And continuing the tweaking here at Quid Pro Quo, I've switched my commenting service, from enetation to BlogSpeak. ...Here's hoping the server will be down a little less often. BlogSpeak limits its users, so that might help. In any case, I like the format a little better in some ways (though a little less in others).
A change'll do you good, right?
...Now, if only I could remember my username and password at enetation so I could shut down the account. ::snorts::
-Laurel
12.31.2003
> >
Hm, a good blog template is so hard to find.
Would change mine if I could find one I liked better. So far I can't, especially since I don't have image hosting.
The search continues.
-Laurel
Would change mine if I could find one I liked better. So far I can't, especially since I don't have image hosting.
The search continues.
-Laurel
12.30.2003
...And 62 grams of carbs. Even by Atkins standards, these things suck. ::laughs::
And random thought for the morning:
Frozen PB&J "subs" (you know, frozen-food-section ones) contain twenty-six grams of fat. Like dude, one weekend when I was home and had never tried them before, I ate two of them! ::laughs:: 80% DV, oh yeah,oh yeah.
...Makes the frozen pizza I had for lunch instead (9g) look like health food.
Well, you know what that means: DDR this afternoon. ::grins::
-Laurel
Frozen PB&J "subs" (you know, frozen-food-section ones) contain twenty-six grams of fat. Like dude, one weekend when I was home and had never tried them before, I ate two of them! ::laughs:: 80% DV, oh yeah,oh yeah.
...Makes the frozen pizza I had for lunch instead (9g) look like health food.
Well, you know what that means: DDR this afternoon. ::grins::
-Laurel
A John-handed compliment
Quote of the night:
John [over AIM]: hey! ignoring the non-custom/interchangeable nature, and the horrible software collection, and the really small configurability of the OS, macs are pretty good
Whee. *g*
-Laurel
John [over AIM]: hey! ignoring the non-custom/interchangeable nature, and the horrible software collection, and the really small configurability of the OS, macs are pretty good
Whee. *g*
-Laurel
12.29.2003
Sea-Bond, now in new chocolate-fudge flavor...
Fudge-drop cookies: the S is for sucks.
Next time I will use a recipe that calls for butter or margarine or shortening or some form of lipid, 'cause I greased every surface those cookies baked on, and they still Sea-Bonded, first to the aluminum foil I was instructed to bake them on, then to the cookie sheet itself, which I tried for the second batch. A quarter-inch of shortening across that sheet, and the things fossilized after ten minutes, completely unremovable. What the he-e-e-e-e-eck?
But it is only one recipe, and from the 1920s at that, according to Joy of Cooking. So here's to progress: next attempt will be something like candy-bar bars.
-Laurel
Next time I will use a recipe that calls for butter or margarine or shortening or some form of lipid, 'cause I greased every surface those cookies baked on, and they still Sea-Bonded, first to the aluminum foil I was instructed to bake them on, then to the cookie sheet itself, which I tried for the second batch. A quarter-inch of shortening across that sheet, and the things fossilized after ten minutes, completely unremovable. What the he-e-e-e-e-eck?
But it is only one recipe, and from the 1920s at that, according to Joy of Cooking. So here's to progress: next attempt will be something like candy-bar bars.
-Laurel
12.28.2003
"We know a line is crooked 'cause we know what's straight--"
This isn't going to be thoroughly articulate, but whatever; you try making perfect sense when you're talking to so many people online. :-P
Am typing while my fudge-drop batter chills. Yay for Erik's cookbook. :)
Well, am back home. Whee.
On the way home I read Scott Russell Sanders's The Country of Language, which I loved so much from essay-class that I didn't try to sell back (as though I would have gotten crap-worth for it in any case! ::laughs::), and thought about career and life and stuff.
I have been lucky to have a balance of friends, ones with the same basic values, but very different general mindsets about them--people like Megan to ones like 'Nanda in high school, those that followed the rules simply because that was right (which has had its logic when we look back and see how so many things have fit together in rightness), and those that followed, but more questioningly, not content to be sheep (which tend to be the people, in the end, that make things easier for everyone by making it harder for themselves, a quality I also appreciate). It was odd--sometimes around tenth grade especially, I felt like I was the rebellious one with half my friends and the overly-careful one with the other half, though looking back I've decided that it was much less extremely so than it felt.
The balance has also held in college, in a different way--people like Tom on one side, giving and generous and upright in every traditional way; and people like John on the other, with as bright an idealism and as much to give, but such different ideas about whom to give it to. John and I will probably never agree with each other on some things, but as perplexing and sometimes-harrowing as our idealism-arguments are, I appreciate that they are making me think about what I'm doing. Sometimes I feel like college has robbed me, for now, of every conviction I have ever owned. Right now, nothing ever seems black and white--sometimes I have to grab on to Newsboys's "Believe" as a sort of defense: I just believe, I just believe it/And sometimes I don't know why/Gotta go with my gut again on this one/Not just a feeling, it's a reason/We know a line is crooked 'cause we know what's straight...
Sometimes I have no way to prove conviction. Arguing by parallel, I read once--which John and I do so much--doesn't ever win an argument; it's a way of making someone look at something with more open a mind. And I think that's true. We can throw situations at each other, but that's all we throw so much of the time--no facts, partly because he's gone through enough economics class, and I enough statistics, that we're both wary of surveys, studies, anything but finely-controlled experiment. And with things like charity, poverty--our biggest arguments--you don't get a lot of those. We know that even facts--what we call truth--can be wrapped around a finger. It's hard sometimes, knowing that, to say that much of anything is definite.
We're only eighteen--I'm half a year older than John, but half a year younger than Lily. How much have he or I lived, that we can say what's right with perfect authority? I have stories of Aubrey; John has stories of working at his church, the problems they had with blind charity.
I know that almost everything is dangerous when taken to an extreme, but gift is an extreme I have a hard time modifying. And what does one do, anyway, when suddenly everything they've been basing their future life on gets called into question?
Scott Russell Sanders, I realize, is very good at showing that moderate does not equal without conviction. Sometimes I'm afraid I'll get misread like that--John in his jibes pushes me farther left than I really am, just as mine to him give more Rush-Limbaugh-type implication to his life than I imagine is really so. In most things, almost all things, I think that case-by-case is the best way of deciding what's best to be done. But that's not how laws get made, how sweeping change happens, is it? Sometimes you're forced to pick a set of ideas.
Sanders' writing makes me believe, though, that I can find a way, somehow, to reconcile what I love with what I want. There has to be a way to make English more than books. Books are wonderful, and they change lives, but they change lives through stir of emotion or mind. That's the real power, and books just the medium. I have to make what I do more than just the words. I don't know if I have the art to do that as a professor. I don't know.
But reading things like that, I don't feel so much like the stakes are so far out of reach.
::exhales:: But my cookie batter and my freshly-dried clothing await. Time to resume household life.
-Laurel
Am typing while my fudge-drop batter chills. Yay for Erik's cookbook. :)
Well, am back home. Whee.
On the way home I read Scott Russell Sanders's The Country of Language, which I loved so much from essay-class that I didn't try to sell back (as though I would have gotten crap-worth for it in any case! ::laughs::), and thought about career and life and stuff.
I have been lucky to have a balance of friends, ones with the same basic values, but very different general mindsets about them--people like Megan to ones like 'Nanda in high school, those that followed the rules simply because that was right (which has had its logic when we look back and see how so many things have fit together in rightness), and those that followed, but more questioningly, not content to be sheep (which tend to be the people, in the end, that make things easier for everyone by making it harder for themselves, a quality I also appreciate). It was odd--sometimes around tenth grade especially, I felt like I was the rebellious one with half my friends and the overly-careful one with the other half, though looking back I've decided that it was much less extremely so than it felt.
The balance has also held in college, in a different way--people like Tom on one side, giving and generous and upright in every traditional way; and people like John on the other, with as bright an idealism and as much to give, but such different ideas about whom to give it to. John and I will probably never agree with each other on some things, but as perplexing and sometimes-harrowing as our idealism-arguments are, I appreciate that they are making me think about what I'm doing. Sometimes I feel like college has robbed me, for now, of every conviction I have ever owned. Right now, nothing ever seems black and white--sometimes I have to grab on to Newsboys's "Believe" as a sort of defense: I just believe, I just believe it/And sometimes I don't know why/Gotta go with my gut again on this one/Not just a feeling, it's a reason/We know a line is crooked 'cause we know what's straight...
Sometimes I have no way to prove conviction. Arguing by parallel, I read once--which John and I do so much--doesn't ever win an argument; it's a way of making someone look at something with more open a mind. And I think that's true. We can throw situations at each other, but that's all we throw so much of the time--no facts, partly because he's gone through enough economics class, and I enough statistics, that we're both wary of surveys, studies, anything but finely-controlled experiment. And with things like charity, poverty--our biggest arguments--you don't get a lot of those. We know that even facts--what we call truth--can be wrapped around a finger. It's hard sometimes, knowing that, to say that much of anything is definite.
We're only eighteen--I'm half a year older than John, but half a year younger than Lily. How much have he or I lived, that we can say what's right with perfect authority? I have stories of Aubrey; John has stories of working at his church, the problems they had with blind charity.
I know that almost everything is dangerous when taken to an extreme, but gift is an extreme I have a hard time modifying. And what does one do, anyway, when suddenly everything they've been basing their future life on gets called into question?
Scott Russell Sanders, I realize, is very good at showing that moderate does not equal without conviction. Sometimes I'm afraid I'll get misread like that--John in his jibes pushes me farther left than I really am, just as mine to him give more Rush-Limbaugh-type implication to his life than I imagine is really so. In most things, almost all things, I think that case-by-case is the best way of deciding what's best to be done. But that's not how laws get made, how sweeping change happens, is it? Sometimes you're forced to pick a set of ideas.
Sanders' writing makes me believe, though, that I can find a way, somehow, to reconcile what I love with what I want. There has to be a way to make English more than books. Books are wonderful, and they change lives, but they change lives through stir of emotion or mind. That's the real power, and books just the medium. I have to make what I do more than just the words. I don't know if I have the art to do that as a professor. I don't know.
But reading things like that, I don't feel so much like the stakes are so far out of reach.
::exhales:: But my cookie batter and my freshly-dried clothing await. Time to resume household life.
-Laurel
12.27.2003
Lovin' the feel of a keyboard beneath my fingertips again...
I have not been near a computer since Christmas Eve. ::laughs:: Can you say withdrawal?
So yeah, Christmas was great. Got a load of excellent stuff, half of which I can't remember now, so that'll have to wait. Went down to Aunt Lisa and Uncle Paul's--Matt was home from Korea (serving with the Army; he's been transferred to a fort here in New York), looking thin and slightly ill-at-ease; I couldn't believe it'd been a year since we'd seen him last.
We stayed there Christmas night and the 26th; the 26th was fun because I got over my urge to get online. Instead I read books for hours on end, like I used to before the internet was invented. ::giggles::
Now I'm here at Lily's, where I will stay 'til tomorrow sometime.
Must go now and shower and stuff. This afternoon: DDR with Lily at her friend Jason's house. Hurrah!
-Laurel
So yeah, Christmas was great. Got a load of excellent stuff, half of which I can't remember now, so that'll have to wait. Went down to Aunt Lisa and Uncle Paul's--Matt was home from Korea (serving with the Army; he's been transferred to a fort here in New York), looking thin and slightly ill-at-ease; I couldn't believe it'd been a year since we'd seen him last.
We stayed there Christmas night and the 26th; the 26th was fun because I got over my urge to get online. Instead I read books for hours on end, like I used to before the internet was invented. ::giggles::
Now I'm here at Lily's, where I will stay 'til tomorrow sometime.
Must go now and shower and stuff. This afternoon: DDR with Lily at her friend Jason's house. Hurrah!
-Laurel
12.24.2003
Christmas Eve. Have been showered, or so it feels, with gifts over the past couple of days by my friends--a VeggieTales ornament from Aneya and a cookbook (Joy of Cooking: All About Cookies) from Erik and various awesomeness from Glenn and his family...
::laughs:: ...and 'Nanda and Daf and I were presented with potato chips and cake by the English department at school when we visited them yesterday; their Christmas party was breaking up and they handed off their leftovers, which we took to SFE.
Tonight: church service and then sitting by the fire, eating things and spending time with my family.
A merry Christmas to all, especially to this year's new friends (and otherwise): Glenn, Kathy, Calypso, John, Tim, Tom, Krystal, Kristin, Simon, Mandie, Jaimie, Gabe, Tadd, Devin, Abby, Anna, and Evan. And to Samweli and Sunil (keep well another year, our children) and those overseas fighting, helping, and caring.
-Laurel
::laughs:: ...and 'Nanda and Daf and I were presented with potato chips and cake by the English department at school when we visited them yesterday; their Christmas party was breaking up and they handed off their leftovers, which we took to SFE.
Tonight: church service and then sitting by the fire, eating things and spending time with my family.
A merry Christmas to all, especially to this year's new friends (and otherwise): Glenn, Kathy, Calypso, John, Tim, Tom, Krystal, Kristin, Simon, Mandie, Jaimie, Gabe, Tadd, Devin, Abby, Anna, and Evan. And to Samweli and Sunil (keep well another year, our children) and those overseas fighting, helping, and caring.
-Laurel
12.23.2003
12.22.2003
LotR was lovely. I think most of my readers have seen it by now, so any who haven't, read on at your own risk...
They did a much better job with this one than Two Towers; I'm hard-pressed to say which I like better, this or Fellowship. This one brought to life a couple of things from the book that I hadn't really gotten the full effect of in the text--not that I can remember what they are at the moment.
The liberties they took in Return of the King were non-annoying ones, so I more or less approve of all of them, except for Denethor fireballing over the cliff to his death and Gandalf seeming more amused than grieved. Uh, no. Plus, I liked Beregond and Bergil and was sorry not to see them.
But as big a chapter as "Scouring of the Shire" was in the book, I actually approve of cutting that out entirely. I heard beforehand that they had and had initially been annoyed, but having sat through the whole movie, enjoying it but knowing it was long and suspenseful, I was happy to pretend that everything was just fine in the Shire the whole time.
And I don't remember offhand, even with the multiple times I've read RotK, whether Pippin ever sang that song (and, if so, whether he sang it for Denethor, 'cause I didn't think he had), but either way, a thousand points to Peter Jackson for sticking that in there, 'cause it was gorgeous. In fact, an additional thousand points to him for letting Pippin's general awesomeness finally show through in this movie, as it does in the book. The part with the Palantir could have been a bit better-done, but keep in mind that that's my favorite part of the Two Towers book, so anything less than the original was going to disappoint me.
Awarding of points holds for Aragorn's song, too, which was perhaps even more breathtakingly gorgeous, but I can't decide without further research. :)
So the night was wonderful. And our college grades for first semester are in, and my average is very good, and Lily's is good enough for honors; also wonderful.
The only downside was finding out online from a medical site that with the acne oral I'm on, for some-odd reason that they didn't bother to explain in the dermatologists' office, for half an hour after I take it, I'm not supposed to lie down. ::blinks:: This about the medicine I take just before bed.
::snorts:: Well, I'm alive so far. Will change my habit now that I know.
In any case, movie was wonderful, dinner afterwards was tasty, got a happy Christmas present from Bethie (yeah left-handers calendar!), and tomorrow is SFE and other happy randomness. And then...Christmas Eve and day and everything after.
Whee!
-Laurel
They did a much better job with this one than Two Towers; I'm hard-pressed to say which I like better, this or Fellowship. This one brought to life a couple of things from the book that I hadn't really gotten the full effect of in the text--not that I can remember what they are at the moment.
The liberties they took in Return of the King were non-annoying ones, so I more or less approve of all of them, except for Denethor fireballing over the cliff to his death and Gandalf seeming more amused than grieved. Uh, no. Plus, I liked Beregond and Bergil and was sorry not to see them.
But as big a chapter as "Scouring of the Shire" was in the book, I actually approve of cutting that out entirely. I heard beforehand that they had and had initially been annoyed, but having sat through the whole movie, enjoying it but knowing it was long and suspenseful, I was happy to pretend that everything was just fine in the Shire the whole time.
And I don't remember offhand, even with the multiple times I've read RotK, whether Pippin ever sang that song (and, if so, whether he sang it for Denethor, 'cause I didn't think he had), but either way, a thousand points to Peter Jackson for sticking that in there, 'cause it was gorgeous. In fact, an additional thousand points to him for letting Pippin's general awesomeness finally show through in this movie, as it does in the book. The part with the Palantir could have been a bit better-done, but keep in mind that that's my favorite part of the Two Towers book, so anything less than the original was going to disappoint me.
Awarding of points holds for Aragorn's song, too, which was perhaps even more breathtakingly gorgeous, but I can't decide without further research. :)
So the night was wonderful. And our college grades for first semester are in, and my average is very good, and Lily's is good enough for honors; also wonderful.
The only downside was finding out online from a medical site that with the acne oral I'm on, for some-odd reason that they didn't bother to explain in the dermatologists' office, for half an hour after I take it, I'm not supposed to lie down. ::blinks:: This about the medicine I take just before bed.
::snorts:: Well, I'm alive so far. Will change my habit now that I know.
In any case, movie was wonderful, dinner afterwards was tasty, got a happy Christmas present from Bethie (yeah left-handers calendar!), and tomorrow is SFE and other happy randomness. And then...Christmas Eve and day and everything after.
Whee!
-Laurel
12.20.2003
This's the result I got:
...the color I sign my name with wasn't one of the many choices, which seems odd to me. ::shrugs:: Ah, well.
-Laurel
#8A2BE2 |
Your dominant hues are blue and magenta. You're the one who goes to all the parties but doesn't quite fit in at every one... you know what you want, but are afraid of what the world might think of it. You're a little different and that's okay with them, and if you're smart it's okay with you too. Your saturation level is higher than average - You know what you want, but sometimes know not to tell everyone. You value accomplishments and know you can get the job done, so don't be afraid to run out and make things happen. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything. |
...the color I sign my name with wasn't one of the many choices, which seems odd to me. ::shrugs:: Ah, well.
-Laurel
12.19.2003
Today was nice. I enjoyed going up to school. :)
Anyway, since 'Nanda and Merani and Megs all did this on their blogs/ljs, I think I'll do it, too. Call me original.
...And yeah, for the most part, it's like Merani did it, "year" usually implies "school year", as opposed to "calendar year".
15 years ago I...
a) was three years old.
b) was learning to read (yup!).
c) was an only child for part of the year, then my brother was born in August.
d) sang marathon renditions of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".
e) broke my nose while I was on vacation. I think I was only three then.
10 years ago I...
a) had my first male teacher, the guy who taught my third grade class.
b) was in the other school district.
c) got babysat by my best friend Amanda's mother.
d) was in Girl Scouts. :)
e) loved Baby-Sitters Club books with a passion and wanted to be an author when I grew up.
5 years ago I...
a) fell for Bryan.
b) became really good friends with Daf and Zinni (holy cow, was that only five years ago?) and met Aubrey.
c) saw my first concert (Jars of Clay).
d) started watching Whose Line and VeggieTales.
e) took my first Regentses, got 98s on both. :)
4 years ago I...
a) became really good friends with 'Nanda.
b) became obsessed with Whose Line and started liking Chris Rice's music.
c) read the Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia books for the first time.
d) got into junior high ensemble after promising myself that I would. :)
e) joined Leo Club and became secretary. :)
3 years ago I...
a) got an e-mail address (finally!) and started e-mailing Zinni with updates 'cause she'd moved.
b) joined SFE. :)
c) ...think that's when I saw Weird Al in concert. That was fun.
d) went to NYC with chorus and saw real-Broadway plays (vive Aida, my first and the best!)
e) got cut from How to Succeed, but ushered for it and got to see it three times, thereby learning the plot and quite a bit of the music and dialogue, which have served me well in college--::grin::.
2 years ago I...
a) became obsessed with M*A*S*H.
b) took psych and creative writing and loved them both.
c) was in English with Daf and Bethie--yay for Mr. K, the clay figures, Dimmesdale, and Starkfield!
d) worried a lot about Aubrey and was mega-confused by Bryan. But that's okay.
e) got AIM and have been sleep-deprived ever since. ::laughs::
18 months ago I...
a) started this blog. :)
b) got my first job.
c) was looking at colleges (oh gracious).
d) went to see LotR: Fellowship again, dressed as Pippin.
e) didn't know I would be filling this out, and therefore didn't do enough, so I am out of ideas. :-P
One year ago I...
a) became president of Leo Club.
b) kicked butt with my team at Ocean Bowl and Envirothon counties and Envirothon states!
c) had an incredible time being O'Hara for Arsenic.
d) met Erik, Jordan, Jay Jei, Matt, and Glenn. In whatever order that happened to have been.
e) loved APs psych and English, hated AP stats, was in Spanish with Aneya and Bethie.
Six months ago I...
a) graduated.
b) did some of my first stargazing at Bunny's graduation party--with he who would become my boyfriend exactly seven weeks later. :)
c) got KaZaA, though I don't have it anymore.
d) d/led StepMania, putting me on my way to some semblance of DDR skill.
e) worked for seven hours twice a week, which brought me to the conclusion that I cannot have an office job: my sanity cannot support 40 hours of that a week when it could barely support 14. At least I got some pay for it.
One month ago I...
a) was in Inspector General (well, exactly one month ago, I was done already)
b) started singing after play practices with Simon and John.
c) went home for Thanksgiving.
d) started eating with the APOs. :)
e) did my presentation on wintergreen for honors (holy cow, it's been a whole month since that?!).
Yesterday I...
a) had lunch, left lunch, then came back to lunch to hang round with John and Mandie.
b) packed all my stuff.
c) finally got out of school.
d) saw the band concert with Aneya and Bethie (see previous entry).
e) stayed up a bit too late rereading parts of The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten.
Today I...
a) got up too early 'cause someone gave us a wrong-number call.
b) went out for lunch with my mom.
c) did a bit of Christmas shopping at Borders, yay!
d) attended Leo-Club-Katie's birthday party--ate some cake and played some Trivial Pursuit.
e) hung round with Glenn, just us--and the new security cameras at school. :-P But it was very very lovely.
Tomorrow I...
a) will get up earlyish to go to the mall and finish my Christmas shopping.
b) might see Matt, who is reportedly planning on doing the same.
c) have no further plans, so maybe I'll take a nap.
d) will be 24 hours from a trip to my uncle's for a Christmas-type gathering of some of Dad's side of the family.
e) will be 48 hours from the Lord of the Rings mass gathering!
One year from now I...
a) will be a college sophomore.
b) will be an official pledged member of Alpha Phi Omega, national co-ed service fraternity. :-D
c) will have gone to Peru.
d) will hopefully have been Chava in Fiddler on the Roof!
e) will hopefully be good at both cooking and driving. :)
::exhales:: Yeesh, that took a while. Going on hiatus now. Have a random craving for grilled cheese; perhaps I will go and satisfy it.
-Laurel
Anyway, since 'Nanda and Merani and Megs all did this on their blogs/ljs, I think I'll do it, too. Call me original.
...And yeah, for the most part, it's like Merani did it, "year" usually implies "school year", as opposed to "calendar year".
15 years ago I...
a) was three years old.
b) was learning to read (yup!).
c) was an only child for part of the year, then my brother was born in August.
d) sang marathon renditions of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".
e) broke my nose while I was on vacation. I think I was only three then.
10 years ago I...
a) had my first male teacher, the guy who taught my third grade class.
b) was in the other school district.
c) got babysat by my best friend Amanda's mother.
d) was in Girl Scouts. :)
e) loved Baby-Sitters Club books with a passion and wanted to be an author when I grew up.
5 years ago I...
a) fell for Bryan.
b) became really good friends with Daf and Zinni (holy cow, was that only five years ago?) and met Aubrey.
c) saw my first concert (Jars of Clay).
d) started watching Whose Line and VeggieTales.
e) took my first Regentses, got 98s on both. :)
4 years ago I...
a) became really good friends with 'Nanda.
b) became obsessed with Whose Line and started liking Chris Rice's music.
c) read the Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia books for the first time.
d) got into junior high ensemble after promising myself that I would. :)
e) joined Leo Club and became secretary. :)
3 years ago I...
a) got an e-mail address (finally!) and started e-mailing Zinni with updates 'cause she'd moved.
b) joined SFE. :)
c) ...think that's when I saw Weird Al in concert. That was fun.
d) went to NYC with chorus and saw real-Broadway plays (vive Aida, my first and the best!)
e) got cut from How to Succeed, but ushered for it and got to see it three times, thereby learning the plot and quite a bit of the music and dialogue, which have served me well in college--::grin::.
2 years ago I...
a) became obsessed with M*A*S*H.
b) took psych and creative writing and loved them both.
c) was in English with Daf and Bethie--yay for Mr. K, the clay figures, Dimmesdale, and Starkfield!
d) worried a lot about Aubrey and was mega-confused by Bryan. But that's okay.
e) got AIM and have been sleep-deprived ever since. ::laughs::
18 months ago I...
a) started this blog. :)
b) got my first job.
c) was looking at colleges (oh gracious).
d) went to see LotR: Fellowship again, dressed as Pippin.
e) didn't know I would be filling this out, and therefore didn't do enough, so I am out of ideas. :-P
One year ago I...
a) became president of Leo Club.
b) kicked butt with my team at Ocean Bowl and Envirothon counties and Envirothon states!
c) had an incredible time being O'Hara for Arsenic.
d) met Erik, Jordan, Jay Jei, Matt, and Glenn. In whatever order that happened to have been.
e) loved APs psych and English, hated AP stats, was in Spanish with Aneya and Bethie.
Six months ago I...
a) graduated.
b) did some of my first stargazing at Bunny's graduation party--with he who would become my boyfriend exactly seven weeks later. :)
c) got KaZaA, though I don't have it anymore.
d) d/led StepMania, putting me on my way to some semblance of DDR skill.
e) worked for seven hours twice a week, which brought me to the conclusion that I cannot have an office job: my sanity cannot support 40 hours of that a week when it could barely support 14. At least I got some pay for it.
One month ago I...
a) was in Inspector General (well, exactly one month ago, I was done already)
b) started singing after play practices with Simon and John.
c) went home for Thanksgiving.
d) started eating with the APOs. :)
e) did my presentation on wintergreen for honors (holy cow, it's been a whole month since that?!).
Yesterday I...
a) had lunch, left lunch, then came back to lunch to hang round with John and Mandie.
b) packed all my stuff.
c) finally got out of school.
d) saw the band concert with Aneya and Bethie (see previous entry).
e) stayed up a bit too late rereading parts of The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten.
Today I...
a) got up too early 'cause someone gave us a wrong-number call.
b) went out for lunch with my mom.
c) did a bit of Christmas shopping at Borders, yay!
d) attended Leo-Club-Katie's birthday party--ate some cake and played some Trivial Pursuit.
e) hung round with Glenn, just us--and the new security cameras at school. :-P But it was very very lovely.
Tomorrow I...
a) will get up earlyish to go to the mall and finish my Christmas shopping.
b) might see Matt, who is reportedly planning on doing the same.
c) have no further plans, so maybe I'll take a nap.
d) will be 24 hours from a trip to my uncle's for a Christmas-type gathering of some of Dad's side of the family.
e) will be 48 hours from the Lord of the Rings mass gathering!
One year from now I...
a) will be a college sophomore.
b) will be an official pledged member of Alpha Phi Omega, national co-ed service fraternity. :-D
c) will have gone to Peru.
d) will hopefully have been Chava in Fiddler on the Roof!
e) will hopefully be good at both cooking and driving. :)
::exhales:: Yeesh, that took a while. Going on hiatus now. Have a random craving for grilled cheese; perhaps I will go and satisfy it.
-Laurel
12.18.2003
Am home for a month, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.
Certainly took me long enough to get out of school--didn't get home 'til quarter to six--but I saw the high school band concert tonight, which was good as always. :) Hope you get to see the next one, Daf. ...Sadly, this's the only high school music production that I get to see this year, save possibly the chicken barbecue, 'cause the spring chorus and band concerts will take place when I am in Peru.
...I'd forgotten about the chicken barbecue, though, until just now. That would give me all the bands and choruses at once, an entire district-worth of music, and that would be lovely. I bet I'll be there, too, 'cause it's usually the first weekend in June, and we'll be home from Peru by then...
Last final at school was decent enough. The English department is apparently big on dogs: Susan has Cheddar, who we all met when we made pasta at her house, and I don't know what Other-Doctor-Susan's dog's name is, but that dog came into our essay-class final yesterday and had a cookie.
Going out to eat with Lily was also fun. Yay for chicken teriyaki.
And I discovered last night that I've a long way to go before I'll ever really be a solo voice (like okay, how about actually getting to the point where I can stand to hear myself without flinching?!), but it was a fun time anyway.
Tomorrow's plans: to finish Christmas shopping and then to go up to school to attend Leo-Club-Katie's birthday party and to see my boyfriend (I really love how that sounds), who was in every single part of the band concert tonight, 'cause even during the symphonic band, which he's not in, they had the singing group come out for the one medley and accompany the band (or was it the band accompanying them?), so he was there for that, too.
What I have missed most about my hometown: the people who live there.
What I have missed the second-most (though it's a distant second-most): the water. Tres hurras for drinkable H2O. I can actually take medicine with water now, 'cause here it actually runs really cold and tastes really good. Can turn on a faucet and stick my mouth under it, thereby quenching my thirst and grossing out my brother in one easy step.
::blinks:: Dude, I've been home (or thereabouts) for five hours and have not even seen my brother. He was already at Lord of the Rings when I came home, and by the time I was back from the band concert, he'd gone to bed. And tomorrow he will be gone to school by the time I get up.
::blinks again:: Ooh. Add to tomorrow's to-do list: laundry. At least one load. Eep.
-Laurel
Certainly took me long enough to get out of school--didn't get home 'til quarter to six--but I saw the high school band concert tonight, which was good as always. :) Hope you get to see the next one, Daf. ...Sadly, this's the only high school music production that I get to see this year, save possibly the chicken barbecue, 'cause the spring chorus and band concerts will take place when I am in Peru.
...I'd forgotten about the chicken barbecue, though, until just now. That would give me all the bands and choruses at once, an entire district-worth of music, and that would be lovely. I bet I'll be there, too, 'cause it's usually the first weekend in June, and we'll be home from Peru by then...
Last final at school was decent enough. The English department is apparently big on dogs: Susan has Cheddar, who we all met when we made pasta at her house, and I don't know what Other-Doctor-Susan's dog's name is, but that dog came into our essay-class final yesterday and had a cookie.
Going out to eat with Lily was also fun. Yay for chicken teriyaki.
And I discovered last night that I've a long way to go before I'll ever really be a solo voice (like okay, how about actually getting to the point where I can stand to hear myself without flinching?!), but it was a fun time anyway.
Tomorrow's plans: to finish Christmas shopping and then to go up to school to attend Leo-Club-Katie's birthday party and to see my boyfriend (I really love how that sounds), who was in every single part of the band concert tonight, 'cause even during the symphonic band, which he's not in, they had the singing group come out for the one medley and accompany the band (or was it the band accompanying them?), so he was there for that, too.
What I have missed most about my hometown: the people who live there.
What I have missed the second-most (though it's a distant second-most): the water. Tres hurras for drinkable H2O. I can actually take medicine with water now, 'cause here it actually runs really cold and tastes really good. Can turn on a faucet and stick my mouth under it, thereby quenching my thirst and grossing out my brother in one easy step.
::blinks:: Dude, I've been home (or thereabouts) for five hours and have not even seen my brother. He was already at Lord of the Rings when I came home, and by the time I was back from the band concert, he'd gone to bed. And tomorrow he will be gone to school by the time I get up.
::blinks again:: Ooh. Add to tomorrow's to-do list: laundry. At least one load. Eep.
-Laurel
12.17.2003
VeggieTales marathon Monday night was fun: saw two I hadn't before, Esther and Lyle; we also watched Dave and the Giant Pickle and Madame Blueberry. It was funny to watch John knock on Tom's door, where Tom, Tim, Kristin, Krystal, Kate, other-boy-I-can't-remember, Gabe, and I were all squished on the bed and floor. John took one look at us, one longer look at the TV (Esther in progress, Esther mid-song), and decided not to come in.
It was even funnier having Gabe there, because he's never seen VeggieTales before (probably because he's Jewish), and he was determined to pick faults in every anachronism and violation of physics that occurred in the movies we watched--and if you've ever seen VeggieTales, you know how rife with both the series is (and we fans of it like it that way, thank you). But he did admit to enjoying the ones he watched, especially "Dance of the Cucumber", which we sped to the proper point in Rack, Shack, and Benny so that he could see it (ignoring the rest of the movie due to time constraints).
We would have watched more, but we wanted to get to Midnight Breakfast (which really starts at 10:30) before it got too crowded--and it was already crowded enough. Oh my word, it's as though the entire college tried to cram into that dining hall. Food and music and decibels untold. But it was fun.
Last night was caroling with choir--dinner at Luanne's house and standing on top of the carillon. Lovely all round. We actually sang the Hallelujah Chorus up there, holy cow.
My finals've been pretty easy so far; last one is today, essay, and that should be pretty simple, too. Tonight is dinner with Lily and song practice with John. And tomorrow...
...home.
-Laurel
It was even funnier having Gabe there, because he's never seen VeggieTales before (probably because he's Jewish), and he was determined to pick faults in every anachronism and violation of physics that occurred in the movies we watched--and if you've ever seen VeggieTales, you know how rife with both the series is (and we fans of it like it that way, thank you). But he did admit to enjoying the ones he watched, especially "Dance of the Cucumber", which we sped to the proper point in Rack, Shack, and Benny so that he could see it (ignoring the rest of the movie due to time constraints).
We would have watched more, but we wanted to get to Midnight Breakfast (which really starts at 10:30) before it got too crowded--and it was already crowded enough. Oh my word, it's as though the entire college tried to cram into that dining hall. Food and music and decibels untold. But it was fun.
Last night was caroling with choir--dinner at Luanne's house and standing on top of the carillon. Lovely all round. We actually sang the Hallelujah Chorus up there, holy cow.
My finals've been pretty easy so far; last one is today, essay, and that should be pretty simple, too. Tonight is dinner with Lily and song practice with John. And tomorrow...
...home.
-Laurel
12.14.2003
Honors party was decent, though I was at the honors house preparing (we made the yule-log glorified-Ho-Ho thing) for so long that the actual party was sort of anticlimactic, plus a bit sparse, as all the snow all over made it hard for lots of people to want to trek over to honors house.
Only three finals, one on each day, and then home. Hurrah!
So there was other stuff I was going to say, but I'm having fun listening to DDR music and talking to 'Nanda, and I don't think I will. Yay for Nate's site being updated. Yay for Saddam being captured so we don't have to keep hearing about how he wasn't. Yay for VeggieTales marathon tomorrow night. Yay for the holidays.
-Laurel
Only three finals, one on each day, and then home. Hurrah!
So there was other stuff I was going to say, but I'm having fun listening to DDR music and talking to 'Nanda, and I don't think I will. Yay for Nate's site being updated. Yay for Saddam being captured so we don't have to keep hearing about how he wasn't. Yay for VeggieTales marathon tomorrow night. Yay for the holidays.
-Laurel
Oh my goodness, I've been so busy this week. Here're the highlights:
Tuesday night was craziness: Simon and John and I had singing practice late. At 1 or so Simon invited John and me back to theater house, where he lives with Drew-from-the-play, for pasta with the sauce he made himself. This, at one in the morning, sounded absolutely wonderful, so we did so.
It was absolutely wonderful. Pay no attention to the philistenic critique of John (and if "philistenic" wasn't a word before, it is now), whose taste buds cannot handle any pasta sauce more complex than Chef Boyardee. Simon's sauce was a work of art, I tell you. The memory floors me still. He had me crush up the fennel with an improvised mortar and pestle (read: bowl and flat side of a cup), which was interesting to me, 'cause it smells so much like anise but doesn't taste as much like it (which's good, 'cause I don't like it). I don't know what-all else he threw in there, but I now aspire to make pasta sauce like Simon's. Oh my ruddy gracious.
So I ate lots of pasta and sauce, did some Spanish homework, and listened to Simon and John have at it in an epic two-and-a-half-hour playing of Dr. Mario (both are experts and took turns kicking each other's butts), followed by some Life Force--as you can tell, Simon and Drew are big into original and Super Nintendo.
Thursday was our Babette's Feast dinner for honors. "Babette's Feast" is this short story about an incredible dinner party (like okay, it's more complex than that, but for purposes of this entry...), and we as a food-in-literature class decided to have a dinner of our own, cooking dishes in pairs or small groups. Having read about it in Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone, Lauren-next-door and I decided to try making coconut bread.
I'm not sure whether anyone noticed that at 8:30 in the morning I was in the third-floor kitchen opening a coconut with a (clean) hammer and a (clean) screwdriver, but it was easier than I'd expected. The milk didn't taste as good as the one from the coconut I had at Aneya's last year, but it wasn't bad.
What impressed Lauren and me is that the bread turned out just like it was supposed to. In terms of being bread, anyway. Neither of us had ever made bread before, nor yet used yeast, so we breathed a major sigh of relief when it actually rose. It was really sticky when we tried to knead it, so we worked a lot of flour into it, but it came out perfectly texture-wise and color-wise.
The only problem was that it didn't taste much like coconut. If I ever make it again, I'm using shredded coconut or something with that kind of stronger flavor, 'cause real coconut, like it asked for, was too mild. Also too difficult to chop up.
That dinner party was wonderful, too. Susan (our professor) made Persian chicken with pomegranates, and that was excellent. The bruschetta was excellent; maybe I will come to like tomato slices yet. John and Fenna made Vietnamese vegetables with peanut sauce, and that was a bit spicy but otherwise very good. The pear salad that the seniors made was very good (they threw the pears in at John's request, but he never got any; somehow they were all taken by the time he got there, which amuses me even though I also pity him). The apple cake was very good. The only thing I didn't like was the German shortbread-type thing, the one said coo'-kin. It had too much of some random spice. But it was worth a taste.
...It was funny, though: when John and I made things together for the class, everyone would refer to them as John's: "that thing John made". But suddenly with the coconut bread, even though Lauren had helped, everyone referred to it as mine, especially Susan. I felt kind of weird about that, though pleased that finally something was mine, too.
Friday was the soda taste-testing for microbio, and we cleaned up, winning fully half of the awards, including best-tasting and overall favorite. Strawberry-banana-mint: get ready, world.
Friday was also Simon and John and me singing at the coffeehouse for real this time. We managed to fill up an hour and a half, some seventeen songs and a short break for Simon to replace a guitar string he'd snapped. We were okay. We were a little inconsistent: either very good or rather sucky. John and I could have done great things with the song Simon let us sing by ourselves, but we had some problems with the words and it wasn't good. ...I realize that it was only a Beatles cover like most of them, but he could have given us more than fifteen minutes to learn it. ::laughs::
...Kate and Jaimie and Gabe came for a while, and Kate asked me why Simon and John didn't let me sing more. That was very nice of her and made me happy.
Had a grilled cheese focaccia while I was there, another thing that tasted very good.
::laughs:: I haven't gotten any heavier yet, though. Score one for metabolism.
Score one also for sleep, which I'm going to get shortly.
Chorus concert was good. Tomorrow: honors Christmas party. Excellent as well.
::sighs contentedly:: Am going to listen to Coldplay and then fall into dreams, what short ones I can get before church service tomorrow.
-Laurel
Tuesday night was craziness: Simon and John and I had singing practice late. At 1 or so Simon invited John and me back to theater house, where he lives with Drew-from-the-play, for pasta with the sauce he made himself. This, at one in the morning, sounded absolutely wonderful, so we did so.
It was absolutely wonderful. Pay no attention to the philistenic critique of John (and if "philistenic" wasn't a word before, it is now), whose taste buds cannot handle any pasta sauce more complex than Chef Boyardee. Simon's sauce was a work of art, I tell you. The memory floors me still. He had me crush up the fennel with an improvised mortar and pestle (read: bowl and flat side of a cup), which was interesting to me, 'cause it smells so much like anise but doesn't taste as much like it (which's good, 'cause I don't like it). I don't know what-all else he threw in there, but I now aspire to make pasta sauce like Simon's. Oh my ruddy gracious.
So I ate lots of pasta and sauce, did some Spanish homework, and listened to Simon and John have at it in an epic two-and-a-half-hour playing of Dr. Mario (both are experts and took turns kicking each other's butts), followed by some Life Force--as you can tell, Simon and Drew are big into original and Super Nintendo.
Thursday was our Babette's Feast dinner for honors. "Babette's Feast" is this short story about an incredible dinner party (like okay, it's more complex than that, but for purposes of this entry...), and we as a food-in-literature class decided to have a dinner of our own, cooking dishes in pairs or small groups. Having read about it in Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone, Lauren-next-door and I decided to try making coconut bread.
I'm not sure whether anyone noticed that at 8:30 in the morning I was in the third-floor kitchen opening a coconut with a (clean) hammer and a (clean) screwdriver, but it was easier than I'd expected. The milk didn't taste as good as the one from the coconut I had at Aneya's last year, but it wasn't bad.
What impressed Lauren and me is that the bread turned out just like it was supposed to. In terms of being bread, anyway. Neither of us had ever made bread before, nor yet used yeast, so we breathed a major sigh of relief when it actually rose. It was really sticky when we tried to knead it, so we worked a lot of flour into it, but it came out perfectly texture-wise and color-wise.
The only problem was that it didn't taste much like coconut. If I ever make it again, I'm using shredded coconut or something with that kind of stronger flavor, 'cause real coconut, like it asked for, was too mild. Also too difficult to chop up.
That dinner party was wonderful, too. Susan (our professor) made Persian chicken with pomegranates, and that was excellent. The bruschetta was excellent; maybe I will come to like tomato slices yet. John and Fenna made Vietnamese vegetables with peanut sauce, and that was a bit spicy but otherwise very good. The pear salad that the seniors made was very good (they threw the pears in at John's request, but he never got any; somehow they were all taken by the time he got there, which amuses me even though I also pity him). The apple cake was very good. The only thing I didn't like was the German shortbread-type thing, the one said coo'-kin. It had too much of some random spice. But it was worth a taste.
...It was funny, though: when John and I made things together for the class, everyone would refer to them as John's: "that thing John made". But suddenly with the coconut bread, even though Lauren had helped, everyone referred to it as mine, especially Susan. I felt kind of weird about that, though pleased that finally something was mine, too.
Friday was the soda taste-testing for microbio, and we cleaned up, winning fully half of the awards, including best-tasting and overall favorite. Strawberry-banana-mint: get ready, world.
Friday was also Simon and John and me singing at the coffeehouse for real this time. We managed to fill up an hour and a half, some seventeen songs and a short break for Simon to replace a guitar string he'd snapped. We were okay. We were a little inconsistent: either very good or rather sucky. John and I could have done great things with the song Simon let us sing by ourselves, but we had some problems with the words and it wasn't good. ...I realize that it was only a Beatles cover like most of them, but he could have given us more than fifteen minutes to learn it. ::laughs::
...Kate and Jaimie and Gabe came for a while, and Kate asked me why Simon and John didn't let me sing more. That was very nice of her and made me happy.
Had a grilled cheese focaccia while I was there, another thing that tasted very good.
::laughs:: I haven't gotten any heavier yet, though. Score one for metabolism.
Score one also for sleep, which I'm going to get shortly.
Chorus concert was good. Tomorrow: honors Christmas party. Excellent as well.
::sighs contentedly:: Am going to listen to Coldplay and then fall into dreams, what short ones I can get before church service tomorrow.
-Laurel
12.09.2003
Randomness all round. Gig this weekend (not that we've practiced since Saturday night), concert this weekend for chorus/choir, essay-class project stuff, microbio taste-testing on Friday for the sodas we're making, two cooking things for honors...oh, and I forgot, learning something for musical tryouts.
...But hey, at least on Sunday night I got some Christmas shopping done.
Today I have to scrape off my car so I can take several friends to Wegmans so they and I can buy all sorts of wonderful nonsense for various cooking things. And I'm getting a new computer mouse, 'cause this one's on crack. ...The trips are always a good time. The car-scraping tends not to be. But whatever.
But I don't have microbio, so that means that all I have today is Spanish, which--here I confess a crime of the deepest dye, I'm sure--I skipped yesterday to work on my essay-class paper rough draft. ...Which I did wrong, as it turns out, but it also turns out that it really doesn't matter, inasmuch as my professor is really proud of me for picking Loren Eiseley, who she says is not an easy person to do a project on, and though I was never sitting there thinking oh no I'm going to fail, in some ways I certainly know what she means. It was, as I've said before, Mrs. W's idea, and when I told my professor this, she said to thank her for her.
...that last part of the sentence made sense, right? You get it, anyway.
Gave me a laugh this morning to read merani's lj, as reading said lj usually does. What especially amused me, actually, was that her band director looked like he was going to prom, 'cause for choir, when our dresses come in, we're gonna look like that, too, 'cause the guys have to be in tuxes.
Tux. It's a weird term, always makes me think of tusk, except it really doesn't, it makes me think of walrus, and I wonder why when I hear the word I get this mental image of a walrus.
Oh, but hey, the schedules for next semester went up online yesterday. I got cut out of one class that it really would help my major if I could take, and Lily got cut out of it, too, but I suppose it's better than Evan, who only got into two classes he wanted out of five. ...So far, I've got linguistics, acting, honors seminar, and choir, and I'm gonna try to get into the general American Lit class if that works out best with everything, and Irish Lit if it doesn't.
...Dang it, you know what? There needs to be a new Teen Girl Squad episode.
This has been the morning report.
-Laurel
...But hey, at least on Sunday night I got some Christmas shopping done.
Today I have to scrape off my car so I can take several friends to Wegmans so they and I can buy all sorts of wonderful nonsense for various cooking things. And I'm getting a new computer mouse, 'cause this one's on crack. ...The trips are always a good time. The car-scraping tends not to be. But whatever.
But I don't have microbio, so that means that all I have today is Spanish, which--here I confess a crime of the deepest dye, I'm sure--I skipped yesterday to work on my essay-class paper rough draft. ...Which I did wrong, as it turns out, but it also turns out that it really doesn't matter, inasmuch as my professor is really proud of me for picking Loren Eiseley, who she says is not an easy person to do a project on, and though I was never sitting there thinking oh no I'm going to fail, in some ways I certainly know what she means. It was, as I've said before, Mrs. W's idea, and when I told my professor this, she said to thank her for her.
...that last part of the sentence made sense, right? You get it, anyway.
Gave me a laugh this morning to read merani's lj, as reading said lj usually does. What especially amused me, actually, was that her band director looked like he was going to prom, 'cause for choir, when our dresses come in, we're gonna look like that, too, 'cause the guys have to be in tuxes.
Tux. It's a weird term, always makes me think of tusk, except it really doesn't, it makes me think of walrus, and I wonder why when I hear the word I get this mental image of a walrus.
Oh, but hey, the schedules for next semester went up online yesterday. I got cut out of one class that it really would help my major if I could take, and Lily got cut out of it, too, but I suppose it's better than Evan, who only got into two classes he wanted out of five. ...So far, I've got linguistics, acting, honors seminar, and choir, and I'm gonna try to get into the general American Lit class if that works out best with everything, and Irish Lit if it doesn't.
...Dang it, you know what? There needs to be a new Teen Girl Squad episode.
This has been the morning report.
-Laurel
12.07.2003
::sighs:: Well, that was different.
We didn't get a full gig.
Today we met at three o'clock and practiced pretty much straight through, 'cept for a dinner break, the hours flying, until 8:45, when we left the performing arts center on the theory that, since we were starting at nine, we might want to get to the coffeehouse. This wasn't so bad; it's just the next street over, and we took Ryan's minivan. Ryan joined up as our second guitarist, playing on a few songs.
We got there...and the owner-guy was nowhere to be found, and the guy who we were supposed to be opening for was finishing his soundcheck and was not about to wait for us to open for him. Simon tried, but no dice: he started at nine. Which's when we were supposed to be starting.
Which didn't bode so well for all our friends who'd come to hear us. John's girlfriend Libby ended up staying as long as we did, but around 9:45, Chris and Krystal and Tom had to go, and Maggie and Claire and their other friend did likewise.
John and Libby played cards after that, and Simon and I played Battleship. I almost won. When that was finished, John and Simon started a game of Battleship (Libby watched John over his shoulder) and I started one of solitaire, and we were doing that when the guy took a break for a while.
We got his permission to sing while he was having his coffee and sandwich, but by then there were only about five people listening to us, and that's counting Libby. The people in the back playing checkers and talking didn't even glance over at us.
We got through eight songs. We were...
...well...
...okay, so our sound was all right, but our words kinda sucked. Like that was a problem all day, John would blank out sometimes, and I was blanking out too on "Helplessly Hoping", which thanks to Daffy I have seen the words to like five dozen times, so what the heck is up with me? So we got to the performance and after John kinda squinched out a couple times on the first song, Simon made him get the words and keep them there to look at, which helped some, but, you know, didn't look professional.
Neither did our singing only cover songs, but the thing is, Simon's songs're so darn complex. He's tried to teach us two or three of them already, but it was going to take more than the three days we've had since we got the gig to learn any of his.
The singer-guy came back with his coffee and later his sandwich and watched us for a bit. Well, okay, he watched on the songs where it was just John and Simon; he didn't seem interested in hearing us when I was up there with them. The ruddy freak. I could hear him talking to this guy we met at the tryout who'd come tonight to see us (not random-Josh from my dorm, but another guy), and both were impressed with the duo numbers. As well they might be: John and Simon are very good, and they're both guy voices on guy parts.
But I hadn't expected to feel stupid up there, and neither had John, but comparing notes later, we both had.
So, to put it bluntly, it really kind of sucked. But we've got Friday, at least: when the owner-guy finally showed up, he and Simon had what Simon said was a long conversation, and we've got the 12th. All to ourselves this time. We'll get more people to come, and we'll have lots more practice time in between. It'll be better that way.
::sighs:: Had this freaky-weird-kinda-bad dream last night, so I'm hoping tonight will be better, or at least more oblivious. More another day.
-Laurel
We didn't get a full gig.
Today we met at three o'clock and practiced pretty much straight through, 'cept for a dinner break, the hours flying, until 8:45, when we left the performing arts center on the theory that, since we were starting at nine, we might want to get to the coffeehouse. This wasn't so bad; it's just the next street over, and we took Ryan's minivan. Ryan joined up as our second guitarist, playing on a few songs.
We got there...and the owner-guy was nowhere to be found, and the guy who we were supposed to be opening for was finishing his soundcheck and was not about to wait for us to open for him. Simon tried, but no dice: he started at nine. Which's when we were supposed to be starting.
Which didn't bode so well for all our friends who'd come to hear us. John's girlfriend Libby ended up staying as long as we did, but around 9:45, Chris and Krystal and Tom had to go, and Maggie and Claire and their other friend did likewise.
John and Libby played cards after that, and Simon and I played Battleship. I almost won. When that was finished, John and Simon started a game of Battleship (Libby watched John over his shoulder) and I started one of solitaire, and we were doing that when the guy took a break for a while.
We got his permission to sing while he was having his coffee and sandwich, but by then there were only about five people listening to us, and that's counting Libby. The people in the back playing checkers and talking didn't even glance over at us.
We got through eight songs. We were...
...well...
...okay, so our sound was all right, but our words kinda sucked. Like that was a problem all day, John would blank out sometimes, and I was blanking out too on "Helplessly Hoping", which thanks to Daffy I have seen the words to like five dozen times, so what the heck is up with me? So we got to the performance and after John kinda squinched out a couple times on the first song, Simon made him get the words and keep them there to look at, which helped some, but, you know, didn't look professional.
Neither did our singing only cover songs, but the thing is, Simon's songs're so darn complex. He's tried to teach us two or three of them already, but it was going to take more than the three days we've had since we got the gig to learn any of his.
The singer-guy came back with his coffee and later his sandwich and watched us for a bit. Well, okay, he watched on the songs where it was just John and Simon; he didn't seem interested in hearing us when I was up there with them. The ruddy freak. I could hear him talking to this guy we met at the tryout who'd come tonight to see us (not random-Josh from my dorm, but another guy), and both were impressed with the duo numbers. As well they might be: John and Simon are very good, and they're both guy voices on guy parts.
But I hadn't expected to feel stupid up there, and neither had John, but comparing notes later, we both had.
So, to put it bluntly, it really kind of sucked. But we've got Friday, at least: when the owner-guy finally showed up, he and Simon had what Simon said was a long conversation, and we've got the 12th. All to ourselves this time. We'll get more people to come, and we'll have lots more practice time in between. It'll be better that way.
::sighs:: Had this freaky-weird-kinda-bad dream last night, so I'm hoping tonight will be better, or at least more oblivious. More another day.
-Laurel
12.04.2003
Oh my word. Oh ruddy crud and oh my word and oh my goodness gracious.
Simon, John, and I've been singing; I've talked about it in entries past, about how after play practice we'd get together. Mostly it was Simon and John, Simon playing and taking turns with John for lead, teaching us the songs. I was in sometimes, always backup, Beatles songs I knew, CSN ones I didn't.
We've got a gig, the three of us, this Saturday, at the coffeehouse.
Like okay, the coffeehouse is not the big time. We were told that we didn't even have to try out, we were allowed to show up randomly and play some night if no one else was there. But Simon, ever the professional, insisted on our trying out. Besides, we were dying to show off.
We didn't know, John and I, that our tryout was tonight. I got a call around 11:30 from John, thinking he was asking me sledding with him and his friends--which's what he'd been scheduled to do, and he'd wanted to invite me. But instead when I got the phone to my ear, I heard that he was on my dorm's ground floor, with Simon, singing, and did I want to come and join them? I most certainly did.
We sang in the lounge for a while, and gradually I learned that the tryout for the coffeehouse, which Simon had been talking about for weeks, was finally happening. I never doubted that it would eventually, but I didn't think that I'd be invited along. I mean, it's really John and Simon's act; I'm there for a few songs only.
But the best song of the group is "This Boy", and that's the one I sing the melody for. I got invited. I came.
So we walked in the cold to the coffeehouse and went upstairs where the bands perform. The manager was really pretty amused, John and I could tell, by our wide-eyed let's-play-professional-singers vibe, 'cause Simon took it so darn seriously. ::grins:: But he looked at us differently when Simon started playing and John started singing. We tried out with Beatles songs, three of them--and then threw in a fourth when the manager said, "Play more."
We were offered a choice--a night to ourselves on the 12th...or forty-five minutes this Saturday night, opening for another band. We chose to go sooner; Simon said we had 30 songs, but only half're anywhere near performable at this point. We want to go soon, anyway; we're dying to perform.
We might even end up with a drummer: a guy named Josh from my dorm followed us there out of curiosity; Simon "hired" him, so to speak, once we were in.
So tomorrow, after microbio lab, we meet to practice. We've got work to do.
We've got a concert Saturday night.
-Laurel
Simon, John, and I've been singing; I've talked about it in entries past, about how after play practice we'd get together. Mostly it was Simon and John, Simon playing and taking turns with John for lead, teaching us the songs. I was in sometimes, always backup, Beatles songs I knew, CSN ones I didn't.
We've got a gig, the three of us, this Saturday, at the coffeehouse.
Like okay, the coffeehouse is not the big time. We were told that we didn't even have to try out, we were allowed to show up randomly and play some night if no one else was there. But Simon, ever the professional, insisted on our trying out. Besides, we were dying to show off.
We didn't know, John and I, that our tryout was tonight. I got a call around 11:30 from John, thinking he was asking me sledding with him and his friends--which's what he'd been scheduled to do, and he'd wanted to invite me. But instead when I got the phone to my ear, I heard that he was on my dorm's ground floor, with Simon, singing, and did I want to come and join them? I most certainly did.
We sang in the lounge for a while, and gradually I learned that the tryout for the coffeehouse, which Simon had been talking about for weeks, was finally happening. I never doubted that it would eventually, but I didn't think that I'd be invited along. I mean, it's really John and Simon's act; I'm there for a few songs only.
But the best song of the group is "This Boy", and that's the one I sing the melody for. I got invited. I came.
So we walked in the cold to the coffeehouse and went upstairs where the bands perform. The manager was really pretty amused, John and I could tell, by our wide-eyed let's-play-professional-singers vibe, 'cause Simon took it so darn seriously. ::grins:: But he looked at us differently when Simon started playing and John started singing. We tried out with Beatles songs, three of them--and then threw in a fourth when the manager said, "Play more."
We were offered a choice--a night to ourselves on the 12th...or forty-five minutes this Saturday night, opening for another band. We chose to go sooner; Simon said we had 30 songs, but only half're anywhere near performable at this point. We want to go soon, anyway; we're dying to perform.
We might even end up with a drummer: a guy named Josh from my dorm followed us there out of curiosity; Simon "hired" him, so to speak, once we were in.
So tomorrow, after microbio lab, we meet to practice. We've got work to do.
We've got a concert Saturday night.
-Laurel
12.03.2003
So we had the post-play dinner, finally. It was tasty to a high degree. Like, you don't understand, I am a person who has never liked chili, and I ate two bowls of Becky's and would have started on a third had I not also been full of her punch and lemon squares and key lime squares. Dang, but she knows how to cook stuff. See previous entry dealing with her lasagna, wherever said entry is.
Yesterday's adventure was scraping off my car so I could take it to Wal-Mart to get things like, say, toothpaste, which I believe I left at home. ...Of course, I thought I'd left my shampoo at home and after I bought some new shampoo I found the old bottle, but that's not the point. The point is that when every surface on your car is coated with between four and five inches of snow, it takes a while to brush and scrape your car off, 'cause you start brushing into places you've already brushed. I was glad I had two pairs of gloves. I wore them both at once. They kept my hands warm.
I would, actually, like to make the following comments on the shampoo I bought though it turns out I didn't need to: It is coconut-scented, and I am so much happier about that than I have any right to be, 'cause c'mon, it's only coconut shampoo. I should not be this happy about smelling like Hook's Lagoon in Darien Lake. 'Cause that is exactly what this stuff smells like. But I am, for some unfathomable reason, ecstatic.
Plus Lily helped me get my hair into pigtails. So I am having a massively good hair day, which happens like once bimonthly, so I imagine my hair will be crap from now until Ocean Bowl, but whatever. ::laughs::
For honors we are making a Christmas log, which is basically a glorified Ho-Ho. ::shrugs:: Hey, why not?
The department is taking a trip to **my home city** tomorrow, and I cannot go because I cannot afford to miss honors class again. So I miss A Christmas Carol and Thai food and Krispy Kreme. Then again, I get to be in choir and honors, and it will be John's birthday. These are happy things.
...I have to sing a song, solo, when I try out for Fiddler. I have never sung a solo song in all my life. I mean, okay, I've done solos within songs, chorus songs, but I have never had a solo lasting more than ten seconds. And now I need one that's like two minutes, accompanied. I am the child who was never even in All-County, much less SoloFest.
So I appealed to John for help: I have never sung a solo and I need to make it look to Luanne and Steve like I've done dozens of them, and I need to learn this by mid-January so that I can convince them that I make a better Chava than all the people who really *have* sung dozens of solos. I need help. I need a Finch.
A major hurrah for John, who replied, I'll help you. Like, c'mon, he's already helped Terra out on stuff; he must at least sort of know how to teach. ...So I wonder if I get to cite him as voice lessons from now until I graduate. ::laughs::
Goodness knows we'll have to do it soon, though: I get out of here on the 17th and I have tryouts basically the day after I come back.
But yeah. Randomness, as always. Time for some honors homework.
-Laurel
Yesterday's adventure was scraping off my car so I could take it to Wal-Mart to get things like, say, toothpaste, which I believe I left at home. ...Of course, I thought I'd left my shampoo at home and after I bought some new shampoo I found the old bottle, but that's not the point. The point is that when every surface on your car is coated with between four and five inches of snow, it takes a while to brush and scrape your car off, 'cause you start brushing into places you've already brushed. I was glad I had two pairs of gloves. I wore them both at once. They kept my hands warm.
I would, actually, like to make the following comments on the shampoo I bought though it turns out I didn't need to: It is coconut-scented, and I am so much happier about that than I have any right to be, 'cause c'mon, it's only coconut shampoo. I should not be this happy about smelling like Hook's Lagoon in Darien Lake. 'Cause that is exactly what this stuff smells like. But I am, for some unfathomable reason, ecstatic.
Plus Lily helped me get my hair into pigtails. So I am having a massively good hair day, which happens like once bimonthly, so I imagine my hair will be crap from now until Ocean Bowl, but whatever. ::laughs::
For honors we are making a Christmas log, which is basically a glorified Ho-Ho. ::shrugs:: Hey, why not?
The department is taking a trip to **my home city** tomorrow, and I cannot go because I cannot afford to miss honors class again. So I miss A Christmas Carol and Thai food and Krispy Kreme. Then again, I get to be in choir and honors, and it will be John's birthday. These are happy things.
...I have to sing a song, solo, when I try out for Fiddler. I have never sung a solo song in all my life. I mean, okay, I've done solos within songs, chorus songs, but I have never had a solo lasting more than ten seconds. And now I need one that's like two minutes, accompanied. I am the child who was never even in All-County, much less SoloFest.
So I appealed to John for help: I have never sung a solo and I need to make it look to Luanne and Steve like I've done dozens of them, and I need to learn this by mid-January so that I can convince them that I make a better Chava than all the people who really *have* sung dozens of solos. I need help. I need a Finch.
A major hurrah for John, who replied, I'll help you. Like, c'mon, he's already helped Terra out on stuff; he must at least sort of know how to teach. ...So I wonder if I get to cite him as voice lessons from now until I graduate. ::laughs::
Goodness knows we'll have to do it soon, though: I get out of here on the 17th and I have tryouts basically the day after I come back.
But yeah. Randomness, as always. Time for some honors homework.
-Laurel
11.30.2003
11.29.2003
So hi. My dad is getting a bit better, though still popping all sorts of pain medication. Went to a hockey game last night with my family and Erik (it was his only night off of work this whole break), which we won easily. We then adjourned to B-Dubs, where Erik won twenty-one cents from my brother by consuming six of the establishment's hottest chicken wings.
Erik called me around noon today, talking to me as he went about drilling holes in the two dimes and the penny so as to be able to string them onto a necklace. Drilling without goggles or gloves or any form of safety precaution, of course. This amused my mother, mainly because Erik is not her kid; I cannot imagine what her reaction would have been if my brother (or, indeed, I) had attempted such a thing.
I wonder if it will be as snowy back at school as it is here.
Oh, and vive Perpetual Motion. If by some chance you have not seen this link, you need to see it right now. Do not let it play in Internet Explorer; make it go through Windows Media Player or whatever else you have handy. It's just better that way.
By the time you next hear from me, I will more than likely be at school.
-Laurel
Erik called me around noon today, talking to me as he went about drilling holes in the two dimes and the penny so as to be able to string them onto a necklace. Drilling without goggles or gloves or any form of safety precaution, of course. This amused my mother, mainly because Erik is not her kid; I cannot imagine what her reaction would have been if my brother (or, indeed, I) had attempted such a thing.
I wonder if it will be as snowy back at school as it is here.
Oh, and vive Perpetual Motion. If by some chance you have not seen this link, you need to see it right now. Do not let it play in Internet Explorer; make it go through Windows Media Player or whatever else you have handy. It's just better that way.
By the time you next hear from me, I will more than likely be at school.
-Laurel
11.27.2003
Okay, right, so I was going to do a makeup entry as a sort of apology for the overwhelming negativity of the last one, a nice benevolent hey-here's-Thanksgiving, but that got a little delayed when my dad had to go to the hospital for x-rays.
From playing football in the mud.
As much as I'm going to take a rather sardonic tone about the fact that my father bruised ribs and strained several muscle groups from a quarterback roll-left play, it really was startling. Well, for my mom and brother. I was asleep for the whole thing, and that was the scary part right there, 'cause suddenly I wake up and I hear that my dad may have broken ribs and he's okay now but he hadn't been breathing for a minute there. And I'd slept right through.
Anyway, I came along to the hospital--my brother stayed with Lily and family. I like hospitals, mainly because I've never spent lots of time in one myself, and mainly because I've never seen anyone there with anything deadly going on. It's not even 'cause of all the M*A*S*H I've watched--all my life I've liked the whole medical community pretty well, always seen hospitals as kind of cool and medicine as noble and exciting. I'm not squeamish by nature--I didn't even flinch the few times my dad did, when they felt around on his ribs and back to find the painful spots. I don't know how I could watch him flinch trying to get up or lie down and not do the same; I don't know what it says about me. It's not like I didn't feel bad, but somehow I knew he was going to be okay all in all, and that made it okay watching.
The only thing that made me flinch was when I went out into the hall, looked down a corridor, and saw a sign on the other side reading Outpatient Oncology. Oncology--cancer. Like Lance Armstrong, that's where I learned the word, from It's Not About the Bike, that one's about life...
...but cancer, that does scare me, that to me is what smacks of mortality.
God love Glenn and Erik, who--may they forgive me for making the references--know so much more about hospitals than I do.
But after lots of waiting, which didn't really bother me, and an amusing incident where I tried to figure out what was in the weird hospital pillow, assured my mom, "Don't worry, I won't mess anything up," and promptly pulled the tag right off as if on cue, we were all done.
There was a lot of information-taking that happened before it even started, though. My dad hadn't been to this particular hospital since he was 18--my age--and still they had him on file in the computer, but after so long everything had to be done over. I learned that "tympanic" temperature means it was taken in your ear, and I learned that hospitals measure things in military time, like when the fall occurred (approximately 1600 hours). It was a quiet night, comparatively, but the hospital was short-staffed for the holiday, so it still took a few hours.
...He's in a lot of pain, my dad--the double-dosage that the doctor's assistant gave him of whatever medication he's supposed to be on isn't really working. I hope the ibuprofen he's on along with it will. I missed my dosage of medication this morning, actually, 'cause we were out the door to go visit my grandmother, also in a hospital. So after being in a hospital this morning, I was in a different one tonight. My grandmother looks awfully pale and sickish to Lily and me, but to our mothers, who were there earlier this week when she was sick all the time, she's lots better, talking and eating even though she isn't hungry.
My shoulder muscles are sore and I don't know why for sure, but it's probably from sleeping in such a crappy position this afternoon. But ooh, it felt good.
I have yet to decide whether coconut cream really does beat out apple as the best-ever pie. More experimentation is necessary for comparison.
More about everything tomorrow. Or the next day.
-Laurel
From playing football in the mud.
As much as I'm going to take a rather sardonic tone about the fact that my father bruised ribs and strained several muscle groups from a quarterback roll-left play, it really was startling. Well, for my mom and brother. I was asleep for the whole thing, and that was the scary part right there, 'cause suddenly I wake up and I hear that my dad may have broken ribs and he's okay now but he hadn't been breathing for a minute there. And I'd slept right through.
Anyway, I came along to the hospital--my brother stayed with Lily and family. I like hospitals, mainly because I've never spent lots of time in one myself, and mainly because I've never seen anyone there with anything deadly going on. It's not even 'cause of all the M*A*S*H I've watched--all my life I've liked the whole medical community pretty well, always seen hospitals as kind of cool and medicine as noble and exciting. I'm not squeamish by nature--I didn't even flinch the few times my dad did, when they felt around on his ribs and back to find the painful spots. I don't know how I could watch him flinch trying to get up or lie down and not do the same; I don't know what it says about me. It's not like I didn't feel bad, but somehow I knew he was going to be okay all in all, and that made it okay watching.
The only thing that made me flinch was when I went out into the hall, looked down a corridor, and saw a sign on the other side reading Outpatient Oncology. Oncology--cancer. Like Lance Armstrong, that's where I learned the word, from It's Not About the Bike, that one's about life...
...but cancer, that does scare me, that to me is what smacks of mortality.
God love Glenn and Erik, who--may they forgive me for making the references--know so much more about hospitals than I do.
But after lots of waiting, which didn't really bother me, and an amusing incident where I tried to figure out what was in the weird hospital pillow, assured my mom, "Don't worry, I won't mess anything up," and promptly pulled the tag right off as if on cue, we were all done.
There was a lot of information-taking that happened before it even started, though. My dad hadn't been to this particular hospital since he was 18--my age--and still they had him on file in the computer, but after so long everything had to be done over. I learned that "tympanic" temperature means it was taken in your ear, and I learned that hospitals measure things in military time, like when the fall occurred (approximately 1600 hours). It was a quiet night, comparatively, but the hospital was short-staffed for the holiday, so it still took a few hours.
...He's in a lot of pain, my dad--the double-dosage that the doctor's assistant gave him of whatever medication he's supposed to be on isn't really working. I hope the ibuprofen he's on along with it will. I missed my dosage of medication this morning, actually, 'cause we were out the door to go visit my grandmother, also in a hospital. So after being in a hospital this morning, I was in a different one tonight. My grandmother looks awfully pale and sickish to Lily and me, but to our mothers, who were there earlier this week when she was sick all the time, she's lots better, talking and eating even though she isn't hungry.
My shoulder muscles are sore and I don't know why for sure, but it's probably from sleeping in such a crappy position this afternoon. But ooh, it felt good.
I have yet to decide whether coconut cream really does beat out apple as the best-ever pie. More experimentation is necessary for comparison.
More about everything tomorrow. Or the next day.
-Laurel
Sum of today's appointments: I need to floss and I have zits.
Tell me things I don't know.
...'kay, so in my defense, Brown--the guy who saw me for skin this morning--is a total massively aggressive psychopath. This is the man who thought that he could eradicate my warts by spraying them with liquid nitrogen for sixty seconds several times (and anyone who's had anything sprayed for fifteen seconds once will understand why this makes him a psychopath). End result: warts spread, worse than ever, and a year of laser treatments and chemical creams later, it was finally the mostly-natural hippie-type stuff that I was so skeptical about (see past entry, long ago) that ended up curing me.
So this Brown guy informs me today that people are supposed to be done with zits in their "mid-teens", and therefore I am several years behind after having started several years early (about the fifth grade). I would like to put forth the humble, laypersonal opinion that this is total crap, inasmuch as many people I know never broke out in the first place until the tenth ruddy grade, and I actually told him that most people I know didn't break out until the tenth grade (read: age 16), but he would have absolutely none of that and told me that I should think about going on Accutane.
I knew I was in trouble when he started by telling me that Accutane has gotten some bad press, but newspapers like to sensationalize things (though I'd like to also state that dermatologists' offices, and I've been to two or three, like to understate things). See, Accutane is this massive vitamin-A-and-other-orally-ingested-randomness treatment that's been linked in rare cases to depression; a senator's son committed suicide on it and it got some media.
He told my dad and me that it's been used here in America for 30 years and in England for closer to 45, and the number of abnormal reactions has been very small. ...Okay, so again I'd like to point out that yeah, 30 to 45 years ago, America was also up on lead paint, asbestos, and DDT, but I suppose they're different enough not to count. He told us that Tylenol is a dangerous drug, and people take it like candy. He told us that his two teenage daughters (thought: oh gracious, there are young females who have to *live* with this man?) have both been on Accutane with no ill effects and total improvement, which actually does comfort me slightly, but that does not mean he treated them equally to how he would me (you think I'm paranoid? You have not met this man--Englert, she's the one with sanity, she's the one who cleaned up Brown's wart mess; I am getting her opinion first).
The truth is, though, that it's not the depression factor that scares the crap out of me, but the reproductive factor. This stuff is unmitigated havoc on fetuses, and while it's safe to say I'm not about to become pregnant anytime in the near-slash-remote future, and while it's true that the risk to babies disappears once you've been off it for two months, I'm also a little concerned about screwing my body up any further. 'Cause as it is, I've been on more medications, topical and oral, than I can remember, since the seventh grade, maybe the eighth; I get switched from one to the next about once a year, sometimes more frequent, and they all of them work better for a while, and then...
...and then I screw it up, I guess. If they're antibiotics, the problem is partly with me; it's just that I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not good at regularity with oral medication; I do fine for a couple of weeks and then I start missing whole weekends--or whole weeks--at a time. This means that I've killed off the main strains of bacteria making my face worse, but when I stop, I'm leaving the hardier ones behind. These're the ones that divide, and now I've got it worse, and I have to change to kill those.
This is what's been happening for over five years of my life now, and nobody ever told me why I was supposed to get it right, why I was supposed to take these things at the same time. Nobody told me that, at higher dosages, some of these medications are forms of birth control (and, again, not like that's important in the main sense, but in certain other senses it kind of is). I learn all this stuff from microbiology. And then the dermatologists can't figure out why I'm still speckled. And I sit in class, wondering what I've been putting into myself.
And now they want to intensify it, five months of this Accutane stuff, on the premise that 70% of people get cured of acne forever, and the other 30% improve significantly. Those are good numbers, enough to sell my dad. But my dad's a guy, and the guy information ('cause I read both sides of the pamphlet) doesn't have warnings every page. To him, this's one big shot, but the rewards are worth it.
But my dad has been, for at least two years now, so much more concerned with my own face than I am. To me, this whole zit thing is ancient news. I've had them for so long that I can't imagine my face without them--and there're times when I wonder if I'd look even plainer with clear skin. They've not affected how I make friends; they've not interfered with even my getting a boyfriend (unless that explains Bryan, but I'm not thinking so), for the love of decency. I am not scarred. After eight years of poking, picking, breaking all the rules, he is doubly terrified now of my getting scars than when my face was worse. 'Cause that's the thing--I'm getting better. I've known times much worse than this, much worse. I've been very very good about medication these few weeks, but still the dermatologist's assistant took my face in her hands and went, "Is this a bad day, honey? This looks bad to me."
"I was in the play," I said. "I was in pancake makeup a week and a half ago. That's the only thing I can think of, 'cause everything else I've done right." For once. Please, have mercy, just leave me alone...
So for now, I am on switched medications. One of the topical is the same. One is different. The oral has been changed. I don't remember the dosages anymore; I'll read the bottles, read the boxes. Brown told me to consider the Accutane. Dad tells me that, too. Mom tells me what I say myself--that I've read the information, the pictures they're showing are for people with faces three, four times worse than mine. Mine are worse than average, considerably worse by college standards, and the fact that makeup doesn't help my cause makes it all the more obvious to most people.
...But wouldn't it have been a more obvious problem if I needed this stuff? I thought John was crazy when, early in our friendship, he told me he thought they were just freckles--but then Anna said it, too, and she hadn't been talking to John. To me, right now I look pretty good. And my skin is worse than my dad's, but even my dad wasn't over his oral crap until he was 20 anyway, is what he told me before I started college.
Look, I don't like having to start getting ready for bed at 11:30 if I want to be in it by midnight, which is what I have to do to get all the pajama-ing/brushing/flossing/fluoriding/topical-ing/oral-ing/contact-removing done that I have to do; thank God I'm off the wart topical, 'cause 'til this summer, there was that, too. But by this time, goodness knows I've messed with myself enough. I know it could end it forever. But what's the cost going to be? I don't exactly feel, enough of the time, like a healthy person. I'm thin and always with half a cold and I can't even give blood, not because I'm scared of needles but because it doesn't work, I get dizzy. Some of the questions these people ask me, I'm not sure how to answer--I don't know what's supposed to be normal, I don't know if I'm blurring the line. I don't want to do this. I don't think it's worth it. I would love to be pretty above the shoulders, but it's not worth it to me. My dad tells me that if I get scars, I'll pay for it for the rest of my life. Well, what happens if I pay for this from the inside out?
::sighs:: The dentist people are much more benevolent; the worst they did to me was stick me with my first-ever periodontal instrument and tell me I had mild gingivitis and had to floss more. Which I knew in the first place.
Look, from family experience I know that doctors tend to know more than patients do. Two of my aunts are making themselves terrors with the hospital people watching over my grandmother, simply because they don't like the answers they get. I'm not trying to do that. But this frightens me, and what frightens me more is how completely inevitable it looks that everybody else's patience will run out and I'll be stuck on it anyway.
...It just wasn't the morning I was looking for.
But I saw Master and Commander tonight with my brother, and that was really great. The more love I have for a book, the more annoyed I am with any deviance from it, which's why Two Towers bothered me so much and whatever they may have changed in this movie from the book didn't bother me at all; I liked the book but didn't love it. I really like what they did with the surgeon's character there, and it was nice to see the occasional shot of Billy Boyd.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Maybe even coconut cream pie, if Aunt Jan found the time to make it after the apple, pumpkin, and cherry, not to mention the turkey and stuffing itself (it's at her house).
Friday is hockey game with Erik, if that works out; Saturday, if it works out, is everybody else. Though it would have been nice if I'd made any of these arrangements tonight. I didn't: my afternoon was spent sleeping, my night at the movie. But I will call when I get back, if it's not too late.
Sunday I go back to school. Whee. Que vacaciones.
-Laurel
Tell me things I don't know.
...'kay, so in my defense, Brown--the guy who saw me for skin this morning--is a total massively aggressive psychopath. This is the man who thought that he could eradicate my warts by spraying them with liquid nitrogen for sixty seconds several times (and anyone who's had anything sprayed for fifteen seconds once will understand why this makes him a psychopath). End result: warts spread, worse than ever, and a year of laser treatments and chemical creams later, it was finally the mostly-natural hippie-type stuff that I was so skeptical about (see past entry, long ago) that ended up curing me.
So this Brown guy informs me today that people are supposed to be done with zits in their "mid-teens", and therefore I am several years behind after having started several years early (about the fifth grade). I would like to put forth the humble, laypersonal opinion that this is total crap, inasmuch as many people I know never broke out in the first place until the tenth ruddy grade, and I actually told him that most people I know didn't break out until the tenth grade (read: age 16), but he would have absolutely none of that and told me that I should think about going on Accutane.
I knew I was in trouble when he started by telling me that Accutane has gotten some bad press, but newspapers like to sensationalize things (though I'd like to also state that dermatologists' offices, and I've been to two or three, like to understate things). See, Accutane is this massive vitamin-A-and-other-orally-ingested-randomness treatment that's been linked in rare cases to depression; a senator's son committed suicide on it and it got some media.
He told my dad and me that it's been used here in America for 30 years and in England for closer to 45, and the number of abnormal reactions has been very small. ...Okay, so again I'd like to point out that yeah, 30 to 45 years ago, America was also up on lead paint, asbestos, and DDT, but I suppose they're different enough not to count. He told us that Tylenol is a dangerous drug, and people take it like candy. He told us that his two teenage daughters (thought: oh gracious, there are young females who have to *live* with this man?) have both been on Accutane with no ill effects and total improvement, which actually does comfort me slightly, but that does not mean he treated them equally to how he would me (you think I'm paranoid? You have not met this man--Englert, she's the one with sanity, she's the one who cleaned up Brown's wart mess; I am getting her opinion first).
The truth is, though, that it's not the depression factor that scares the crap out of me, but the reproductive factor. This stuff is unmitigated havoc on fetuses, and while it's safe to say I'm not about to become pregnant anytime in the near-slash-remote future, and while it's true that the risk to babies disappears once you've been off it for two months, I'm also a little concerned about screwing my body up any further. 'Cause as it is, I've been on more medications, topical and oral, than I can remember, since the seventh grade, maybe the eighth; I get switched from one to the next about once a year, sometimes more frequent, and they all of them work better for a while, and then...
...and then I screw it up, I guess. If they're antibiotics, the problem is partly with me; it's just that I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not good at regularity with oral medication; I do fine for a couple of weeks and then I start missing whole weekends--or whole weeks--at a time. This means that I've killed off the main strains of bacteria making my face worse, but when I stop, I'm leaving the hardier ones behind. These're the ones that divide, and now I've got it worse, and I have to change to kill those.
This is what's been happening for over five years of my life now, and nobody ever told me why I was supposed to get it right, why I was supposed to take these things at the same time. Nobody told me that, at higher dosages, some of these medications are forms of birth control (and, again, not like that's important in the main sense, but in certain other senses it kind of is). I learn all this stuff from microbiology. And then the dermatologists can't figure out why I'm still speckled. And I sit in class, wondering what I've been putting into myself.
And now they want to intensify it, five months of this Accutane stuff, on the premise that 70% of people get cured of acne forever, and the other 30% improve significantly. Those are good numbers, enough to sell my dad. But my dad's a guy, and the guy information ('cause I read both sides of the pamphlet) doesn't have warnings every page. To him, this's one big shot, but the rewards are worth it.
But my dad has been, for at least two years now, so much more concerned with my own face than I am. To me, this whole zit thing is ancient news. I've had them for so long that I can't imagine my face without them--and there're times when I wonder if I'd look even plainer with clear skin. They've not affected how I make friends; they've not interfered with even my getting a boyfriend (unless that explains Bryan, but I'm not thinking so), for the love of decency. I am not scarred. After eight years of poking, picking, breaking all the rules, he is doubly terrified now of my getting scars than when my face was worse. 'Cause that's the thing--I'm getting better. I've known times much worse than this, much worse. I've been very very good about medication these few weeks, but still the dermatologist's assistant took my face in her hands and went, "Is this a bad day, honey? This looks bad to me."
"I was in the play," I said. "I was in pancake makeup a week and a half ago. That's the only thing I can think of, 'cause everything else I've done right." For once. Please, have mercy, just leave me alone...
So for now, I am on switched medications. One of the topical is the same. One is different. The oral has been changed. I don't remember the dosages anymore; I'll read the bottles, read the boxes. Brown told me to consider the Accutane. Dad tells me that, too. Mom tells me what I say myself--that I've read the information, the pictures they're showing are for people with faces three, four times worse than mine. Mine are worse than average, considerably worse by college standards, and the fact that makeup doesn't help my cause makes it all the more obvious to most people.
...But wouldn't it have been a more obvious problem if I needed this stuff? I thought John was crazy when, early in our friendship, he told me he thought they were just freckles--but then Anna said it, too, and she hadn't been talking to John. To me, right now I look pretty good. And my skin is worse than my dad's, but even my dad wasn't over his oral crap until he was 20 anyway, is what he told me before I started college.
Look, I don't like having to start getting ready for bed at 11:30 if I want to be in it by midnight, which is what I have to do to get all the pajama-ing/brushing/flossing/fluoriding/topical-ing/oral-ing/contact-removing done that I have to do; thank God I'm off the wart topical, 'cause 'til this summer, there was that, too. But by this time, goodness knows I've messed with myself enough. I know it could end it forever. But what's the cost going to be? I don't exactly feel, enough of the time, like a healthy person. I'm thin and always with half a cold and I can't even give blood, not because I'm scared of needles but because it doesn't work, I get dizzy. Some of the questions these people ask me, I'm not sure how to answer--I don't know what's supposed to be normal, I don't know if I'm blurring the line. I don't want to do this. I don't think it's worth it. I would love to be pretty above the shoulders, but it's not worth it to me. My dad tells me that if I get scars, I'll pay for it for the rest of my life. Well, what happens if I pay for this from the inside out?
::sighs:: The dentist people are much more benevolent; the worst they did to me was stick me with my first-ever periodontal instrument and tell me I had mild gingivitis and had to floss more. Which I knew in the first place.
Look, from family experience I know that doctors tend to know more than patients do. Two of my aunts are making themselves terrors with the hospital people watching over my grandmother, simply because they don't like the answers they get. I'm not trying to do that. But this frightens me, and what frightens me more is how completely inevitable it looks that everybody else's patience will run out and I'll be stuck on it anyway.
...It just wasn't the morning I was looking for.
But I saw Master and Commander tonight with my brother, and that was really great. The more love I have for a book, the more annoyed I am with any deviance from it, which's why Two Towers bothered me so much and whatever they may have changed in this movie from the book didn't bother me at all; I liked the book but didn't love it. I really like what they did with the surgeon's character there, and it was nice to see the occasional shot of Billy Boyd.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Maybe even coconut cream pie, if Aunt Jan found the time to make it after the apple, pumpkin, and cherry, not to mention the turkey and stuffing itself (it's at her house).
Friday is hockey game with Erik, if that works out; Saturday, if it works out, is everybody else. Though it would have been nice if I'd made any of these arrangements tonight. I didn't: my afternoon was spent sleeping, my night at the movie. But I will call when I get back, if it's not too late.
Sunday I go back to school. Whee. Que vacaciones.
-Laurel
11.25.2003
Well, I am home again. For not quite a week; I leave Sunday because classes resume Monday.
Cleaning didn't happen as quickly as it might have; I needed to clean the dorm before I left to avoid a $15 charge, so Lily and I did that, but I didn't get fully on the road until about 1:30, which put me in school for SFE at 3:25, almost over. I missed Bethie entirely, and with 'Nanda and Daffy it was kinda 'kayhikaybye. Gladly would I have stayed, especially to see Glenn, who was in singing practice, but my brother was bent on getting home to eat before his volleyball thing, so that was that.
I do not get to see Glenn at all this vacation; I called him and we talked for an hour, after which point he left for Albany to spend Thanksgiving there, from which he will not get back until Sunday afternoon, which is when I leave to go back to school. So it's been over three weeks since I've seen him, and it will be about three more until Christmas break, which will mean six weeks from one visit to another ('cause one glance of him in singing practice does not count, especially because he didn't see me and couldn't glance back), the longest separation we have ever had, and that thought makes me realize all the more sharply that that's a long darn time. But I get a month once Christmas break begins. It will be worth the wait.
Right now I should go to sleep, because I have a dentist appointment at eight-thirty in the ruddy morning what the he-e-e-e-eck?! Thanks a lot to my early-rising dad (who does not, and most likely will never, read this blog). :-P Oh, well, I can nap.
I remembered my clock this time. This means I can know what time it is when I am in my room.
Oh yeah, I wanted to watch Strong Bad before I went to bed. It hasn't been working on my computer at school; the network has been crappy in new and exciting ways for the past week and a half, and now Strong Bad loads so slowly that it, like, times out in the middle or something.
And note to self: Five-minute oral report on Loren Eiseley due one week from tomorrow = necessity to actually read a couple of Eiseley's essays.
'night, all.
-Laurel
Cleaning didn't happen as quickly as it might have; I needed to clean the dorm before I left to avoid a $15 charge, so Lily and I did that, but I didn't get fully on the road until about 1:30, which put me in school for SFE at 3:25, almost over. I missed Bethie entirely, and with 'Nanda and Daffy it was kinda 'kayhikaybye. Gladly would I have stayed, especially to see Glenn, who was in singing practice, but my brother was bent on getting home to eat before his volleyball thing, so that was that.
I do not get to see Glenn at all this vacation; I called him and we talked for an hour, after which point he left for Albany to spend Thanksgiving there, from which he will not get back until Sunday afternoon, which is when I leave to go back to school. So it's been over three weeks since I've seen him, and it will be about three more until Christmas break, which will mean six weeks from one visit to another ('cause one glance of him in singing practice does not count, especially because he didn't see me and couldn't glance back), the longest separation we have ever had, and that thought makes me realize all the more sharply that that's a long darn time. But I get a month once Christmas break begins. It will be worth the wait.
Right now I should go to sleep, because I have a dentist appointment at eight-thirty in the ruddy morning what the he-e-e-e-eck?! Thanks a lot to my early-rising dad (who does not, and most likely will never, read this blog). :-P Oh, well, I can nap.
I remembered my clock this time. This means I can know what time it is when I am in my room.
Oh yeah, I wanted to watch Strong Bad before I went to bed. It hasn't been working on my computer at school; the network has been crappy in new and exciting ways for the past week and a half, and now Strong Bad loads so slowly that it, like, times out in the middle or something.
And note to self: Five-minute oral report on Loren Eiseley due one week from tomorrow = necessity to actually read a couple of Eiseley's essays.
'night, all.
-Laurel
11.23.2003
Well, then. ::can only laugh::
Tonight's fun fact: back when I first knew the twins, I made the wrong guess as to which of them had been in Envirothon. It was Tim; I've been convinced it was Tom. Now I can tell them apart and will know better. Found this out when the three of us talked about Envirothon states tonight--their school was the one we met on the way last year, the group that hadn't even made their poster yet but still got third in the presentations. ...That wasn't Tim, though; he did it the year before I did.
We had another French dinner tonight, this one at a country club. I felt a lot better than the last ones, so that was good. The people were a little farther into the wine this time (or at least that one guy who tried to conduct us was, telling us about how the Italians hate the French and whatever nonsense), but they tipped well. And Bert sang "Michelle" this time with Theresa, they did this cool bit with taking this fedora from each other--I know that sounds weird or confusing or dumb, but it looked really cool.
And we girls finally got to sing with the guys on "Vive L'Amour", but yeah, Kristin and I had it a little harder than we planned, 'cause we were trying to look on with Tim for the music. Bass part? Sure, no problem! Ri-i-i-ight...
But yeah, my head kinda hurts, and I've got lots to do tomorrow, so I should sleep.
-Laurel
Tonight's fun fact: back when I first knew the twins, I made the wrong guess as to which of them had been in Envirothon. It was Tim; I've been convinced it was Tom. Now I can tell them apart and will know better. Found this out when the three of us talked about Envirothon states tonight--their school was the one we met on the way last year, the group that hadn't even made their poster yet but still got third in the presentations. ...That wasn't Tim, though; he did it the year before I did.
We had another French dinner tonight, this one at a country club. I felt a lot better than the last ones, so that was good. The people were a little farther into the wine this time (or at least that one guy who tried to conduct us was, telling us about how the Italians hate the French and whatever nonsense), but they tipped well. And Bert sang "Michelle" this time with Theresa, they did this cool bit with taking this fedora from each other--I know that sounds weird or confusing or dumb, but it looked really cool.
And we girls finally got to sing with the guys on "Vive L'Amour", but yeah, Kristin and I had it a little harder than we planned, 'cause we were trying to look on with Tim for the music. Bass part? Sure, no problem! Ri-i-i-ight...
But yeah, my head kinda hurts, and I've got lots to do tomorrow, so I should sleep.
-Laurel
11.21.2003
Well, honors presentation went pretty well, really. ::laughs:: Certainly better than John's, poor boy--he put his entire presentation to a song and then left his lyrics in the choir room and had to go without them. Turned into an oral report pretty quickly, it did, and when he mentioned that pears came from Turkey, "somewhere around the Himalayas, I guess", I was of course the one there after class to mop his broken ego off the floor ('cause yeah, the Himalayas? Definitely in India somewhere...).
It's so weird to see John acting like me. He's been doing the same thing I used to do here--taking one bad event and having it mentally make a ripple-effect of doom over his whole life. Like, one bad presentation in honors turned into, mentally, him failing the project and the whole honors class thinking him a total idiot, especially Susan. I used to do that with honors, I'd say something and they'd just kind of stare at me, and I'd totally panic mentally, and after class John would be calming me down--and now I'm fine, I'm the one consoling him. This's like the third week I've ended up doing this.
He got that way about chorus, too; I teased him when Luanne made a comment about the tenors, and I didn't mean it as anything but sic transit gloria--he's so good, and we all know it, that I tease him when he messes something up because it's just so unlike him. Just that usually it's for forgetting his music, not messing up the song itself, so he really took it hard, really kinda lit into me about it later. Which's fine--we're good friends enough, and step on each other's toes emotionally often enough, that there've been times when I've lit into him in the same way. It's just that it's happened so often lately...in a way I'm glad, like I've said, to see him so human. ...In a way it kind of worries me. We've been here about three months. He wasn't like this for two-and-a-quarter of them.
...incidentally, yeah, sic transit gloria means thus passeth glory; I got it from Cyrano.
But all my friends have had so much happen to them lately; I feel so strange to have had November so easy. Well, in the beginning it kind of wasn't, for complicated reasons, but--but everyone seems to have fallen just as I've found my feet. Which's just as well, I'd much rather hear them talk about it and be able to listen. But...everyone, everyone, even my friends who're always happy.
...six o'clock in the mornin', you're the last to hear the warnin'--you're tryin' to throw your arms around the world...
Ah, well. Thanksgiving is coming. I don't get off 'til Tuesday at the earliest; Wednesday if I have choir on Tuesday night.
Mmph, I should get off my lazy bum and do some microbio. I have 'til 6 pm tomorrow to take the test, it turns out, but it would be cool if I learned some definitions and stuff.
-Laurel
It's so weird to see John acting like me. He's been doing the same thing I used to do here--taking one bad event and having it mentally make a ripple-effect of doom over his whole life. Like, one bad presentation in honors turned into, mentally, him failing the project and the whole honors class thinking him a total idiot, especially Susan. I used to do that with honors, I'd say something and they'd just kind of stare at me, and I'd totally panic mentally, and after class John would be calming me down--and now I'm fine, I'm the one consoling him. This's like the third week I've ended up doing this.
He got that way about chorus, too; I teased him when Luanne made a comment about the tenors, and I didn't mean it as anything but sic transit gloria--he's so good, and we all know it, that I tease him when he messes something up because it's just so unlike him. Just that usually it's for forgetting his music, not messing up the song itself, so he really took it hard, really kinda lit into me about it later. Which's fine--we're good friends enough, and step on each other's toes emotionally often enough, that there've been times when I've lit into him in the same way. It's just that it's happened so often lately...in a way I'm glad, like I've said, to see him so human. ...In a way it kind of worries me. We've been here about three months. He wasn't like this for two-and-a-quarter of them.
...incidentally, yeah, sic transit gloria means thus passeth glory; I got it from Cyrano.
But all my friends have had so much happen to them lately; I feel so strange to have had November so easy. Well, in the beginning it kind of wasn't, for complicated reasons, but--but everyone seems to have fallen just as I've found my feet. Which's just as well, I'd much rather hear them talk about it and be able to listen. But...everyone, everyone, even my friends who're always happy.
...six o'clock in the mornin', you're the last to hear the warnin'--you're tryin' to throw your arms around the world...
Ah, well. Thanksgiving is coming. I don't get off 'til Tuesday at the earliest; Wednesday if I have choir on Tuesday night.
Mmph, I should get off my lazy bum and do some microbio. I have 'til 6 pm tomorrow to take the test, it turns out, but it would be cool if I learned some definitions and stuff.
-Laurel
11.19.2003
Mm. Another short posting, for I am tired and have a microbio test tomorrow for which I am in no way prepared. Also a presentation for honors under the same heading.
Have been lounging these nights, playing video games and talking online. I thought that maybe the end of the play would be the end of my procrastination, but in fact this is not so: I'm as bad as ever.
I'm still wiped out completely these days; I wonder if I'll ever wake up rested. ::laughs a bit::
Cheerio. 'night.
-Laurel
Have been lounging these nights, playing video games and talking online. I thought that maybe the end of the play would be the end of my procrastination, but in fact this is not so: I'm as bad as ever.
I'm still wiped out completely these days; I wonder if I'll ever wake up rested. ::laughs a bit::
Cheerio. 'night.
-Laurel
11.17.2003
My inner child is ten years old!
The adult world is pretty irrelevant to me. Whether
I'm off on my bicycle (or pony) exploring, lost
in a good book, or giggling with my best
friend, I live in a world apart, one full of
adventure and wonder and other stuff adults
don't understand.
How Old is Your Inner Child?
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::giggles:: You know, that really kind of fits.
-Laurel
Dude, Zinni's gonna go see Colin and Brad next weekend! :)
Anyway, has been a good weekend. Erik came up last night to see the last performance of the play, which gave me an excellent excuse to skip out on the cast party, which was going to be a massive drinking-drugs-makeout thing. We were only allowed guests if they were significant others, and I didn't feel like pretending anyway. So we hung round instead, which was fun.
And a scheduling update: courses for next semester, planned, are Acting I, Survey of American Lit (or a course in Irish lit, depending on which I can get into), Basic Linguistics, honors seminar, and choir (not chorus this time, like I think I mentioned before). 16 credits, two more than this semester, all things I enjoy. I'm not doing much in the way of requirement-fulfulling, but that's okay, I was ahead on that anyway 'cause of all those transfer credits. :) I decided that Psych Methods/Statistics can wait, 'cause linguistics is only done once a year, and meth/stat's every semester.
Next semester I'm going to be pledging for APO, doing 16 credits, and being in the musical. I am such a ruddy freak all the time. ::laughs helplessly::
But in two weeks I get a week off for Thanksgiving break. :)
I'm trying to research Loren Eiseley for essay class, but unfortunately, Mrs. W may've been wrong, 'cause she told me when I saw her to pick him, and at the moment I'm a little bit bored, and rather wishing I'd asked if I could do something on Steve Martin's written pieces instead. Oh, well, I've barely scratched the surface with Eiseley's writings, so I shouldn't try to switch just yet.
Finding free time now that the play is over, tonight I knocked off and played Mario 64 and drank a smoothie and ate Goldfish crackers. And took a long lovely shower. Unfortunately, I missed the supposedly-mandatory hall meeting for said shower, completely forgot about it (eep!). So we'll see if I catch any heat for that. I doubt it.
I've only been awake for like 12 hours; how ridiculous is that?
-Laurel
Anyway, has been a good weekend. Erik came up last night to see the last performance of the play, which gave me an excellent excuse to skip out on the cast party, which was going to be a massive drinking-drugs-makeout thing. We were only allowed guests if they were significant others, and I didn't feel like pretending anyway. So we hung round instead, which was fun.
And a scheduling update: courses for next semester, planned, are Acting I, Survey of American Lit (or a course in Irish lit, depending on which I can get into), Basic Linguistics, honors seminar, and choir (not chorus this time, like I think I mentioned before). 16 credits, two more than this semester, all things I enjoy. I'm not doing much in the way of requirement-fulfulling, but that's okay, I was ahead on that anyway 'cause of all those transfer credits. :) I decided that Psych Methods/Statistics can wait, 'cause linguistics is only done once a year, and meth/stat's every semester.
Next semester I'm going to be pledging for APO, doing 16 credits, and being in the musical. I am such a ruddy freak all the time. ::laughs helplessly::
But in two weeks I get a week off for Thanksgiving break. :)
I'm trying to research Loren Eiseley for essay class, but unfortunately, Mrs. W may've been wrong, 'cause she told me when I saw her to pick him, and at the moment I'm a little bit bored, and rather wishing I'd asked if I could do something on Steve Martin's written pieces instead. Oh, well, I've barely scratched the surface with Eiseley's writings, so I shouldn't try to switch just yet.
Finding free time now that the play is over, tonight I knocked off and played Mario 64 and drank a smoothie and ate Goldfish crackers. And took a long lovely shower. Unfortunately, I missed the supposedly-mandatory hall meeting for said shower, completely forgot about it (eep!). So we'll see if I catch any heat for that. I doubt it.
I've only been awake for like 12 hours; how ridiculous is that?
-Laurel
11.13.2003
11.12.2003
So, right, I've never seen Rent, so it was just this afternoon, scribbling some long division in microbio instead of paying attention to the last bit of the lesson, that I realized that 525,600 minutes is equivalent to one year.
That's it, only that many minutes in a year? So you haven't even lived a million minutes 'til you're, like, almost two. We should have one-million-minute birthday parties.
...it's Bryan's birthday; goodness knows why I still remember that.
It is also a Math League day. :)
I need to do some homework now.
-Laurel
That's it, only that many minutes in a year? So you haven't even lived a million minutes 'til you're, like, almost two. We should have one-million-minute birthday parties.
...it's Bryan's birthday; goodness knows why I still remember that.
It is also a Math League day. :)
I need to do some homework now.
-Laurel
Okay, so I should have realized it was a bad sign that John hadn't ever told me before that he'd remembered me from PlayFair.
...'kay right, PlayFair is this thing from the first night of college where you got to meet a bunch of people for five seconds, and I don't remember meeting John there, so I've always considered play tryouts several days later to be the first time we met.
So John told me tonight during notes for the play, out of absolutely ruddy nowhere, that he remembered me from PlayFair.
"Really? From what part?"
That was a bad question, right there.
'Cause here was his reply: "Well, I wasn't sure if you were a girl or a guy."
...I am keeping in mind the idea that, last May, before everything started, Glenn told me once that I could pass for a guy. But...it wasn't a good thing for John to say. I had sucked entirely on everything that night I did, and anyway, that's a bad, bad thing to tell me. Terra, when she was in the play, actually flashed me one night back when I was in my old role, flashed me on the premise that, playing a constable, my character must be lesbian anyway. I have gotten far more of this crap than I care to--figure skaters don't get this; why do I get it when I cut my hair last year like one?
And then he says something else later, a bit too complicated for context, but suffice to say, somebody I thought was too nice to say something about me? Said something about me. Not to me, either, but to John.
And other crap, and it just wasn't cool, and John kept trying to help but he kinda just made it worse a lot of the time. Not all the time, but a lot.
::laughs:: Tom was unintentionally sweet, though. I asked him tonight why Tim randomly started talking to me--it's not like I had a problem with it, as I said before, but I was curious.
"It's Tim's Pretty-Girl Syndrome," he told me.
"What?"
"No, seriously. He sees me talking to any pretty girl, and he's like, 'ooh' and he gets jealous."
I paused, taken aback. Kinda looked down.
"I am?"
"Yeah."
Tom is one of those people so naturally friendly that he calls people pretty and he means it but he means nothing by it. ...It was kind. And after John's randomness, very appreciated.
On another note, got iTunes today, 'cause I wanted QuickTime and I like the idea that Lily and I can listen to each other's music via the network. Plus anyone else in the dorm with it.
Right, going to bed or something. I've got homework to finish tomorrow. Of course.
-Laurel
...'kay right, PlayFair is this thing from the first night of college where you got to meet a bunch of people for five seconds, and I don't remember meeting John there, so I've always considered play tryouts several days later to be the first time we met.
So John told me tonight during notes for the play, out of absolutely ruddy nowhere, that he remembered me from PlayFair.
"Really? From what part?"
That was a bad question, right there.
'Cause here was his reply: "Well, I wasn't sure if you were a girl or a guy."
...I am keeping in mind the idea that, last May, before everything started, Glenn told me once that I could pass for a guy. But...it wasn't a good thing for John to say. I had sucked entirely on everything that night I did, and anyway, that's a bad, bad thing to tell me. Terra, when she was in the play, actually flashed me one night back when I was in my old role, flashed me on the premise that, playing a constable, my character must be lesbian anyway. I have gotten far more of this crap than I care to--figure skaters don't get this; why do I get it when I cut my hair last year like one?
And then he says something else later, a bit too complicated for context, but suffice to say, somebody I thought was too nice to say something about me? Said something about me. Not to me, either, but to John.
And other crap, and it just wasn't cool, and John kept trying to help but he kinda just made it worse a lot of the time. Not all the time, but a lot.
::laughs:: Tom was unintentionally sweet, though. I asked him tonight why Tim randomly started talking to me--it's not like I had a problem with it, as I said before, but I was curious.
"It's Tim's Pretty-Girl Syndrome," he told me.
"What?"
"No, seriously. He sees me talking to any pretty girl, and he's like, 'ooh' and he gets jealous."
I paused, taken aback. Kinda looked down.
"I am?"
"Yeah."
Tom is one of those people so naturally friendly that he calls people pretty and he means it but he means nothing by it. ...It was kind. And after John's randomness, very appreciated.
On another note, got iTunes today, 'cause I wanted QuickTime and I like the idea that Lily and I can listen to each other's music via the network. Plus anyone else in the dorm with it.
Right, going to bed or something. I've got homework to finish tomorrow. Of course.
-Laurel
11.11.2003
I'm boring
why is YOUR livejournal annoying?
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::laughs:: That's funny. That sentence is a little like mine. Anyway, it's a much more accurate result than the first response, which was you post those short weird messages no one understands. Not too very many of these're all that short.
There's this part in the play where Marya, this one hyper girly character, goes, "I'm so excited, I don't know what to do!" Laura, who plays her, has been saying this in such a wonderful way that we crack up at the total randomness of the statement and use it ourselves. Said that tonight, 'cause I'm so close to well now that I can eat just about whatever I want and only get a little stomachache now if I get one at all. This meant that I got to have milk with dinner(!), not to mention that I had ice cream for the first time since I got here (amazing but true)--that vanilla tasted darn good, lemme tell you.
::blinks:: Dang it. I do sound like that livejournal thingy. I'm talking about my food, and I am boring.
But I don't care.
Bwah-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaaaaaaa.
-Laurel
11.09.2003
Ichi - "That one with wisdom"
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What would your Japanese name be? (female)
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::smiles:: Cool. Only stay away from the site, unless the whole Dracula thing appeals to you. ::shrugs::
So am feeling pretty good right now after feeling awful for most of the day. Sickness seems to have left as abruptly as it arrived. ...Which's good, 'cause Jaimie told me at tech rehearsal that if it was the thing she'd gotten, I'd be throwing up later today.
So tech rehearsal wasn't as bad as everyone said it would be--got done in a little under four hours, which makes it better than a regular rehearsal. I still felt pretty bad at that point, so I didn't join in the lasagna dinner Becky'd made for everyone--I ate applesauce all day, as one of the patented Easily-Digestible Foods (my breakfast: wheat toast and banana). 16 ounces got me through most of the day.
...I don't like the way most of the theater kids talk about Simon, though, our lead. I've been referring to him as Troubadour-Simon; he's the one who's always playing guitar and singing and having people sing with him. The theater seniors hate him, think he's creepy and awful, and Kara was a perfect snot to him when he came into the green room today, asking him why his sweatshirts're always several sizes too small.
I call John a theater snot, but I mean it in different, more benign ways.
French dinner was much more fun tonight: we knew our words better and our audience was just generally in a good mood, so lots of fun stuff happened. Lots more encores tonight, and we could take our time 'cause play practice was already over. Bet we made a lot more this time. Crud, Betsy and Shaminda could prolly get halfway to Peru on the tips they'll have made--they sang practically the whole night; it looked like they only stopped long enough to catch their breath, Betsy especially.
::blinks:: So I do know how to tell Tim and Tom apart, really I do, but I'm still bewildered as to when Tim decided to start talking to me on a regular basis. 'Cause it was just Tom before, and then all of a sudden over the past couple of nights Tim's been coming over and telling funny stories and stuff. Don't get me wrong, I like it, it just makes me uneasy, makes me wonder how long he's been doing this with me thinking he was Tom, if I have been. It's certainly possible I've been mistaking one for the other; I can tell them apart by whose face is thinner (Tim's), but that's harder to do when there's only one of them there.
And Krystal and I're massively jealous of all the "Dirait'on" people--we'd better take that song on tour so we can do it; I remember 'Nanda and Daf singing it, and Krystal's heard it elsewhere, too, and Tim and Tom and Kristin and Jaimie and John got to sing it, and we want to, too, so there.
What is it with these alliterative friends I have? Tim and Tom, Krystal and Kristin, Jodi and Jaimie and John. Evan and Erin, too, come to think of it, though Erin's to a lesser degree 'cause I don't know her as well 'cause she's always working. Though I don't know who'd pair with Mandie...if you take her full name, it could be Amanda and Anna, but...
...but I'm devoting too much brainpower to this. (That'd be assonance, not alliteration, in any case. ::grin::)
Anyway, I got back from the dinner and was actually hungry(!), so I made myself some pasta-out-of-a-packet (yay Lipton), butter-and-herb or whatever, and ate some of that and a couple of lollipops and had a bunch of water while watching M*A*S*H, which I have not done since I got here, so you'd think I'dve missed it more after almost-three-months' hiatus. 'Course, goodness knows how long it's been since I've watched Whose Line.
It was nice to have M*A*S*H back again, though. :)
'kay, so right, I really should go to bed.
-Laurel
11.08.2003
'kay, sorry for the lack of updatage, but things've been crazy round here as always. At this moment, I feel very much like crap: thought at first I'd gotten some very mild food poisoning from the crab bisque at lunch, but that would have gone away by now, 'cause it's been almost twelve hours, so I'm thinking I've caught one of those random day-or-two sicknesses that everyone's been getting. Not eating made me feel bad; eating has made me feel equally bad, just in different ways. John stuck a hand to my forehead and said I was burning up, but I can't feel it...
::feels forehead::
ooh. maybe I can.
So tonight was the first French dinner for choir and play rehearsal 'til going for midnight; tomorrow (well, all right, today) is tech rehearsal (oh nooooooo) and French Dinner Part Deux.
I feel tired just thinking about that. Perhaps I will go to bed.
-Laurel
::feels forehead::
ooh. maybe I can.
So tonight was the first French dinner for choir and play rehearsal 'til going for midnight; tomorrow (well, all right, today) is tech rehearsal (oh nooooooo) and French Dinner Part Deux.
I feel tired just thinking about that. Perhaps I will go to bed.
-Laurel
11.04.2003
And then there's linguistics, which I just found, and which looks absolutely kick-butt, and which's taught by Vicky, this professor I know from knowing Yung-Mei, and which I really could fit into my schedule, wonder of wonders...but do I really want to take four classes plus honors plus choir? I know I need to stop slacking off, but this is ridiculous...
::sighs:: Bedtime.
-Laurel
::sighs:: Bedtime.
-Laurel
Okay, so the course schedule for next semester is up, so Lily and I've been planning our schedules (registration is this Friday!), and I have hit several major reality checks.
Subtitle: You Can't Do it All, Even if You Want To.
Primary reality check: I have to choose between Acting I and Survey of American Lit. And I feel like a major dork because I know acting is going to win. I am an English major, and I need that goshdarn survey course to get into advanced lit, and I have this awful feeling that it won't be offered until second semester of next year if I don't take it this year...but dang it, I have been waiting all semester to get into Acting I and learn what the heck I am doing onstage and be able to write something in the "acting class experience" blank when I try out for plays. I will do well in it because I've been learning bits via Inspector General, and it will be fun, despite the fact that, since Becky has changed the time, I will be goshdarn hungry for most of it.
Oh, Becky, Becky, Becky, you simply love to complicate my schedule, be it now, be it later. ::can't help laughing::
Honors loves it, too. Should I get the one I want, I can stick with choir, but it will cut me out of chorus completely. Which is okay mostly, since I like choir much better anyway, but I may end up just going Wednesdays instead of Mondays (as a privileged choir child, I'm only required for one of the two). I don't know.
Spanish IV is out of the question, also because of Becky, Becky, Becky. But I'm actually glad of that; I know I should go on with it since I plan to keep studying, but I was looking for a good excuse not to.
And Psych Methods/Statistics is at 9:20 in the morning hi, to cop off 'Nanda and merani. Math that early? They offer that darn course every semester; if I can find a decent lower-level one, I should think about taking that instead, doing meth/stat next year.
Then again, I could take a nap on some of those days, and those that I couldn't, I'd at least have 50 minutes before acting.
Final decisions to be posted next week, on the assumption that my readers care.
-Laurel
Subtitle: You Can't Do it All, Even if You Want To.
Primary reality check: I have to choose between Acting I and Survey of American Lit. And I feel like a major dork because I know acting is going to win. I am an English major, and I need that goshdarn survey course to get into advanced lit, and I have this awful feeling that it won't be offered until second semester of next year if I don't take it this year...but dang it, I have been waiting all semester to get into Acting I and learn what the heck I am doing onstage and be able to write something in the "acting class experience" blank when I try out for plays. I will do well in it because I've been learning bits via Inspector General, and it will be fun, despite the fact that, since Becky has changed the time, I will be goshdarn hungry for most of it.
Oh, Becky, Becky, Becky, you simply love to complicate my schedule, be it now, be it later. ::can't help laughing::
Honors loves it, too. Should I get the one I want, I can stick with choir, but it will cut me out of chorus completely. Which is okay mostly, since I like choir much better anyway, but I may end up just going Wednesdays instead of Mondays (as a privileged choir child, I'm only required for one of the two). I don't know.
Spanish IV is out of the question, also because of Becky, Becky, Becky. But I'm actually glad of that; I know I should go on with it since I plan to keep studying, but I was looking for a good excuse not to.
And Psych Methods/Statistics is at 9:20 in the morning hi, to cop off 'Nanda and merani. Math that early? They offer that darn course every semester; if I can find a decent lower-level one, I should think about taking that instead, doing meth/stat next year.
Then again, I could take a nap on some of those days, and those that I couldn't, I'd at least have 50 minutes before acting.
Final decisions to be posted next week, on the assumption that my readers care.
-Laurel
A little cleanup here at QPQ; I've republished the archives and made it so that you can link to individual posts (for anyone unfamiliar with the proceduer: go to where it says the time and right-click, it's "copy shortcut", do that and then post it into an "a href=" tag).
Okay, so I'm a little excited about the prospect of the third LotR movie. :)
-Laurel
Okay, so I'm a little excited about the prospect of the third LotR movie. :)
-Laurel
11.03.2003
Aughhh I should be getting ready for Spanish instead of posting but I'm not so whatever.
Not that I was celebrating it, but yesterday was a lovely half-birthday, especially if you count that I began November 2nd with Glenn. Lily and I went to my house Saturday (the 1st), went to a hockey game that night with my family, Erik, and Glenn, and then we met Lily's friend Karyn at B-Dubs for chicken wings and trivia, and then we took Glenn home, which was a bit after midnight, so technically the 2nd. I am a hyper little child for caring about that, I know, but I do.
Eighteen and a half, woo.
So on Sunday morning we met Daf and 'Nanda for cafe-stuff, except that Jitters didn't bother to tell us that they didn't take Discover until after we'd ordered $10 worth of stuff, and the card was really all I had, so I owe Ananda an additional two bucks after whatever sponsorship-ness I still have to give her.
Came back here afterwards, had randomness until play practice, when I went and dressed up in my maid costume and paraded out with everyone else. It could be worse, the costume, but I find it odd that the costume people have no problem with my slip sticking out about two inches lower than my skirt, and even odder that they expect me to be able to grovel at Shaminda's feet without letting the whole world know what brand of underwear I've got on, considering how short the darn skirt-part is. The slip does not help me much.
On the other hand, I no longer have to say slut. ::laughs:: So I can just feel like one, right? 'Cause the top is a bit gappy in itself, and how John can liken my outfit to Mrs. Cleaver, I'm not sure. I have never seen the show, and therefore would not know the difference.
Rehearsal was long and I was starving for a lot of it (woo for not having enough dining dollars to get anything but candy!), but it went well-ish.
Food was forgotten after rehearsal, though, when the Random Foyer Singing Group met again. Not that that's our title, but it's troubadour-Simon with his acoustic guitar and whoever else decides to show up, singing Beatles songs in three parts, or whatever else Simon teaches us. Megan and I started out there with him, John came a bit later, and eventually it was Simon and John and me, serenading Lindsay and Chris, who started slow-dancing to our rendition of "This Boy" just to make us laugh (that's our best song).
I felt really appreciated last night: Simon said that he'd never sung with as good a pair as John and me (and I don't know how much singing he's done, but that was awesome, even though the real talent is John's)...and Lindsay recounted to Chris and Simon the story of me battling Luanne in choir on "Il Est Bel"...and later on, when John and I were talking as we came back, Tom came up to me and got all excited 'cause I'm joining APO, and said that even though he probably couldn't, he'd wanted to be my big for it (that's the mentor-person; you have to have one).
I just...it was so cool. What a night that was, even though it wasn't all the 2nd.
So now I'm gonna be late to Spanish again (surprise? I think not), and I don't know when I'm going to get the rest of my essay homework done, but I'm going to have to try.
Cheerio.
-Laurel
Not that I was celebrating it, but yesterday was a lovely half-birthday, especially if you count that I began November 2nd with Glenn. Lily and I went to my house Saturday (the 1st), went to a hockey game that night with my family, Erik, and Glenn, and then we met Lily's friend Karyn at B-Dubs for chicken wings and trivia, and then we took Glenn home, which was a bit after midnight, so technically the 2nd. I am a hyper little child for caring about that, I know, but I do.
Eighteen and a half, woo.
So on Sunday morning we met Daf and 'Nanda for cafe-stuff, except that Jitters didn't bother to tell us that they didn't take Discover until after we'd ordered $10 worth of stuff, and the card was really all I had, so I owe Ananda an additional two bucks after whatever sponsorship-ness I still have to give her.
Came back here afterwards, had randomness until play practice, when I went and dressed up in my maid costume and paraded out with everyone else. It could be worse, the costume, but I find it odd that the costume people have no problem with my slip sticking out about two inches lower than my skirt, and even odder that they expect me to be able to grovel at Shaminda's feet without letting the whole world know what brand of underwear I've got on, considering how short the darn skirt-part is. The slip does not help me much.
On the other hand, I no longer have to say slut. ::laughs:: So I can just feel like one, right? 'Cause the top is a bit gappy in itself, and how John can liken my outfit to Mrs. Cleaver, I'm not sure. I have never seen the show, and therefore would not know the difference.
Rehearsal was long and I was starving for a lot of it (woo for not having enough dining dollars to get anything but candy!), but it went well-ish.
Food was forgotten after rehearsal, though, when the Random Foyer Singing Group met again. Not that that's our title, but it's troubadour-Simon with his acoustic guitar and whoever else decides to show up, singing Beatles songs in three parts, or whatever else Simon teaches us. Megan and I started out there with him, John came a bit later, and eventually it was Simon and John and me, serenading Lindsay and Chris, who started slow-dancing to our rendition of "This Boy" just to make us laugh (that's our best song).
I felt really appreciated last night: Simon said that he'd never sung with as good a pair as John and me (and I don't know how much singing he's done, but that was awesome, even though the real talent is John's)...and Lindsay recounted to Chris and Simon the story of me battling Luanne in choir on "Il Est Bel"...and later on, when John and I were talking as we came back, Tom came up to me and got all excited 'cause I'm joining APO, and said that even though he probably couldn't, he'd wanted to be my big for it (that's the mentor-person; you have to have one).
I just...it was so cool. What a night that was, even though it wasn't all the 2nd.
So now I'm gonna be late to Spanish again (surprise? I think not), and I don't know when I'm going to get the rest of my essay homework done, but I'm going to have to try.
Cheerio.
-Laurel
10.29.2003
Well, I never thought I would inspire hope in someone by the way I say the word slut.
...I've been given one of Terra's old lines, now that she's out of the play, and there's really no way around it; I have to call Ivanna (Vanessa's character) a slut, and those of you familiar with my lexicon will note that I don't really say that out loud, at least not to my memory. But, as I don't have much choice, and there are worse things I could say, I've been spitting it out to the best of my ability.
Which apparently has not gone unnoticed by John. He and I were sitting backstage tonight, waiting for our respective cues, and John was impatiently checking his watch because he wanted to get back to his room and watch 24, which he loves with a burning fiery passion and which he was taping because we knew we had rehearsal.
I have never known John to be impatient during rehearsal, but then, he's never had much of anything better to do. So John, who has been in a massive number of plays and who takes it very seriously most of the time (except when we're townspeople and he's busy feeding us Mike & Ikes or poking us or talking to Jared and Chris), went off on a quiet tirade to me about how the seniors don't focus, how nobody here is really serious, how we could have been done by now had the seniors not been screwing so much up that they had to start over so many times.
It's not all the seniors' fault, though. No one enforces discipline, and there are times when I think Becky makes it worse. I like theater very much, but it bothers me less than John because this's the atmosphere I'm used to. I hated Annie, where times were thin if you were only an eighth-grade bit part, bossed around by power-tripping ninth-graders; I hated DeF never being satisfied, making us do things over when we had them perfectly just to prove it wasn't a fluke. I loved Arsenic, the bonding we did and the fact that, as it was comedy, we never took ourselves too seriously. It's true that Annie's quality was of a higher caliber than Arsenic, even for a junior high show, and it's true that a lot of that was due to leads in Arsenic that wouldn't put in the time or didn't have the basic skill. But with Arsenic, we were scraping the bottom for people to fill the roles; we had lower expectations. This's college, and I can see why John is frustrated. If he got better in high school, I can see what would set him off.
He said something, sitting there, that stopped me short. "In you," he said, in the voice and wording he uses when he's being profound, "I see traces of hope."
"Tell me what you mean," I said.
"You say things and they sound real. The line you have, when you say slut, it sounds like you really mean it, it's real. You take things seriously. And the way when you had the other line, the one Mandie has now, I liked how you said it better than how it's being said now."
"I hated how I said it," I told him, laughing.
Still, stupidly enough, it meant so much to hear him say both things. I thought to myself at first that he was saying this because I am his friend, but come to think of it, he's been saying it longer than that. We met at a play tryout, the one for Stories to be Told, and then we got talking at the honors reception--and he told me about how I'd said my lines, said later, in a voice that's echoed in my head from time to time ever since, I want to see you act.
Oddly enough, this has also begun to reconcile to me the idea that he, like Jaimie, will probably leave, probably transfer to a more theater-oriented school. That is, I think, what a lot of the really good people do. Shaminda is local, grew up around here, I think, so he hasn't. (He's also, like, 27, so I don't know what the heck is up.)
John takes separation a lot better than I do; I think he sees friends a little like Inspector General, our play: everyone has a part, and some parts are bigger than others, but they all have the same basic concept--you're on the stage, you play your part, you're off the stage, and when you're off the stage, you're out of sight. Some people get to come back onstage before the end; others don't.
I can't see it that way--I want it like ensemble cast, like when John and Jaimie and the others did Stories to be Told: sometimes people are part of the immediate story and sometimes they're not, but everyone's there onstage, or just slightly offstage, out of the spotlight but still visible to me, the audience; still playing their part and making a noticeable difference. Right now I'm seeing a lot of John's stories, Lily's stories, 'cause that's where we are in this script that I don't get to read, I only get to see acted out. But Daf's out there, too, and Erik, and Glenn--when I look just offstage, I can see them there, sometimes they speak together, sometimes they're silent, but they're watching, too.
...I guess that's what Glenn tried to tell me the one afternoon, what he meant in his meandering story about people you run into at the store, the day he found out how I always felt tugged by both sets of friends, like how when I paid attention to the one, I felt like I was neglecting the other.
...Truth be told, my set of home friends is still my favorite overall. But I'm finding more to like about my school friends. It's made my friendship easier with John, in a way, to know that I'm not bound to him anymore. He is still such a huge part of my campus life that it would be a major change if suddenly something changed and I didn't see him anymore, but he's no longer my only close friend, though (outside of Lily) he is my closest here. I have made friends in my own right--Mandie, Tom, and Krystal, for one thing, and they're not just people to wave at, like so many of my original friends were. I am beginning to believe John when he tells me that the honors-class "foodies" are starting to like me.
I am beginning to want to stay here, which in all truth has not happened before the past couple of weeks.
This is and has been a long and slightly overdramatic ramble, but I am in a reverie mood. I have a massive amount of essay-class homework to do, which is just as well, seeing as there are three boys and my cousin sitting on my bed playing MarioKart, and an additional boy in a chair nearby, so it wasn't like I was going to get to sleep anyway. Which is fine; usually I'm looking for excuses to stay up.
I have so many loose ends to tie up, all the time--so many things that I have to do that I forget. I have a lab due on Thursday, things to do for choir, a livejournal entry to write, two FYE events to attend for microbio, a rummage sale to help organize, gas to get, another trip to the post office to make with Jaimie, Erik to call, Glenn to try to get a hold of, all the rest of my friends to keep up with, more laundry to do, play practice, and goodness knows what else that I'm forgetting--and my own standards and other standards to be living up to while I get those things done. ...Every time I get something done that's been nagging at me, I think, that's one loose end tied up, but more of them loosen all the time. I'm amazed I'm not more exhausted. I'm more amazed that I'm not sick.
Maybe that makes it okay that I'm so bipolar, that I spaz even easier than I did at home, that I'm more easily frustrated with myself. It was nice to be the comforter for once tonight, to hear John angry--he's usually so massively happy, and that's great, but it's nice to see him human, to not wish I could be like him and be frustrated because I'm not. Tonight I saw a lot I haven't before. We talked about some other things, too, not just the play...
...right now I'm calm, goodness knows how. It was nice that I got dinner after all. It was nice that twice I got invited by Krystal and Tom to come and sit with them--once at lunch, once at dinner. It was nice that Mandie was happier than I've seen her in a long time, joining in the random poking and tweaking and rubbing that goes on in our cast. It was fun as anything that we played my two favorite acting games during rehearsal (vive Chichi-Chacha and Big Bootie). It was nice that we didn't have microbio, and it was nice to wander the windy streets of the next town over with Jaimie, looking for the post office and laughing at ourselves trying to cross the streets.
It's been a good day. And I suppose I could be nailing myself for tomorrow by not doing my homework yet, but I think in the end that I'd rather savor my now. So yeah.
-Laurel
...I've been given one of Terra's old lines, now that she's out of the play, and there's really no way around it; I have to call Ivanna (Vanessa's character) a slut, and those of you familiar with my lexicon will note that I don't really say that out loud, at least not to my memory. But, as I don't have much choice, and there are worse things I could say, I've been spitting it out to the best of my ability.
Which apparently has not gone unnoticed by John. He and I were sitting backstage tonight, waiting for our respective cues, and John was impatiently checking his watch because he wanted to get back to his room and watch 24, which he loves with a burning fiery passion and which he was taping because we knew we had rehearsal.
I have never known John to be impatient during rehearsal, but then, he's never had much of anything better to do. So John, who has been in a massive number of plays and who takes it very seriously most of the time (except when we're townspeople and he's busy feeding us Mike & Ikes or poking us or talking to Jared and Chris), went off on a quiet tirade to me about how the seniors don't focus, how nobody here is really serious, how we could have been done by now had the seniors not been screwing so much up that they had to start over so many times.
It's not all the seniors' fault, though. No one enforces discipline, and there are times when I think Becky makes it worse. I like theater very much, but it bothers me less than John because this's the atmosphere I'm used to. I hated Annie, where times were thin if you were only an eighth-grade bit part, bossed around by power-tripping ninth-graders; I hated DeF never being satisfied, making us do things over when we had them perfectly just to prove it wasn't a fluke. I loved Arsenic, the bonding we did and the fact that, as it was comedy, we never took ourselves too seriously. It's true that Annie's quality was of a higher caliber than Arsenic, even for a junior high show, and it's true that a lot of that was due to leads in Arsenic that wouldn't put in the time or didn't have the basic skill. But with Arsenic, we were scraping the bottom for people to fill the roles; we had lower expectations. This's college, and I can see why John is frustrated. If he got better in high school, I can see what would set him off.
He said something, sitting there, that stopped me short. "In you," he said, in the voice and wording he uses when he's being profound, "I see traces of hope."
"Tell me what you mean," I said.
"You say things and they sound real. The line you have, when you say slut, it sounds like you really mean it, it's real. You take things seriously. And the way when you had the other line, the one Mandie has now, I liked how you said it better than how it's being said now."
"I hated how I said it," I told him, laughing.
Still, stupidly enough, it meant so much to hear him say both things. I thought to myself at first that he was saying this because I am his friend, but come to think of it, he's been saying it longer than that. We met at a play tryout, the one for Stories to be Told, and then we got talking at the honors reception--and he told me about how I'd said my lines, said later, in a voice that's echoed in my head from time to time ever since, I want to see you act.
Oddly enough, this has also begun to reconcile to me the idea that he, like Jaimie, will probably leave, probably transfer to a more theater-oriented school. That is, I think, what a lot of the really good people do. Shaminda is local, grew up around here, I think, so he hasn't. (He's also, like, 27, so I don't know what the heck is up.)
John takes separation a lot better than I do; I think he sees friends a little like Inspector General, our play: everyone has a part, and some parts are bigger than others, but they all have the same basic concept--you're on the stage, you play your part, you're off the stage, and when you're off the stage, you're out of sight. Some people get to come back onstage before the end; others don't.
I can't see it that way--I want it like ensemble cast, like when John and Jaimie and the others did Stories to be Told: sometimes people are part of the immediate story and sometimes they're not, but everyone's there onstage, or just slightly offstage, out of the spotlight but still visible to me, the audience; still playing their part and making a noticeable difference. Right now I'm seeing a lot of John's stories, Lily's stories, 'cause that's where we are in this script that I don't get to read, I only get to see acted out. But Daf's out there, too, and Erik, and Glenn--when I look just offstage, I can see them there, sometimes they speak together, sometimes they're silent, but they're watching, too.
...I guess that's what Glenn tried to tell me the one afternoon, what he meant in his meandering story about people you run into at the store, the day he found out how I always felt tugged by both sets of friends, like how when I paid attention to the one, I felt like I was neglecting the other.
...Truth be told, my set of home friends is still my favorite overall. But I'm finding more to like about my school friends. It's made my friendship easier with John, in a way, to know that I'm not bound to him anymore. He is still such a huge part of my campus life that it would be a major change if suddenly something changed and I didn't see him anymore, but he's no longer my only close friend, though (outside of Lily) he is my closest here. I have made friends in my own right--Mandie, Tom, and Krystal, for one thing, and they're not just people to wave at, like so many of my original friends were. I am beginning to believe John when he tells me that the honors-class "foodies" are starting to like me.
I am beginning to want to stay here, which in all truth has not happened before the past couple of weeks.
This is and has been a long and slightly overdramatic ramble, but I am in a reverie mood. I have a massive amount of essay-class homework to do, which is just as well, seeing as there are three boys and my cousin sitting on my bed playing MarioKart, and an additional boy in a chair nearby, so it wasn't like I was going to get to sleep anyway. Which is fine; usually I'm looking for excuses to stay up.
I have so many loose ends to tie up, all the time--so many things that I have to do that I forget. I have a lab due on Thursday, things to do for choir, a livejournal entry to write, two FYE events to attend for microbio, a rummage sale to help organize, gas to get, another trip to the post office to make with Jaimie, Erik to call, Glenn to try to get a hold of, all the rest of my friends to keep up with, more laundry to do, play practice, and goodness knows what else that I'm forgetting--and my own standards and other standards to be living up to while I get those things done. ...Every time I get something done that's been nagging at me, I think, that's one loose end tied up, but more of them loosen all the time. I'm amazed I'm not more exhausted. I'm more amazed that I'm not sick.
Maybe that makes it okay that I'm so bipolar, that I spaz even easier than I did at home, that I'm more easily frustrated with myself. It was nice to be the comforter for once tonight, to hear John angry--he's usually so massively happy, and that's great, but it's nice to see him human, to not wish I could be like him and be frustrated because I'm not. Tonight I saw a lot I haven't before. We talked about some other things, too, not just the play...
...right now I'm calm, goodness knows how. It was nice that I got dinner after all. It was nice that twice I got invited by Krystal and Tom to come and sit with them--once at lunch, once at dinner. It was nice that Mandie was happier than I've seen her in a long time, joining in the random poking and tweaking and rubbing that goes on in our cast. It was fun as anything that we played my two favorite acting games during rehearsal (vive Chichi-Chacha and Big Bootie). It was nice that we didn't have microbio, and it was nice to wander the windy streets of the next town over with Jaimie, looking for the post office and laughing at ourselves trying to cross the streets.
It's been a good day. And I suppose I could be nailing myself for tomorrow by not doing my homework yet, but I think in the end that I'd rather savor my now. So yeah.
-Laurel
10.28.2003
Lindsay was at play practice last night, the same as ever. Everyone acted like nothing had happened, so I did, too. 'Course, it happens often enough that for everyone else, it is fairly normal.
Had essay class yesterday. It doesn't look easy. But it does look good. ::exhales:: It makes me feel better about being an English major, anyway; everything we've done so far feels right.
Much more some other time; right now I've got laundry to get into the dryer and a trip into town to make.
-Laurel
Had essay class yesterday. It doesn't look easy. But it does look good. ::exhales:: It makes me feel better about being an English major, anyway; everything we've done so far feels right.
Much more some other time; right now I've got laundry to get into the dryer and a trip into town to make.
-Laurel
10.27.2003
A few random neural findings, 'cause it's late and I need to go to bed so I can get up tomorrow and do my homework, absolutely none of which got done this weekend.
...Lindsay passed out tonight. Apparently it happens every so often, her friends all know what to do, but apparently it's never happened at play practice, 'cause Lindsay's a senior and Becky still wasn't aware of this, from what I can tell. Most of my friends were gone--I was still there 'cause my maid spot keeps me at practice--I was sitting on the floor in front of the first row of audience chairs facing the stage, reading something for my essay class ('cause it turns out I'm still in; more on that later), when I heard a really loud clunk behind me, several rows up. I looked up and couldn't see anything. Becky got up from her seat higher up, with what I believe was a quiet curse, her hand stretched out. I thought something had been dropped. Only when people started coming over did I realize what had happened.
Halley and Chris checked to see that she was breathing; she was. We cleared out the chairs in the area and elevated her feet so the blood could go to her head. They asked for wet paper towels, cold, and I ran to get them. While I did that, Andrew called 911. They talked to her as they wiped her down, but she didn't come around, hadn't by the time I went into the hall to ask the other townspeople to stay outside, 'cause they were coming back from break, Becky'd told me to go--so I ended up pointing security and the paramedic in while I was out there.
It was really kind of creepy to see her lying there, eyes closed--she didn't look asleep, but she had too much circulation to look dead, so I don't know...
They don't know what causes it. Thick blood and weak heart is their latest guess (and she's so tall, that can't help much...and maybe that's part of why she's so pale). Jeesh, it'd be like being narcoleptic, you have to just go on living, never knowing when you'll get set off.
So, on a completely different note, today was pasta-making for honors, and that was great fun, made the dough with the eggs and flour, rolled it out and cut it with the pasta-roller thing (we were bad at the part, most of us), hung the strands and let them dry. Susan and Rob (that's her husband) made these wonderful oil-and-garlic and pesto sauces, we had some of each kind with arulla salad, or whatever the lettuce's called, on top, toasted pine nuts and stuff...
...holy cow. I wish I could do that. This's Susan's house; I'll never duplicate that in reality, will I? ...will I?
As I said, I got into essay, 'cause turns out the prof thought the class was Tuesday/Thursday until about an hour before she had to go and teach it for the first time, so yeah, I'm in.
Which means I have to write an essay for it by tomorrow. Crap.
Am all bipolar and I'm so sick of it. Gah.
-Laurel
...Lindsay passed out tonight. Apparently it happens every so often, her friends all know what to do, but apparently it's never happened at play practice, 'cause Lindsay's a senior and Becky still wasn't aware of this, from what I can tell. Most of my friends were gone--I was still there 'cause my maid spot keeps me at practice--I was sitting on the floor in front of the first row of audience chairs facing the stage, reading something for my essay class ('cause it turns out I'm still in; more on that later), when I heard a really loud clunk behind me, several rows up. I looked up and couldn't see anything. Becky got up from her seat higher up, with what I believe was a quiet curse, her hand stretched out. I thought something had been dropped. Only when people started coming over did I realize what had happened.
Halley and Chris checked to see that she was breathing; she was. We cleared out the chairs in the area and elevated her feet so the blood could go to her head. They asked for wet paper towels, cold, and I ran to get them. While I did that, Andrew called 911. They talked to her as they wiped her down, but she didn't come around, hadn't by the time I went into the hall to ask the other townspeople to stay outside, 'cause they were coming back from break, Becky'd told me to go--so I ended up pointing security and the paramedic in while I was out there.
It was really kind of creepy to see her lying there, eyes closed--she didn't look asleep, but she had too much circulation to look dead, so I don't know...
They don't know what causes it. Thick blood and weak heart is their latest guess (and she's so tall, that can't help much...and maybe that's part of why she's so pale). Jeesh, it'd be like being narcoleptic, you have to just go on living, never knowing when you'll get set off.
So, on a completely different note, today was pasta-making for honors, and that was great fun, made the dough with the eggs and flour, rolled it out and cut it with the pasta-roller thing (we were bad at the part, most of us), hung the strands and let them dry. Susan and Rob (that's her husband) made these wonderful oil-and-garlic and pesto sauces, we had some of each kind with arulla salad, or whatever the lettuce's called, on top, toasted pine nuts and stuff...
...holy cow. I wish I could do that. This's Susan's house; I'll never duplicate that in reality, will I? ...will I?
As I said, I got into essay, 'cause turns out the prof thought the class was Tuesday/Thursday until about an hour before she had to go and teach it for the first time, so yeah, I'm in.
Which means I have to write an essay for it by tomorrow. Crap.
Am all bipolar and I'm so sick of it. Gah.
-Laurel
10.24.2003
'kay, here's news that is both wonderfully good and terribly, horribly bad:
My essay class, as it turns out, is on Mondays and Wednesdays. Not Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is excellent inasmuch as I can eat dinner every night now, but it sucks inasmuch as I found this out today, meaning I've missed the past two classes and this means I could potentially be dropped from the class by the professor. Right, somebody's definitely leaving e-mail and voice mail apologies soon.
Here is some news that is spectacularly good but mildly concerning:
I have been promoted in the play, thanks to Lily, who was offered the part but took a lesser one (barmaid) to save herself some evening time. I am now Mushka, the housemaid, and not only do I get Lily's old lines, but I get a massive amount of stage time. This is mildly concerning in the sense that now I am at rehearsal every night from 7-11, without fail, except when I have class (like chorus). But in every other way, it is wonderful. I take back everything I ever said the first night when I found out how crappy my other-constable role was.
I feel bad that I got a part because somebody had mono. But I have Lily to thank more for my spike in stage time, and I will try not to complain, so if I start complaining at having to be there all the time, she and/or John can whap me.
Though complaints about general stress, if they do not mention the play specifically, should at least be tolerated. *g*
Simon (one of the play's most important characters) and John and I sang Beatles songs tonight, accompanied by Simon's guitar. It was fun.
And John and I played DDR briefly; that was fun, too. :)
So I am busy as all get out again, just in different ways than I expected. But this way I like a little better than class from 1:20-8:30.
Crap. Now I'm gonna have to revise and print out my wall-schedule again! ::laughs:: Nah, scrap it, if no one knows where I am, they can find out from my away messages.
Time for bed. I have to get up early tomorrow and do coloring for microbio.
-Laurel
My essay class, as it turns out, is on Mondays and Wednesdays. Not Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is excellent inasmuch as I can eat dinner every night now, but it sucks inasmuch as I found this out today, meaning I've missed the past two classes and this means I could potentially be dropped from the class by the professor. Right, somebody's definitely leaving e-mail and voice mail apologies soon.
Here is some news that is spectacularly good but mildly concerning:
I have been promoted in the play, thanks to Lily, who was offered the part but took a lesser one (barmaid) to save herself some evening time. I am now Mushka, the housemaid, and not only do I get Lily's old lines, but I get a massive amount of stage time. This is mildly concerning in the sense that now I am at rehearsal every night from 7-11, without fail, except when I have class (like chorus). But in every other way, it is wonderful. I take back everything I ever said the first night when I found out how crappy my other-constable role was.
I feel bad that I got a part because somebody had mono. But I have Lily to thank more for my spike in stage time, and I will try not to complain, so if I start complaining at having to be there all the time, she and/or John can whap me.
Though complaints about general stress, if they do not mention the play specifically, should at least be tolerated. *g*
Simon (one of the play's most important characters) and John and I sang Beatles songs tonight, accompanied by Simon's guitar. It was fun.
And John and I played DDR briefly; that was fun, too. :)
So I am busy as all get out again, just in different ways than I expected. But this way I like a little better than class from 1:20-8:30.
Crap. Now I'm gonna have to revise and print out my wall-schedule again! ::laughs:: Nah, scrap it, if no one knows where I am, they can find out from my away messages.
Time for bed. I have to get up early tomorrow and do coloring for microbio.
-Laurel