So this is goodbye, for now...

I'm off to Casablanca via London and Tangier. Into the mountains with some Berbers, Ifrane, Fes, Chefchaouen... Then Paris. Versailles, Montmartre, the Louvre... Then Maui. Vegging on the beach, driving to tiny villages, eating shave ice and char siu bau (manapua) and haupia ice cream, going snorkeling with turtles. Then home, and I'll write again. So be safe, and take care. Until next time.

Oy.

Some people baffle me with their ignorance:

(From the Orange County Register, in an article about a vet who wrote a book about the sex lives of animals, these are quotes from real pet owners.)

If I neuter my Siamese cat, will his eyes uncross?

I have a male chauvinist cat. He refuses to help care for his kittens once they are born. What can I do to increase his involvement in bringing up baby?

Where can I buy perfume to make my dog sexier? I am trying to breed her but when the owner of the stud brought him over to my house, all the male dog wanted to do was jump around and play with my dog's toys.

I only let my dog out during the day. How can she be pregnant?

I heard that there are birth control pills for dogs. I gave my dog some of mine, but she still got pregnant. Should I give her two a day instead of one?
(AAAAUUUUUGHGGGGHHHHHH!!!!)

(stupid...people...brain...hurt....ack!)

It wouldn't be right

for me to leave on a new adventure without finishing the first. So let me do that here, in abbreviated form:

Road Trippin-Day 8: Really pretty things

Santa Fe to Williams, Arizona, via Albuquerque, the petrified forest and painted desert (is anyone else confused by where the heck we got our pronunciation for "Albuquerque" from?). We had also planned to see the meteor crater, but didn't make it before sunset. We stopped by my friend Jared's (from Georgetown) house on a reservation, which was cool. The roads were on open plans surrounded by huge cliffs in the distance. It was beautiful. The brush and grasses were rainbow-colored, and the sky was always full of distant storms. (That night we got to watch a lightning storm from afar.) We supplemented the beauty by listening to "Goodnight and Go" and "Hide and Seek" on repeat for the entire drive (and well into the next morning, too).

On the way to the national forest (they trapped all the pretty stuff along a road that you have to pay to drive on) we stopped at a crazy place called Stewart's Petrified Wood that lured us in with insane signage and the promise of free petrified wood. Of course, when we got there it was just a tiny piece given to the driver of the car, but whatever. :) I bought a lot of petrified wood for cheap that I plan to take to a lapidary and cut/polish myself someday. I also bought a meteorite and some agate. The great thing about Stewart's is that they had ostriches there, and a big sign that said "Caution! Ostrich Bite!" that if taken not as a general statement with Ostrich pretending to be plural, is very funny.

The Painted Desert was really cool, especially because we were also in a dust storm and the winds were really high. Unfortunately it was overcast so the colors were dulled. A lot of bumpy little hills looking almost like cindercones made of layers of richly colored sediment. Reds, pinks, whites, even blues and purples. The petrified forest was cool because it was pretty much just chunks of log lying around that happened to have gorgeous mineral patterns growing inside. I'll post pictures when I get back. Or maybe before I leave today.

Then we stayed at a tiny motel and slept for three hours.

Road Trippin-Day 9 1/2: The day of dooooom

We woke up at 3:30am and I drove us to the Grand Canyon. We were about an hour early, so we sat around in blankets listening to foreign tourists (some Portuguese, some Japanese, some British). Sadly the opposite ridge was higher than the horizon so the whole sky was light before we saw the sun peek over the edge. Seeing the sunlight spill onto the cliffs across the canyon, turning slivers of orange light into brilliant washes, was something else. Once the big show had finished, we got our cereal out of the car and had breakfast on a bench. Then I drank a several month old sugar free Red Bull so I could make the rest of the drive. We drove along the canyon for a while, and personally I found the non-primary views more interesting. I also preferred views where the canyon narrowed so it looked more like a canyon than a mountain range surrounded by cliffs. (I didn't expect the bottom to be so mountainous...guess I was expecting something more like The Lion King.) The drive away from the canyon was absolutely gorgeous, surrounded by the Marble Cliffs and things. (Take the 89 Alternate!! Get off the main highway!) We crossed the Colorado River, which was bright green. Up at the north ridge of the GC we saw the biggest milkshakes we've ever seen...basically soft serve in a giant drinking cup.

The road to Zion was again surrounded by storms...gorgeous. Actually getting into Zion felt like being Mario in the giant level. You'd seen strange colored hills approaching, and then suddenly you were in the middle of richly colored sandstone monsters rising up on either side of you as your road snaked between them. Most of the park views were only visible by taking their shuttle bus up the canyon, but we only had time to stop off at one place (some little waterfalls). All the really pretty stuff required hours of strenuous hiking. We did see some wild turkeys, though. Then when we left we saw a fire that had been started by lightning.

The plan for the rest of the day was to stop in Vegas, see it, play the nickel slots with 5 dollars, stay in Vegas, drive home sunday. We got to Vegas, stopped at a gas station, got creeped out by the people there, spent an hour in traffic on the strip, saw ridiculously elaborate casinos, got scared by the seediness of it all and my dad's warnings of chronic gamblers stumbling drunkly through the halls of nearby cheap motels, and decided to stay in the next town over (this was at 9pm). So we went one more exit. Nothing but restaurants and a casino hotel. One more exit, still nothing. Got back on the highway, then complete darkness and the sign: the next exits were 15 and 30 miles away. The only exits. Okay...so we drove 15 miles, no motels. Just darkness. 15 miles later, still nothing. It's okay, we'll find something at the next exit. Then all of a sudden WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA! Ack! What? We didn't even stop the car in Nevada, let alone send a postcard? Ack! The sign: Next exit: 40 miles. Next exit after that: 60 more miles! Gah! What? How can there be NOTHING here? I'm freaking out because I'm so tired I can't stay awake for another hour and a half to make sure Kina doesn't fall asleep (we did wake up at 3:30 that morning after all) and I just want to stop driving and sleep and I'm mad and frustrated. We can't even get off the highway to turn around because there's a concrete median and no exits! We drive 40 miles, no decent motels, but a few gross ones. Is this even possible? So we stop there, in Baker, CA, check out the one motel there, find out it's expensive and super sketchy, so we go to the Denny's down the street to recoup. What are our options? Drive 60 miles to Barstow and stay there (because once we get into LA there's no way two girls are staying in a cheap motel alone, pepper spray or no), or drive all the way home. The latter option makes sense if we can stay awake (we'd get home around 2:30am), but it's lame because it's so anticlimactic. We'd get home, someone would be up, "how was your trip," "fine I'll tell you about it tomorrow," check email, go to bed. A day early. Lame. Plus I wanted to cut my hair and wash the car first. So what we did was this: called my parents, told them we were sleeping in barstow. Had coffee at Denny's and went crazy on caffeine. Bought energy drinks. Kina drove all the way home, we slept on her boyfriend's couch. Then we woke up, ate our cereal (from real bowls this time), cleaned out the car, washed it, cut my hair, got iced chais, and went home. Then told them we actually had been in town all day. Not a huge surprise, but a clever solution to the problem, I felt.

So that was the trip, not so abbreviated, I apologize. Sorry for the shift in tense. I'll be back one more time to say goodbye before I go.

Turkey feathers and sea shells

According to Wikipedia:

Misa
A Korean drama called "miahnhada, saranghanda" which means, "sorry, I love you"

Typing

I just took an online typing speed test for fun. This was the passage I had to copy:

As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears..Unable to pull your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you..The venom takes effect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along with your complexion..You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall from the limbs of the tree..Snap! Your head falls off and rolls all over the ground..The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head..Worse yet, the spider is suing you for damages.

I was highly amused.

Scary.

I woke up with my heart beating out of my ears and feeling so relieved. I had just dreamt that I was about to marry Brian, I don't know why, and we were already well into the expensive two-day celebration surrounded by family and friends. We hadn't gone through the ceremony yet, so when I realized this was NOT the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with I pleaded with my mother for her to help me call it off, but she had to go help Ellen Tani because she had gotten sick and needed to be taken home. I started pacing around in circles hyperventilating, not even remembering being proposed to, knowing that I would regret this decision forever, wondering why I had said yes, and wondering how damaged my reputation would become if I did in fact manage to cancel it hours before I said "I do." Just when I felt like all hope was lost, I woke up (so often waking up ends up saving me from complete desperation in dreams), chest pounding, feeling soooo relieved. Thank god.

SDCC '05

The proof
Originally uploaded by Beepifier.

Here I am, sunburned face, half of which is numb from the anesthesia they gave me for my filling, wondering what happened to everyone, so rather than coming up with some elaborate photoblog, I'll just link to my flickr photoset for the dang thing. :) I didn't take many photos, only of the important things. Enjoy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24753407@N00/sets/610908/

Oh

Gabi gave me a book for graduation which I'm really excited to read. It's called "What Should I Do With My Life?" by Po Bronson, and what's funny is that in Bewitched (which I saw this afternoon) she reads this book. :) But anyway, I was flipping through it, and I found this passage, which really struck me:

(From an interview with a girl who had spent the past 16+ years training to be a doctor like her father, then during her internship had a breakdown, discovered she belonged somewhere else, and felt it had all been a waste.)
"Well, if the purpose of life is to be as great a doctor as your father, then you might have stalled. But if the purpose of life is to be true to yourself, when you walked out of that hospital, you passed your first big test."

Beyond the reef...

Tomorrow I go on a big yacht (thank you uncles with too much money) to sail around some islands off of San Diego. Hopefully I'll be able to find a place by myself and think without being conversed with too often. It helps to have no cousins my age. Maybe I can find some peace out on the wide open sea...

One among the fence

Adventure! Sort of. So, after seeing bewitched with the sisters (the distraction by which significantly elevated my mood, unless what did it was crying like a baby during the trailer for RENT), I came home to find that my worst fears had been realized: The water I got in my ear during my shower this morning wasn't gone yet! But that's not the kicker. After some probing with a q-tip, I discovered the reason. Just as I had suspected would happen last night, I had gotten tiny bits of tissue paper shoved deep into my right ear! Whee! I knew I should have stuck to using single larger pieces rather than adding tiny bits as I needed them. I swelled them up with water, encouraged their mobility with rubbing alcohol, and then (don't tell my parents) fished them out bit by bit with a pair of tweezers. Heh, heh. So much for smaller than your elbow. It was quite fun, though.

Tonight is Milque and Cookies, and I am so, so sad to be missing it. It's the reason I'm a 'Tau, after all... (although my waistline sure doesn't regret my absence)


[Before I started to forget why I felt so upset earlier today--I was crying and blasting Coheed really, really loud to make my dad feel bad for pushing me over the edge--I was driving my sisters to the theater and came up with the idea that I wanted to write this:

My heart feels very, very heavy. It's almost like junior fall when I was getting sick every day thinking about Ian and Ilya and the problems that were haunting me there and I had to write to them and apologize and hope that in doing so I could lift some of the burden. Now it's not only emotionally, though. I realize that any time I've been home in the past three years I've had at least one major project to take care of, whether that's my dad's site, my dad's video, my aunt's resume DVD, my Japan LSA DVD, etcetera whatever. Add that to all the personal projects I take on when I'm home, and you've got Misa the frantic stressball. I feel like I haven't been able to sit back and think, "what will I decide to do for fun today?" in a long, long time. It's always been "I'd *like* to do ____, but I really have to be doing ____." I know that's life, just a series of things that need to be done, and it's up to us to set our priorities straight and allow ourselves "me" time where we can temporarily forget about all our obligations and assignments, but I haven't really figured that out yet. I still end up following the path of "making everyone else happy is priority #1, so I'd better get this stuff done stat," and then being miserable myself.

I feel like I need to unload this heavy burden, even if that just means temporarily shelving it before coming back with (hopefully) a clear head and a new perspective. It's not just one thing, it's everything, and nothing's doing what it's supposed to do, so I feel like I'm wading through slow-moving quicksand and can't see where the quicksand ends and the solid ground begins ahead of me, if it even does. The problem is that these burdens can't be shelved, really--it's more complicated than this. However, my approach to them can change, and going to Morocco will provide that opportunity, I believe. I'm not bringing my computer, and while I intend to write while I'm there, I'm going to try to keep my connectivity to a minimum. (I'm sure I'll have the opportunity to get online, especially in Paris, I'm just not going to be attached at the wrists.) Maybe if I go there and allow myself to put all my fears and worries aside and not think about what needs to be fixed on the website or my upcoming job search, just for those two weeks, I'll get that breath of fresh air I've been waiting for, and it'll help me when I come back. Just maybe.]

2113

Today was a looong day, and fairly atypical of my life these days, since I actually *did* something.

It started with a bang--a chemical burn on my eye (which is still stinging and red, btw). Note to self: when switching contact solution, READ THE BOTTLE FIRST. More importantly, if you hear the solution fizzing in the bottom of the drain, DON'T PUT IT IN YOUR EYE.

I got off to a late start to the SDCC, which I went to all by my lonesome. I hit a ton of traffic on the way down, so I was so frantic about finding parking that I parked in the first garage I could find (turned out to be beneath Morgan Stanley, so when I left, the two adults in the elevator with me had a conversation that went like this: sophisticated old man: "Ah, that's a lot of files. Big trial coming up?", thirtysomething businesswoman:"No, just depos." "Ah, just in time for the weekend. I've been there before myself." *chuckles like a very rich man*) and ended up getting hit with a $28 parking fee. Bleh. Ouch.

The con itself was very large, but I got through all of it in about 3 hours. I walked up and down almost every aisle (100-5400, in increments of 100), picked up some nice swag, and I got to talk to some mildly (and some more than mildly) famous people, too:

Coheed and Cambria: I said, "Did any of you happen to see a big red rubber band on this table? I think I left it here...but you probably would have noticed it, so probably not." Co&Ca: "hrm(muttering...don't see rubber band...resume ignoring me)"
So that kind of counts as talking to them. ;) Actually, later I did exchange a few words (few=about 5 or 6) with the bassist Mic, so that does sort of count.

Stan Sakai of Usagi Yojimbo (samurai rabbit) comic book fame: A long time ago my mom gave me the first four or five (!--there are 85 now!) issues of the comic, and it was really the first exposure I had to the comic book medium. I was really excited to see his name on his pass (I wasn't sure if he was just some random old asian guy drawing a rabbit in a book), so I had to buy a few of the cheaper items from the table.

Mike and Jerry from PA: I didn't really talk to Gabe, but I had a chat with Tycho about Stan Sakai and Usagi Yojimbo (and Mike's fandom of those comics) because Jerry was wearing an Usagi shirt and I commented that I'd just been to Stan's booth. Oowee.

Stephen Notley of Bob the Angry Flower: didn't actually talk to him, just stood in front of him momentarily while he conversed with some girl about something political.

Sam Brown of Explodingdog.com: I wanted Thinking of You SO BADLY it hurt, but decided I'd have to go cheaper. He's a very nice guy, and I embarrassed him by taking his picture.

Orson Scott Card: I had to check his badge, too. He was talking about mormons and other scary stuff when I got there, and I so desperately wished I had my copy of Ender's Game for him to sign, but all they had at the booth were two of his newest books in hardcover. Boo. I was going to have him sign the back of a piece of paper for me, but then I explained that it was because Ender's Game is my favorite book and that I can never recommend it to my friends becaues everyone's already read it, and he gave me his email address and told me he'd send me an autographed book. Then his assistant handed him a copy of his book Enchantment (supposedly the story of what happens post-happily-ever-after in fairy tales...probably a good reality check for me) from the display, he signed it, and I got it for free. :P

Red v. Blue people: Took their picture, didn't talk to them.

Some amusing things from the con floor: a male princess leia, girls at the Adult Swim booth covered in day-glo orange paint (I got a free belt there), a playboy playmate signing autographs, a giant sign for a movie with bad acting and good kung foo that said "It's like PORNO, but with KUNG FU instead of SEX" (I'd upload the picture but I'm lazy), and a lot of hentai. I also learned that on October 4th, the Complete Anthology of Calvin and Hobbes is coming out! Three hardbound volumes in one of those five-sided box slide-in cases hardbound books come in sometimes, with every single strip ever published (in the paper maybe? wasn't clear on that detail), for $150. Definitely a purchase I'll be recommending to my parents. ;) I also learned that I really want to see The Corpse Bride, and remembered how much I like the Chronicles of Narnia.

As I was leaving I got gifted a pass for the rest of the weekend by some random volunteer who used me in a practical joke on his friend...it wasn't really a funny joke (I pretended to be a girl the volunteer had mistaken for the fiancee of his friend who he'd been sent to retrieve from the entrance), and I think it was just an excuse to give me his number, but I got a free pass out of it, even if I have no intention of going back. (Anyone want it, btw?)

Next: stalled in starbucks while I read my new acquisitions. Then: drove ten minutes north to the concert venue. Stopped in a Ralphs for sustenance, bought liquid sustenance, got glared at by the checker girl.

So, the concert: During the first opener, I was sitting in the lobby resting my legs. They didn't sound that great anyway (Frank the Baptist). During the second, I wanted to secure my place close to the front (silly Misa...I obviously usually go to very tame concerts), and the floor-to-ceiling speakers just about blew the hair off of my arms. I felt like the drummer was dictating my heartbeat. I shoved toilet paper in my ears and all was well again, but my body still shook. So I moved closer to the center, and by the time Coheed and Cambria came on we had gotten crushed into the front area, and soon enough the moshing commenced. I was a few bodies back from the edge, but that means I was still pushed around quite a bit. I was surviving (but not seeing--I'm not exaggerating when I say there were at least five guys standing in front of me who were over six foot three) until the moshing went over the top and I got the wind knocked out of me by the combined weight of the guy in front of me and the girlfriend he was holding as it concentrated itself into his bony butt and slammed into my stomach. (Actually, at one point the pit shifted and I was actually inside of it for a moment and had to violently push my way out of it, past the hands trained to keep those people out of the crowds.) So I moved a safe distance back.

I must say, Claudio has a lot of hair. He had it tied back and under a hat at the con, and he actually wasn't bad looking at all. You just usually can't see his face, or it's dwarfed by the size of his giant fluffed curly half blondish mop. It literally looked like cousin itt had gotten a perm and a cut and come to sing for us. When he was talking to the audience the microphone head was disappearing through the curtain of curls and we couldn't even see his face. I don't mind the chops at all (always been a sideburns fan), but I'm not real keen on that spit...mostly because they don't look comfortable.

The music was wonderful, as could be expected. Claudio has a double-necked guitar! Never saw him use the upper one, though. Something I really liked about being able to see them in person was seeing how each of the three singers had their own unique vocal styling to contribute to the band's sound. (Plus being able to put voices to faces.) Claudio, of course, provides the sweet and melodic lead vocals. The lead guitarist makes all the vocal effects that sound instrumental, like the vocoder or just singing really high pitched and in tones so it sounds like a synthesizer. The bassist (the first non-significantly-older/really awkward one I've seen, probably ever), who's the one who was nice to me at the con, turned out to be the one who does the occasional harmony but specializes in the screamy-death-metal stuff that is really the only part of their songs I'm not a huge fan of. I'll admit that it fits with the music quite nicely, and he does a very impressive job at it, it's just not my cup of tea. Plus I doubt he'll have any vocal cords left in four or five years to be able to keep it up.

The last song of the encore was In Keeping Secrets... and at the end Claudio played a beautiful guitar solo, first normally, then behind his head, and finally with his teeth. Kudos to you, Claudio-o-o-o-oh-ee-yeah.

So all in all, it was a good day. Just wish I had more expendable income. :P There were really cool arm warmers at the goth booth with a ton of D rings on them and I got flashbacks of my goth-wannabe stage in high school...good times. ah well. goodnight. hope you slept well. hope my eye gets normal again.

Hotaru no Haka

My family just watched Grave of the Fireflies, and I haven't seen Emi cry so hard since we told her we were going to move out of her first house. Wow. I usually cry at movies, but I barely shed a tear watching this one. I think I must have missed something, because everyone I know who's seen it has come out ex-sobbing.

Also, my sister's boyfriend is a waiter at a country club, and yesterday he waited on a foreign looking lady whose credit card read, I kid you not, "Sea O. Pirates."

That has to be the best name I have ever heard. Apparently she didn't even look like the type to find a clever way to fake a name. It's probably pronounced "say Oh pee-RAH-tees" anyway. But that doesn't stop it from being awesome.

I am in love

with the Bright Eyes video for First Day of My Life (it's on iTunes).

Well,

After having my blood drawn however many times last year, I must say that shots suddenly seem much less terrible. Still far from okay, but not as world-ending by far.

Today my dad and I took the boat out (finally), and realized that the once-125-pound 14' racing sailboat had suddenly become a 300 pound oversized anvil. A small crack in the hull (which we patched last week) turns out to have been the inlet for 15 or 16 gallons of water to seep into the hull itself, leaving us several inches lower in the water and hard pressed to move it about on land. We're going to have to drill a couple of holes and drain it for a bit :\. Oh well. I did manage to get it down the lake and back, despite the terrible and inconsistent wind conditions one finds on a small, frequently-inletted manmade lake. Hopefully when I get back from Hawaii it'll be back to its original weight and I'll be able to take it out solo. Now *that* is my idea of a good time.

Then again, having someone to hang off the edge as we keel over a good 50 degrees in a strong wind is fun, too.

Thoughts on cooking.

I had to make dinner tonight because my mom had to leave, and I actually did a good job at it. Meaning I didn't botch it. I took a ton of cooking classes in Japan, but I couldn't really understand most of the instructions/recipes, so I was more of a kitchen helper and don't really feel I came out of it a master chef. So tonight was a happy surprise. While I don't feel that I'm particularly gifted at the culinary arts, I do feel that with practice I could be quite good, and that if given a recipe I could make anything you asked me to, just not necessarily as beautifully as someone who knows what they're doing. While I was cooking, I started thinking--earlier I said that I thought a person's driving style said a lot about them. Well, something I find equally interesting to learn about someone is their level of cooking expertise. Especially among guys. Only because it's something that is so typically associated with the fairer sex.) It's kind of like being good at dancing. They're life skills that, while seemingly marginal, actually carry a significant weight. They will never define one's opinion of another, nor can they break it (although they can make it), but they can act as a ten-pound cherry on top of that person's sundae. So yeah--I like to know how my friends drive, cook, and dance. They're very interesting aspects of a person's whole that rarely (except for the driving) get exposed to the public eye.

"It was the bos primogenus of the paleontologists of the outer crust. The long-extinct progenitor of the bovine species of our own world.

back from the dead

Well, for anyone wondering where I've been for the past few days (five, to be exact), it's here:

http://www.kinagrannis.com

That represents five consecutive 12 hour days locked in my room living off of nectarines and water and losing feeling in my legs. Five days of hating GoLive, loving my Wacom tablet, and cursing Firefox. (But really, most of the work got done in the last two or three days, and all the cursing was much more concentrated within that time.) Five days of shunning family and friends. And now, thanks to the technically savvy and on-the-go programming skillz of a certain Mr. Peebles, it's at least mostly up and running. I still have the photos to thumbnail and set up as well as a forum and blog to make a template for before I let them go public, plus a few minor kinks here and there (and I know where they are so there's no need to inform me :P). But, the key is that it's up there and that's a relief and a half. I didn't think I had it in me to actually design a visually appealing website, but I suppose this one is much better than my dad's site I did a few years back (www.grannischiropractic.com -- but that WAS a professional site so my creativity allowance was much smaller), thanks in no small part to having live tech support this time around.

In summary, I almost killed the world last week, but now everything's a little bit better. In the coming days I've got a lot of stuff to take care of, a potential day trip to San Diego, a sailing outing tomorrow (and apparently also a swim in the scary manmade lake in Mission Viejo where our little boat is stored), and lots and lots of unpacking. Bleh. Hopefully I'll get a few movies in while I'm at it.

Peace out.

ps--I know there are a few of you who are going to go straight to the source to look at the man behind the machine, and to you I have this to say:
I appreciate your comments and suggestions, but please, go easy. I know it's still a little broken/incomplete/slow, and I know that a lot of the code is ugly (thanks, golive), and I'm working on it. :) So if I get any emails with long bulleted lists of things to fix/add/remove, I'm gonna have to bring out the brute squad. :)

new things

I have a new wireless network in the house, a rearview mirror that fell off of my car :\, a dentist appointment tomorrow, and three days to finish this website. Dun dun dun. hence the radio silence.

Let me tell you

I am not in the least surprised. :)

Well,

IMG_5022.jpg
Originally uploaded by Beepifier.

I now look diseased. My back looks like a steak. I'm going to have tan spots, like a cow. Moo.

My body is an enigma.

Something...very strange, and fairly frightening, and quite painful just happened to me, but I don't really feel like talking about it here. It's better now, but...I just hope it wasn't anything serious.

I almost forgot!

Apparently, Bill Nye the Science Guy swing dances, and he was at the Lindy Groove a couple of weeks ago! Hiwi danced with him! That's pretty darn awesome.

Mmm.

First off, welcome to July.

Today: mildly productive. Got some things mailed.

This evening: saw Howl's Moving Castle, and by god it was absolutely gorgeous. Not to mention that once again Studio Ghibli has put together a perfect fairytale romance. It was perfect. I want to see it again. Only Japan could make a guy with pretty teardrop earrings and a nice gold necklace (and long hair) look handsome and masculine (unless it's Johnny Depp in Pirates, of course).

Later this evening: Adam's moving to SLO in a few days, so I met him and Hiwi at The Lindy Groove in Pasadena, which is actually just a borrowed Masonic Temple. Pretty cool building. Hillary looked good, and apparently lost 15 pounds, which is hard to believe since she's about 5 feet tall and didn't really look like she had 15 extra pounds on her before. Oh well. I think it's easier to control one's eating habits when one isn't living in a house with a giant pantry and an overflowing fridge. I only had an hour of dancing, but tonight was a good night. A good night is when I get asked to dance for at least half the songs (I spend a lot of time avoiding being asked so I can just peoplewatch), and the leads are good and patient with me (as in I don't screw up most of what they try to lead and we generally have a good time) and I feel like I'm following well despite my rustiness. A bad night is when the only people who ask me to dance are the worst dancers on the floor and all the good dancers ask everyone but me and I go home feeling like I want to quit swing forever. Sadly, good nights and bad nights are about 50/50, but tonight was excellent (there was a bit of go go dancing, with a little thriller thrown in, when the Austin Powers song came on and I found myself twisting with some random guy), so I'm happy. Then we went to Carrow's and hung out (and ran into Mr. Go-Go there, oddly enough. I think he's at least 28 or something...kind of creepy given he looks about 20) and I had a, and I quote, "Jumpy Monkey Sundae" (kind of ironic, aheh, given my post a few days ago). So called because it's coffee ice cream with bananas. MmmMMmmm. I was going to be good, but he broke me down with the temptation of an Oreo milkshake and when that wasn't available I had already lost the battle. In the parking lot Adam busted out his guitar for Hillary and serenaded us with some tunes, like Caedmon's Call, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Nickel Creek, Sean Watkins, Burlap to Cashmere, blah de blah etc. Harmonizing to Walk on the Ocean was re-had and it was good, although we were missing the high part (oh Kina where art thou?). I won't see him again unless I drive up to SLO, but then again he did graduate in '03 and I haven't seen him much since then so it's not like this'll be much of a change.

Something funny about dancing: several times I've taken boys to see me dance because it's a really important part of my life that I'd like to share with them. I also like to think that I've got at least a little bit of talent, so I suppose I hope to impress a bit, too. Mostly I just want them to be proud of me for being good at something. But every time I do that it only induces boredom or bad moods (from jealousy of my dance partner, I'm presuming), so I guess it's not as good of an idea as I usually think it will be. I guess I should stop. Or just make them learn to dance, too.

But now it's 4:15 in the morning (almost fell asleep on the hour drive home...ack), and I have no alarm (thanks, Emi), and a week to finish a website that hasn't been started, so I suppose I should get to bed. Good morning.