more bits of summer...

Here are a few more pictures from Shannon and my trip to Double Falls. (look! a yak!)

Yesterday was supposed to be raining, but it rained before I got up and then was sunny all day. Today is also shaping up to be quite beautiful. I'm waiting for my pot of tea to steep, and when it does, I'm going to curl up with my book about the fall of Rome and get some reading accomplished. I already finished the reading assignment I had in my "Inuit Morality Play" book. There will probably be some napping in my near future as well as some watching Firefly and doing some more things from my to-do list, but my day is pretty empty.

last taste of summer...

here are a few photos I took on a trip to double falls with my besties, Shannon. there are a few here for you Dad (the water stills)! we had an awesome time, and I miss her mucho out here in Tactown. i've just been looking through the photos from our adventure to cheer myself after an exceptionally crappy science lab. :D (click to enlarge, as always)

christmas list

Is it sad and selfish that I've started my Christmas list? And that it is populated with very practical items? I feel so old that I don't want a dollhouse or a game or something fun and fancy-free. Instead I find myself wanting:

• A new powercord for my computer, as I can predict that the one I have will be biting the dust in the near future.
• A new pair of running shoes.
• A backpack
• This Jacket

In other news, I'm hopefully going to get my food-handlers permit tonight so that I can start a job and perhaps purchase some of these items (especially a backpack) for myself. Lori very kindly arrange for her sister to take me with her when she heads to the health department to get her own permit tonight. I went last week, but they had closed the doors because too many people arrived. So keep your fingers crossed for me. :D

I'm thoroughly enjoying my classes (excluding biology) and considering declaring myself a History Major with a minor in French and possibly creative writing. We'll see. Not much else is new. I stayed up too late on Sunday night and again last night, and I really need to stop doing it because then I have a hard time the next afternoon and have to take a nap. AND today during my nap, I woke up and I was laying just right that my tongue was between my teeth and I was accidentally trying to bite off my tongue. It was quite unfortunate. Luckily I woke up and saved my poor tongue.

Welllll... I'm going to read some homework about Inuits and then off to get my permit. TTFN!

phoxes. fox.

set 'em wild, set 'em wild, set them free

set 'em wild, set 'em wild, set them free

set them free, set them up, and let them be

their own release.

and when it's time you can begin to let things breathe.

let it be.

settle down now.

settle down now.

settle down now.

settle in and out again.

you cannot win.

you cannot lose.

you cannot be.

you cannot lose so go ahead and set 'em free.

"Set 'em Wild" by Akron/Family

pink: an assignment for my fiction class

A pink smoothie was an undesirable choice for him. Strawberry, cherry, watermelon and other fruity pink flavors had never seemed particularly appetizing. But this morning, he saw the pink smoothies everywhere, and his mouth began to water. He spotted a pink smoothie in the hand of a girl walking her small and fluffy dog down the sidewalk. He caught a glimpse of a pink smoothie on the table of a mustachioed man reading the morning’s paper. He even noticed a group of giggling blond teenagers each holding a pink smoothie topped with a dainty swirl of whipped cream. With each sighting, his cravings for the bubblegum-hued monstrosity doubled, tripled and quadrupled.

In class, his mind strayed. He saw the figures from Russian history projected brightly on the screen, but in his mind, their fur hats were pink. In biology, every cell was pink. Every organelle was pink. Every tissue was pink. He twirled his golden curls distractedly around his finger and failed to take any notes. Staring blankly at the flag pinned up on the wall of his French classroom, the colours shifted from bleu, blanc and rouge to bleu, blanc and rose.

His hours at work passed in a manner that can be described only as agonizing. One person visited the menswear shop where he worked, and she was simply looking for a tie to give as a gift. As he tidied the store, he glimpsed himself in the strategically placed mirrors. Even the red shirt he had chosen after rolling out of bed that morning betrayed him, appearing pink in his peripheral vision. He watched the clock and envisioned pink hands pointing to pink numbers. Finally, 5 o’clock came, and as he locked the doors and counted the money in the till, his heart began to pump harder.

By the time he made it to the coffee shop down the street, he could barely contain the violent hunger. He placed his order with the bubbly barista behind the counter. When she asked for three dollars and ninety-five cents, he wrestled his wallet from his back pocket and fumbled for a few dollars. He handed the money over, almost shaking from anticipation as he heard the blender start. He hovered near the counter, never taking his eyes from his prize.

Finally the smoothie was his. The cold plastic cup was placed into his sweaty-palms and his eyes shot from one end of the building to the other. Bee-lining for the door, he glanced at the drink in his hand, his excitement building. He took a deep breath, and lowered his mouth to the straw, taking a long and drawn out sip. He spluttered, his mouth involved in a sudden traumatic experience. The colour was not all this smoothie had in common with Pepto-Bismol. The taste was identical, and the texture had the added pleasure of chunks of ice. He coughed and spat the mouthful of smoothie on the sidewalk in an attempt to expel the horrible taste from his mouth. Disappointment slowly emerged from beneath the grimace of disgust on his face. He chucked the cup in the direction of the garbage can, quickly turning and stomping away. The cup hit the sidewalk and cracked. Smoothie oozed across the pavement, seeping into the cracks, and flowing stickily into the gutter, dyeing everything in its wake pink.

piñata: an assignment for my fiction class

It rained cats and dogs when little Samson Turner was born that day in June at Decatur Memorial Hospital. His parents laughed each year and claimed that he was their bright light, and that was the reason it hadn't rained on his birthday since. This year was no exception. This year’s birthday was a perfect example of the splendor of June. And as Samson’s father laid on the deck soaking in the sun, his mother spent the morning wringing her hands and wondering about the 26 invites that had been sent to 26 students.

He’d always been acutely aware that he wasn’t quite the same as his classmates, and unfortunately for Samson, they were aware too. In first grade, when the students were encouraged to share something no one would know about them, Samson didn’t share his favorite colour or the pride he felt at Thursday night violin lessons like the other students. He made the mistake of revealing that sometimes he would forget to breath and remember only when his chest was aching and his heart was pounding. Even the teacher stared at him as though he was something far more abominable than a small tow-headed six-year old. He was a tomato in a garden of vegetables; it could be argued that a tomato is a vegetable, but no amount of rhetoric will make it stop being a fruit. This Samson had also realized.

Standing in the warmth of the afternoon sun, sightless with the blindfold required to crack a piñata, Samson spun giddily. He swung the broom handle in the direction of the llama hanging in the tree. The handle made contact with the animal, a dull thud, but not the crack that would signal candy.

In the silence of his second grade classroom, he had once started singing unintentionally. His mind was focused on the multiplication tables neatly stacked across the blackboard in his teacher’s handwriting. Samson had always imagined that her handwriting was made from the walking-stick-bugs in the insect book he kept in his bedroom on the second shelf to the left. As he stared at the board and willed the insects to come to life and prove everyone wrong, his mind and mouth had disconnected, and the song that he always sang with his mother in the morning had escaped without him knowing. The notes flew away like birds he could never get back and he didn’t even realize until he could feel the eyes of his classmates burning into him.

Samson held the broom handle high above his head, giggling and smiling the unique half smile that he’d had since birth. He swung again, but didn’t hit the piñata. He heard the wind rustle the tissue-paper fur of the llama, and knew he had been close. He shook his head and went in for one last crack. With all the strength his tiny frame could muster, he swung wildly. His arms stopped suddenly as he hit it, a brutal crack following. Samson grinned his biggest grin and tearing off the blindfold raced for the candy that poured from a gash in the llama’s side.

He dove into the shower of sweets, but there was no struggle to get the best goodies. No one had come. Not one of the 26 students invited to his party had arrived. The laundry list they were keeping of all the strange and unnatural actions of little Samson Turner had grown too long for them to associate with him. But as the candy rained down upon his head, the hurt Samson felt drained away into the joy of the evening sun.

Dream come true...

This weekend was AMAZING!!!!!

To start it off, I hung out with the lovely ladies pictured above. We had a great Friday night.

Saturday, I stuck around my room and finished my 50 pages of reading and 3 writing assignments so that I was free for the rest of the weekend. I accomplished everything, and headed to Seattle on Sunday.

On Sunday, I volunteered at bumbershoot (Seattle's music and arts festival). It was pretty sweet. I sold posters. Then I got to see The Mount Saint Helens Vietnam Band for free. Whoo! I met up with Mariska and Sarah and went back to her apartment. We later ate delicious Lamb and Beef Gyros. It was awesome.

Monday was so fabulous. We went back to Bumbershoot nice and early in the morning and saw Macklemore, Visqueen, The Minus 5, Grand Hallway, and Akron/Family. We also spent over an hour viewing and purchasing posters. We watched the onereel film fest, saw the Seattle/Moscow poster show, and made our own relief prints. After that Franz Ferdinand played and rocked the house. Their awesome scottish accents made me consider studying abroad in Scotland as opposed to elsewhere.

Then, the moment I've been waiting for: Modest Mouse played. I nearly died of happiness. Dream come true for me to see them in concert and I'd go again in a heartbeat. They played older songs like Baby Blue Sedan and Dramamine, and ones of their new EP (Satellite Skin and King Rat). Isaac Brock then admitted that he thought he was playing with a cracked rib, but he still managed to have crazy amazing energy and appear that it would be physically impossible to put more emotion into the lyrics. I loved it. (http://stereogum.com/archives/photo/bumbershoot-2009-in-photos_088681.html?img=0&gfmt=e&gp=1) They played crowd favorites (Gravity Rides Everything and Float On). And most importantly they played a few favorites of mine (Paper Thin Walls, Wild Pack of Family Dogs, and Bury Me With It). I would have liked to hear some more of their older stuff, but considering that the band Modest Mouse has existed longer than a lot of the audience (pre-teens) I understand that they kept it pretty recognizable. Absolutely worth every penny, and as I said, an awesome awesome amazing awesome dream come true!

I got back to school, and to top of an awesome weekend, class today was great. Writing=incredible. History=extraordinary. Hope they keep it up. :D

Me oh my crayfish pie!

I can't even begin to explain how much I'm enjoying this semester so far. Yes, it is going to be a lot of work, and yes, my social life will take up a smaller proportion of importance, but everything is so interesting and engaging!

I have a biology class (which isn't that interesting...) but I had my first lab today, and it went well and I actually really enjoyed looking at cells under a microscope.

I have a cultural anthropology class. There is quite a bit of reading, but the books seem incredibly interesting. We are reading one about the enculturation of an Inuit girl, one about the social and political implications of the one child policy of modern China, one about dealing crack in El Barrio, and one about Bedouin women in Egypt. There are a couple obnoxious people in the class, but other than that, VERY interesting.

I'm taking an intro to writing fiction class, which I completed my first writing assignment in today. My group really enjoyed my piece and although I was frustrated when first began writing it, I enjoyed writing it.

I'm taking a history class on the birth of Europe which has a TON of reading, but it all seems so intersting. Class today was AWESOME, I couldn't get enough.

I'm also auditing a French class that will refresh and replenish my knowledge of French. And as opposed to being stressed out, I'm not getting a grade, so I can concentrate on what I'm learning without an ounce of anxiety. I also had a martial arts class, but I dropped it as it didn't seem interesting enough to be worth the hassle of dealing with my ankle.

I'm meeting lots of new people, making new friends and I can't get enough of my friends that I've been missing all summer.

My bed is lofted, and my former roommate's parents are bringing a futon to go under it on the 12th of September so that she and others can spend the night in my single room. It should be pretty awesome.

This year is really starting out on a high note. I'm on a majoooor Paul Simon binge. I listen to him when I'm studying, when I'm getting ready, when I'm sleeping, all the time. This weekend I'm headed to Seattle to see Mariska, volunteer at Bumbershoot, and attend Bumbershoot on monday to see MODEST MOUSE! I'm so excited about everything. I'm so excited about life.