I have discovered that I love being on performance tour.  It's kind of intense (not like music trips in high school where you do touristy stuff; it's all driving, rehearsing, and putting on shows) but it's super fun.  I'm filled with new love and appreciation for my fellow AME members, for our music, and for our audiences.  Now I'm tempted to drop out of college to play music in the grand tradition of Kanye West.  There's only one thing about touring that I don't like: it's super hard to eat healthfully.  You have to find restaurants that can serve a lot of people very quickly without charging a lot, which basically means eating a lot of crap.

We stayed at this amazing hotel in Fargo called the C'mon Inn.  (Really!)  They have it set up so that the interior of the hotel is a sort of courtyard, filled with lush (fake) greenery.  All the rooms are around the edges and look like motel rooms, each with its own little patio area.  Ranged throughout the courtyard are a shuffleboard court, a ping-pong table, arcade games, and five hot tubs.  January in Fargo means windchills of -50 degrees Fahrenheit, but being inside the C'mon Inn is like living in perpetual summer, or possibly in Adrian Veidt's Antarctic base.

We played a show at an elementary school, which was very strange.  Everything in elementary schools is in miniature, and the colors are super bright.  The best part, though, was when a group of us were walking through the halls after the show as the kids were getting ready to go home.  The bell rang-- ridiculously loud and abrupt.  We squawked and winced and clapped our hands to our ears.  The little kids stared at us in disbelief.   "It's just the bell," one of them informed us.  I hadn't realized how unused to the way things are run in K-12 schools I had become.  It was weird; I felt like a recently-landed alien.

Are you guys back at school yet?

M did this, and I thought it was cool. I'm nothing if not a follower.

( Bold what applies to you. )

It turns out that the trip through the wilderness was HELLA FUN. The people in my group were both sweet and totally hilarious. The scenery was excellent. I got to slide down waterfalls, guys. Also, I just generally love being outdoors, away from civilization. Everything becomes more simple. There's nothing to stress you out, you just eat when you're hungry and sleep when you're tired and spend the rest of the time chilling with your awesome new friends. I kind of fear that I'm spoiled now. College is about to become less like day camp and more like school, and I'm not sure if I'm ready for that.

Last night was my cousin's wedding, for which (you may remember) I read a poem. That was pretty great too. I love talking and being the center of attention, and the poem was received really well. It must have been my delivery, because this was a really terrible poem. (The person on that page is not actually my cousin).

Weddings are just so cool! Free cake! Free champagne! Dancing to awesome cheesy music! The problem with the latter was that most of the people available for me to dance with were either my grandma or really drunk guys who kept awkwardly hitting on me. Okay, maybe that was less a "problem" and more a "totally hilarious thing." Although my uncle describing me as "hot, single, and ready to go?" Kiiind of creepy. (Anyway, this is another thing I now have in common with Jon Walker: sleazy dancing with scary older dudes at weddings.)

I'm about to go meet with my academic adviser to finalize my schedule. Ahhh, school! I don't want to think about it!

Here is the download link for Hollaback Boy.

Also of note: it looks like I'll be going on an orientation trip into the great outdoors after all. I should probably be excited, but mostly I'm kind of freaked. I really hope the people in my group are nice! I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to sign up to traipse through the wilderness with a bunch of strangers. D:

I think those waffles
were acidic.  Holy crap,
my throat is on fire!

Haiku2 for tonparapluie
they had just hired some new clarinet players and weren't looking
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Created by Grahame

Well, I love haiku poetry as much as (quite possibly more than) the next girl. But I don't know that I can get behind a haiku in which two of the lines have the wrong number of syllables. I'm not just counting wrong, am I?

Haiku2 for tonparapluie
in my life go i met scarlett johansson this was because i think
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Created by Grahame

This one seems to be accurate... and that's practically some e.e. cummings shiznit right there. Or possibly Descartes.

A bright, sunny day
But the air smells like tuna


ETA:
I picked out a song
All by ear on my keyboard
Now I'm triumphant!

Once upon a time, there lived a (mostly) happy band of lovely young friends named 

While cleaning house yesterday I found, in my ninth grade English binder, a ripped piece of paper with the following on it (in my handwriting):

( In a Field, one dewy dawn- )

Today is my graduation party. 5:30 PM. Be there. And happy graduation to M.

I went salsa dancing last night (which I know I said was going to happen last week, but it was rescheduled).  The venue (Loring Pasta Bar) is one of the coolest buildings I have ever entered.  It has a big dance floor with a balcony above it, so one can lean over and look down at the people dancing, all illuminated by swirling lights, and be mesmerized by the glamour of it all.  The walls are aged brick and draped with lights and velour hangings.  The booths around the edge of the dance floor (because the Loring is a restaurant by day and a club by night) are deep red cloth in a sexy curve around dark hardwood tables.  The ceilings are sweeping, the doors are classic wood paneling.  The friends I was with were examining the guys on the dance floor; I was just examining the architecture like the total social reject I am.

You can go there with no idea of how to salsa dance and it's perfectly okay, as long as you are young and female and reasonably good looking.  There are any number of eligible young Latino men standing on the edges of the dance floor who will simply leap at the chance to teach you.  You have to remember, though, that they are only after one thing, and it's not to help you perfect your steps.  I was dancing with what's-his-face and he was all running his hands up and down my sides and whispering "do you work out?" and praising my salsa skills (I have no salsa skills) and telling me how much he liked dancing with me.  Also of note is that these guys know the words to all the songs the DJ plays.  "Mio, mio, mio," crooned what's-his-face.  "Do you know what that means?" he asked, looking deep into my eyes.  "It means 'mine.'"  Suddenly I needed to go see how my friends were doing.

It was a good time, don't get me wrong.  And no more sleazy than a high school dance, really.  Probably less so.  I kind of like being able to get into 18+ stuff.

On a largely unrelated note, Panic at the Disco was on SNL last night.  Did anyone watch it?  I taped it but haven't gotten a chance to check it out yet.

On another largely unrelated note, I've been making so many smoothies lately.  I'm really starting to appreciate the magic my blender can work.  Mmmm, fresh fruit!  Healthful and delicious!

Today I took my first bike ride of the season.  Perhaps that's an admission that will cause true bicycle aficianados to turn up their noses.  Unfortunately, I simply haven't the fortitude for winter bike riding.  It amazes me that anoyone does.  I think I would collapse from cold.

I had to inflate the tires beforehand, and by inflate I mean "flail around helplessly until my mother came and helped me."  It's one of the great mysteries of life that I can attempt to work a tire pump for several minutes and she can come over, do what appears to be exactly what I've been doing, and have it done in seconds.   It should be noted that she turns fifty tomorrow.  A big milestone!

I only rode through one muddy puddle, which seems like it can be counted as a victory.  No-one yelled at me or ran me over, which can definitely be counted as a victory.  When I got to the record shop (that's where I was going) and finished chaining up my bike, a man drove by and honked at me from his rusty pick-up.  It's not that I never get sleazy guys driving past me and honking/yelling/&c.  The thing is, though, that I wasn't exactly looking like the kind of girl you honk at (in my knitted earflap hat and shapeless peacoat).  Do these guys even look before they honk, or do they just see something vaguely female and lay on the horn?

Also:  it's pi day!  I hope you've been appreciative of irrational numbers.

Dear members of study group,

Would you/could you come to my house on Sunday afternoon into evening?

(I live at 1837 Hewitt Avenue and my house is... well, if not totally cool, at least livable.)

(You'd probably have to bring something entertaining to watch, otherwise we're bout to be watching Newsies.  My DVD collection, it is not expansive.)

Yesterday was kind of interesting, as weekdays in my life go.  I met Scarlett Johansson!  This was because I work on the news crew at my school, and she visited and gave a presentation about caucuses on our video announcements.  Things got pretty crazy; the door to the studio was locked but we could hear kids outside, pounding on it and screaming "I love you Scarlett!" and demanding to be let in.  Her entourage had to get her out through the little-known back passageways of the school basement.  Which, on the one hand, was really funny, but also made me so glad that I'm not famous.  I imagine Scarlett can't go anywhere without being hounded by the adoring masses, and that's got to get old after a while.




I also went to my caucus (which I swear I would have done even without an movie star suggesting it).  A record number of people turned up, which meant that there was an awful lot of standing around in lines and that I voted on a little scrap of paper because they had run out of ballots.  I had a bit of trouble deciding for whom to cast my ballot, because in all honesty I think either Clinton or Obama would be a pretty good president.  Who I ended up choosing is confidential.  :D

(Also I keep typing "ballet" instead of "ballot.")

When making this account, I had the hardest time proving I wasn't a robot.  I kept thinking I had that ugly little combination of letters and numbers typed in correctly, and I kept being wrong.  One could, I suppose, regard this as a suggestion that I am not in fact human.