Jul
30
The Moon
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The moon is so pretty and bright and clear tonight that I decided to flex my nonexistent photography muscles by taking some pictures.
“I’m going out to attempt to take pictures of the moon!” I heroically announced to my parents and my dogs.
It turns out that this particular feat is much more easily heroically announced than done.
So I tromped outside, with Bradley and Benvolio prancing around alongside me because they really like supporting the arts and they thought they were getting fed. I parked a lawn chair on our driveway, nearly put out my eye while struggling with my tripod, and attempted to set the focus on my camera.
I’ll save you the gory details (which involve a mosquito bite on my head, a near face plant onto the large/pointy rocks that are impersonating the gravel on our driveway and my camera’s brush with death as Bradley did his Angry Orca impression and slammed into the side of my small fishing vessel lawn chair) and get right to the pictures.
The first attempt, wherein the moon tries to trick me into believing that it is the sun. Nice try, Moony!
Getting closer…kind of…
Hey, this one actually resembles the moon!
Then I got about 12 more pictures pretty much exactly like the one above and my attention span officially disappeared. And so, I went back to doing what I do best: pushing buttons on my camera and blinding innocent animals in the process.
Olio is throwing up a gang sign in that last picture. He’s so west coast.
Jul
29
My subject line is misleading, because by “bacon,” I of course mean “cheese.”
My parents returned from a successful mini-vacation up yonder, which involved a quick stop at our favorite cheese factory in Wisconsin. We used to attend the Wisconsin Shakespeare Festival every year and gorge ourselves with fresh, delicious cheese from this place. Now the Shakespeare Festival is gone, but we still find occasion to get cheese. Actually, a nuclear apocalypse could occur and we would not forfeit the cheese.
“Oh, you’re headed up north to escape the radioactive cat armies? Please, take Gregor, our pack mule, and send him back with no less than 535 lbs of garlic cheddar.” And that would probably last us about a month.
Besides consuming an awful lot of cheese, I’m looking forward to going to the eye doctor tomorrow. I went there last week, and he gave me some different contacts to try. I’ve got a very slight astigmatism in one eye, so usually I wear a toric lens in that eye. But since it’s so slight, my doctor wanted me to try a regular lens at a slightly higher prescription. This has put an interesting, wobbly spin on my world, as my depth perception does not agree with my doctor’s decision. I find myself yelling, confused, “What?! No, I’m not goose stepping! I’m walking uphill, I think!” quite often.
Jul
28
Artsy Fartsy
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I’ve been in an artsy mood lately, which makes sense. I seem to only get in the mood to draw when I’ve got school work I should be doing instead, or when I’ve forgotten my drawing tablet somewhere.
This weekend, though, I finally have the time, the will and the means to draw, so I’ve been spending lots of time doing that.
So can you expect art posts from me in the near future? Probably not. I’m super sketchy (no pun intended) on sharing my art with people I know, for some reason. It’s weird, but I chalk it up to the fact that, due to my intermittent creative bursts, I draw like a blind kindergartener with no hands.
In other news, it’s officially less than a month before I go back to school! I’m going to be a (pseudo) senior, which blows my mind. Soon enough I will have to face the world as a real, honest-to-God grown up.
For now, though, I’m going to watch the rest of a movie called “Boa vs. Python” on the SciFi channel, with its flame throwers and giant snakes, and doodle.
Jul
27
The Michael Jackson Generation
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I survived! My chemistry class is officially over, and I got a B. No more 5 hour long, 7:30AM class! I am DONE!
Amongst my wild celebration (which so far has mostly consisted of catching up on sleep), I did a little reminiscing on another time I survived.
During the sophomore year of high school in our town, there is a class offered called Workshop of Life. In this class we learned about a lot of things, like Native Americans and different religious sects (you can only imagine the puns involved when talking to a class of 15 year-olds about sects). We also covered an extensive chapter on The Lord of the Flies, in preparation for…dun dun dun!…THE SURVIVAL ENCOUNTER.
The Survival Encounter was the much-anticipated highlight of the class. We learned what plants were poisonous, how to build a lean-to shelter and how to avoid awkward “kill the beast” chants by not utilizing any conch shells.
We broke into groups, made our plans and anxiously awaited the big day. On the morning of, we had our bags checked to make sure we didn’t have any contraband items (cell phones, cross bows, you know), loaded into the buses and headed out to the secret Survival Encounter location, which changed every year. In order to ensure that none of us knew where we were and to make things more realistic, we had fake bus malfunctions. These malfunctions consisted of the teachers walking down the bus aisles, telling us to cover our heads in case of flying glass while we sassed them about how we really just wanted to see out the windows. The buses pulled over, we got out and preceded to hike through the wood to our campsite.
The main thing we were graded on, besides coming out alive and signing a meaningless social contract, was a journal we had to keep. We were supposed to keep them as realistic as possible, so our first entries basically consisted of:
Dear Journal,
Today our bus crashed in the wilderness on the way to the museum. Thank goodness I’d packed several cans of stew, an ax and my sleeping bag!
I can’t wait until we get rescued.
I wish I would have brought my conch.
Our groups all made fires and shoddy lean-tos. In an effort to get extra points, we had to go above and beyond the bare requirements by making a bunch of extra stuff. My group made a fake garden, a clothes line, spoons, and a hole in which we put water bottles in order to keep them cool and a specially-designated branch on which we hung our saw. I remember that two members or my group filled their water bottles in the nearby stream and drank the water without boiling it (I should mention that we were in a cow pasture and that the stream was very shallow and murky). I desperately wanted them to fail or at least go blind for that idiotic move, but alas, they did not.
It was a pretty fun time, all in all. I enjoyed chopping down saplings and avoiding the blame for digging the latrine way too shallowly (yes, it was my fault).
The next day, rescue came and we got bussed home. Everyone survived! We had a review of the whole ordeal the next class period.
“You guys worked together the best out of any class we’ve ever taken,” said our teacher. We beamed, thinking to ourselves that the class of ‘04 was truly awesome. We remembered back to being out in the woods, hiking up steep slopes covered with loose dirt and how the first ones up held down a branch for those of us at the bottom to grab onto and use to pull ourselves up. We remembered working together on the shelters, sharing tools and food and having a grand time together. If it had been a movie, this would be the part where the jock and the nerd high five and the credits roll over a group laughing scene.
Alas, it was not a movie. “But,” our teacher continued, “I don’t know if it’s because you guys are the Michael Jackson generation or what, but you guys not only worked together the best, you also cursed more than any other class we’ve ever taken out there! The teacher camp site was in an ideal location, where we could hear conversations from every student camp site. You were like a bunch of sailors!”
Our smiles fell. We sought out the troubled gazes of our group members, the look in our eyes clearly saying, “Ohhhh no, do you think they heard that?” My particular group was scrambling to remember what exactly we’d said when one of the chaperons, the handsome assistant football coach, had walked by in a form-fitting under shirt. Luckily, I seem to recall it only consisting of a lot of Ooh’s and high-pitched giggling.
I still don’t really understand the Michael Jackson reference.
Jul
25
An Uneasy Truce
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I’ve reconciled with Mr. Tum-Tumnus, my stomach. It’s an uneasy truce, though, which was nearly ruined this afternoon by a delicious turkey sandwich.
I had an unfortunate night last night, after my fight with Mr. Tum-Tumnus. I was feeling much better and went up to bed with the plan of doing some last minute reviewing of chemistry and then getting a good night’s sleep. I settled down in bed, cracked open some thrilling notes on acids and bases and then…it hit me. I leaped out of bed, hunted around on the floor before having an epiphany: the closet. I walking in (it’s a big closet) slowly, holding my breath. Flicking on the light, I glanced into the corner and, yes, there it was. A dead mouse, which had decided it was appropriate to fill the entire closet and at least part of my room with the stench of its death. Thanks, little mouse. I hope you enjoyed the trap.
Mr. Tum-Tumnus communicated to me that we needed to get out of there, and get out of there now.
I stumbled out, stopping only to secure the closet door behind me before gasping for breath in the hall way. I went in again only to gather my notes and cell phone (which I use as an alarm clock) before closing the door and dragging myself into one of the spare rooms to sleep.
Luckily, my lovely father has accepted his role as Dead Mouse Remover, so I left a note this morning alerting him to the presence of my expired friend and he took its vengeful little corpse away.
It’s rather late and I’m all tuckered out, but I’m avoiding going to bed for fear of repeating the whole unsettling incident.
Jul
23
Low Expectations
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This week I’m probably going to be pretty dead, blog-wise. And normal-wise, come to think of it…
This week is fraught with 2 chemistry tests (including the final) and 2 doctor’s appointments. Also, for some reason, my stomach has suddenly decided to take on the role of the cruel British judge for “So You Think You Can Eat Crackers Without Throwing Up?” I just hope and pray I’m not coming down with something. That would be loads of fun what with those chemistry tests, let me tell you.
Please send Gatorade, a chemistry tutor (or a Kalin lookalike who’s really good at chemistry) and about 5 extra hours for each day.
Jul
21
Wasting Time
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I’ve ventured out to the Wild West for the weekend. Bradley and I made the 5 hour drive from home to my apartment to make sure no raccoons or hobos had taken up residence over the summer. We haven’t found any yet. I also wanted to weed my back yard, which took approximately 10 minutes.
So I’ve been sitting around, wasting time on the internet. It reminds me a lot of my normal school schedule.
Bradley has remained occupied by sleeping on the couch and the bed, which he doesn’t get to do at home. I think he’s spent about 2 hours total outside. And that’s for the entire two years I’ve lived at this apartment, not including the time he ran away (I’ll write about that, someday). He goes outside, attends to his business, and then stands at the doorway and demands to be let back inside. Basically, he spends about 90% of his time sleeping, 7% licking himself and the remaining 3% is spent trying to convince me to chauffeur him on his Bye-Bye car rides.
We did go out to the university farm to visit Big Red, who is still big but not red.
And I called my sister April, who was kind enough to tell me everything that happened in the latest Harry Potter book. For some reason I know quite a bit about the Harry Potter world, especially for never having read a book, so I was dying to know how it all ends.
Mostly, though, I’ve been sitting around, eating Chinese food and watching this over and over again.
It’s been a good day.
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Kalin is twenty-two years old.
Contrary to popular belief, she's not bilingual (though after 4.5 years of Spanish you'd think she'd know more than she does).
She loves Herefords and Tennessee Walkers. . . [READ MORE] -
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