Tales from the Crypt

It's time for my update of random events.  Ready GO!

1. Kyle made his senior recital poster with pictures of he and Aaron on it (Aaron is directing the orchestra).  Both of these guys are geeks.  Everyone know that.  They know that.  Talented geeks, but geeks nonetheless.  And they both spend way too much time trying to impress the ladies by coming off as these attractive, professional, intense musicians.  Kyle wanted his poster to send that message of course, so both he and Aaron are staring at you dead serious with these really intense resolute looks.  Well of course no one was taking the poster seriously.  Aaron was holding his baton like he was Harry Potter about to defend himself with his wand, and as I stared at it more, I realized how much Kyle looked like professor Snape with short hair holding the neck of a cello.  So I spent a good two or three hours finding the perfect pictures on the internet to turn this poster into a Harry Potter movie advertisement.  Snape's head fit perfectly onto Kyle's and the cello neck turned into a broom.  For Aaron, I cut out just Harry's hair and glasses, both of which were slightly too small, giving it this really awkward geeky look.  Of course then I drew a lightning bolt on his forehead, and he already had the wand.  Then I taped it up on Kyle's locker.  It turned out really well if I may say so myself.  I wasn't there, but I heard it attracted quite a crowd, and I got compliments on it for the rest of the day.  Kyle hunted me down but he was a good sport about it and left it hanging on the inside of his locker.

 

2. So a little over a week ago we played a couple of days in the new dining area in the MC to advertise for the Wycliffe Gordon concert that weekend.  Well for like two weeks we'd been complaining and joking about how ridiculous the Wycliffe poster was that Center Stage designed because it had a picture of Wycliffe against a blue background with a yellow circle around his head, which was functioning as the "O" in GordOn.  So the message being conveyed was one of three things: 1. Wycliffe, your fat head is so round we thought it'd make a good "O"; 2. Wycliffe, your head is so round we thought we'd make it look like the moon; 3. Wycliffe, we admire you so much we decided to saint you and give you a big yellow halo.  In fact the first thing most people noticed was that it looked like he had a halo.

So anyway we were performing with one of those posters set up next to us and this girl comes up to me and says, "So what do you think about that poster?"  Without hesitation and without even thinking I turned to her and said very matter-of-factly, "Oh it's hideous."  She looked a little stunned and suddenly it dawned on me and I said, "Oh!  Are you the girl that designed them?"

Yup.  I talked to her for a minute and it turned out she had done her research and now I can see what vintage style she was going for, but it just turned out really awkward.  I apologized like a million times.

3. The Wycliffe concert was awesome.

4. I went to FHE for the first time in who-knows-how-long where they had a grand showing of The Incredibles in the cultural hall on a huge projector screen with popcorn and everything.  I'm finally making singles branch friends I can hang with, largely because my roommate is one of the integral members of that social scene.

5. I've been getting to know this girl Shanda who's a folk singer/guitarist/photographer/soccer player from California, so we started hanging out this week, mostly talking music and movies.  Her family is a bunch of intense movie buffs.

6. I've feel like I've become the cultural center of my singles branch because word got out that I'm into foreign flicks and now all these people have been borrowing my movies and watching them all week.  My Mongolian friend Roza watched The Color of Paradise from 2-4:00am last night and said she cried all the way through it, which is just kinda funny because she's one of the most happy, care-free people I know.

7. Thursday night Emily found me practicing and explained that she needed me to accompany her to a dance lab right then because her stalker was bound to be there.  We went, but it ended a lot sooner than she thought, so we got in a cha-cha-cha (FYI that's it's real name), fox trot, waltz and a couple of swings and it was over.  But we won some silly string for striking our best interpretive dance poses!  Then we made french toast at 10:00 at night with way too much nutmeg and it was scrumptious.

8. Last night we had a Vernal Equinox BBQ at Holly and Pili's place.  Somehow I got stuck grilling all the burgers and hotdogs.  I don't know how that happened.  It ended with Shanda and Pili doing several songs with the guitar.  They're both really pretty good.  Shanda had texted me that afternoon to announce the precise minute at which the vernal equinox was taking place.  I'm pretty sure I could feel it.  And it was fitting that it was the first day of spring because it was the first warm day we've had all year.

9. This morning Ryan, Shanda, Meagan, Roza and I went to the college flea market that some business students are doing for their project this semester.  It was actually really big with some pretty good booths, but it was apparent that several people were just using their booth as a garage sale.  Favorite parts: the booth selling a bunch of a used clothes and a bowling ball, the booth selling cats(?), the TWO booths selling flowery tutus, the booth selling edited movies including an edited version of a Hannah Montana video, and the random tire for sale that I didn't know which booth it belonged to.  Afterward we went ate lunch on the grass in the park in the SUN.

10.  Tonight I went to Guitars Unplugged at the last minute with Emily, and after we went to Ingrid's and ended up playing Guitar Hero which we were all really bad at.  Well then Ingrid's roommate comes in and I said I'd play against her and she looked at me like, "Whatever dude," sitting there chomping on her gum like it was cud and playing with her hair and staring at the ceiling and looking totally unimpressed with everyone.  And then she puts it on Expert mode which is LITERALLY almost impossible, and she starts playing and her fingers are FLYING and she's getting almost every note.  It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.  Her fingers were just a blur.  It's like she was this Guitar Hero prodigy.  As ridiculous as it sounds, and as much as I didn't want to admit it because she was being a brat, it was actually kind of inspiring.  Like, I don't think I'm even that coordinated on the sax.  The funny thing is I guess the game got her into actually picking up the the guitar a couple of years ago and Ingrid said she's really good at it now.

Because it chases away the loneliness birds.

To whom it may concern,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97BwLXtLTT0&NR=1

Waters of March

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

It's a sliver of glass,
It is life, it's the sun,
It is night, it is death,
It's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms,
A fox in the brush,
A knot in the wood,
The song of a thrush

The wood of the wind,
A cliff, a fall,
A scratch, a lump,
It is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free,
It's the end of the slope,
It's a beam, it's a void,
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And the river bank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of the strain,
The joy in your heart

The foot, the ground,
The flesh and the bone,
The beat of the road,
A slingshot's stone

A fish, a flash,
A silvery glow,
A fight, a bet,
The range of a bow

The bed of the well,
The end of the line,
The dismay in the face,
It's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike,
A point, a nail,
A drip, a drop,
The end of the tale

A truckload of bricks
in the soft morning light,
The shot of a gun
in the dead of the night

A mile, a must,
A thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme,
It's a cold, it's the mumps

The plan of the house,
The body in bed,
And the car that got stuck,
It's the mud, it's the mud

Afloat, adrift,
A flight, a wing,
A hawk, a quail,
The promise of spring

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
It's the joy in your heart

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

A snake, a stick,
It is John, it is Joe,
It's a thorn in your hand
and a cut in your toe

A point, a grain,
A bee, a bite,
A blink, a buzzard,
A sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle,
A sting, a pain,
A snail, a riddle,
A wasp, a stain

A pass in the mountains,
A horse and a mule,
In the distance the shelves
rode three shadows of blue

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone,
The end of the road,
The rest of a stump,
A lonesome road

A sliver of glass,
A life, the sun,
A knife, a death,
The end of the run

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of all strain,
It's the joy in your heart.

Pixi Stix? JUST HOOK IT UP TO MY VEINS!!!!!!!

Hello word.  Here's the world.  Wait, flip that...   Illinois accepted me. Colorado did not.  I'm just waiting for my FAFSA pin number to FINALLY arrive so I can finalize that and find out if Illinois wants to offer me any money.  Cross your fingers.

Other than that life has been slowish: 

*I'm trying to practice a lot more.

*I think I've been grinding my teeth at night which is why my jaw hurts all the time.

*I leaned to one side of the toilet seat the other night and it snapped clear through and now it pinches really bad.

*I had to tell my stalker student to stop texting me for the second time.

*I saw a great Russian film by Andrei Tarkovsky called "Nostalghia," but if you're not into abstract artsy foreign films, I wouldn't recommend it. In fact I liked it so much I bought it.  It arrived in the mail today. There are several interesting themes in it, one of which is introduced by a crazy guy who's putting drops of oil into his hand and saying that when you put two drops together, you don't get two drops.  You just get a bigger drop.  And then they're walking through his house and there's this big sign on his wall that says 1+1=1.  Kind of a cool thought.  Oh, and then my friend Shanda referred to that scene in sacrament meeting last Sunday in a talk she had to give on marriage.  Actually there is a lot of Christian symbolism throughout the film.

*Speaking of films (but on the other end of the spectrum entirely) my roommate really likes High School Musical.  He threw a HSM birthday party for a girl he has a crush on in our ward the other day, and let me tell you, it was a big deal.  HSM pictures all over the walls, HSM decorations, HSM presents.  And he's been complaining about how much he wants to watch it lately, so finally he got a group of people together this evening for it.  I definitely wasn't interested, but he kind of guilt tripped me into thinking about it, and now we'll see.

OH WAIT OH WAIT OH WAIT!!!!!!!!  My roommate and friends just showed up HERE with the movie, and Ryan just stood in front of the TV and gave a very lengthy and eloquent introduction to High School Musical that was actually really funny.  And now the movie has been going for five minutes and I haven't stopped laughing.  Wow.  That's all I have to say.  In Ryan's words, it's like being fed Pixi Stix intravenously for an hour and a half...