Anyway, I'm getting really, really excited. I can't wait to feel that London energy, and I can't wait to get to Stratford, to meet all the renowned people that are going to be giving our workshops, and to see all the shows. The Royal Shakespeare Company is doing a complete works festival. It began in April, and over the course of the next year every single work ever written by Shakespeare (sonnets, etc.) is going to be performed in Stratford. Some of it is being done by the RSC company, and then they're bringing in different groups from arond the world to perform as well. Like, the Midsummer we're seeing is being performed by a company from India (apparently it's being performed in both English and various Indian dialects), and the Titus we're seeing is done by a Japanese company (and will be performed in Japanese, or so I hear). We're seeing Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titus Andronicus, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus (although I think we're seeing Coriolanus at the Globe in London). Anyway, I think (I hope) it's going to be awesome.
The class itself is going really well, too. I like it so much more than I thought I would. Today after class Dr. C asked to talk to me privately. I was wondering what I might have done wrong, but it turns out she just wanted to tell me that both she and Patricia think I'm doing really well. That was totally not what I was expecting to hear. It's common knowledge that I'm the person in the class with the least acting/voice/movement experience, but I actually feel like I'm holding my own okay. I mean, I'm certainly not the best in the class, but I don't think you'd automatically pick me out as the least experienced, either. Dr. C. was saying that she admired the fact that I'm not afraid to try everything and that I just jump right in, and she also asked if I had dance training (apparently it still shows...who knew?!) and said that in terms of being comfortable in my body I'm actually one of the better ones in the class.
Both of those comments really surprised me. For one thing, I never used to be a "jump-on-in" kind of person. I'm not typically the type that throws my hand up and volunteers to be first. It used to be that if we got through an entire acting class without it getting to be my turn, I was relieved. But now I'm disappointed if I don't get a turn. And I also never used to be someone who could fully use my body, or could be considered "comfortable" in my body. I've always had a pretty good amount of body confidence, but I also often felt a certain amount of awkwardness when it came to actual body movement and it's fascinating to discover that suddenly that awkwardness isn't really a factor anymore (or not nearly as much as it once was, at any rate).
So I've been wondering...what has changed between this acting/voice/movement class and the ones I took at TCU a few years ago?
I think that part of it is just a matter of coming into my own. I progressively get more confident as I get older. I've always been like that. Maybe everybody is. All I know is that I was a much more confident person at 18 than I was at 15, a much more confident person at 21 than I was at 18. So it makes sense that I've just naturally grown and gotten to know myself more in the past few years and I'm more confident overall now at 23 than I was when I took acting at the age of 19 and 20.
But more importantly than that, I think I feel safer in this class than I ever have in any other acting class. At TCU I always knew the people in my classes very well. I was in acting class with my best friends. You'd think that would be a benefit, that it would make for a safer environment. And true, it made for a fun environment most of the time. But actually, in terms of work and growth, I'm finding that I'm liking taking this class with (mostly) near-strangers a lot more. I think in my acting classes at TCU there was always a certain amount of pressure. True, most of it was self-imposed, but I could never quite escape that feeling of wanting to impress people. I wanted to do really well in the classes so that my professors would want to cast me in shows. I wanted to do well in the classes so that I didn't have to worry that my friends were pitying me behind my back over my lack of talent (not that I think that ever actually happened, but that was sort of my thought process at the time). Needless to say, that constant feeling in the back of my mind of wanting to be "good" totally backfired.
Now, if there's any feeling of wanting to impress people at all, it's just me wanting to impress myself. I don't feel like I'm competing with anyone in this class. I don't feel the need to be good at this in comparison to the entire group, I just feel the need to make an overall improvement over where I started on Tuesday. I don't audition here so I don't feel like I need to be "better" than Jenn or Mindy or whoever. Everybody in this group knows that I'm a scholar before I'm an actor, so nobody expects me to be able to do this as well as Chris or Alex or the self-proclaimed actors in the group. I know that nobody expected these things of me before, in my old classes, but I did.
But now I'm truly just worried about improving myself, and that's such a freeing feeling. It's like I've finally grasped the mindset I should have had all along, and as a result I'm not nearly as intimidated by it all as I used to be.
Of course, this only counts right now. I may very well have a heart attack when I have to do workshops with the people in Stratford. But for right now, it's mostly just a lot of fun.
(I have very specific rules about when I can add states/countries to my list. If I drive through a state/country and see a significant amount of it that counts, even if we don't actually stop anywhere other than gas stations. For example, I was able to add Utah to my list of states because I drove across a significant portion of it on my way from Colorado to Las Vegas when I was 16. However, layovers in airports don't count if you don't actually leave the airport since the airport is a neutral space. If airports counted, Ohio, Washington D.C., and Georgia would be on my list, but they're not. I can't add Canada to my list if I don't actually leave the airport, but if we do get to leave and, say, have lunch somewhere or even just walk around outside for a while off airport property, then it counts.)
Anyway, I'm getting really, really excited. I can't wait to feel that London energy, and I can't wait to get to Stratford, to meet all the renowned people that are going to be giving our workshops, and to see all the shows. The Royal Shakespeare Company is doing a complete works festival. It began in April, and over the course of the next year every single work ever written by Shakespeare (sonnets, etc.) is going to be performed in Stratford. Some of it is being done by the RSC company, and then they're bringing in different groups from arond the world to perform as well. Like, the Midsummer we're seeing is being performed by a company from India (apparently it's being performed in both English and various Indian dialects), and the Titus we're seeing is done by a Japanese company (and will be performed in Japanese, or so I hear). We're seeing Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titus Andronicus, Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus (although I think we're seeing Coriolanus at the Globe in London). Anyway, I think (I hope) it's going to be awesome.
The class itself is going really well, too. I like it so much more than I thought I would. Today after class Dr. C asked to talk to me privately. I was wondering what I might have done wrong, but it turns out she just wanted to tell me that both she and Patricia think I'm doing really well. That was totally not what I was expecting to hear. It's common knowledge that I'm the person in the class with the least acting/voice/movement experience, but I actually feel like I'm holding my own okay. I mean, I'm certainly not the best in the class, but I don't think you'd automatically pick me out as the least experienced, either. Dr. C. was saying that she admired the fact that I'm not afraid to try everything and that I just jump right in, and she also asked if I had dance training (apparently it still shows...who knew?!) and said that in terms of being comfortable in my body I'm actually one of the better ones in the class.
Both of those comments really surprised me. For one thing, I never used to be a "jump-on-in" kind of person. I'm not typically the type that throws my hand up and volunteers to be first. It used to be that if we got through an entire acting class without it getting to be my turn, I was relieved. But now I'm disappointed if I don't get a turn. And I also never used to be someone who could fully use my body, or could be considered "comfortable" in my body. I've always had a pretty good amount of body confidence, but I also often felt a certain amount of awkwardness when it came to actual body movement and it's fascinating to discover that suddenly that awkwardness isn't really a factor anymore (or not nearly as much as it once was, at any rate).
So I've been wondering...what has changed between this acting/voice/movement class and the ones I took at TCU a few years ago?
I think that part of it is just a matter of coming into my own. I progressively get more confident as I get older. I've always been like that. Maybe everybody is. All I know is that I was a much more confident person at 18 than I was at 15, a much more confident person at 21 than I was at 18. So it makes sense that I've just naturally grown and gotten to know myself more in the past few years and I'm more confident overall now at 23 than I was when I took acting at the age of 19 and 20.
But more importantly than that, I think I feel safer in this class than I ever have in any other acting class. At TCU I always knew the people in my classes very well. I was in acting class with my best friends. You'd think that would be a benefit, that it would make for a safer environment. And true, it made for a fun environment most of the time. But actually, in terms of work and growth, I'm finding that I'm liking taking this class with (mostly) near-strangers a lot more. I think in my acting classes at TCU there was always a certain amount of pressure. True, most of it was self-imposed, but I could never quite escape that feeling of wanting to impress people. I wanted to do really well in the classes so that my professors would want to cast me in shows. I wanted to do well in the classes so that I didn't have to worry that my friends were pitying me behind my back over my lack of talent (not that I think that ever actually happened, but that was sort of my thought process at the time). Needless to say, that constant feeling in the back of my mind of wanting to be "good" totally backfired.
Now, if there's any feeling of wanting to impress people at all, it's just me wanting to impress myself. I don't feel like I'm competing with anyone in this class. I don't feel the need to be good at this in comparison to the entire group, I just feel the need to make an overall improvement over where I started on Tuesday. I don't audition here so I don't feel like I need to be "better" than Jenn or Mindy or whoever. Everybody in this group knows that I'm a scholar before I'm an actor, so nobody expects me to be able to do this as well as Chris or Alex or the self-proclaimed actors in the group. I know that nobody expected these things of me before, in my old classes, but I did.
But now I'm truly just worried about improving myself, and that's such a freeing feeling. It's like I've finally grasped the mindset I should have had all along, and as a result I'm not nearly as intimidated by it all as I used to be.
Of course, this only counts right now. I may very well have a heart attack when I have to do workshops with the people in Stratford. But for right now, it's mostly just a lot of fun.
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Prying Open My Third Eye
So, life has been good around here this week.
For one thing, I think that I got everything all worked out with the Mike situation. We are finally talking normally, as friends and nothing more. FINALLY. I'm glad that we've managed to reach a decent compromise because for a while I thought that was never going to happen.
On Sunday I went tubing on the Guadalupe with Chelsea, Katy, and Scott. I'm glad I got the chance to see Scott and Katy, it was so much fun. Tubing on Memorial Day weekend is crazy. The river was absolutely full of people, most of them college students, most of them drunk. Why do people think that every time there's a group of young adults and a body of water a beer bong needs to be involved? Oh, and my personal favorite group was floating a grill. Who floats a grill?! Surprisingly, it seemed to be working well. Or at any rate, it was standing up and lit every time we saw them. Being on the river reminded me a lot of being in Padre, actually. It was the same vibe, although slightly less frantic (thank God). We floated a cooler with a bunch of drinks and sandwich stuff and had about five hours of just drifting lazily and chatting punctuated with a few moments of screaming whenever we hit "rapids".
Coincidentally, I ended up running into my friend Aaron on the river. Aaron and I were friends in high school and I haven't seen him or talked to him in any sort of meaningful way* since we graduated five years ago. I knew Aaron lives in Austin and I figured what with being Matthew's "emotionally detached hag" I'd run into Aaron at one of the gay clubs eventually, but it never happened. Wouldn't you know, two weeks after Matthew moves to Houston I run into Aaron in a totally random place. Anyway, it was great to see Aaron. Chelsea, Aaron and I did a lot of reminiscing about our high school days and he reminded me of some people and events I'd literally completely forgotten about. God, we were laughing so hard. High school isn't something I'd ever want to do again, but it sure is fun to laugh about it for a couple of hours. It's so weird to think about how much has happened and changed in the five years since I left high school behind. It freaks me out a little bit in a weird way I can't quite put my finger on, but it also makes me really excited to think about the potential of the next five years of my life, if the last five have brought so many major changes.
All in all Sunday was pretty perfect. Every day of summer should be like that.
But my summer vacation is on hiatus now since I started my summer school class on Tuesday. I have to say, I was a bit wary of doing this summer program. Shakespeare is not my strength. True, it's possible that Shakespeare isn't my strength simply because I've never done any in-depth Shakespeare before, but whatever the reason, I don't feel very confident when it comes to Shakespeare. Oh, I can read and comprehend the plays, it's not that. I took a Shakespeare class for an English credit at TCU and read a ton of plays and sonnets and wrote some decent papers. I'm great at English class Shakespeare. I have the reading comprehension bit down. But Shakespeare from an acting/theatre perspective is a different thing entirely, and it's pretty much all new to me. So I was scared of the idea of taking a class that has so many performance elements when a) I'm not a very confident actress under the best of circumstances and b) did I mention that I've never done any Shakespeare performance at all whatsoever? And that most of the people in this class are acting emphasis? I don't even need the six hours of credit I'm getting for this course. Pretty much the only reason I took this class was because I had a thousand dollar summer scholarship that I wasn't going to be able to use otherwise, and the idea of giving a thousand dollars back to the school was killing me. That, and I'll never give up an opportunity to travel, especially to England. I LOVE England.
Well, let me just say that I'm already so glad that I am in this class. I already like Dr. C, and she is team-teaching the class with a woman named Patricia, who has awesome credentials and is just a cool person. She's really cool so far, anyway.
Today we worked a lot on scansion and I scanned my very first piece, ever. I kind of can't believe I've been studying theatre for five years and have never had to do any sort of scansion work before, but it's true. I knew the basics but had never applied them until today. And it's fun! It's like...cracking a code or something. And then we've already had a couple of good lectures, and Patricia has us working on yoga, releasing our bodies and working on our breathing. She's one of those people that says things like "Now send your breath into your hip sockets" or "Relax your third eye". I'm always really scornful of stuff like that until I spend an hour really focusing on it and then I remember that it actually works. I feel terrific for an hour or two afterwards. I also just really like being in a group of people focusing on body movement. It makes me realize exactly how much I miss dance class.
Anyway, there's still a bit of trepidation on my part. I'm still very worried about actually getting into the scenework portion of things. But so far so good. I think a struggle will be good for me. I don't challenge myself very often, and I'm not used to doing things and not being one of the best. In this class I definitely won't be one of the best. And you know what? I'm okay with that.
*The occasional two line IM saying something along the lines of, "We need to hang out sometime!" or a MySpace message hardly counts as meaningful in my book. Although it does count a little bit. It's better than nothing, anyway.
For one thing, I think that I got everything all worked out with the Mike situation. We are finally talking normally, as friends and nothing more. FINALLY. I'm glad that we've managed to reach a decent compromise because for a while I thought that was never going to happen.
On Sunday I went tubing on the Guadalupe with Chelsea, Katy, and Scott. I'm glad I got the chance to see Scott and Katy, it was so much fun. Tubing on Memorial Day weekend is crazy. The river was absolutely full of people, most of them college students, most of them drunk. Why do people think that every time there's a group of young adults and a body of water a beer bong needs to be involved? Oh, and my personal favorite group was floating a grill. Who floats a grill?! Surprisingly, it seemed to be working well. Or at any rate, it was standing up and lit every time we saw them. Being on the river reminded me a lot of being in Padre, actually. It was the same vibe, although slightly less frantic (thank God). We floated a cooler with a bunch of drinks and sandwich stuff and had about five hours of just drifting lazily and chatting punctuated with a few moments of screaming whenever we hit "rapids".
Coincidentally, I ended up running into my friend Aaron on the river. Aaron and I were friends in high school and I haven't seen him or talked to him in any sort of meaningful way* since we graduated five years ago. I knew Aaron lives in Austin and I figured what with being Matthew's "emotionally detached hag" I'd run into Aaron at one of the gay clubs eventually, but it never happened. Wouldn't you know, two weeks after Matthew moves to Houston I run into Aaron in a totally random place. Anyway, it was great to see Aaron. Chelsea, Aaron and I did a lot of reminiscing about our high school days and he reminded me of some people and events I'd literally completely forgotten about. God, we were laughing so hard. High school isn't something I'd ever want to do again, but it sure is fun to laugh about it for a couple of hours. It's so weird to think about how much has happened and changed in the five years since I left high school behind. It freaks me out a little bit in a weird way I can't quite put my finger on, but it also makes me really excited to think about the potential of the next five years of my life, if the last five have brought so many major changes.
All in all Sunday was pretty perfect. Every day of summer should be like that.
But my summer vacation is on hiatus now since I started my summer school class on Tuesday. I have to say, I was a bit wary of doing this summer program. Shakespeare is not my strength. True, it's possible that Shakespeare isn't my strength simply because I've never done any in-depth Shakespeare before, but whatever the reason, I don't feel very confident when it comes to Shakespeare. Oh, I can read and comprehend the plays, it's not that. I took a Shakespeare class for an English credit at TCU and read a ton of plays and sonnets and wrote some decent papers. I'm great at English class Shakespeare. I have the reading comprehension bit down. But Shakespeare from an acting/theatre perspective is a different thing entirely, and it's pretty much all new to me. So I was scared of the idea of taking a class that has so many performance elements when a) I'm not a very confident actress under the best of circumstances and b) did I mention that I've never done any Shakespeare performance at all whatsoever? And that most of the people in this class are acting emphasis? I don't even need the six hours of credit I'm getting for this course. Pretty much the only reason I took this class was because I had a thousand dollar summer scholarship that I wasn't going to be able to use otherwise, and the idea of giving a thousand dollars back to the school was killing me. That, and I'll never give up an opportunity to travel, especially to England. I LOVE England.
Well, let me just say that I'm already so glad that I am in this class. I already like Dr. C, and she is team-teaching the class with a woman named Patricia, who has awesome credentials and is just a cool person. She's really cool so far, anyway.
Today we worked a lot on scansion and I scanned my very first piece, ever. I kind of can't believe I've been studying theatre for five years and have never had to do any sort of scansion work before, but it's true. I knew the basics but had never applied them until today. And it's fun! It's like...cracking a code or something. And then we've already had a couple of good lectures, and Patricia has us working on yoga, releasing our bodies and working on our breathing. She's one of those people that says things like "Now send your breath into your hip sockets" or "Relax your third eye". I'm always really scornful of stuff like that until I spend an hour really focusing on it and then I remember that it actually works. I feel terrific for an hour or two afterwards. I also just really like being in a group of people focusing on body movement. It makes me realize exactly how much I miss dance class.
Anyway, there's still a bit of trepidation on my part. I'm still very worried about actually getting into the scenework portion of things. But so far so good. I think a struggle will be good for me. I don't challenge myself very often, and I'm not used to doing things and not being one of the best. In this class I definitely won't be one of the best. And you know what? I'm okay with that.
*The occasional two line IM saying something along the lines of, "We need to hang out sometime!" or a MySpace message hardly counts as meaningful in my book. Although it does count a little bit. It's better than nothing, anyway.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Talking to the Girlfriend
[FYI there's another new entry below this one. Wouldn't want you to miss a second of my thrilling and exciting life. Also, just for clarification purposes, Jenny-Mike's-girlfriend and Jenny-of-the-weekend-adventures are not the same person. I'm sure you could have figured that out on your own, but ya know, just in case...]
Okay, I know I promised to tell the story of how I befriended Mike's girlfriend. But as with most things, by the time I finally get time to tell the story I no longer feel like telling it, or I don't care much about it. Such is the case here.
The other thing is, I thought that by befriending Jenny (yes, she has a name, her name is Jenny) I would be able to talk to Mike. That's the whole point in befriending his girlfriend, after all. I want to be able to talk to Mike without him having to feel guilty and without her having to worry that I'm a threat to their relationship. Of course I also wanted to befriend her just for the sake of karma. I'd rather not have people out there in the world hating me if I can help it, you know? But mainly the main point of befriending Jenny was to maintain my friendship with Mike. The thing is, even though Jenny and I are on good terms now, Mike and I are still apparently on hiatus from talking. I have a feeling if I just asked her if he and I could go back to talking normally she'd say "Sure", but Mike doesn't want me to ask her. So now he's imposing these restrictions, and it's pissing me off. Once again I'm wondering why I'm going through all this trouble to maintain a friendship if he's not really going to reciprocate. I guess it's mainly because I feel like he may not necessarily need this friendship right now, and I may not necessarily need it right now either, but we're both going to regret it if we let it slip away entirely.
Mike gave Jenny my phone number. She didn't trust that he hadn't seen me while I was in town, so he gave her my number so she could text me personally and hear from me that he was telling the truth, that we really hadn't seen each other at all while I was in El Paso. At first she sent me a bunch of really bitchy, angry text messages. And okay, fine, I helped her boyfriend cheat on her so yes, I suppose I deserve that. But I also wasn't about to give her a reason to tell Mike that I'm a bitch. So I stayed nice and polite the whole time she was bashing me and I just kept saying, "Yes, I was fooling around with your boyfriend. There are reasons that happened and those reasons are gone now. If you'd like to talk about it I'll explain the whole thing to you. If not, that's fine, too. But just know I'll tell you the truth if you want to hear it. You have nothing to worry about anymore." Finally she got tired of insulting me (or realized I wasn't going to take the bait) and she began talking to me rationally. Three hours of text messaging later I'd told her the entire story: the situation Mike and I had been in when they started dating, everything that happened in Padre, why I was letting him have phone sex with me even when I knew he had a girlfriend, the fact that it took him forever to finally admit to me that he was committed to her and over me, etc., etc. etc. I was perfectly honest, and it paid off. I came to find out that Mike had told her a lot of lies, she found out that I'm not even remotely the sort of person she thought I was going to be, and ultimately I feel like she and I would actually have hit it off had we met under different circumstances. And it felt SO GOOD to finally come clean about all of it. A big weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and I think I helped her, too.
The bigger benefit, though, is that I got a lot of insight into her personality. And while I can see her as a full person now and like her as a result, I also think that she has a lot of issues. Anger issues, trust issues, emotional/mental issues. There's a lot going on with this girl and a lot going on with Mike right now that it would be unfair of me to discuss here.
But what I'm trying to say, basically, is that I no longer feel the need to be jealous of their relationship. Before it was so hard because I kept trying to figure out what was better about this relationship than the relationship that Mike and I had. And now I realize that the answer to that question is nothing. This is not a relationship that is going to last. I can say that with certainty. Or rather, I guess I should say that it shouldn't last. It's so cracked. God, it's more than half broken already. And maybe neither of them can see that.
But I can see it so much more clearly now. And that's the important thing for me. I just hope Mike stays smart, though. As much as I like Jenny now, and I honestly do, I just hope that eventually the love fog clears for him and he realizes exactly what he has gotten himself into and realizes that he deserves more than what he will get out of this relationship. And I hope that she realizes that she's never going to get what she needs from being with a guy like Mike, either. They're both good people. I love him flaws and all, and I now believe that she's a good person flaws and all, too. I just think that their relationship is incredibly screwed up. I mean, in real life I'll try to be a good friend to Mike and support him as long as he chooses to be in this relationship (until it gets really dangerous, which hopefully isn't too much of a possibility). But do I see this as a good, healthy relationship? Hell no.
Then again, who knows. Maybe I'm the one that's deluded and he is getting exactly what he deserves. The universe is strange.
Okay, I know I promised to tell the story of how I befriended Mike's girlfriend. But as with most things, by the time I finally get time to tell the story I no longer feel like telling it, or I don't care much about it. Such is the case here.
The other thing is, I thought that by befriending Jenny (yes, she has a name, her name is Jenny) I would be able to talk to Mike. That's the whole point in befriending his girlfriend, after all. I want to be able to talk to Mike without him having to feel guilty and without her having to worry that I'm a threat to their relationship. Of course I also wanted to befriend her just for the sake of karma. I'd rather not have people out there in the world hating me if I can help it, you know? But mainly the main point of befriending Jenny was to maintain my friendship with Mike. The thing is, even though Jenny and I are on good terms now, Mike and I are still apparently on hiatus from talking. I have a feeling if I just asked her if he and I could go back to talking normally she'd say "Sure", but Mike doesn't want me to ask her. So now he's imposing these restrictions, and it's pissing me off. Once again I'm wondering why I'm going through all this trouble to maintain a friendship if he's not really going to reciprocate. I guess it's mainly because I feel like he may not necessarily need this friendship right now, and I may not necessarily need it right now either, but we're both going to regret it if we let it slip away entirely.
Mike gave Jenny my phone number. She didn't trust that he hadn't seen me while I was in town, so he gave her my number so she could text me personally and hear from me that he was telling the truth, that we really hadn't seen each other at all while I was in El Paso. At first she sent me a bunch of really bitchy, angry text messages. And okay, fine, I helped her boyfriend cheat on her so yes, I suppose I deserve that. But I also wasn't about to give her a reason to tell Mike that I'm a bitch. So I stayed nice and polite the whole time she was bashing me and I just kept saying, "Yes, I was fooling around with your boyfriend. There are reasons that happened and those reasons are gone now. If you'd like to talk about it I'll explain the whole thing to you. If not, that's fine, too. But just know I'll tell you the truth if you want to hear it. You have nothing to worry about anymore." Finally she got tired of insulting me (or realized I wasn't going to take the bait) and she began talking to me rationally. Three hours of text messaging later I'd told her the entire story: the situation Mike and I had been in when they started dating, everything that happened in Padre, why I was letting him have phone sex with me even when I knew he had a girlfriend, the fact that it took him forever to finally admit to me that he was committed to her and over me, etc., etc. etc. I was perfectly honest, and it paid off. I came to find out that Mike had told her a lot of lies, she found out that I'm not even remotely the sort of person she thought I was going to be, and ultimately I feel like she and I would actually have hit it off had we met under different circumstances. And it felt SO GOOD to finally come clean about all of it. A big weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and I think I helped her, too.
The bigger benefit, though, is that I got a lot of insight into her personality. And while I can see her as a full person now and like her as a result, I also think that she has a lot of issues. Anger issues, trust issues, emotional/mental issues. There's a lot going on with this girl and a lot going on with Mike right now that it would be unfair of me to discuss here.
But what I'm trying to say, basically, is that I no longer feel the need to be jealous of their relationship. Before it was so hard because I kept trying to figure out what was better about this relationship than the relationship that Mike and I had. And now I realize that the answer to that question is nothing. This is not a relationship that is going to last. I can say that with certainty. Or rather, I guess I should say that it shouldn't last. It's so cracked. God, it's more than half broken already. And maybe neither of them can see that.
But I can see it so much more clearly now. And that's the important thing for me. I just hope Mike stays smart, though. As much as I like Jenny now, and I honestly do, I just hope that eventually the love fog clears for him and he realizes exactly what he has gotten himself into and realizes that he deserves more than what he will get out of this relationship. And I hope that she realizes that she's never going to get what she needs from being with a guy like Mike, either. They're both good people. I love him flaws and all, and I now believe that she's a good person flaws and all, too. I just think that their relationship is incredibly screwed up. I mean, in real life I'll try to be a good friend to Mike and support him as long as he chooses to be in this relationship (until it gets really dangerous, which hopefully isn't too much of a possibility). But do I see this as a good, healthy relationship? Hell no.
Then again, who knows. Maybe I'm the one that's deluded and he is getting exactly what he deserves. The universe is strange.
Summer Fun
This has turned into a crazy busy week, but in the best possible way.
Monday I drove back from El Paso. Tuesday I chilled and then went to Chelsea's house in the evening.
Wednesday Chelsea and I went to Schlitterbahn Waterpark, and it was so much fun! I love waterparks and I'd never been to Schlitterbahn, even though it's only twenty minutes from the apartment I've called home for the past ten months. I'd heard a lot of horror stories about Schlitterbahn, mostly about how people paid $40 for tickets and then had to wait in line so long that they only did one or two rides the entire day. Still, I wanted to go at least once in my life. My sister and I really lucked out, mostly because we were smart about it and purposely went on a day when a) it was early in the season and mid-week, b) anyone younger than college age is still in school, c) it was overcast and only 80 degrees early in the day which might have turned off potential visitors, and d) it was a half-price day so only half the park was open but hey, you only have to pay half price! Plus the half that was open was what seemed to be the more exciting half with the Master Blaster and all the other "roller coaster"-type water rides you always see on the Travel Channel water park specials. Besides, the park is so enormous I don't know how you'd ever get around to more than half of it in one day anyway even if both halves were open.
Anyway, we had a great time. There were a lot of people there despite all our careful planning (mainly buses full of high school kids on end-of-the-year field trips, which made for a lot of entertaining people to make fun of...ah, high school) but we never had to wait longer than about 45 minutes for a ride and for a few we didn't wait at all. That's amazing considering that the peak wait time for some of the rides during the summer really is 3 to 4 hours. We managed to hit all the open rides (we even did some of them TWICE. Oooooh!) and we still had plenty of time at the end of the day to leisurely drift around the "river" on a fake alligator. I really wish I had my own fake alligator. I'd be at the river all the time if I had an alligator to float around on. Anyway, it was a really fun day with my sister and I left feeling like it was well worth the money, which is a better Schlitterbahn experience than I've ever heard of anyone else having. It was something I've wanted to do for a while, and we actually did it, so I was happy.
Then Jenny came to town to visit for a couple of nights. True to form, we managed to consume near-ridiculous amounts of free alcohol and amass several good stories over the two nights she was here. We were somewhat tame (for us) on Thursday night and started out at Bennigan's and then moved to the square and went to Rocky's, which started out slow but then got much better once the bartender randomly decided to give us a free round of shots, and then another round, and then another round...I managed to get just drunk enough to have a good time but not so drunk that I made a fool of myself or woke up with a hangover, so it was a good night.
Then yesterday Chels, Jenny and I spent the day swimming and laying out at the dam and then we went up to Austin and had dinner at Matt's El Rancho (Dear Matt's, you are delicious!) and then we spent the night bar hopping on 6th Street. As testimony to our combined hotness [or perhaps because we unintentionally appear easy?...Whatever, I'm gonna keep telling myself it's just because we're hot] let me tell you that we were at the bars from 10:30 until 2 a.m. drinking continuously the entire time and we spent a combined total of $15 on drinks. Jenny got us a round of $3 Jager bombs and I bought a round of $1 Long Island iced teas (Yes! Really! How crazy is that?! They were normal sized drinks even!) and other than that every drink we had was free. 6th Street is full of club promoters trying to round up girls into their bars, so if you're a relatively small group of single girls it's pretty easy to take advantage and drink for free all night long.
What happened last night is pretty much what happens every time I go to 6th Street: We wander the street trying to decide where to go and inevitably a promoter comes up and says, "I'll buy you a free round at wherever" so we go and get the free round and then either stay just long enough for it not to look too shady before heading out onto the street again where the odds are very good that we'll get offered another free round by a different bar promoter, or guys in the bar start buying us rounds of drinks and we stay. Free drinking all night either way. I'm not saying this is exactly the most ethical way to spend an evening, but I also figure there aren't that many advantages to being a young single female so I might as well appreciate the advantages I DO have while I've got 'em. Plus in my defense I have never, ever blantantly flirted with a guy for the sole purpose of getting a drink out of him. People just tend to send drinks my way when I'm out with my girlfriends. I'd love to chalk this up to my being a sexy girl, but I think the more likely explanation is there are just a lot of desperate guys out there.
At any rate, we did a lot of drinking last night. We started out with a couple of free rounds from promoters and then ended up meeting these guys who asked us to bar hop with them the rest of the night. They were funny, friendly, easy to talk to, and not drunken assholes, so we hung out with them the rest of the night. We spent most of the night dancing at The Dizzy Rooster. Personally, I don't understand the appeal of the Dizzy Rooster. Everyone wants to go there because it was featured on Real World, but there are much, much better bars on the street. But the guys we were hanging out with were mostly all tourists from Missouri so of course they wanted to see it. It was hot as hell and way too crowded, but the dancing was a lot of fun. The upshot of all this is that I ended up kissing an accountant from Kansas City for a while and then we girls go thrown out of the Hilton Hotel because we were apparently being too loud in the hotel room.
Getting thrown out of the hotel room was kind of ridiculous. Yes, we were being loud. There were about ten of us in one hotel room, of course it was loud. It was also after 3 in the morning so yeah, we were out of line. I admit that. However, I think the security guards that threw us out were out of line, too. They didn't give us any sort of first warning or anything like that, they just came into the room, told us we weren't allowed to stay unless we were registered guests, and forced us to leave. No "Do you ladies have somewhere else to go?" No "Can we call you a cab?" Just "Get out of here." They wouldn't even let us sit in the lobby for a minute. And Jenny was definitely visibly pretty out of it. Chelsea and I were both sobered up by that point from all the dancing and the fact that we'd been chillin' in the hotel room without drinking for a couple of hours, but still. The security guys didn't know that. They basically threw three drunk girls out of the hotel onto the streets at 4 a.m. I'm sorry, regardless of our behavior, there is something very wrong with that.
I didn't mind being thrown out. I was actually kind of happy about it. It was the first time in my life I've ever officially been thrown out of anywhere! Plus Jeff was nice and attractive enough, but all I really wanted to do was dance with him and kiss for a little while and we were rapdily approaching the point where I was going to have to have an awkward conversation with him about how no, I didn't want to go to the empty room next door to fool around, I'd already done everything I wanted to do tonight so, um, I'm just gonna go back to my own house now, okay? The arrival of security prevented me from having to turn down the offer I knew was coming, so that actually was the perfect ending to my night. I just think the guards could have been a little more polite about it. It's not like we were being unruly or destructive, we were just talking too loudly in the middle of the night.
For the record, the guy last night was one of the few strangers I've ever made out with in my life. I've never been much of a lip slut. In fact, the last time I remember making out with anyone who wasn't already a pretty good friend of mine was in Las Vegas in spring 2004, and I'm pretty sure that particular guy was the first stranger I've ever kissed, ever. So I don't do that a lot. I guess it's mainly just because I don't really see the point. It's fun for a minute but I just don't have much desire to do anything if I don't feel like it's ultimately going to go somewhere. You know me, I do pretty much everything in my life with a particular ultimate goal in mind, and that includes relationships. And yeah, there have been times in my life when that goal was more along the lines of "potential fuck buddy" than along the lines of "potential meaningful relationship" but I can't say I've ever gone into anything with the goal being "potential one night stand". And no matter how much he claimed to like me, Jeff wouldn't have been anything but a one night stand. So yeah, I can't say that I was exactly sad that we got thrown out of the hotel before things could go any further.
Anyway, that's a Cliffs Notes version of everything that actually happened last night, but it was a fun night overall. I thought the rest of my weekend would be just me and Shakespeare since I have lots of reading to do before my summer class starts on Tuesday, but then Katy called me last night and told me she and Scott are in this neck of the woods visiting Scott's family for the weekend and they decided on a whim to tube the Guadalupe tomorrow and they invited Chelsea and I to go with them. So now I get to spend tomorrow tubing with Katy!
I should get some sleep first, though. For real.
Monday I drove back from El Paso. Tuesday I chilled and then went to Chelsea's house in the evening.
Wednesday Chelsea and I went to Schlitterbahn Waterpark, and it was so much fun! I love waterparks and I'd never been to Schlitterbahn, even though it's only twenty minutes from the apartment I've called home for the past ten months. I'd heard a lot of horror stories about Schlitterbahn, mostly about how people paid $40 for tickets and then had to wait in line so long that they only did one or two rides the entire day. Still, I wanted to go at least once in my life. My sister and I really lucked out, mostly because we were smart about it and purposely went on a day when a) it was early in the season and mid-week, b) anyone younger than college age is still in school, c) it was overcast and only 80 degrees early in the day which might have turned off potential visitors, and d) it was a half-price day so only half the park was open but hey, you only have to pay half price! Plus the half that was open was what seemed to be the more exciting half with the Master Blaster and all the other "roller coaster"-type water rides you always see on the Travel Channel water park specials. Besides, the park is so enormous I don't know how you'd ever get around to more than half of it in one day anyway even if both halves were open.
Anyway, we had a great time. There were a lot of people there despite all our careful planning (mainly buses full of high school kids on end-of-the-year field trips, which made for a lot of entertaining people to make fun of...ah, high school) but we never had to wait longer than about 45 minutes for a ride and for a few we didn't wait at all. That's amazing considering that the peak wait time for some of the rides during the summer really is 3 to 4 hours. We managed to hit all the open rides (we even did some of them TWICE. Oooooh!) and we still had plenty of time at the end of the day to leisurely drift around the "river" on a fake alligator. I really wish I had my own fake alligator. I'd be at the river all the time if I had an alligator to float around on. Anyway, it was a really fun day with my sister and I left feeling like it was well worth the money, which is a better Schlitterbahn experience than I've ever heard of anyone else having. It was something I've wanted to do for a while, and we actually did it, so I was happy.
Then Jenny came to town to visit for a couple of nights. True to form, we managed to consume near-ridiculous amounts of free alcohol and amass several good stories over the two nights she was here. We were somewhat tame (for us) on Thursday night and started out at Bennigan's and then moved to the square and went to Rocky's, which started out slow but then got much better once the bartender randomly decided to give us a free round of shots, and then another round, and then another round...I managed to get just drunk enough to have a good time but not so drunk that I made a fool of myself or woke up with a hangover, so it was a good night.
Then yesterday Chels, Jenny and I spent the day swimming and laying out at the dam and then we went up to Austin and had dinner at Matt's El Rancho (Dear Matt's, you are delicious!) and then we spent the night bar hopping on 6th Street. As testimony to our combined hotness [or perhaps because we unintentionally appear easy?...Whatever, I'm gonna keep telling myself it's just because we're hot] let me tell you that we were at the bars from 10:30 until 2 a.m. drinking continuously the entire time and we spent a combined total of $15 on drinks. Jenny got us a round of $3 Jager bombs and I bought a round of $1 Long Island iced teas (Yes! Really! How crazy is that?! They were normal sized drinks even!) and other than that every drink we had was free. 6th Street is full of club promoters trying to round up girls into their bars, so if you're a relatively small group of single girls it's pretty easy to take advantage and drink for free all night long.
What happened last night is pretty much what happens every time I go to 6th Street: We wander the street trying to decide where to go and inevitably a promoter comes up and says, "I'll buy you a free round at wherever" so we go and get the free round and then either stay just long enough for it not to look too shady before heading out onto the street again where the odds are very good that we'll get offered another free round by a different bar promoter, or guys in the bar start buying us rounds of drinks and we stay. Free drinking all night either way. I'm not saying this is exactly the most ethical way to spend an evening, but I also figure there aren't that many advantages to being a young single female so I might as well appreciate the advantages I DO have while I've got 'em. Plus in my defense I have never, ever blantantly flirted with a guy for the sole purpose of getting a drink out of him. People just tend to send drinks my way when I'm out with my girlfriends. I'd love to chalk this up to my being a sexy girl, but I think the more likely explanation is there are just a lot of desperate guys out there.
At any rate, we did a lot of drinking last night. We started out with a couple of free rounds from promoters and then ended up meeting these guys who asked us to bar hop with them the rest of the night. They were funny, friendly, easy to talk to, and not drunken assholes, so we hung out with them the rest of the night. We spent most of the night dancing at The Dizzy Rooster. Personally, I don't understand the appeal of the Dizzy Rooster. Everyone wants to go there because it was featured on Real World, but there are much, much better bars on the street. But the guys we were hanging out with were mostly all tourists from Missouri so of course they wanted to see it. It was hot as hell and way too crowded, but the dancing was a lot of fun. The upshot of all this is that I ended up kissing an accountant from Kansas City for a while and then we girls go thrown out of the Hilton Hotel because we were apparently being too loud in the hotel room.
Getting thrown out of the hotel room was kind of ridiculous. Yes, we were being loud. There were about ten of us in one hotel room, of course it was loud. It was also after 3 in the morning so yeah, we were out of line. I admit that. However, I think the security guards that threw us out were out of line, too. They didn't give us any sort of first warning or anything like that, they just came into the room, told us we weren't allowed to stay unless we were registered guests, and forced us to leave. No "Do you ladies have somewhere else to go?" No "Can we call you a cab?" Just "Get out of here." They wouldn't even let us sit in the lobby for a minute. And Jenny was definitely visibly pretty out of it. Chelsea and I were both sobered up by that point from all the dancing and the fact that we'd been chillin' in the hotel room without drinking for a couple of hours, but still. The security guys didn't know that. They basically threw three drunk girls out of the hotel onto the streets at 4 a.m. I'm sorry, regardless of our behavior, there is something very wrong with that.
I didn't mind being thrown out. I was actually kind of happy about it. It was the first time in my life I've ever officially been thrown out of anywhere! Plus Jeff was nice and attractive enough, but all I really wanted to do was dance with him and kiss for a little while and we were rapdily approaching the point where I was going to have to have an awkward conversation with him about how no, I didn't want to go to the empty room next door to fool around, I'd already done everything I wanted to do tonight so, um, I'm just gonna go back to my own house now, okay? The arrival of security prevented me from having to turn down the offer I knew was coming, so that actually was the perfect ending to my night. I just think the guards could have been a little more polite about it. It's not like we were being unruly or destructive, we were just talking too loudly in the middle of the night.
For the record, the guy last night was one of the few strangers I've ever made out with in my life. I've never been much of a lip slut. In fact, the last time I remember making out with anyone who wasn't already a pretty good friend of mine was in Las Vegas in spring 2004, and I'm pretty sure that particular guy was the first stranger I've ever kissed, ever. So I don't do that a lot. I guess it's mainly just because I don't really see the point. It's fun for a minute but I just don't have much desire to do anything if I don't feel like it's ultimately going to go somewhere. You know me, I do pretty much everything in my life with a particular ultimate goal in mind, and that includes relationships. And yeah, there have been times in my life when that goal was more along the lines of "potential fuck buddy" than along the lines of "potential meaningful relationship" but I can't say I've ever gone into anything with the goal being "potential one night stand". And no matter how much he claimed to like me, Jeff wouldn't have been anything but a one night stand. So yeah, I can't say that I was exactly sad that we got thrown out of the hotel before things could go any further.
Anyway, that's a Cliffs Notes version of everything that actually happened last night, but it was a fun night overall. I thought the rest of my weekend would be just me and Shakespeare since I have lots of reading to do before my summer class starts on Tuesday, but then Katy called me last night and told me she and Scott are in this neck of the woods visiting Scott's family for the weekend and they decided on a whim to tube the Guadalupe tomorrow and they invited Chelsea and I to go with them. So now I get to spend tomorrow tubing with Katy!
I should get some sleep first, though. For real.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Won't You Be My Neighbor? Part II
Remember last month when I wrote about all my neighbors, including how I didn't know what exactly was going on in the apartment across the hall but it seemed kind of shady and maybe like nobody was living there at all? (Here's the link to that post)
About a week later I was walking out of my apartment and there was a guy knocking on the door across the hall and he asked me, "Hey, do you know the guy that lives here? His name is Roland, he works for Budweiser. Do you know if he's usually home at this time?" I said no, that I didn't know him and had no idea when he was home and when he wasn't, and then I went about my business and didn't think anything else about it.
But then this afternoon I was cleaning my apartment and there was a knock on my door. I opened it and there was a cop standing outside. After wrangling my attack basset back into the apartment (he wanted to lick the cop to death) I said hello and the cop said to me, "Do you know this guy? He lives across the hall from you. We're looking for him," and he showed me a print out of my neighbor's picture. I said that I recognized the picture and that the guy does in fact live across the hall but that I don't actually know him at all. Then the cop asked if I'd seen him around lately and I said I'd been out of town for the past week but that I never really see my neighbor anyway. [The last time I saw him was a couple of weeks ago when Chelsea, Matthew and I were outside talking one night and the neighbor stuck his head out into the breezeway to glare at us and then went right back inside. I don't know what the glare was for, we were talking in normal tones of voice and it wasn't even all that late at night. Humph.] I told the cop that I've only seen him a few times and have no idea how long he has actually been living there or whether he even lives there regularly at all. Then the cop asked me what kind of car he drives and I said I had no idea and the cop prompted, "Is it a silver Chevy truck?" and I told him that I actually don't think it is. To tell you the truth, I have no idea, but I'm sort of familiar with the cars that make up the view out my front window and I don't think a silver truck is regularly one of them. But like I said, I don't think this guy is regularly living in his apartment anyway.
So who knows. I wanted to ask what the cops want him for, but I figure the officer probably wouldn't give me that information even if I asked. At any rate, my closest neighbor is apparently a wanted criminal. Awesome.
Anyway, I have more to tell you and I know I'm still holding out on the story of how I befriended Mike's ex, but my friend Jenny from Forth Worth just got here and she's spending a couple of nights with me. So I'll update again in a few days, possibly with more Jenny-related adventures since you all know we're crazy together!
About a week later I was walking out of my apartment and there was a guy knocking on the door across the hall and he asked me, "Hey, do you know the guy that lives here? His name is Roland, he works for Budweiser. Do you know if he's usually home at this time?" I said no, that I didn't know him and had no idea when he was home and when he wasn't, and then I went about my business and didn't think anything else about it.
But then this afternoon I was cleaning my apartment and there was a knock on my door. I opened it and there was a cop standing outside. After wrangling my attack basset back into the apartment (he wanted to lick the cop to death) I said hello and the cop said to me, "Do you know this guy? He lives across the hall from you. We're looking for him," and he showed me a print out of my neighbor's picture. I said that I recognized the picture and that the guy does in fact live across the hall but that I don't actually know him at all. Then the cop asked if I'd seen him around lately and I said I'd been out of town for the past week but that I never really see my neighbor anyway. [The last time I saw him was a couple of weeks ago when Chelsea, Matthew and I were outside talking one night and the neighbor stuck his head out into the breezeway to glare at us and then went right back inside. I don't know what the glare was for, we were talking in normal tones of voice and it wasn't even all that late at night. Humph.] I told the cop that I've only seen him a few times and have no idea how long he has actually been living there or whether he even lives there regularly at all. Then the cop asked me what kind of car he drives and I said I had no idea and the cop prompted, "Is it a silver Chevy truck?" and I told him that I actually don't think it is. To tell you the truth, I have no idea, but I'm sort of familiar with the cars that make up the view out my front window and I don't think a silver truck is regularly one of them. But like I said, I don't think this guy is regularly living in his apartment anyway.
So who knows. I wanted to ask what the cops want him for, but I figure the officer probably wouldn't give me that information even if I asked. At any rate, my closest neighbor is apparently a wanted criminal. Awesome.
Anyway, I have more to tell you and I know I'm still holding out on the story of how I befriended Mike's ex, but my friend Jenny from Forth Worth just got here and she's spending a couple of nights with me. So I'll update again in a few days, possibly with more Jenny-related adventures since you all know we're crazy together!
Monday, May 22, 2006
I'm Great to Have Along on Road Trips
I'm back home. Chelsea and I drove back from El Paso today. On the 9 hour car ride home I amused myself by doing such things as:
A) Singing the entirety of Elton John's Tiny Dancer one line faster than it was actually playing. Sometimes you false start and you just have to roll with it. This worked fine musically at some points, not-so-well at most. And at one point I did have to belt out "Jesus freaks, out in the street, something something out for God!" because I had to get the line out before Sir Elton caught up to me and for the life of me I couldn't remember the real words. [Incidentally: "Handing tickets out for God." Obviously.] Chelsea fully backed me on this project and I intend to attempt it with other songs in the near future, except that I don't think I know many songs well enough to sing the lyrics ahead of the singer him/herself. Another deterrent to the continuation of this project/experiment is that it is stupid and pointless.
B) Changing lyrics to rap songs so that they can be sung by/to my basset hound. Examples include: "On the front porch barking bring 'em out, bring 'em out! In the backyard barking bring 'em out, bring 'em out!" or "Shake that bas for me, shake that bas for me, come on Co!" Cohen, of course, was fast asleep in the backseat the whole time, but should the dog ever decide he wants to live up to his name and be a rap star, my sister and I will have a routine ready. [In case you don't know, his name as a young puppy before my sister gave him to me was T.I., after the rapper, so I went ahead and registered him as T.I. Cohen. So far he hasn't proven to be a very gangsta dog, but he's young yet].
C) Shouting "Jesus take the wheel!" and flinging my hands in the air and then admonishing Jesus for doing a damn lousy job of taking over on the steering.
Oh, and a certain Pussycat Dolls song may have been played a minimum of three times and possibly more. Possibly. I'm not confirming or denying that except to suggest that if such a thing DID happen it was on account of my sister's bad influence and I still fundamentally think the song is utter crap except that maybe, just maybe, it does kind of grow on you but not so much that you'd actually pay to download such a thing, thankyouverymuch.
And in case you are somewhat concerned by the above descriptions, let me assure you that I was in fact sober the entire way across the state. I'm just that much fun in the car all the time!
On a completely unrelated note, I talked to Mike's girlfriend today. Yeah, really. I'm planning to leave the whole story for another entry because I'm too drained to rehash it at the moment, but the very brief version: it was a surprisingly good turn of events.
Less than three weeks until England!
A) Singing the entirety of Elton John's Tiny Dancer one line faster than it was actually playing. Sometimes you false start and you just have to roll with it. This worked fine musically at some points, not-so-well at most. And at one point I did have to belt out "Jesus freaks, out in the street, something something out for God!" because I had to get the line out before Sir Elton caught up to me and for the life of me I couldn't remember the real words. [Incidentally: "Handing tickets out for God." Obviously.] Chelsea fully backed me on this project and I intend to attempt it with other songs in the near future, except that I don't think I know many songs well enough to sing the lyrics ahead of the singer him/herself. Another deterrent to the continuation of this project/experiment is that it is stupid and pointless.
B) Changing lyrics to rap songs so that they can be sung by/to my basset hound. Examples include: "On the front porch barking bring 'em out, bring 'em out! In the backyard barking bring 'em out, bring 'em out!" or "Shake that bas for me, shake that bas for me, come on Co!" Cohen, of course, was fast asleep in the backseat the whole time, but should the dog ever decide he wants to live up to his name and be a rap star, my sister and I will have a routine ready. [In case you don't know, his name as a young puppy before my sister gave him to me was T.I., after the rapper, so I went ahead and registered him as T.I. Cohen. So far he hasn't proven to be a very gangsta dog, but he's young yet].
C) Shouting "Jesus take the wheel!" and flinging my hands in the air and then admonishing Jesus for doing a damn lousy job of taking over on the steering.
Oh, and a certain Pussycat Dolls song may have been played a minimum of three times and possibly more. Possibly. I'm not confirming or denying that except to suggest that if such a thing DID happen it was on account of my sister's bad influence and I still fundamentally think the song is utter crap except that maybe, just maybe, it does kind of grow on you but not so much that you'd actually pay to download such a thing, thankyouverymuch.
And in case you are somewhat concerned by the above descriptions, let me assure you that I was in fact sober the entire way across the state. I'm just that much fun in the car all the time!
On a completely unrelated note, I talked to Mike's girlfriend today. Yeah, really. I'm planning to leave the whole story for another entry because I'm too drained to rehash it at the moment, but the very brief version: it was a surprisingly good turn of events.
Less than three weeks until England!
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
El Paso-isms
This is a list, but there's really no rhyme or reason here, so don't try to make logical connections.
1. Why are there so many shopping centers here? El Paso is a city full of half-empty shopping centers, and even though most of the shopping centers on the east side of town are half empty (or more than half empty), in the past two days I've driven past at least five sites where they are building new shopping centers. This is a phenomenon that I just don't understand. And I don't really see this happening in other cities, either. Is there a logical explanation for this? 'Cause if there is, I'm not smart enough to figure it out on my own.
2. Do you know what the word "yoco" means? Neither did I, until I read an article in the El Paso times yesterday about some stupid "Bring Your Brightest Bling" party at the El Paso Museum of Art (kill me). Here's a link to a description of the party. It's for El Paso's "young, sophisticated" people to socialize and network (KILL ME). Problem number one is that the El Paso Times is one of the most pathetic newspapers I've ever come across. Given, I'm pretty sure that nobody's crowning achievement is writing for the El Paso Times and the minute a person actually turns into a decent journalist they get a job at a different paper, but still. I have never taken a journalism course in my life, even in high school, and I'm fairly certain I could research and write better articles than anyone on their current staff. The paper is a joke, and trust me, that's not just some snobby, elitist opinion of mine. I'm not one of those El Paso bashers anyway. I actually like El Paso other than the fact that the whole damn city currently reminds me of my idiot ex boyfriend. Anyway, problem number two, the paper wants to tell people where the cool stuff for "young, sophisticated" people is happening? Trust me, the young, sophisticated people of the world (whoever they are) know where the hip stuff is happening without having to be told in the Arts section of the paper. The most annoying thing, though, was this sentence in the article describing the party as a place for "Yocos" to mingle and then in parentheses the reporter explained "Yoco is short for 'young cosmopolitans' and is the new term for yuppies." Is it? Is it REALLY? 'Cause I'd sure never heard the word yoco before. Neither has anyone else I asked. Google didn't even turn up anything,which leads me to believe this isn't exactly pop culture slang. The fact that the reporter or the museum or whatever is apparently making up the word "yoco" isn't even the most annoying part, though. The annoying part was that the reporter had to explain what a yoco is. You don't explain stuff like that. Just use the word. When was the last time you saw a word defined in the newspaper, unless the reporter was specifically coining a new word/phrase? If you want to use a word, use the word. The people who are in the know will understand it. The people that don't understand it will use context clues or ask their friends or look it up. I don't know why I'm ranting on and on about this, it just annoys me that the majority of the paper seems to be written with the assumption that its audience is a bunch of morons. They're not. And if they are, well, sink or swim, people. I just hate when stuff is dumbed down.
3. I got a fun new hair cut today and had a nice chat with my hairdresser. He also cuts Mike's hair, so he's heard the whole breakup debacle from Mike's perspective already. And when I got to the part of the story about how Mike finally told me he's in love with Jenny, Victor snorted and said, "He doesn't love her. He thinks he does right now, but he doesn't. She's a bartender. She's not even from here. He just thinks he loves her because it's new and exciting." I'm not sure why those are reasons not to love someone, but it made me laugh. I asked Victor if Mike made it seem like I was crazy about the whole thing, and Victor said no and added, "Mike just said that he can't handle long distance relationships and you always knew that all along so you should have known better than to get all attached." Fine, that's probably true. I finished up by telling Victor, "He doesn't love me anymore, so I'm done with it for good," and Victor laughed and said, "Of course he still loves you. He will always love you. Just wait, I can already tell you exactly what's going to happen. Years from now you're going to be married with a family and you'll be happy, and he'll run into you and realize what he lost. He will always love you, always. That's just how it works." And I told Victor, "Yeah, but I don't think it works the other way. I won't always love him like that. I warned him when I'm done I'm done, and I meant it. I'm going to move on." And Victor said, "I know that. And it's his loss. And believe me, he's going to realize what he lost eventually. Maybe not any time soon, but he will. Trust me, hairdressers know everything."
Deep down, I have a feeling that's true. That's how I like to imagine things turning out, anyway. Since at this point we won't get back together, I'd at least like to come out on top. Then again, who doesn't? But it was nice to have an objective source agree with me on the fact that Mike still loves me. I mean, obviously he's still afraid he has feelings for me or else he'd be able to talk to me and hang out with me like a normal person, right?
Anyway, there's a good chance Victor pretended to be on Mike's side when he talked to Mike, but I don't care. I'm gonna assume that Victor really is The All Knowing Hairdreser and that he's absolutely right in this particular case.
Alright, time to load up and go to the mountains. I'll be back to the connected world on Saturday.
1. Why are there so many shopping centers here? El Paso is a city full of half-empty shopping centers, and even though most of the shopping centers on the east side of town are half empty (or more than half empty), in the past two days I've driven past at least five sites where they are building new shopping centers. This is a phenomenon that I just don't understand. And I don't really see this happening in other cities, either. Is there a logical explanation for this? 'Cause if there is, I'm not smart enough to figure it out on my own.
2. Do you know what the word "yoco" means? Neither did I, until I read an article in the El Paso times yesterday about some stupid "Bring Your Brightest Bling" party at the El Paso Museum of Art (kill me). Here's a link to a description of the party. It's for El Paso's "young, sophisticated" people to socialize and network (KILL ME). Problem number one is that the El Paso Times is one of the most pathetic newspapers I've ever come across. Given, I'm pretty sure that nobody's crowning achievement is writing for the El Paso Times and the minute a person actually turns into a decent journalist they get a job at a different paper, but still. I have never taken a journalism course in my life, even in high school, and I'm fairly certain I could research and write better articles than anyone on their current staff. The paper is a joke, and trust me, that's not just some snobby, elitist opinion of mine. I'm not one of those El Paso bashers anyway. I actually like El Paso other than the fact that the whole damn city currently reminds me of my idiot ex boyfriend. Anyway, problem number two, the paper wants to tell people where the cool stuff for "young, sophisticated" people is happening? Trust me, the young, sophisticated people of the world (whoever they are) know where the hip stuff is happening without having to be told in the Arts section of the paper. The most annoying thing, though, was this sentence in the article describing the party as a place for "Yocos" to mingle and then in parentheses the reporter explained "Yoco is short for 'young cosmopolitans' and is the new term for yuppies." Is it? Is it REALLY? 'Cause I'd sure never heard the word yoco before. Neither has anyone else I asked. Google didn't even turn up anything,which leads me to believe this isn't exactly pop culture slang. The fact that the reporter or the museum or whatever is apparently making up the word "yoco" isn't even the most annoying part, though. The annoying part was that the reporter had to explain what a yoco is. You don't explain stuff like that. Just use the word. When was the last time you saw a word defined in the newspaper, unless the reporter was specifically coining a new word/phrase? If you want to use a word, use the word. The people who are in the know will understand it. The people that don't understand it will use context clues or ask their friends or look it up. I don't know why I'm ranting on and on about this, it just annoys me that the majority of the paper seems to be written with the assumption that its audience is a bunch of morons. They're not. And if they are, well, sink or swim, people. I just hate when stuff is dumbed down.
3. I got a fun new hair cut today and had a nice chat with my hairdresser. He also cuts Mike's hair, so he's heard the whole breakup debacle from Mike's perspective already. And when I got to the part of the story about how Mike finally told me he's in love with Jenny, Victor snorted and said, "He doesn't love her. He thinks he does right now, but he doesn't. She's a bartender. She's not even from here. He just thinks he loves her because it's new and exciting." I'm not sure why those are reasons not to love someone, but it made me laugh. I asked Victor if Mike made it seem like I was crazy about the whole thing, and Victor said no and added, "Mike just said that he can't handle long distance relationships and you always knew that all along so you should have known better than to get all attached." Fine, that's probably true. I finished up by telling Victor, "He doesn't love me anymore, so I'm done with it for good," and Victor laughed and said, "Of course he still loves you. He will always love you. Just wait, I can already tell you exactly what's going to happen. Years from now you're going to be married with a family and you'll be happy, and he'll run into you and realize what he lost. He will always love you, always. That's just how it works." And I told Victor, "Yeah, but I don't think it works the other way. I won't always love him like that. I warned him when I'm done I'm done, and I meant it. I'm going to move on." And Victor said, "I know that. And it's his loss. And believe me, he's going to realize what he lost eventually. Maybe not any time soon, but he will. Trust me, hairdressers know everything."
Deep down, I have a feeling that's true. That's how I like to imagine things turning out, anyway. Since at this point we won't get back together, I'd at least like to come out on top. Then again, who doesn't? But it was nice to have an objective source agree with me on the fact that Mike still loves me. I mean, obviously he's still afraid he has feelings for me or else he'd be able to talk to me and hang out with me like a normal person, right?
Anyway, there's a good chance Victor pretended to be on Mike's side when he talked to Mike, but I don't care. I'm gonna assume that Victor really is The All Knowing Hairdreser and that he's absolutely right in this particular case.
Alright, time to load up and go to the mountains. I'll be back to the connected world on Saturday.
Quote O' the Day
Mom: In all the years I've been getting Playboy*, I think I've only seen a "Girls of the Ivy League" spread once. It's kind of sad, really, because a lot of girls at those Ivy League schools aren't that hot. It really does seem to be a brains or body thing a lot of the time.
Me: It's not just that, though. I think the bigger problem would be finding girls that would agree to be photographed naked. Because lets face it, the people who do agree to pose naked in magazines aren't usually the brightest Crayons in the box.
Shane: Hey, what about me?!
Mom: When did you pose naked?
Shane: Not yet, but I might.
[The conversation then went off on a different tangent. Ten minutes later]
Shane: So back to me posing naked...
Mom: Yes?
Shane: I'm not gonna lie, my body is pretty hideous.
[...]
Me: And?
Shane: What?
Me: That's it? There's not more of a story? You just had to get that line in there?
Shane: Yeah.
[One more, just for fun]
Background: Because we're total nerds, Chelsea, Shane and I are lying around my grandmother's pool playing that game where one person says "I'm going on a camping trip and bringing whatever" and makes up a rule and then the other people suggest stuff they're bringing and the rule maker says yes or no according to the rule and keeps bringing new things that fit the rule, and then eventually other people start to catch on and guess the rule and whoever the last one is to guess the rule loses. Do you know that game? I hope so, 'cause this is a really shoddy description of it. Anyway, we played a bunch of rounds of this game, and each time a new round would start, Shane would always say, "I'm bringing a...snake?" I don't know why he kept suggesting snake, but he'd say it all the time, even when it was already obvious that snake probably didn't fit the category. Finally I called him on it and said, "Stop saying you're going to bring a snake!" And then we started a new round and it was Shane's first guess and, well, the first guess doesn't require a lot of thought. Basically you just need to start suggesting random things to try to narrow down the pattern. So Shane was thinking and thinking and finally I was like, "Just say something!" and he said
"I can't. I keep wanting to say 'snake' again."
Ah, this family of mine...
*Incidentally, yes, my parents subscribe to Playboy. It actually comes to the house under my mother's name because she's one of those people that says she gets it for the articles and actually does read the articles. Also, this is a pretty typical dinner conversation with my family.
Me: It's not just that, though. I think the bigger problem would be finding girls that would agree to be photographed naked. Because lets face it, the people who do agree to pose naked in magazines aren't usually the brightest Crayons in the box.
Shane: Hey, what about me?!
Mom: When did you pose naked?
Shane: Not yet, but I might.
[The conversation then went off on a different tangent. Ten minutes later]
Shane: So back to me posing naked...
Mom: Yes?
Shane: I'm not gonna lie, my body is pretty hideous.
[...]
Me: And?
Shane: What?
Me: That's it? There's not more of a story? You just had to get that line in there?
Shane: Yeah.
[One more, just for fun]
Background: Because we're total nerds, Chelsea, Shane and I are lying around my grandmother's pool playing that game where one person says "I'm going on a camping trip and bringing whatever" and makes up a rule and then the other people suggest stuff they're bringing and the rule maker says yes or no according to the rule and keeps bringing new things that fit the rule, and then eventually other people start to catch on and guess the rule and whoever the last one is to guess the rule loses. Do you know that game? I hope so, 'cause this is a really shoddy description of it. Anyway, we played a bunch of rounds of this game, and each time a new round would start, Shane would always say, "I'm bringing a...snake?" I don't know why he kept suggesting snake, but he'd say it all the time, even when it was already obvious that snake probably didn't fit the category. Finally I called him on it and said, "Stop saying you're going to bring a snake!" And then we started a new round and it was Shane's first guess and, well, the first guess doesn't require a lot of thought. Basically you just need to start suggesting random things to try to narrow down the pattern. So Shane was thinking and thinking and finally I was like, "Just say something!" and he said
"I can't. I keep wanting to say 'snake' again."
Ah, this family of mine...
*Incidentally, yes, my parents subscribe to Playboy. It actually comes to the house under my mother's name because she's one of those people that says she gets it for the articles and actually does read the articles. Also, this is a pretty typical dinner conversation with my family.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Crazy As Ever
Yesterday my sister and I drove across the state along with two dogs, two cats, two crates for the dogs, and a bunch of other random crap. Thankfully Chelsea drives an SUV (except that it cost me $60 to fill it up in Fort Stockton. I wasn't as thankful about that part).
The drive was uneventful, and so far El Paso has been uneventful too. We all went to Hudson's last night (including Shane's friends Gus and Dykes, who spend so much time with my family whenever Shane is in town that they're basically my brothers, too). And I got a really good buzz going, which is pretty much the only way I can both be in El Paso and be happy at the same time right now. And everyone else drank a lot, too, and we were all really loud and a lot of inappropriate things were said, and my parents are still very much in mid-life crisis mode, which is entertaining to say the least. In other words, it's the same old, same old.
Probably my two favorite moments of this El Paso trip so far:
Yesterday in the car Chelsea and I got on the topic of annoying songs that always get played at weddings and dances (the Cha Cha Slide being a prime example) and I announced that I won't have that music at my hypothetical-possibly-never-going-to-happen wedding. Chelsea then informed me that she's all about the Cha Cha Slide and, in fact, at her wedding she's only going to play the 18 songs that they play over and over again at The Derby in Juarez. "Which means you'll be hearing Cha Cha Slide about every hour and a half!" she gleefully informed me. I love my sister. I'm pretty sure the Derby mix also includes some Prince, so it's not all bad.
And then this morning at 10:00 I was getting breakfast in the kitchen, and Shane poured himself a bowl of shredded wheat and then opened the fridge and stood there staring for a minute and then sighed and said, "Damn, I was hoping we'd have bottled beer." (I later realized this was just general commentary on the fridge and not that he was looking for a beer to have with breakfast, thank God).
Also, my brother just now strolled through the living room wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts with a beach towel wrapped around his neck, carrying a staple gun. This led to the following conversation.
Me: What the heck are you doing?
Shane: That's for me to know and you to find out...(pauses in the doorway) Have you ever been in a staple gun fight?
Me: No. Why would anyone want to do that?...Are you about to tell me that you have?
Shane: During the Member/Guest when you're putting up the scoreboards, nobody comes into the room for hours and there's nothing better to do.
Me: So you kill time by shooting each other with staple guns?
Shane: Yeah...
Me: (long, long LOOK) I have absolutely nothing to say about that.
The drive was uneventful, and so far El Paso has been uneventful too. We all went to Hudson's last night (including Shane's friends Gus and Dykes, who spend so much time with my family whenever Shane is in town that they're basically my brothers, too). And I got a really good buzz going, which is pretty much the only way I can both be in El Paso and be happy at the same time right now. And everyone else drank a lot, too, and we were all really loud and a lot of inappropriate things were said, and my parents are still very much in mid-life crisis mode, which is entertaining to say the least. In other words, it's the same old, same old.
Probably my two favorite moments of this El Paso trip so far:
Yesterday in the car Chelsea and I got on the topic of annoying songs that always get played at weddings and dances (the Cha Cha Slide being a prime example) and I announced that I won't have that music at my hypothetical-possibly-never-going-to-happen wedding. Chelsea then informed me that she's all about the Cha Cha Slide and, in fact, at her wedding she's only going to play the 18 songs that they play over and over again at The Derby in Juarez. "Which means you'll be hearing Cha Cha Slide about every hour and a half!" she gleefully informed me. I love my sister. I'm pretty sure the Derby mix also includes some Prince, so it's not all bad.
And then this morning at 10:00 I was getting breakfast in the kitchen, and Shane poured himself a bowl of shredded wheat and then opened the fridge and stood there staring for a minute and then sighed and said, "Damn, I was hoping we'd have bottled beer." (I later realized this was just general commentary on the fridge and not that he was looking for a beer to have with breakfast, thank God).
Also, my brother just now strolled through the living room wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts with a beach towel wrapped around his neck, carrying a staple gun. This led to the following conversation.
Me: What the heck are you doing?
Shane: That's for me to know and you to find out...(pauses in the doorway) Have you ever been in a staple gun fight?
Me: No. Why would anyone want to do that?...Are you about to tell me that you have?
Shane: During the Member/Guest when you're putting up the scoreboards, nobody comes into the room for hours and there's nothing better to do.
Me: So you kill time by shooting each other with staple guns?
Shane: Yeah...
Me: (long, long LOOK) I have absolutely nothing to say about that.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Really Lame Stuff I Did Today
I don't know if this is a sign that I'm an adult or just a really pathetic neat freak, but while I was cleaning my apartment this afternoon I kept thinking about how much I long for one of those fancy Dyson vacuums. If I got a sudden windfall of cash, I would spend part of it on a vacuum cleaner, and I'd be happy about it. Who daydreams about having enough money to buy a new vacuum cleaner?!
So yeah. I cleaned my apartment today. The absolute only other things I did today were 1) work out and 2) read The Da Vinci Code. I borrowed it from Matthew so I could re-read it before Chelsea and I see the movie when it comes out. Matthew got a promotion last week (yay!) and has to move to Houston (boo!). He thought he wasn't going to have to move until June, but now it turns out they want him in Houston on the 21st, which means he'll be leaving here while I'm still in El Paso. And since I'm going to El Paso the day after tomorrow, I'm doing some speed reading so I can get his book back to him. I realize Houston is just a few hours away and I could easily make a day trip and see him in person and give the book back to him then. And I do intend to visit him in Houston, I just figure I might as well finish the book now anyway, especially since I have a whole stack of library books on my nightstand waiting to be read. Ah, few things in life make me happier than a stack of unread fiction!!
Hmmm, I've already admitted my pathetic vacuum daydream and the nerdy revelation that few things get me more excited than a stack of library books. I was trying to think of something else to share with you, but that's probably enough damage done for one day.
Oh, wait, here's one more complete reputation-damager: I have spent not one, not two, but EIGHT HOURS today watching a Brady Bunch marathon. Given, I've been reading and cleaning and working out at the same time. But still, I have had the TV tuned to the Brady Bunch for eight hours. And counting. Yeah.
P.S.-Today is the one year anniversary of the day Chelsea surprised me with Cohen! Best. Surprise. EVER. In five minutes it will be the one year anniversary of the day I graduated from TCU. I can' t believe it has already been an entire year. Unbelievable how much can happen in a year, really.
So yeah. I cleaned my apartment today. The absolute only other things I did today were 1) work out and 2) read The Da Vinci Code. I borrowed it from Matthew so I could re-read it before Chelsea and I see the movie when it comes out. Matthew got a promotion last week (yay!) and has to move to Houston (boo!). He thought he wasn't going to have to move until June, but now it turns out they want him in Houston on the 21st, which means he'll be leaving here while I'm still in El Paso. And since I'm going to El Paso the day after tomorrow, I'm doing some speed reading so I can get his book back to him. I realize Houston is just a few hours away and I could easily make a day trip and see him in person and give the book back to him then. And I do intend to visit him in Houston, I just figure I might as well finish the book now anyway, especially since I have a whole stack of library books on my nightstand waiting to be read. Ah, few things in life make me happier than a stack of unread fiction!!
Hmmm, I've already admitted my pathetic vacuum daydream and the nerdy revelation that few things get me more excited than a stack of library books. I was trying to think of something else to share with you, but that's probably enough damage done for one day.
Oh, wait, here's one more complete reputation-damager: I have spent not one, not two, but EIGHT HOURS today watching a Brady Bunch marathon. Given, I've been reading and cleaning and working out at the same time. But still, I have had the TV tuned to the Brady Bunch for eight hours. And counting. Yeah.
P.S.-Today is the one year anniversary of the day Chelsea surprised me with Cohen! Best. Surprise. EVER. In five minutes it will be the one year anniversary of the day I graduated from TCU. I can' t believe it has already been an entire year. Unbelievable how much can happen in a year, really.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Swimming/Not swimming
Well, some minor bad news today. Mandi and I were supposed to go to Galveston for the weekend so we could hang out at the beach and I could meet her family. Unfortunately, her dad has been sick lately and had to go into the hospital for tests yesterday. He still wanted us to come down, but Mandi has decided to go down by herself, which I totally understand. I know she'd feel weird taking me out around town and entertaining me while her dad is sick, and if they happen to get bad news about his health this weekend I know I would feel very awkward being there. I just hope that her dad's health ends up being okay. That's the important thing. And hopefully we'll get to make a trip down there sometime later this summer.
I'm a little disappointed, but I don't mind not going after all. Now I can save a little bit of money this weekend instead of blowing it all on food and alcohol at the beach. Plus it was going to be kind of a hassle coming home on Sunday night and leaving again on Monday morning. Now I have the weekend to clean and pack and all that good stuff. So yeah, it's okay.
And my day was still awesome today because...Cohen learned to enjoy swimming!! I've been determined to get him used to the river. I love hanging out at the river, and it would just be so much more fun if the dog would come and swim with me. Well, Chelsea and I had taken our dogs down to the San Marcos River a few times. Morty the Dark Lord (Morty is in fact short for Voldemort and I love referring to him as "The Dark Lord") ended up loving the river, but Cohen wasn't a fan. On Easter we got him to swim a little bit but he'd only get in by force and he wasn't digging it AT ALL. Plus the river here in town isn't the best place for a little dog like Cohen to swim because there's only one tiny portion of the river where you can actually wade in gradually, and that area is always full of other dogs and screaming children. Not exactly relaxing.
So last week I bought him a life vest, thinking that maybe he'd like swimming better if he could be a little more weightless. Bassets are not made for swimming. They're very heavy-boned and have very short legs, so they basically sink like stones. They CAN swim on their own (all dogs can swim) but definitely not very long or very far. So today Chelsea came down for the afternoon. We put Cohen in his life vest and went out to Five Mile Dam, a park on the Blanco River that's only about four miles from my apartment. I somehow didn't know that this park existed until a couple of days ago, but I'm so, SO glad someone at the dog park told me about it. It's perfect. The Five Mile Dam park itself is big and grassy with picnic tables and all that good stuff. Lots of people hang out up there. But if you go down below the dam there's a quiet area where the water flows really gently and is shallow enough to wade right into at most parts. This is where people take their dogs, so that's where Chels and I took Cohen. Then we tempted him with pieces of hot dog until he waded out into the river. Before long he was paddling around in his little life vest!!
I love my hound dog like crazy, but I don't think I've ever loved Cohen more than I did when he was paddling around in the river today. He looked so cute, I almost couldn't stand it. And the best part is, by the end of the day I think he really, truly liked it. At first I could tell he was just in the water to make me happy (and to get hot dogs pieces) but by the end of the day he was actually wading through some of the shallow parts of the river without any coaxing. And then once we'd had enough of swimming we took his life vest off and we walked up the river a little ways to check out more of the park. Cohen bounded along beside us (off leash and behaving really well, I might add!) and then took it upon himself to wade out into the water several more times. So he's not afraid anymore! I still think he prefers wading to actual swimming, but I'm just so happy that he'll willingly get into the water now.
Plus I'm really glad we discovered Five Mile Dam. It's much better than the City Park here in San Marcos, which is where I'd always been swimming in the past. The water feels great, it's quieter, and it's just prettier overall. Wild flowers everywhere, clear water, lots of shade...I'm thinking I'll head out that way much more often this summer.
These links will take you to pictures of my swimming hound dog!
I'm a little disappointed, but I don't mind not going after all. Now I can save a little bit of money this weekend instead of blowing it all on food and alcohol at the beach. Plus it was going to be kind of a hassle coming home on Sunday night and leaving again on Monday morning. Now I have the weekend to clean and pack and all that good stuff. So yeah, it's okay.
And my day was still awesome today because...Cohen learned to enjoy swimming!! I've been determined to get him used to the river. I love hanging out at the river, and it would just be so much more fun if the dog would come and swim with me. Well, Chelsea and I had taken our dogs down to the San Marcos River a few times. Morty the Dark Lord (Morty is in fact short for Voldemort and I love referring to him as "The Dark Lord") ended up loving the river, but Cohen wasn't a fan. On Easter we got him to swim a little bit but he'd only get in by force and he wasn't digging it AT ALL. Plus the river here in town isn't the best place for a little dog like Cohen to swim because there's only one tiny portion of the river where you can actually wade in gradually, and that area is always full of other dogs and screaming children. Not exactly relaxing.
So last week I bought him a life vest, thinking that maybe he'd like swimming better if he could be a little more weightless. Bassets are not made for swimming. They're very heavy-boned and have very short legs, so they basically sink like stones. They CAN swim on their own (all dogs can swim) but definitely not very long or very far. So today Chelsea came down for the afternoon. We put Cohen in his life vest and went out to Five Mile Dam, a park on the Blanco River that's only about four miles from my apartment. I somehow didn't know that this park existed until a couple of days ago, but I'm so, SO glad someone at the dog park told me about it. It's perfect. The Five Mile Dam park itself is big and grassy with picnic tables and all that good stuff. Lots of people hang out up there. But if you go down below the dam there's a quiet area where the water flows really gently and is shallow enough to wade right into at most parts. This is where people take their dogs, so that's where Chels and I took Cohen. Then we tempted him with pieces of hot dog until he waded out into the river. Before long he was paddling around in his little life vest!!
I love my hound dog like crazy, but I don't think I've ever loved Cohen more than I did when he was paddling around in the river today. He looked so cute, I almost couldn't stand it. And the best part is, by the end of the day I think he really, truly liked it. At first I could tell he was just in the water to make me happy (and to get hot dogs pieces) but by the end of the day he was actually wading through some of the shallow parts of the river without any coaxing. And then once we'd had enough of swimming we took his life vest off and we walked up the river a little ways to check out more of the park. Cohen bounded along beside us (off leash and behaving really well, I might add!) and then took it upon himself to wade out into the water several more times. So he's not afraid anymore! I still think he prefers wading to actual swimming, but I'm just so happy that he'll willingly get into the water now.
Plus I'm really glad we discovered Five Mile Dam. It's much better than the City Park here in San Marcos, which is where I'd always been swimming in the past. The water feels great, it's quieter, and it's just prettier overall. Wild flowers everywhere, clear water, lots of shade...I'm thinking I'll head out that way much more often this summer.
These links will take you to pictures of my swimming hound dog!
Imogen!!
Tonight was the Imogen Heap concert, and it was AWESOME!!!!!!! (All exclamation marks very well-deserved)
I tend to forget how much I love going to concerts until I'm actually at one. I forget how much I love being in a group of people that's all crazy about the same thing, especially when a hit song is played and the crowd goes crazy. I forget how fun it is to watch an artist perform and really pour their heart and soul out for you up there on the stage. I forget how cathartic it is to be at a concert, how I always leave feeling simultaneously energetic and relaxed and absolutely in awe. I'm blown away by musicians. So impressed, and also so jealous because singing and performing like that seems like it would be such an incredible emotional release, and I don't think I can do anything in my own life that would even come close to that. Writing is as close as I can get I think, but it's not remotely close enough. So I live vicariously through musicians. I think maybe we all do, to a certain extent.
Anyway, what can I say about Imogen Heap? If you aren't familiar with her and her music, you are missing out. Katy first turned me on to Imogen Heap when we were living together, and I'm so glad she did. It's hard to explain her musical style. Well, hard for me to explain anyway since I'm not a huge music buff. Most people either know her song "Hide and Seek" (which I believe gained popularity after getting some play on The O.C.) or know the stuff she did with the band Frou Frou (their most popular song is probably "Let Go", which plays at the very end of Garden State). So there's a starting point. I highly, highly recommend you check her out if you haven't already. Maybe her music won't reach out and grab you like it did me, but I think she's freakin' awesome. Her set tonight was great. She played at Stubbs in Austin and it was an outdoor concert, which was cool. She did a very good mix of new stuff and older favorites, and she also took a few requests, which amazed me (I don't think I've ever been at a concert where the artist actually responded to requests). She has good stage presence and she was great to her fans. She hung around afterwards and signed autographs for everyone who stayed. I normally never, ever hang out after shows but I did it because Matthew wanted to. I'm so glad I did. She was super friendly and signed a picture for me AND took a picture with me!
All in all, it was a fantastic evening. Definitely in my Top Five Concert Experiences of All Time, and I've seen...well, not a ton of concerts, but quite a few. And some of them really big. In fact, tonight I got to thinking that maybe I should make a list of people/groups I've seen in concert. I'm afraid I've already forgotten quite a few off the top of my head. Thankfully I keep my obsessive journal, so I could always go back through it and figure out exactly who I've seen in concert, but here's the basic list:
Madonna (at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas!!)
Dave Matthews Band (three times)
Tool (twice...hopefully soon to be three times, since I'm sure they'll do a big tour this year)
A Perfect Circle
Audioslave
Jane's Addiction
Jurassic Five
Pearl Jam
Pat Benatar
Blue Oyster Cult
Tommy Lee (I did not pay money for this, he happened to perform at a barbecue where I was serving beer)
Willie Nelson
The Beach Boys (well, the surviving members...you know how that goes)
Chicago
Three Dog Night
Tone Loc
2 Live Crew (Tone Loc and 2 Live Crew performed together at a frat party I went to once)
Vanilla Ice (performed on my college campus)
M.C. Hammer (I was 8. My first concert ever)
Bob Schneider
Cowboy Mouth
Matchbox Twenty
Everclear
Lifehouse
Common
Simon and Garfunkel (Giving a free concert at the Coliseum in Rome! Definitely one of the cooler things I've ever lucked into experiencing)
and now Imogen Heap
I'm positive I'm missing some. If you've been to a concert with me and it's not on this list, remind me. And I think one of my goals in life should definitely be to see more concerts. It sure does make me happy.
In other news, Matthew and I were discussing tonight what a terrible hag I make. He was telling me that he'd been talking about me with his sister and she told him that she thinks I'm pretty (awww) and she wondered why I don't have a boyfriend and then told Matthew, "Is it because she spends too much time with you?" Haha. I appreciated that his sister attempted to blame my single-ness on Matthew, but it's definitely not his fault. We don't spend nearly enough time together for me to be his official fag hag. Plus I would just suck at that.
For one thing, I don't think I get nearly excited enough about all his boys as a good hag should. Take this recent example:
To make a long story short(ish), Matthew lost touch with his first important boyfriend seven years ago. As in he lost touch with him entirely and had had no contact with him since summer of 1999. Recently Matthew sent me a sad IM one night, telling me that he was looking for this long-lost boy but was thinking he could very well be dead since there was a rumor he'd been working the street, gotten AIDS, and died. So I helped him look for this guy online for a while that night and found nothing, but reassured him that the odds of the friend actually being dead were very, very slim. Sure enough, two days later Matthew finally located him online after years of searching for him on and off. Why did this guy suddenly show up in a search now? I don't remember all the details, but suffice it to say Matthew found him and contacted him and he's going to Houston tomorrow to see this long-lost friend for the first time in years. Kymberli got really excited with Matthew and pointed out that he and long-l0st guy have in some ways been living parallel lives and were right under each other's noses in Austin several times over the past seven years. People he works with got incredibly excited and insisted that he HAD to go to Houston to see him, that it could all be fate. His sister was thrilled. And my reaction? In a nutshell: "Oh, cool. See, I told you he probably wasn't dead."
And then there's the whole fashion thing. If you've met me, you know that fashion really isn't my thing. I care about what I look like, but only to a certain extent. So when Matthew began talking on Monday about coordinating outfits for Thursday, I kind of just ignored that part of the conversation. Then when he mentioned it again on Tuesday I realized he was serious and was like, "We're really coordinating outfits?" and he said, "Well, I don't want us to look like twins." Um, trust me on this: the odds of me ever being remotely fashionable enough to look like Matthew's twin? ZERO. So I just kind of laughed and then he added, "Plus I don't want to get all cute and then you be in like, jeans and a spaghetti strap shirt. I mean, not that you'd ever wear jeans and a spaghetti strap shirt as an outfit to a concert." Except that I totally would wear jeans and a spaghetti strap shirt to a concert! Jeans with a spaghetti strap shirt is like, my uniform! Especially for going out! Does that not work as a fashion concept anymore?! What's a girl to do?! Luckily I was already planning to wear a flowy skirt to the concert because I knew it would be outdoors and crowded and I wanted to be as cool as possible. Plus later on I realized that when I think "spaghetti strap shirt" I'm thinking of the sparkly, dressy spaghetti strap shirts I wear out and that when Matthew said "spaghetti strap shirt" he probably meant the very plain ones that I use as workout clothes and pajamas. The Spaghetti Strap Shirt Spectrum is pretty broad, actually. Still, I think I fail the fashion portion of the hag test, too.
So, in summary:
Imogen Heap: AMAZING.
Ashley: Worst hag ever.
And I adore Matthew.
Tomorrow: off to the beach for the weekend!!
I tend to forget how much I love going to concerts until I'm actually at one. I forget how much I love being in a group of people that's all crazy about the same thing, especially when a hit song is played and the crowd goes crazy. I forget how fun it is to watch an artist perform and really pour their heart and soul out for you up there on the stage. I forget how cathartic it is to be at a concert, how I always leave feeling simultaneously energetic and relaxed and absolutely in awe. I'm blown away by musicians. So impressed, and also so jealous because singing and performing like that seems like it would be such an incredible emotional release, and I don't think I can do anything in my own life that would even come close to that. Writing is as close as I can get I think, but it's not remotely close enough. So I live vicariously through musicians. I think maybe we all do, to a certain extent.
Anyway, what can I say about Imogen Heap? If you aren't familiar with her and her music, you are missing out. Katy first turned me on to Imogen Heap when we were living together, and I'm so glad she did. It's hard to explain her musical style. Well, hard for me to explain anyway since I'm not a huge music buff. Most people either know her song "Hide and Seek" (which I believe gained popularity after getting some play on The O.C.) or know the stuff she did with the band Frou Frou (their most popular song is probably "Let Go", which plays at the very end of Garden State). So there's a starting point. I highly, highly recommend you check her out if you haven't already. Maybe her music won't reach out and grab you like it did me, but I think she's freakin' awesome. Her set tonight was great. She played at Stubbs in Austin and it was an outdoor concert, which was cool. She did a very good mix of new stuff and older favorites, and she also took a few requests, which amazed me (I don't think I've ever been at a concert where the artist actually responded to requests). She has good stage presence and she was great to her fans. She hung around afterwards and signed autographs for everyone who stayed. I normally never, ever hang out after shows but I did it because Matthew wanted to. I'm so glad I did. She was super friendly and signed a picture for me AND took a picture with me!
All in all, it was a fantastic evening. Definitely in my Top Five Concert Experiences of All Time, and I've seen...well, not a ton of concerts, but quite a few. And some of them really big. In fact, tonight I got to thinking that maybe I should make a list of people/groups I've seen in concert. I'm afraid I've already forgotten quite a few off the top of my head. Thankfully I keep my obsessive journal, so I could always go back through it and figure out exactly who I've seen in concert, but here's the basic list:
Madonna (at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas!!)
Dave Matthews Band (three times)
Tool (twice...hopefully soon to be three times, since I'm sure they'll do a big tour this year)
A Perfect Circle
Audioslave
Jane's Addiction
Jurassic Five
Pearl Jam
Pat Benatar
Blue Oyster Cult
Tommy Lee (I did not pay money for this, he happened to perform at a barbecue where I was serving beer)
Willie Nelson
The Beach Boys (well, the surviving members...you know how that goes)
Chicago
Three Dog Night
Tone Loc
2 Live Crew (Tone Loc and 2 Live Crew performed together at a frat party I went to once)
Vanilla Ice (performed on my college campus)
M.C. Hammer (I was 8. My first concert ever)
Bob Schneider
Cowboy Mouth
Matchbox Twenty
Everclear
Lifehouse
Common
Simon and Garfunkel (Giving a free concert at the Coliseum in Rome! Definitely one of the cooler things I've ever lucked into experiencing)
and now Imogen Heap
I'm positive I'm missing some. If you've been to a concert with me and it's not on this list, remind me. And I think one of my goals in life should definitely be to see more concerts. It sure does make me happy.
In other news, Matthew and I were discussing tonight what a terrible hag I make. He was telling me that he'd been talking about me with his sister and she told him that she thinks I'm pretty (awww) and she wondered why I don't have a boyfriend and then told Matthew, "Is it because she spends too much time with you?" Haha. I appreciated that his sister attempted to blame my single-ness on Matthew, but it's definitely not his fault. We don't spend nearly enough time together for me to be his official fag hag. Plus I would just suck at that.
For one thing, I don't think I get nearly excited enough about all his boys as a good hag should. Take this recent example:
To make a long story short(ish), Matthew lost touch with his first important boyfriend seven years ago. As in he lost touch with him entirely and had had no contact with him since summer of 1999. Recently Matthew sent me a sad IM one night, telling me that he was looking for this long-lost boy but was thinking he could very well be dead since there was a rumor he'd been working the street, gotten AIDS, and died. So I helped him look for this guy online for a while that night and found nothing, but reassured him that the odds of the friend actually being dead were very, very slim. Sure enough, two days later Matthew finally located him online after years of searching for him on and off. Why did this guy suddenly show up in a search now? I don't remember all the details, but suffice it to say Matthew found him and contacted him and he's going to Houston tomorrow to see this long-lost friend for the first time in years. Kymberli got really excited with Matthew and pointed out that he and long-l0st guy have in some ways been living parallel lives and were right under each other's noses in Austin several times over the past seven years. People he works with got incredibly excited and insisted that he HAD to go to Houston to see him, that it could all be fate. His sister was thrilled. And my reaction? In a nutshell: "Oh, cool. See, I told you he probably wasn't dead."
And then there's the whole fashion thing. If you've met me, you know that fashion really isn't my thing. I care about what I look like, but only to a certain extent. So when Matthew began talking on Monday about coordinating outfits for Thursday, I kind of just ignored that part of the conversation. Then when he mentioned it again on Tuesday I realized he was serious and was like, "We're really coordinating outfits?" and he said, "Well, I don't want us to look like twins." Um, trust me on this: the odds of me ever being remotely fashionable enough to look like Matthew's twin? ZERO. So I just kind of laughed and then he added, "Plus I don't want to get all cute and then you be in like, jeans and a spaghetti strap shirt. I mean, not that you'd ever wear jeans and a spaghetti strap shirt as an outfit to a concert." Except that I totally would wear jeans and a spaghetti strap shirt to a concert! Jeans with a spaghetti strap shirt is like, my uniform! Especially for going out! Does that not work as a fashion concept anymore?! What's a girl to do?! Luckily I was already planning to wear a flowy skirt to the concert because I knew it would be outdoors and crowded and I wanted to be as cool as possible. Plus later on I realized that when I think "spaghetti strap shirt" I'm thinking of the sparkly, dressy spaghetti strap shirts I wear out and that when Matthew said "spaghetti strap shirt" he probably meant the very plain ones that I use as workout clothes and pajamas. The Spaghetti Strap Shirt Spectrum is pretty broad, actually. Still, I think I fail the fashion portion of the hag test, too.
So, in summary:
Imogen Heap: AMAZING.
Ashley: Worst hag ever.
And I adore Matthew.
Tomorrow: off to the beach for the weekend!!
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Just a Few Random Things
None of these ideas remotely flow together, so you're getting bullet points today.
- Have you seen the commercial for Preparation H with the man on the seesaw? Is anyone else completely horrified by this commercial? 'Cause I sure am.
- When I checked my box today my Dramaturgy stuff was back. I got a 95 on the paper and a 98 on the final exam, so that class will be an A for sure. So far it's 3 As and the only class I don't know about yet is Playwriting. We got our portfolios back at our "final" today, but he didn't write any grades or comments on them, which annoys me. I write a full one-act play and you can't bother to write a few comments on it? I'm going to be pretty pissed off if I don't get an A in that class, since I'm one of only six people (out of 25) that actually bothered to turn in every single assignment more or less on time. Surely actually completing all of the coursework should count for something right? Plus it's an undergrad/graduate tiered class, and I am going to kick myself if I can get an A in something as intense and complicated as graduate-level dramatic theory but only get a B in Playwriting.
- Yesterday evening I decided that I'd swim laps for my workout and when I was lying on a lounge chair reading afterwards I had the very happy realization that my body is definitely in better shape than it was last summer. I hadn't really noticed the last time I was wearing my swim suits because I was standing up all the time (in Padre), but now that I was actually lying down in my bathing suit I noticed that yup, I'm definitely in better shape. That made me happy. I think it's because of a combination of things. Last year I sprained my ankle and couldn't really work out for about seven weeks in the winter, and so by summer I still wasn't in the kind of shaped I'd have liked to be in. So part of it is just that I've been exercising more this year in general. I think I'm also eating a tiny bit better. Not MUCH better, but I do eat less fast food. The biggest lifestyle difference, honestly, is that I drink a lot less now than I did at this time last year. I hate to admit that so much of my little belly was a beer gut, but, well...
- They've been renovating the exterior of my apartment complex since spring break. Last week they finally got to the painting portion of the project. They decided on a color that I can't quite describe. It's green. Kinda...moss green? Avocado green? I don't know. The brick portion of the buildings is reddish brown, so the red and green work okay together. Plus it's better than the peach color that they initially tried on one of the buildings. The peach was god-awful, especially after Matthew began describing it as "the color of a vagina" (like he would even know!) so I'm glad the powers that be decided against that. But they painted the trim white, and this color of green really, really needs off-white trim. Don't ask me why, it just DOES. Plus they haven't painted the iron on the stairwells and patio and balcony fences yet, and I'm not sure what color they're going to do those. Right now they're still the old pine green color, which is clashing terribly with the new green color and the whole thing is just conspiring to subtly drive me crazy. Why do I even care about this? I don't know. I'll just be glad when all the renovating is over, especially since I can't put my patio furniture back out until they finish all the painting, and so every time I open my patio storage closet to get my cleaning supplies out my table and chairs come crashing out, too.
- My sister and I are making a trip to El Paso next week. My brother will already be home, so the whole family will be together for the first time since Christmas. Honestly, I have no real desire to go to El Paso. The only real reason I'm going is because I'm supposed to be in my friend Cassie's wedding in December and she kept asking when I was going to be home so that I could get fitted for my bridesmaid's dress. Honestly, in an ideal world, I wouldn't have to be in El Paso at all until Thanksgiving (by which time all the Mike drama will be a distant memory and El Paso won't be an emotionally painful place to be). But I realize Thanksgiving is too late to get measured for a dress that needs to be finished by December, so I decided I needed to make a summer trip to El Paso. I'm also rationalizing this trip by telling myself it's necessary to see my parents before I leave the country for three weeks. Actually, I do miss my parents. It will be good to see them. And since now I have to go to El Paso, Chelsea and I have decided to take our dogs with us and actually spend the majority of our time in Ruidoso. I love Ruidoso. It's not El Paso, so no negative Mike associations, I haven't been to the cabin in ages (the last time I remember being there was with Katy, which was spring break of last year), and I know Cohen is going to have a blast with all the new stuff to sniff. Plus no place relaxes me like the mountains, so that should be good. And I guess El Paso itself won't be too bad. It's just weird going there and literally having nobody to visit but my parents. There used to be a time when I could go to El Paso and get a whole group of friends together, now the only person that I'd really go out of my way to contact and see while I'm in town is Cassie. If I were to randomly run into other people (which always seems to be the case at holidays although probably won't be the case this time) that would be fine, fun even, but there's only one person I'd bother calling to say "Hey, I'm in town." All of my other friends from El Paso a) live elsewhere full time and if our trips to El Paso overlap it's just a coincidence, b) have basically lost touch with me, or c) have girlfriends and are no longer allowed to spend time hanging out with me.
It's crazy what a difference five years makes.
My sister was making me laugh, because she's pretty much in the same position of not having many friends in El Paso anymore and not particularly caring one way or another whether or not she finds the time to see the people who are there. She says the only reason she's going to El Paso is to get some real Mexican food. And I can second that! We were talking the other day about how we'd like to watch the first season of Grey's Anatomy, since neither of us started watching it until midway through this season. (The first episode I ever saw was the train wreck episode...what an episode to come in on!) I told Chelsea that I think we can probably rent the first season, and she said, "We can rent it and watch it while we're in El Paso! While we eat Mexican food!" So now we keep joking with each other that we're driving the 9 hours to El Paso solely to watch Grey's Anatomy and eat Mexican food which, no, you CANNOT do in Austin because there is no Julio's or L&J in Austin. So yeah, I'll be in El Paso/Ruidoso next week. - But first I'm going to Galveston with Mandi for the weekend! That should be fun.
- Yeah, that's all I got. I'm off to read magazines and watch more TV.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Secret Single Behavior
I've been such a bum today, and it is wonderful. I slept until 1:00, worked out for an hour, lazed around the house reading and watching TV, finally went to the grocery store and did my big monthly stock up at about 6:00, and got home just in time to watch my Sunday night TV shows.
And I cooked tonight! I made turkey burgers seasoned with some paprika, McCormick's grill seasoning, garlic, and onion and...hmmm, something else was in there, but I forgot what. Anyway, they turned out really good. I did set the smoke alarm off, but lately the smoke alarm has been going off every single time I turn on the stove. I don't know if it's heat-sensitive or what, but tonight after it rang so long I thought my ear drums were going to explode I stood up on one of my bar stools and pounded on the inside of the smoke detector until it eventually stopped going off. Which means it's probably broken now. Shouldn't there be some sort of button on smoke detectors that you can push to make them stop going off? Is there a button that you can push to turn off smoke detectors and I just don't know where it is? Anyway, because I no longer have a functioning smoke alarm I'll probably be held responsible when building three burns to the ground, but I feel fairly confident that I'd detect a fire in this apartment even before a smoke detector would. The apartment is only a little over 500 square feet big. Plus even if a raging fire did somehow start in my kitchen while I was asleep in my bedroom, I could always escape through the door that leads to my patio. In other words, what I'm saying is, the odds are enough in my favor that I'm okay with the fact that I pounded my smoke alarm to death.
I'm proud of my cooking, except now I'm getting stuck in a rut again. Remember about a year ago when I was stuck in a rut of only trusting myself to make either desserts or appetizers that didn't involve any real meat (other than like, lunch meat)? And then I tried some pastas and got stuck on that? Well, I finally tackled my fear of cooking meat and have now made hamburgers, turkey burgers, and chicken patties in different varieties several times without dying from salmonella or e.coli. But now I realize that for the past couple of months all of my cooking projects have been burgers of some variety. So next up I think I need to do something that doesn't involve ground beef. I'm going to be a real cook yet, just wait and see...maybe soon I'll even be brave enough to cook for people other than my sister!
(P.S.-Why do I suddenly feel like a 1950s housewife?)
Anyway, I had a really enjoyable night cooking and eating and watching my Sunday night TV shows. Grey's Anatomy was a bit too melodramatic tonight, though, dontcha think? Although I did enjoy Meredith's little speech to McDreamy, mostly because I can totally relate. You broke me, you don't get to complain about how I choose to fix myself! HELL YEAH! Maybe the parallel will continue and I'll start dating a vet that looks exactly like Chris O'Donnell. I'd be okay with that. Incidentally, it's weird that he suddenly showed up on Grey's because I swear just a few weeks ago I was wondering whatever happened to him.
Speaking of dating, I was thinking tonight about one of the best things about being single. Namely, I only have to entertain myself. I was thinking today how I can be perfectly happy spending an entire day just like this: cooking a meal, lying on the couch reading blogs, watching The Sopranos. Throw a guy into the mix and suddenly I'd feel the need to be entertaining. I have to get pretty far into a relationship before I feel comfortable just going around the house doing my thing while my guy does his own thing. When I'm not in a relationship I forget how exhausting it can all be: in a relationship, especially the beginning of a relationship, there's such a need to be "on" all the time. I always feel like I need to be carrying on a conversation, and planning things to do, and looking my best even if I'm in my pajamas or my workout clothes. In a good relationship the ability to just lie around the house in grubby workout clothes and not speak to each other at all for a couple of hours, that feeling of being totally comfortable in one another's presence, comes around eventually. But until it does there's a definite need to be entertaining, and I'd forgotten how much that annoys me. And then there's always having to plan around another person, and the checking in every day even if you can't see each other...there are a lot of things that are really great about being in a relationship, and I personally believe overall that the pros outweigh the cons. But I'm a person who likes a lot of privacy and alone time, so I think maybe I should focus on all the pros of being single for a while. Because all of a sudden tonight the thought of having to share a home with another person for the rest of my life really scares me.
I'm so fickle.
Still, maybe I should enjoy having my own place while it lasts.
And I cooked tonight! I made turkey burgers seasoned with some paprika, McCormick's grill seasoning, garlic, and onion and...hmmm, something else was in there, but I forgot what. Anyway, they turned out really good. I did set the smoke alarm off, but lately the smoke alarm has been going off every single time I turn on the stove. I don't know if it's heat-sensitive or what, but tonight after it rang so long I thought my ear drums were going to explode I stood up on one of my bar stools and pounded on the inside of the smoke detector until it eventually stopped going off. Which means it's probably broken now. Shouldn't there be some sort of button on smoke detectors that you can push to make them stop going off? Is there a button that you can push to turn off smoke detectors and I just don't know where it is? Anyway, because I no longer have a functioning smoke alarm I'll probably be held responsible when building three burns to the ground, but I feel fairly confident that I'd detect a fire in this apartment even before a smoke detector would. The apartment is only a little over 500 square feet big. Plus even if a raging fire did somehow start in my kitchen while I was asleep in my bedroom, I could always escape through the door that leads to my patio. In other words, what I'm saying is, the odds are enough in my favor that I'm okay with the fact that I pounded my smoke alarm to death.
I'm proud of my cooking, except now I'm getting stuck in a rut again. Remember about a year ago when I was stuck in a rut of only trusting myself to make either desserts or appetizers that didn't involve any real meat (other than like, lunch meat)? And then I tried some pastas and got stuck on that? Well, I finally tackled my fear of cooking meat and have now made hamburgers, turkey burgers, and chicken patties in different varieties several times without dying from salmonella or e.coli. But now I realize that for the past couple of months all of my cooking projects have been burgers of some variety. So next up I think I need to do something that doesn't involve ground beef. I'm going to be a real cook yet, just wait and see...maybe soon I'll even be brave enough to cook for people other than my sister!
(P.S.-Why do I suddenly feel like a 1950s housewife?)
Anyway, I had a really enjoyable night cooking and eating and watching my Sunday night TV shows. Grey's Anatomy was a bit too melodramatic tonight, though, dontcha think? Although I did enjoy Meredith's little speech to McDreamy, mostly because I can totally relate. You broke me, you don't get to complain about how I choose to fix myself! HELL YEAH! Maybe the parallel will continue and I'll start dating a vet that looks exactly like Chris O'Donnell. I'd be okay with that. Incidentally, it's weird that he suddenly showed up on Grey's because I swear just a few weeks ago I was wondering whatever happened to him.
Speaking of dating, I was thinking tonight about one of the best things about being single. Namely, I only have to entertain myself. I was thinking today how I can be perfectly happy spending an entire day just like this: cooking a meal, lying on the couch reading blogs, watching The Sopranos. Throw a guy into the mix and suddenly I'd feel the need to be entertaining. I have to get pretty far into a relationship before I feel comfortable just going around the house doing my thing while my guy does his own thing. When I'm not in a relationship I forget how exhausting it can all be: in a relationship, especially the beginning of a relationship, there's such a need to be "on" all the time. I always feel like I need to be carrying on a conversation, and planning things to do, and looking my best even if I'm in my pajamas or my workout clothes. In a good relationship the ability to just lie around the house in grubby workout clothes and not speak to each other at all for a couple of hours, that feeling of being totally comfortable in one another's presence, comes around eventually. But until it does there's a definite need to be entertaining, and I'd forgotten how much that annoys me. And then there's always having to plan around another person, and the checking in every day even if you can't see each other...there are a lot of things that are really great about being in a relationship, and I personally believe overall that the pros outweigh the cons. But I'm a person who likes a lot of privacy and alone time, so I think maybe I should focus on all the pros of being single for a while. Because all of a sudden tonight the thought of having to share a home with another person for the rest of my life really scares me.
I'm so fickle.
Still, maybe I should enjoy having my own place while it lasts.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Rose Tint My World
Time to get a happier entry at the top of this journal, don't you agree?
With all the melodrama on Thursday I kind of forgot to get excited about the fact that I finished the semester. Technically I'm not completely done. My Playwriting professor actually believes the rule that everyone needs to take a written final, so I have to show up to class on Tuesday afternoon and take my Playwriting final which is worth 0% of my grade. ZERO PERCENT. The whole thing really annoys me, it's such a waste of a perfectly good hour of my life, but whatever. At least I don't actually have to do anything but show up. So as of Thursday I was finished. I went to Dramaturgy, turned in my paper and final, and then went out for dinner and drinks with some of my classmates, and that was that.
The first week or so I'm out of school for the summer always feels so weird. I keep thinking that I need to be doing something right now and it feels really bizarre to just be able to read blogs or watch TV without having to feel guilty because I should really be working instead. I do have a few personal goals for myself over the summer. I need to start working on some things for Rocky Horror already, and I really need to catch up completely in my personal journal. I have a sick, sick journal obsession and have attempted to write an entry every single day for ten years now. Well, obviously, the whole every-single-day thing doesn't always happen. When I'm on vacation I don't always take my computer, when I have guests I tend to skip my nightly writing time, and when life gets really busy I just don't have time to journal, so on nights when I don't have time I just list a few things to help jog my memory later and then fill the entry in on another day when I have some free time to kill. What this means is right now, at this exact moment, I have about forty or so incomplete entries, some of them dating all the way back to Christmas time of 2004 and some of them as recently as spring break of this year. So my goal is to finally get caught up completely. Since it only takes five to fifteen minutes to write an entry, I figure if I just do five or six entries a day for a couple of weeks I should have no problem catching up, and I'd love to be caught up for real before I go to England. We'll see if I can actually make that happen.
So yeah, incredibly nerdy personal goals aside, I don't have any commitments over the next few weeks except for fun ones. That's such a great feeling.
Last night Matthew and I celebrated Cinco de Mayo by making ghetto tacos and drinking sangria. And by "ghetto tacos", I mean both Matthew and I are pretty much completely out of food in our apartments and too poor to go out to eat dinner (I just got a paycheck, but I'm trying to be somewhat careful with money until England), so we just scraped together everything we could find in our kitchens and realized that between the two of us we just barely had the ingredients to make some tacos. Ha. So we ate tacos and got nice and tipsy, and it was an enjoyable, if low-key, Cinco de Mayo.
Then today Mandi and I went to the Pecan Street Festival in Austin. It was so much fun, just walking around drinking and looking at all the art booths. I LOVE stuff like that. It made me miss Katy, since going to the Main Street Arts Festival was always our thing back when we were living in Fort Worth, and this was pretty much the exact same thing. Mandi and I had such a great time. We finished off our day by going to the Boiling Pot, which is one of those restaurants where they tie a bib around your neck and put butcher paper down on the table and then just pour a bucket of seafood onto the table and you go at it with your hands. It was awesome. So Mandi and I were sitting on the patio eating our seafood when a guy across the street caught Mandi's eye. She mentioned she thought he was cute, I agreed, and we continued eating. Well, five minutes later Mandi got up to go to the bathroom and when she turned around the guy was standing right behind our table! He had come all the way into the restaurant and onto the patio just to tell Mandi how beautiful he thought she was! I don't know whether to think he's just really gutsy or a little crazy, but he seemed sweet and I felt really bad for him when Mandi had to tell him she already has a boyfriend. The thing is, the compliment totally made her day (probably her entire week) so I take that as an example of how being gutsy is good. I mean, worst case scenario the person is already taken, but at least you tried, and you can know you gave them a great compliment.
Not that I'd ever do something that gutsy, but it's kind of refreshing to know that stuff like that happens in real life and not just in the movies.
Anyway, I'm gonna go. I have a full list of things to do tomorrow. Like, um...grocery shopping. Yeah. And sleeping a lot. And anything else I want to do!
With all the melodrama on Thursday I kind of forgot to get excited about the fact that I finished the semester. Technically I'm not completely done. My Playwriting professor actually believes the rule that everyone needs to take a written final, so I have to show up to class on Tuesday afternoon and take my Playwriting final which is worth 0% of my grade. ZERO PERCENT. The whole thing really annoys me, it's such a waste of a perfectly good hour of my life, but whatever. At least I don't actually have to do anything but show up. So as of Thursday I was finished. I went to Dramaturgy, turned in my paper and final, and then went out for dinner and drinks with some of my classmates, and that was that.
The first week or so I'm out of school for the summer always feels so weird. I keep thinking that I need to be doing something right now and it feels really bizarre to just be able to read blogs or watch TV without having to feel guilty because I should really be working instead. I do have a few personal goals for myself over the summer. I need to start working on some things for Rocky Horror already, and I really need to catch up completely in my personal journal. I have a sick, sick journal obsession and have attempted to write an entry every single day for ten years now. Well, obviously, the whole every-single-day thing doesn't always happen. When I'm on vacation I don't always take my computer, when I have guests I tend to skip my nightly writing time, and when life gets really busy I just don't have time to journal, so on nights when I don't have time I just list a few things to help jog my memory later and then fill the entry in on another day when I have some free time to kill. What this means is right now, at this exact moment, I have about forty or so incomplete entries, some of them dating all the way back to Christmas time of 2004 and some of them as recently as spring break of this year. So my goal is to finally get caught up completely. Since it only takes five to fifteen minutes to write an entry, I figure if I just do five or six entries a day for a couple of weeks I should have no problem catching up, and I'd love to be caught up for real before I go to England. We'll see if I can actually make that happen.
So yeah, incredibly nerdy personal goals aside, I don't have any commitments over the next few weeks except for fun ones. That's such a great feeling.
Last night Matthew and I celebrated Cinco de Mayo by making ghetto tacos and drinking sangria. And by "ghetto tacos", I mean both Matthew and I are pretty much completely out of food in our apartments and too poor to go out to eat dinner (I just got a paycheck, but I'm trying to be somewhat careful with money until England), so we just scraped together everything we could find in our kitchens and realized that between the two of us we just barely had the ingredients to make some tacos. Ha. So we ate tacos and got nice and tipsy, and it was an enjoyable, if low-key, Cinco de Mayo.
Then today Mandi and I went to the Pecan Street Festival in Austin. It was so much fun, just walking around drinking and looking at all the art booths. I LOVE stuff like that. It made me miss Katy, since going to the Main Street Arts Festival was always our thing back when we were living in Fort Worth, and this was pretty much the exact same thing. Mandi and I had such a great time. We finished off our day by going to the Boiling Pot, which is one of those restaurants where they tie a bib around your neck and put butcher paper down on the table and then just pour a bucket of seafood onto the table and you go at it with your hands. It was awesome. So Mandi and I were sitting on the patio eating our seafood when a guy across the street caught Mandi's eye. She mentioned she thought he was cute, I agreed, and we continued eating. Well, five minutes later Mandi got up to go to the bathroom and when she turned around the guy was standing right behind our table! He had come all the way into the restaurant and onto the patio just to tell Mandi how beautiful he thought she was! I don't know whether to think he's just really gutsy or a little crazy, but he seemed sweet and I felt really bad for him when Mandi had to tell him she already has a boyfriend. The thing is, the compliment totally made her day (probably her entire week) so I take that as an example of how being gutsy is good. I mean, worst case scenario the person is already taken, but at least you tried, and you can know you gave them a great compliment.
Not that I'd ever do something that gutsy, but it's kind of refreshing to know that stuff like that happens in real life and not just in the movies.
Anyway, I'm gonna go. I have a full list of things to do tomorrow. Like, um...grocery shopping. Yeah. And sleeping a lot. And anything else I want to do!
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