Vive.

I realize that it has political ties, but today I offer Barack Obama's brilliant speech to the Democratic National Convention as my good-news story.

Because certainly it is good news to hear passages like this at one of the most political events this year, someplace you'd expect solely one side:

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states and have gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

I started the good-news file for just such moments as this: people putting aside the negative and finding something to cheer about. And let me tell you, I never expected a political party to give me one of my stories.

Democrat or Republican or independent or anarchist or anything in between, please, do me a favor, read this speech from beginning to end. It only took me five or seven minutes. It is never boring.

...Which is not, incidentally, to say that the whole political decision process has gotten much the easier for me. I still would love to see statistics, ones as little slanted as possible. Everything is still too much talk and not enough proof, and I realize that even with statistics, there is little proof to be had. But I need to do some research before I decide what it is I really think is going on with both parties.

And in the end, I don't plan to say who I voted for. They put voters in a box with a black curtain for a reason. (Not that this will work with absentee ballot, since I am not registered to vote in the same county that I go to school, but all the same...)

That's my thought process for right now. Other musings to be given another time.

August is almost here.

-Laurel

"Half improvised and half compromised..."

Well, apparently nothing good happened on earth today, or so you'd judge from all the newspapers I had to comb to find even this story, which Kristin says may not even be fully positive, since some people think the Egyptian government did pay ransom:

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,10259283%255E1702,00.html

But the Relay for Life was pretty nice on Friday. There was a lot of hope there, and that was great to see. I conked out pretty early--hadn't been getting enough sleep--but I saw a lot of people walk who normally hate going anywhere because they have leg or breathing difficulties, and I saw a lot of money freely given for a good cause, and a lot of support by businesses, and thank goodness the school had the bathrooms open so we didn't have to use portable toilets. It's the simple things.

The luminaries--there were so many. It was my second time seeing them, so it wasn't quite as magical as last time--and seeing a few of them catch fire over the course of the night was kind of creepy. But the track went pretty quiet, especially when the band took breaks, and that was nice. I found my uncle's luminary (he died over the school year; it's my mom's side of the family that joined the Relay, and for him)--and it burned perfectly all through the night and into the morning, no problems at all.

And I got to look through a telescope at the moon for what I think is the first time. It was very cool--sort of, well, like a picture in a science book.

And our team made a heck of a lot of money selling off my Aunt Jan's culinary brilliance (this is no exaggeration when applied to her pies, believe me), though a fair percentage was donation from people who told us to keep the change (and such change it was, sometimes $8 at a time...).

Erik's grad party was also fun, and not really mosquitoey at all, as I'd feared it might be. The food was great, the Fluxx was fun, the fireworks were amusing, and sitting around the fire talking was probably best of all.

Tonight my mom and I made dinner Colin-Mochrie-style: there's a recipe on his website (which I was poking randomly round on last night) for chili-rubbed chicken with roasted-garlic sauce, and tonight that's what we made, with a zucchini casserole thing. Except that we didn't have enough ingredients in some cases, and messed with the ingredient amounts when we did, so that the whole thing came out like Ben Franklin described revolutions in 1776--half improvised and half compromised. But it tasted pretty good.

Work's been a little better than usual. But I've gone down the tubes in DDR. I don't know what the deal is.

Oh, and anyone with information about the extended disappearance of my copies of Screwtape Letters and Tender at the Bone will please notify me immediately. ::frowns::

Back to school in 26 days. Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.

-Laurel

::a la Will Smith:: Old and busted -> new hotness!

I'm assuming this story is, overall, positive, though I admit I didn't read more than a page or two:

http://www.time.com/time/globalbusiness/article/0,9171,1101040726-665056,00.html

In other good news, I have been testing alternative browsers to Internet Explorer (which's familiar and mostly fine, but has a few very annoying quirks, especially ones related to my firewall) and Netscape (how did that browser become so popular? Is it from the earlier versions, compared to earlier versions of IE?).

I pitted Firefox, a relatively-new Mozilla creation, against Opera, which I've been hearing a lot about: I tested them on regular sites, sites I've been having problems with, and tested the whole file-downloading process. Firefox's overall win is clear. Opera warns you that unregistered free versions will have reminder banners (and I loathe constantly being asked to register, no matter how subtly), it has way more buttons than any computer-literate person should need (and it will only confuse the people who aren't), and it didn't solve the problems I've been having about loading certain websites behind the firewall.

Firefox, on the other hand, is brilliant. Simple layout, much like IE, very easy to get rid of extraneous buttons, built-in popup blocker that not only doesn't block Outlook mail windows, as some do, but which realizes that sometimes it might block something you need and makes it easy to get that site on a safe-list. Completely solves the firewall problem: Outlook, Gmail, and 'Nanda's blog, all trouble sites on IE, loaded without so much as a twitch--and Outlook actually loads faster on Firefox-with-firewall-on than IE with it off. And none of that messing-with-the-cookie-settings crap on Gmail, either.

The only thing that annoyed me was instead of "Save Target As", it took me a minute to figure out that they were displaying the command as "Save Link As", which confused me, 'cause there're a bunch of link commands on that right-click anyway. But that's the most forceful argument I can muster. Other than that, I think I'm in love.

If you do download it, a cool thing to d/l for it, once you have it installed, is an extension (you can get to the menu of available ones through the "Tools" menu) called "IE View", which will add "Open Link Target in IE" to your right-click options. So any page that doesn't work under Firefox, you can get in IE that easily.

More on the Relay for Life, Erik's grad party, and other cool things later.

-Laurel

Thought Patterns

Ha, an ally in the positive-news media (the article listed counts as tonight's story)!
www.tulareadvanceregister.com/news/stories/20040717/localnews/865656.html
 
This weekend has been good--not least of which because it was full when I expected it to be empty.
 
Yesterday we went down to the lake near my uncle's house to use two of his hydrobikes--think bicycles mounted on pontoons and a propellor you can raise and lower, powered by your pumping. Get them out of the seaweed, and they are so cool. But so painful are the bike seats after forty minutes of riding around. :(
 
And today was watching little children for church (better than I expected, but I will enjoy having next week off: I do not keep sane enough Saturday-night hours to really enjoy getting up early on Sunday mornings, plus I'm just not liking it as much as I once did, and if I don't cut back...but next week I have off, so it should be all right) and I, Robot with the immediate family, which was just goshdarn cool. I have not read the original novel, and when I do, it will probably be so different that I will be glad I saw the movie first. But dang. I would see that again, and you longtime friends know what it takes for me to say that.
 
Got a call today from Erik, who is stuck in Tennessee and pleased as anything about it. Coming back from his mission trip with his church, the plane got way overbooked and I don't even know how many of them (perhaps all) got cut out of the flight--and given a free ticket for the next day to anywhere in the US, free hotel lodging for the night, and $200 each in cash. He called me via cell phone from the Nashville Mall, where he was, quote, about to empty his wallet. ::giggles:: He considers it payback for the good deeds he's done all week.
 
My one rant for the entry, though: yesterday before we went on the lake, Mom and my brother and I went to the sub shop to grab lunch, and since it took forever to make the subs, we were hanging around looking at the shop. There was this coin-operated sticker machine, and they were all these, like, metallic, sparkly-edged girl-power stickers.
 
Here's my problem with these things: they're reverse sexist. Okay, right, here I go being a whiner again, but how fast would every feminist in America jump on the butt of any sticker series involving the phrase "girls are stupid--throw rocks at them"? Sexist, abusive, condoning domestic violence, they'd say. But if girls say it about boys, no harm done, it's just play? ...Why? 'Cause the girls involved know the difference? That's the excuse it looks to me like they're hiding behind, that a girl saying it somehow gets the joke, and no harm done. But that argument wouldn't hold if it were anti-girl. No one would let that fly, however likely or unlikely.
 
And that wasn't the only such sticker; there were a dozen variations on the theme. I no more enjoy being portrayed a sassy brat than I do a weak little girl, thankyouverymuch. If you want feminist profundity, read Marge Piercy's poetry--but be fair: read "Ken Doll", too, one teenage boy's written answer to her poem "Barbie Doll".
 
< /cranky interlude>
 
-Laurel 

(Dance) to the second power...

Tonight's/this morning's positive story:
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/198/ascribe/_Iraqi_Child_Undergoes_Life_Sa:.shtml
 
Okay, yeah, I'm trying not to be critical here, but Blogger's new interface is nettling me, too.
 
Anyway, the past few days have been good. Have been playing a lot of old-school-type Nintendo games with my brother, and he has been very funny and pretty nice. Have made lemon squares, which turned out fairly well.
 
Got to talk tonight to Sarah from church, who is in China until mid-August to teach. She's been there a week and a half and got online at an internet cafe (as there's a twelve-hour difference between us, it was nearly 1 pm for her). She's started teaching (with the help of an interpreter) and is doing pretty well. Her class is sorted by skill level, not age, so she's got between nine- and thirteen-year-olds. The little girls, she says, cling onto her. Today she taught them all to square-dance.
 
I never pictured Sarah as someone who'd even go on a monthlong China trip, let alone enjoy it, but so far she seems to be adapting much better than I ever did to Peru, I who couldn't wait to get there, and then couldn't wait to get out.
 
Still sort of baffled on that account. You'd think, after two months since the first day of the trip, I'dve been able to process the whole thing. Nope.
 
Five weeks and a day until I'm back at school.
 
-Laurel

Down-and-dirty kitchen-slaving (ha!).

Made what is probably my first vegetable-intensive cooking project for dinner tonight: latkes. Three potatoes, half an onion, and half a carrot. Peeled them all, shredded them all. So to speak: "peeling" was a very relative term for the potatoes: I can't seem to do it right, so I kind of scraped them with the vegetable peeler and the knife until I just didn't care anymore. And "shredded" was a very relative term for the onion: they kind of don't shred, at least not via vegetable grater. It's probably that darn labyrinthian cell structure. ::giggles:: Instead, they make this, like, sticky mound of onion debris. And why've I been saying "they", if I only meant one onion?

And there was garlic powder and other spices, and some egg and flour and baking powder, and I fried them up and served them. They went over well. And they were rather good, though I wish I'd used just a little less oil and made it a little hotter.

I thought about making hot dogs, too, but that seemed sort of funny and wrong somehow when I realized I would have been pairing them with an essentially Jewish food. Plus, we only had white hots, and I don't like 'em. ...We had precooked shrimp and melted butter instead.

And then I swam with my brother and dad, and then sat around reading Ruth Reichl and eating crackers.

I am such a foodie. I need so much help. ::giggles again::

Keepin' it simple for tonight's positive story.
http://www.bladeempire.com/web/isite.dll?1089742158964

Okay, that's enough of that.

-Laurel

Hmph, what was that about not going after the messenger?

Heard a newsman just the other day
He said a war was comin' down
He said destruction was just a breath away
One world, one war, one awesome tragedy
Yeah, that's what the world believes
"In the Kingdom", Whitecross

I cannot believe how many online newspapers I have had to read to find tonight's positive story.

I mean it. I checked, like, every newspaper in Wisconsin. And the ones in Nova Scotia. And then in Oklahoma. And granted that quite a few of them were going to make me register to read them and I had to find others, but to read them...

...I mean, dude, I found two horrible stories about Milwaukee in the Oklahoma newspapers, picked up by the Associated Press. ::sigh:: Granted that most people in Oklahoma don't have boyfriends spending the summer in Milwaukee, but then, neither do most people in New York.

This is at least part of why America's just so freaked out. This is what we're exposed to, every day, in the name of staying informed. I looked in so many local sections, looking for stories about nice little moments, reasons to think happy thoughts--but so many of them, the only things they put there are the big-bad things, the scary things, the gossipy things.

And the story I finally found--linked here--isn't totally stand-up-and-cheer, either, but I chose it because it's an effort by local people to do something good, and they're looking for people to join the cause, and it's creative, and it interested me.

Now, onto the reason I was posting in the first place.

Today I went with my family, Aneya, Daf, and Erik to the public market downtown. I hadn't remembered how sort-of-bad the surrounding streets were to get there, though there're certainly worse roads ::thinks of APO conference gasoline errand and shudders::. But it was nine-thirty in the morning, and we were seven people in a minivan, and of course nothing happened.

Sometime I will have to figure out, in some way, just how dangerous downtown is, because it cannot be as bad as I always feel like it is, now that I was stupid down there and almost got into trouble.

Gratuitous aside: I have to raise an eyebrow at how the guide that our newspaper put out about the city uses the term "diverse neighborhood" when they can't say "bad part of town"; that seems unfair, like the crime is being blamed on the minority population, rather than the poverty. ...And don't jump on me: I'm only saying the poverty would maybe explain the crime, not excuse it. ::blows raspberry at John pre-emptorily::

So we walked around the market, which's always fun (though this was only my second-ever time there). My favorite part is the Spanish bakery (the counter-guys--brothers, I think--are so smoothly bilingual that it's awesome; can I do that someday, canIcanI?), where I bought a horn (think flaky pastry-stuff in a cylinder with vanilla-pudding-style cream in the middle and chocolate drizzled over the whole) and Erik bought this big whonking loaf of freshly-baked French bread, from which we gleefully swiped wads for the rest of the morning. And my brother got something, but I can't remember what. He and I got some honey sticks, too, which's cool (pina-colada flavor = good; cinnamon flavor = bad).

Erik bought the most of anybody except my mom (who was making gazpacho and needed a whole bunch of fresh produce), including a bootleg DVD of Chronicles of Riddick. This reminded me of the day in Pucallpa when Chris bought the Saving Private Ryan bootleg for about a fifth of that from the guy who was selling Shrek 3 (which, yeah, definitely does not exist). I don't know what befell Chris's DVD player when he put it in, but Erik tried his on mine, and it was, I suppose, decent quality, though we all had a good laugh when people started crossing the shot to find their seats in the theater.

And then Aneya and Daf and I (and, briefly, Erik) played DDR. I have two new goals to work toward: Max 300 on 5 feet (still absolutely crazy) and Sandstorm on 8 (so close for so long, but I still fall apart at the end there).

After that, I took Aneya and Daf home, had lunch, slept for a darn long time, got up, had dinner, read, listened to music, looked up Spanish words, and got online.

Ha, who says I never have productive weekends? ...Well, we'll see about tomorrow.

-Laurel

Flippin' a U

Okay, that's enough melodrama. You don't like it, I don't really like it, and besides support-pledges (which makes this sound like PBS), there's really not much anyone can do. Things went a little better today; feeling useful is good.

Newspapers--I searched a couple for positive stories today, and I couldn't find any to speak of. I don't like this. As a sort of anti-last-entry, I've decided that from now until I come back to school, every entry will contain one positive news story. Here is tonight's:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001961091_hair21m.html

'night, all.

-Laurel

Ech...

"I've always been dissatisfied, I know that. But lately I find that I reek of discontentment: it fills my throat and floods my brain, and sometimes—sometimes I fear that there is no longer a dream, but only the discontentment..."
-John Adams, 1776

Strange days: nothing seems certain, nothing seems right, and I just feel so helpless. Besides my boyfriend being 600 miles out of my reach and a lot of my friends doing the summer-crisis thing (I don't know why June and July keep doing this to us), this whole find-the-good thing is calculated to drive me mad, because even as I know that it will take a lot of time for me to really know what I think about a lot of things, my brain torments me so that sometimes I'm afraid I'll never decide what I really think is right, but will just pick something to shut myself up, or find a way to distract myself and make myself think it's all okay. ...And then I wonder if maybe everybody does that. And then that's even worse mentally.

I don't know what I'm going to do with my life, I don't know how I feel about the world anymore, I'm torn on so many things, and I feel like everybody's demanding I have an opinion, and no matter what I choose, I'm wrong. Kristin says to follow my heart. Well, I don't trust it even when it does have a real opinion, and that's not very often right now.

(I hate election years so much. So much talk about right, but so much rhetoric that any real discussion there could be gets drowned.)

My brother got in trouble for defying me again and doing things he really shouldn't have, and though last time he argued and whined his way out of things, tonight I got a letter from him saying he was sorry. If you knew how much he hates writing, you would know how absolutely incredible this is. It wasn't even really apologizing for today, but in general, for acting like he hated me and telling me that he really didn't think it was bad that I'm weird (I get a lot of flack from him about that). And I don't really know what to do--it's not really a plea for attention, though most of the problem stems from the fact that he's lonely and bored and wants some companionship, and I'm one of those people who just wants, when I'm home, to be left alone, or at least to be with my friends, the people of my own choosing. What do you say to that? Anything?

My mom is sort of disappointed in me because she knows full well that I'm about thisclose to giving up on him completely, that all I really want is for him to leave me alone, that I don't really want to make an effort. I hatehatehate my mom getting like that, the way her voice is, her face is, because it makes me feel like such crap, as though I needed reasons these days to feel like crap.

At this point, everyone I know is helpless and lonely. He is one of many, many, many. That I am supposed to give him more effort simply because we have the same parents is not something I would go along with, except that I've given him a lot less effort.

I do that even to my friends, I try to help them when they've got problems, I try to be so perfect, and then I just give out when I can't take it anymore. It's how I lost Aubrey and Calypso. I couldn't stand to go so long without seeing anything change, I couldn't stand hearing the new sob story. So when hiatuses came and they didn't talk to me...I didn't really try to start it up again. It felt that much better not having the responsibility.

I'm deathly afraid that I'm going to do that with my career, with my faith, with everything--settle for something quiet, something easy, something painless, because it takes so much out of me to do anything else.

But if I did that, nobody would have to hate me for it, I'd hate myself. I can't.

It's as well I'm not on Accutane this summer like the dermo-people originally threatened (like, it wasn't a threat really, but it certainly felt like one): my parents wanted to watch me if I did to make sure I didn't get depressed, like once in a while people do. That's part of why the drug's so hated. ...But it's summer. Depressed or not, how could anyone tell the difference?

-Laurel

:(

Well, that'll teach me not to read the livejournals of people who don't know I'm reading their livejournals.

Kristin's had school listed as an interest, and it linked to all the ljs who shared that interest, so I was looking at all the people on the list, and two names I recognized and read, and they're just tragic: a friend of Lily's was hit in a hit-and-run and the guy who did it committed suicide; the other was this friend from acting class and Am-Lit, and things're just going horribly for her, plus I get sort of freaked-out-frohked-out at so many descriptions of her being drunk or just so lonely at school (she's going to be a junior; in all this time she hasn't been happy?), and she's on the South Beach diet and she isn't even heavy, let alone fat.

I hate that, everyone talks about how fat America is, but then you get so many people tormented because they're so afraid of it. So many of my friends so worried, and for what? They're in no danger. And what does it matter?

...Back last semester I said I should put on like two or three pounds--which makes no difference in appearance, by the way--because when I ran I was starting to get a lot of pain, and I thought maybe it was pushing myself so hard on so little. I said this, and got two horrified cries in unison from two friends--"No!"

"Why not?" I'd asked, startled.

"'Cause when people start," said one, deadly serious, "they don't stop." And the other nodded.

Thirty-two ounces I apparently can't be trusted with, lest I pork out. I wasn't sure whether to explode or cry. I think I just fell very silent.

...I can count on two hands the people in my life who look down on themselves over a matter of a few extraneous inches--even (especially?) inches that don't exist. I can count on a couple of fingers how many have done seriously stupid things for the cause. I'm sick of seeing schemes for weight loss. I'm sick of something only being worthy if it has a health benefit. They put DDR on CNN not because it's fun, but because some guy lost 70 pounds playing it.

'Nanda doesn't look at scales, and sometimes I think that takes the most willpower of all.

Aren't there more important things?

-Laurel

Aw-w, I wanted to be Larry...*g*

Which Veggie Tales character are you?

this quiz was made by Karen

Charcoal Corral with Daf and 'Nanda yesterday was brilliant. Vive LotR pinball, crazy aim-and-grab machines, Big Buck Hunter II (Daf the veggie is the best shot of us all! ::mischievous grin::), and driving through 'Nanda's past with REM and U2 playing.

Gack, I have no motivation to work or sleep these days.

-Laurel

On the day of cannons and fireworks, a little reminder that the pen is even mightier... :)

This's quite possibly the best 4th of July column I've ever read.

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/opinion/0704PL4Q8DD_opinion.shtml

And this one's not bad either.

Molly Ivins (in Sacramento Bee)

I am not sure how much longer I will be an English major, though. 'Cause as I have reminded myself, rather than spend my spare time outside of work and family trying to help people, perhaps it will be simpler and happier to get a job where I help people.

From what I have seen from the public-service-career fair at school, English majors are welcome, but psychology majors are more welcome, though social work--no, thank you--is the most welcome major of all. ...Psych I love with nearly as fiery a passion as books. In many ways, come to think of it, it is the psychology of literature that I love the most (remember when I thought that's what I would teach, psych of lit?)--the connection in every apt description, every profound sentence--the heart of psychology, the desire to understand and be understood, and to enjoy the wide-eyed wonder and scream-inducing stupidity of humankind--'cause there's both.

I'm gonna throw out there, for what it's worth, the statement that I actually do appreciate that today my church printed senators' addresses in the program-thing and encouraged us to "voice our opinions" on national issues--but nowhere in the paragraph was there even a hint of one opinion the church itself endorsed. That my church is trusting its congregation's hearts enough to allow for difference and complexity of opinion is something I hadn't really thought about, but was glad to see.

It seems so long ago in junior high that I said that there was a right and wrong answer to everything, it was just that sometimes we couldn't find it. ...I don't know anymore how much I subscribe to that--I'm sort of inclined to say that it was Screwtape Letters that smacked some sense into me on that one--how does it go? Something about the humans debating whether things like art and music and literature were generally right or wrong--and the demons laughing because there was no answer, that everything was right at one time and wrong at another, that everything was just grounds for obedience, that outside of extreme devotion to God, any extreme opinion unwilling to give ground was really closer to evil than good?

::sighs:: Being Christian in a household that has brought me up to be slightly liberal involves a perpetual crisis of conscience, I am finding, because liberality is so much about allowing for other ideas, other points of view. But go too far that way, and right and wrong disappears. Too far the other way, and sometimes right passes you by because you can't imagine it could come in another form than what you've decided it is. ...How simple should the world be, and how complex? And how much of that is supposed to be our decision, anyway?

In any case, don't assume I'm switching majors yet. We'll see.

-Laurel

-being subversive-

Remind me, again, with a friend kicked out of her house and a boyfriend lonely, and both of them worlds out of my reach, what's so great about independence? That's what both of them call it.

-Laurel

Caidil gu lo, laddie...

Am back from vacation.

I do not have much use for cruise ships because I am not really one for movies or pools or shows or dancing or sitting around drinking things. The food is cool, and the small skating rink was kinda nice (and had good skates; I was mega-impressed), but I never do end up liking being waited on and killing time. ...It would be more fun if it were friends and not just family, though family is pretty cool.

What I ended up doing, most of the time, was sleeping or reading. Also dashed off several e-mails with my family's free minutes, but that was tricky, 'cause it was in ten-minute intervals over several days, and the pricing was an exorbitant 50¢/minute outside of that.

But the stopoffs in Canada, those were cool. St. John in New Brunswick is a smallish town, but had a cool museum that we went to, and a cool public markety-thing. And Halifax, in Nova Scotia, we stayed there all day, went on a sailing ship and had fresh seafood for lunch (mine: fish and chips, and it came wrapped in fake newspaper with fish recipes and things on it! ...rest of my family: lobster, which was sweet and good and came whole--though cracked in strategic places so it wasn't so hard to get open--so my brother amused himself by making his lobster dance, pick its own nose-area, etc.), and toured a citadel, and went round on a bus along the streets of Halifax, and then went to Pier 21 (Canadian equivalent of Ellis Island) long enough to buy a T-shirt. Oh, and bought Canadian candy bars, which my brother and I made short work of. :-D

But I think my favorite night--the nights were mostly long and boring and lonely--was last night, when I went up onto the top deck. It was actually warm, and there was an unceasing wind that tangled my hair into knots, and a full dark yellow moon on my other side. I stood along different parts of the ship for a whole hour, enjoying the wind (oh, how I love strong-cool-loud-whipping wind, except in winter, as I've said several times before), watching the wake at the side of the ship, dreaming, and singing "Cape Breton Lullaby" (Scottish-Canadian song from the tenth grade) softly to myself, as well as one can sing four parts' worth of SSAA harmony, especially when only two parts (S1/A2) are memorable at the time.

Turns out, according to online (which doesn't always agree on other text in the song), the main phrase in the chorus is caidil gu lo (still pronounced "cah'jeel-goo-law", like we did it), with a macroned o (that means a horizontal line above it; I would show, but Blogger doesn't support the character--::grumbles::), and it means sleep through the night. Makes sense enough, right?

Dang, we need to sing that song in choir next year or something. Soon, anyway. ::sighs:: The guys can sing another cool audience-pleaser kind of song, and we can sing another close-harmonied song--a pretty one this time, 'cause that song is absolutely incredible. Having spent two days in the more Scottish parts of Canada, I say it with even more conviction. ...Even if I saw no blue-burning driftwood.

The other thing that made last night so good was Tropical Breeze--a band on the ship with two members from Peru. I talked to the keyboardist; he was friendly and articulate, and knew Pucallpa even though he hadn't been there (he was from Lima). They had a concert up in the one lounge, and my parents and I sat around and listened, and watched everyone on the dance floor salsa. ...Actually, most of the people doing salsa were not Spanish, but I believe Japanese--a group of friends who'd taken the lessons the ship had offered. They were fun to watch. The one lady obviously loved it, looked so happy to be dancing. It was just nice, you know?

Plus I knew that today I'd be home. And I am.

Side-column overhaul of this blog to take place shortly. ...I was seriously considering changing the template as well, but I can't find any ones with black-and-gray-and-white color schemes that don't...you know...suck. So it's staying like this for now, and I'll content myself with making the "people to know" a little better and the links a little more up-to-date.

Sleep the dark away, my friends.

-Laurel