Mixing memory with desire

Hello, blog! This post is coming to you from outside Here's some proof:

It is very windy right now and that makes it chilly but the sun is out and the lawn outside of my building is covered with students like ants at a picnic going down hill. Hips are hula-hooping. Frisbees are flying. Softballs are soaring. A couple boys from the floor below me are kicking a soccer ball back and forth. People with guitars and saxophones and cymbals are criss-crossing the grass to get between the music buildings. I'm listening to a mix of The Zombies coming from Sierra's earbuds and jack-hammering from the construction project behind me. My bare toes painted a dusty blue are digging past the mulch into the soil beneath and my shoes are warming on a rock beside me. the leather jacket I took from Sierra last night is warm on my shoulders. It all feels very collegiate.

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in about a month. And that I didn't do BEDA like I meant to. Maybe I'll do "Blog More In April" instead. BMIA. I've been busy, I suppose. But more then that, I've been kind of happy. Or at least interested in life. It feel good. I feel like Things are happening. That's "Things" with a capital "T." I am enjoying the world this spring. I don't even mind that I just met the first swarm of gnats around my head this year. Hello, old friends!

Today I had a very surreal French class full of a stranger shouting the names of French vegetables at us in French while I tried to decide if I should laugh or cry. I should be posting answers for the class that was canceled this afternoon. Later tonight I'll do thing and maybe even see a people. The Zombies are singing in my ear about roses and Emily. The sky is bue. The grass is returning to green. And this world is treating me right.

Weekend documentation cont.

All right, where did I leave off? Snowball fight? Great.

The next morning I went to my French class, ready to fail, as I didn't do anymore studying after Russell left, but enough people didn't show up to class because of the snow that we convinced our professor to push back the test until Tuesday. The rest of the class was pretty uneventful but at one point someone called the professor "Sassy-Pants."

My English class was cancelled that day so I went to lunch and met up with Russell, Erik, Kevin, Jesse, and Eve. Eve and I made plans to play in the snow later. We wound up walking to town to try and find a sled. We couldn't find one in our budget so we bought a license plate that said "BOYCRAZY" for the boys to put in their suite and order dark chocolate, Irish cream concoctions at Dunkin' Donuts. We never did play in the sow but we found out we had a ton in common so it was fun anyway.

When I got back to my dorm I found my new roommate with her friend and boyfriend, almost finished moving in. I made small talk for a bit until I could make my excuses to go meet up with Eve and the boys again. After a rushed dinner, we all went to watch the Rangers game in the suite. Zack reminded me of an assignment I never did for our English class due that night and he let me use his computer to do it. About half way through the game Eve and I took off with one of her friends who owned a car to Taco Bell across the river. I had a crunchwrap supreme and cheesy fiesta potatoes and it was incredible. When we got back Sierra and Megan had joined us and we watched "Clerks II." I had never seen the first one but I loved the second. Erik took to saying "Happy Women's Day!" after every slightly awkward line. My favorite was "I got mayonnaise in my pooter." "Happy Women's Day!"

After the movie ended we wound up just sitting around joking and talking for a few hours. I argued against Zach on behalf of Anne Perkins in a debate on character necessity in Parks and Recreation. Eve remembered she still had tacos sitting in the corner. Eventually Garth wandered off to bed and we realized that no one still in the common room actually lived there. We were squatters.

Thursday and Friday were kind of busy days so I wanted to document them. Saturday I was pretty much the same as Friday night. And today, Sunday, I woke up in Kim's bed, went to breakfast, spent most of the time talking about Les Miserables, and then went on a walk in the woods. I found Craig, Garth, Ryan, and James there and walked with them until they turned back. I kept going and even got in a little rock climbing.

I realize this isn't very good writing and is probably awful to read but I kind of wanted an example of a typical weekend to keep. If you've read this and made it to the end, here's your gift.

Snow and my life

Hi, blog! It's late. Heading on to five in the morning. I got back at my dorm about an hour ago with Megan, Sierra, and Sean Charles but they are gone now and I'm all showered and tired. But I will bring us to this point after I talk a little about the last couple days. In list form because it's waaaaaaay too late for segues. Ready? Go!

1.) On Thursday afternoon a girl form down the hall came to my room. She told me she was moving in tomorrow. I accepted this.

2.) After band I went to Russell and told him that we only had one more night to enjoy the "couch" in my dorm, aka, Sierra's former bed. We liked to sit there and watch Man Vs. Food into the night.

3.) After band I went to the planetarium to advertise for Cosmic Club and help out. One of the other guys from the club, Cooper, got beat up by a three year old. It was awesome. He didn't think so.

4.) I got back to my dorm and tried to study for a French class scheduled for the next day but wound up watching 30 Rock instead until Russell came over. He brought me some ice cream he didn't eat much of (Ben & Jerry's Boston Cream Pie <3) and we talked about classes and reminisced about the couch.

5.) After professing our hope that classes would be cancelled for Friday, we started discussing the snow and I suggested a snowball fight. Russell was faster and had better aim. But I was better at packing snowballs quickly and without leaving myself vulnerable. Also sometimes I can catch them when thrown at me. Russell accidentally dunked his sneaker in a puddle pretty early on and my glasses fogged up so that eventually I could only see shadows. So we were pretty evenly matched. We ran around our building shouting. One of our hall officials came outside and stood watching us for a bit to make sure we weren't doing anything illegal. After Russell nailed me in the head for the 3rd time I shouted "Do I look like I'm in the theatre department?!" He said "no," confused. I said "Then why do I need so many headshots!?!?" At one point instead of throwing a snowball I ate it and Russell was surprised. He hadn't known that you could eat snow. So I talked to him about all the wonders of snow for a while. Then we continued our fight and I, having gotten the last hit just as Russell thought he was safe having hit me and was fleeing towards the door, won.

It's 4:55 am and I am exhausted. I will write another post continuing this tomorrow. I may get caught in a loop of writing blogs two days after the events in them happen. I hope not. Good night/morning!

Pleasant

I should probably start this off by apologizing for my last post. I can't remember what it was exactly (but I do know it's bad enough not to re-read it.) I was upset. Somethings happened. I didn't like them. I lost my favorite hat. But other things happened as well In conclusion, my head is cold.

So. Now that that's out of the way....

Today? Today was pleasant. That's the best word to describe it I think. After a week of sleeping in, skipping class, eating like crap, feeling like crap, and not doing any work, I got out of bed this morning. At 9:30. Trust me. This was a big accomplishment for me. It is very hard to get out of bed at college when you live alone, haven't done the reading, and just, like, don't care that much? If there is one thing I believe is that people never want to leave their beds. Add to this the fact that I hadn't gotten to sleep before four in the morning in quite a few weeks and I say that this is downright miraculous!

But I got my ass to the dining hall to have a proper breakfast of rice chex with cinnamon and skim milk, a banana, a glass of lemon water, and 3/4th of a cinnamon raisin bagel with peanut butter. (I really only wanted a half but that was the closest I could find in the bagel box. I don't know where the other quarter is but I hope it's doing well.) I ran into some friends there and they were all so shocked to see me conscious in what can be quantified as the A.M.

I didn't eat with them though. I studied for a French quiz instead because sometimes I am a responsible student. Despite my seeming inability to figure out when to use l'imperfait tense. But no matter how bad I was feeling for not knowing that, I think it's safe to say that I have a better grasp on the French language than most people in that class. They spent an hour arguing and trying to translate six sentences of La belle et la bete (The Beauty and the Beast) into English. SIX SENTENCES. By the end, after not saying anything throughout the whole affair shouting "IT'S A VERB! YOU JUST NEED A VERB!" Then we had 15 minutes for the quiz because the two girls in the opposite corner who never. stop. talking. insisted that we take it then. Why? By the time this semester is done I am either going to have the patience of a saint or the ulcer of my friend Tori.

Women and Literature was lovely as it tends to be. I like everyone in that class, even when we disagree. Everyone's intelligent ad insightful and just a good booster of confidence in the human species after French.

The highlight of my day was my four mile walk through the woods, though. It was sunny. The sky was clear. It was less muddy than it could have been. It was just this side of chilly. The scenery was gorgeous. And it felt so good. The trail was like a combination between a glen hike and a rail trail back home and even when I thought geese were going to attack me it was an excellent time. I saw three whitetail deer and made it back to the head of the trail just in time for civilian sunset.

Now after a solitary dinner I'm writing this blog post and watching 30 Rock. Later I want to finish the book we're reading for Lit and study Europe for my map quiz in International Relations tomorrow. It feels good to be re-learning the countries of Europe. It reminds me of the early days of AP Euro with my three foot tall Atlas. Which is also a pleasant memory.

Some days are just good.

What about you? (If anyone is out there reading this.) What normal life things made your day pleasant?

Breakfast

I seem to have a firm belief that a bad night can be solved with a good breakfast. I don't know where this belief came from or how long I've had it but this morning I decided that it was so.

I had a bad night. I wound up replacing sleep with Cabin Pressure and How I Met Your Mother. And some hurried mouthfuls of cold macaroni and cheese in the dark kitchen at 6 AM and a small bag of mini jaw breakers in my nightstand. So around nine o'clock I decided that what I really needed was a good breakfast and set about to making one.

The kitchen was where the trouble started the night before. I had bitten off most of my nail polish the night before and my fingers were cracked and raw and stinging. My left thumb required band-aids. But I shouldered on and came up with two scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, tea, orange juice, water, and a tortilla. I felt that bread would make me sad.

I ate this while reading This Side of Paradise and part-way through my plate my older sister had joined me in silence with a book of her own. The watery winter sun was just glancing through the window and the snow on the ground reflected some of the light back. A but of tiny snowflakes, more like ice crystals, could occasionally be seen when caught in a ray. This stirred in me my latent desire for a proper room in which to take breakfast.

Breakfast rooms remind me of spring, and silent mornings where I am alone and wake up willingly, and the works of Kate Chopin which, despite all of the pigeons and other strange happenings from my AP Lit class, I will begrudgingly admit I enjoyed. I know that if when I have a place of my own I have an honest-to-God breakfast room, I will be doing all right by my adolescent self.

Trivia

Today was very nice. I woke up at 1330 and didn't get downstairs until 1530. Then I ate a bunch of cookies with my mom, Billy, and Sarah. I read the Fellowship of the Rings and ate beef barley soup with my mom, Billy, and Linda. Then Elana came and we went to trivia night.

Wednesday is trivia night. I had been hearing tales of it from my friends for over two years now. But I had never gone. An invitation was never extended to me until I was in Aaron's kitchen last night and Will asked if I wanted to come. I did. Elana and I discussed dwarves and weird Korean shows on the ride over to the bar and grill. We parked across the street and leaped majestically through mounds of snow to leave the parking lot. There we found Mary, Colleen, Brad, Tori, Josh, and Jenny Sue already in a booth with drinks and answer sheets. Elana and I ordered lemonades and brownie sundaes and joined them. We caught up on each other's lives and talked about One Direction and Jenny Sue was shouting at a tv where her beloved Florida Gators were playing. A few questions in Will showed up and we squeezed a chair onto the end of our booth.

It was a 2012 year in review night and the questions were all about things that had happened in the past year. Tori impressed us all by knowing all three winners of the Voice though none of us were that surprised. Brad knew that the inventor of the barcode had died. We were mostly useless about sports except for Jenny Sue who got a name right here and there. I wasn't even ashamed that I knew that Burning Man was answer to one of the later questions. I started to laugh, grabbed the pencil from Tori's hand, and scribbled it down. For the half-way wager question the DJ told us that the category was "human accomplishments." I knew right away that it would be about Felix Baumgartners jump. There was a lot of confusion and the answer we gave didn't quite match up with the answer the DJ had but Will and I believed the DJ to be mistaken. I'm not sure how that worked out.

This particular DJ plays song clues to go along with all of the questions. Sometimes they're really far-fetched. Last spring at the competition that gave birth to this blogpost he played "Crazy In Love" when the answer was Jim Lovell. This leads us to one of my favorite moments from tonight. The DJ asked us what state was the first to legalize the possession of marijuana and played the Olympic March. Upon hearing the first few measures I shouted "O, Canada!" but Will told me point-blank that that was not the song. Then Mary and I simultaneously had a thought. Olympics = Olympia which is in Washington. I explained how I knew this by saying excitedly "I know this from Twilight!" To which Mary replied "I know this from the third grade geography bee."

Overall we did okay. But I had a lot of fun and would love to go back. Will, Elana, Jenny Sue, Tori and I were the only ones to stay to the end and we had an awkward group hug while blocking the door to the restaurant. Then Elana, Will, and I fell through the snow to where we were parked and I shouted "Shoe in my boot! Shoe in my boot!" but I meant that there was snow in it. Then Elana came back to my house and we watched Drake and Josh on Netflix, looked at pictures of child stars who grew up hot, read off lists of old Nickelodeon shows and laughed at the names. Then Elana introduced me to Danny Phantom and I completely fell in love. None of it made sense, it was so funny, and absolutely wonderful.

Now Elana has left and I am wearing new pajama pants and lounging in my bed typing this. It was a great 2nd day to the new year. I think I'll read some more of Fellowship before going to sleep. Good night!

How do you measure a year?

Hello! Sorry. I've been busy. Sleeping. Hiding from people. You know.

But it is January now. More specifically it is the 2nd of January in the year 2013. So far it's been pretty good. I spent New Year's Eve at Jenn's house with some friends (Hannah, Regina, Faaria, and Tori.) We played Apples to Apples and Quelf and ate food and talked and made bad jokes about the fiscal cliff and wore stupid hats and blew noise blowers and watched Pixar shorts and made fun of Kathy Griffith and tried to get Frank Sinatra songs to line up with Pit Bull's performance. It was the first New Year's I spent not with my family in the house or at a church party and it was a lot of fun. I give it a 9.

Then the next morning I woke up at 1430 and made a video of photos from 2012. Originally it was just going to be cell phone pictures but I accidentally deleted a bunch of them so I added more from my camera and from friends on facebook. I couldn't really get the song to line up right with the photos that I had but I'm pretty pleased with it regardless and that's what matters. I used "Lovely Lily" by The Remus Lupins which I listened to a lot walking to and from school in the spring and I think that it really fits how I want to remember this year. I don't want to focus on the shitty and depressed November or the stressed December or the October and September that now feels like a betrayal or the stationary July-August period.

I want to remember the trip to see my cousin Nick's children for the first time in January. I want to remember the trip to Albany with my AP gov class and the snowball fight second period the next day when we all still had tons of work due that day. I want to remember the wintery mix of poutine, Sherlock Holmes, and Nicolas Cage. I want to remember the emotional overload that was Science Olympiad in February and March and the fun we had against my better judgement with the squirrels at Niagara Falls. I want to remember the Hunger Games and how much prom preparations felt like competing in them. I want to remember Grease and the library and the Fallout shelter with Brooke and going to the creek with Allison. I want to remember the space history filled ice cream factory and meeting Dan Bursch with my dad and all those bright spring afternoons that I spent reading about manned space exploration on my deck after walking home early and doing some push-ups and sit-ups. Sun's out, gun's out! I want to remember the pair of pants I found in the bathroom during a five hour bio review session and Tori, Molly, and I sneaking around the school and leaving coffee for each other. I want to remember eating bagels on the bench by the flagpole with Kelly and just enjoying the flowers. I want to remember my last band concerts and Friendly's after them and riding and singing in Aaron's car with Peter and Will and Linda and her not being able to find the seat belt and Will and I teaching history for a day. I want to remember going to the prom with Aubrey and Manon and Axel and all of the teacher chaperons walking in to eat at the restaurant we were at. I want to remember the video I made for my senior class of our last month together. I want to remember the music picnic and finally making pretzels with Deanna and our senior trip with the lake cruise running out of French toast and so many near-deaths at the amusement park and everyone shoving their belongings into Tyler's backpack and trying to chain together on the Lazy River. I want to remember how we made noise whenever our principal tried to speak at graduation and our multiple standing ovations whenever the library or our librarian was even referred to. I want to remember party-hopping and Brianna pulling over to climb onto the hood of her car to clean the windshield and melting glowsticks over the bonfire at E.J.'s and dripping the glowing substance onto our skin. I want to remember the strange Fairy Festival with Elana and Kate and the trolls and bringing Kara back with me after orientation and being incredibly strange for 72 hours. I want to remember going to playgrounds with Kate, Elana, Dan, Chris, and Colin in August after realizing how little we had done with each other that summer. I want to remember Aaron's lakehouse and the "last-hurrah" drama club bowling expedition where we realized none of us liked bowling and we wound up at bubble tea and a playground after dark. And I want to remember the Richard Simmons workout with Lloyd and the Fancy Party with Sierra and the Harry Potter Exhibition with Kara and Alex and BeanCon and sitting in the grass with Derek and Chris and Russell getting me into wrestling and my Joe Biden birthday party and laughing in church with my sisters and Dianna and Hope and Madeline and going to Chipotle and seeing The Hobbit with my family

That's what I want to remember from this past year.

As far as 2013 goes I think it'll be really fucking weird. But so far I've loved it. I read The Fellowship of the Rings by the fire and ate soup with my parents and brother and then my sisters came home from a friends house with a huge plate of delicious cookies and we all had a good time just hanging out. Then I went to Aaron's house for "Hanksapalooza." We really like Tom Hanks movies. Aaron, E.J., Brooke and I hung out with Aaron's dad for a while and it was as good a time as it always is with those people. Then Tori arrived and we watched "A League of Their Own." Will came in just in time for the credits. I really, really liked that one. Then we watched "Philadelphia" and it was really sad but fun because Tori is going to be a lawyer and I know about not being straight. Brooke and E.J. left because they both had to go to the dentist in the morning and we watched the Swarley episode of How I Met Your Mother. Then Tori departed and it was just Will, Aaron, and I wandering around the kitchen. Aaron kept giving me citrus fruit and I kept loving him for it. Will and I decided that we were actually going to do something together when we both went back to school and my dad texted me that he was outside while I was in Aaron's arms and he was carrying me around and I was begging for Will to help me.

It was probably the best January 1st I've ever had. They say that the first day of a new year is supposed to be an indication of how the rest of the year will go for you. If that is the case, then I will be very, very grateful, lucky, and happy.