so, the lovely stephanie howell has interviewed me. she made up these 5 questions to ask me. i will answer them and then if you want me to interview you, you leave a comment telling me so (with your email address) and then i email you questions to answer on your blog. got it? good.
1. when were you most proud of yourself? i can't really think of any specific moment, but any time i do something i didn't think i could is a proud moment for me. it happens a lot. maybe i should stop underestimating myself.
2. what breaks your heart? seeing others be intentionally rude or hateful to someone. realizing someone is not who i thought they were.
3. what trait do you most admire in other people? most despise? admire: straightforward laidbackitude. (it's two so i made it into one.) despise: two-faced-ness i am on a roll with the word invention today!
4. what's the biggest scrapping goal you have? to have fun making pretty things that tell my story.
5. what makes you laugh the hardest? my sister abby lee and my boyfriend. they are both funny funny people. and also my dog is pretty funny, although unlike them, he doesn't do it on purpose.
is a pretty good day. For starters, this arrived in my little p.o. box:
There are several reasons why this is good:
Wired appears to have finally gotten their junk together regarding my subscription. I bought it in January, which apparently means I start getting issues in March. My March issue was waaay late, and I called and asked about it. All they could tell me was to sit tight (of course, I don't really know what else I expected.) So I did, and luckily, it showed up at the end of March. April's issue never showed at all. I called, and they added a month onto the end of my subscription. My hopes for May were not high. But look! Here it is, on time AND
with Hiro on the cover! If you're not familiar with the tv show Heroes, I recommend you familiarize yourself as soon as possible. Created by the same dude who did Lost, Tim Kring, it's got the same sort of crazy, interconnected plot lines that Lost does, but without all the bazillions of bizarro questions that never get answered. With Lost, I got tired of never finding any answers. Heroes always answers just enough to make me dying for next Monday to rapidly approach. Mondays at 9 on NBC. Or you can catch back episodes online at nbc.com. (I sound like I've been paid. I haven't, I swear!) It is so worth your time. But you probably do have to watch some back story to know what is going on. Especially last night's episode. Let's just say it's a good thing that (as far as we know) parallel universes are only a sci-fi plotline because if they were real I'd just sit in my room in a perpetual state of confusion. Anyway...
Not only is my favorite Japanese time traveler on the cover, but so is Ahnold. Over Easter weekend I was introduced to the amazingness that is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Kindergarten Cop, Predator, and Total Recall. All I have to say is, "Get to the choppa!" Well, that's not really all I have to say. I am now a huge Arnold fan. I don't know if that's weird or not. I don't really care. Not only am I now a huge fan of his movies, but seriously I think he rocks as California governor. I wish he could run for president. I'm in favor of changing the rules to say only US citizens and Austrian bodybuilders who once played a killer robot in not one, not two, but three pieces of cinematic treasure can run for president. In fact, I think I'll write my Congressman about that today.
Speaking of California, did you see the collapsed freeway? And how no one died? And only one person - the driver - was slightly injured? That's just insane. Crazzzy.
Other good things that have happened recently:
I got a raise! I now make an extra 25 cents an hour, baby. Which works out too about...20 extra bucks a month. Oh yeah.
My battleship program that I slaved and cried over ended up not doing too shabbily in the tournament! I placed 13th out of 43, which as far as I'm concerned, is something to celebrate!
Chris is borrowing Lauren's GameCube now that she has a Wii and doesn't need a GameCube. That is stellar news because I love GameCube. On the flipside of all of this:
All I want to do now is sit and read my magazine and play Super Mario. But this is Dead Week. I think for the first time I actually understand the true meaning of this. When I was taking euphonium lessons, Dead Week was good news because it was Jury Week. After juries, nothing really big happens. A couple easy finals, maybe. Now, Dead Week is when I cram and read and study and do all sorts of academic things and try to last without actually becoming dead through next week when I prove that I learned something over the last four months. In some cases, easier said than done.
So unfortunately, the GameCube waits for me at Chris's apartment until I take what will be well-deserved brain break on Saturday. The magazine stares at me from my desk, waiting for me to find a few minutes here and there to squeeze in an article or two. And I go to memorize a speech in German, relearn chapters 1 and 2 of my chemistry textbook, and read about von Neumann computer architecture.
Well, last week was my much needed spring break. Chris and I left Saturday morning and drove to Laredo to visit his family. It was my first time to Laredo and my first time meeting most of his family. His mom and oldest brother came up to Denton the week before for his first DMA recital, so I met them then, but he has lots of other family: 4 sisters, 2 brothers, 5 nephews and lots and lots of aunts and uncles. It was a little intimidating, to say the least! But of course, all of his family is very nice and we had a lot of fun. And we ate a lot of food. :)
Chris's mom's house wasn't big enough for us to stay there (it's really big but lots of people live there!), so we stayed at his sister Trina's new house. She and her family haven't moved in yet, so it's been sort of a free hotel for various people over the last several months. She has two little boys and lots of video games, which we definitely took advantage of! Chris and I stayed up late every night we were there playing Super Mario Sunshine and Donkey Konga. I love video games. :)
I got to sleep in the master bedroom (yay for being the guest - and a girl!) and this was the view outside my window:
We spent a lot of time touring around Laredo in the Festiva. It's actually really pretty! (I have to admit I wasn't execting that.) The warm warm weather meant there were lots of palm trees and beautiful flowers everywhere, and most of the houses were painted bright colors. This one in particular caught my eye:
I loved the little patio area and all the green with the bright splash of pink! This house was right across the street from the school where Chris's brother James teaches high school English.
We were planning to go into Mexico one morning and spend a bit walking around in the shops, but I woke up one morning feeling sick and yucky so we decided not to go in. We did go right up to the border though!
By the Rio Grande:
Since we didn't go to Mexico and shop, we went instead to the import store where I bought my fam silly souvenirs. They had incredible things there, like 15-ft. tall mariachi men and suits of armor statues.
Chris and I bought some rad rubber sunglasses for ourselves:
Then, on Wednesday morning we packed the Festiva up again and headed off to Odessa, about a 6 and 1/2 hour drive. Two and a half hours in,
we stopped. Or rather, Festiva screeched and clunked and turned off, and we coasted to a stop at the Taco Way in Uvalde, Texas. While Chris exchanged about a million phone calls with his car-smart brother George and his taking-off-work-to-come-pick-us-up brother James, I fretted and worried and took pictures. Finally finally finally after three hours, many calls to mechanics who never showed, one friendly stranger who put in a call to his mechanic friend (who never showed), and two crosswords, Chris decided to try again.
He cautiously turned the Festiva on and pulled out of the parking lot. The terrifying aroma of burning wafted through the open windows. Festiva huffed up a bridge where lo and behold we saw Auto Parts Alley! Four mechanics in a row, waiting for us, to fix our poor car and empty our wallets. Fifteen minutes later, we were on our way with full wallets and a happy Festiva. It turns out that the only thing wrong with Festiva was the compressor. Our friendly mechanic looked at it and told us it had locked up and caught a belt in it, which caused the screeching and clunking and turning off, and then burned the belt off, which caused the burning smell. (duh!) Once all that was taken care of, the car was fine! The only thing we were missing was an air conditioner. No problem - we have windows. So we were on our way. After a long pretty drive through the "mountainous" area of Texas, we were safely in Odessa. Finally. Odessa was fun, as always, and slow, as always. I loved it.
Chris and I played Hand and Foot and wore red things on our necks with Grannie and Papa. (Except for Papa: "I refuse to wear this thing.") We took the crazy dog for walks:
She quickly realized she couldn't jerk Chris around like she does everyone else. He reined her in pretty fast. I was impressed.
We went to the Sand Hills again - woo!
Here are the other videos we took. "Ramp Gone Wrong" is a funny one. There's also a bonus video of some improv accordion by Chris.
All in all, this was a great spring break. I had a lot of fun meeting all of Chris's family, and it was super relaxing being in Odessa with Grannie and Papa. Now. Only 6 weeks to summer. 6 weeks to summer. 6 weeks to summer.
On Valentine's Day, throughout the course of the day a piercing pain slowly developed in the center of my right foot. When I woke up the next morning, my foot was red and swollen. I could barely walk. I went to the doctor and she informed that I had a puncture wound in the bottom of my foot. I would just like to know how a person gets a puncture wound without noticing it. I mean, seriously. Something stabbed me and I didn't notice?
The doctor poked and prodded at it for a few minutes, with me holding back tears and trying to pretend like I'm not really the biggest baby on the face of the planet when it comes to pain tolerance. When she determined that whatever was inside my foot wasn't coming out anytime soon, she gave me a pair of crutches, some pain medication and instructions to come back the next morning.
I took my pain medication, Ultram, and about an hour later I was a mess. I was dizzy and light-headed and apparently I was saying some weird stuff. Just babbling on and on without making any sense. Something about dragons. (Ultram is a narcotic drug with addictive properties.) Yikes.
The next day when I went to the doctor again, I told her what happened the night before and she told me to definitely stop taking the Ultram immediately. Then she noticed I had an infection in my still-swollen foot. Another prescription, this time for an antibiotic. A GIANT pill.
This whole time, I was using crutches. Now, when I was in elementary school, kids would come to school all the time on crutches for their broken leg or sprained ankle or whatever. I was so jealous of those kids! I wanted to use crutches. So when the doctor gave me a pair of crutches, inside I was excited! Thank goodness for this mysterious hole in the bottom of my foot! I get to use crutches!
That lasted about ... 10 minutes. Dude. Crutches hurt. After about three hours of use I had giant bruises in my armpits and sore upper arm muscles. So mostly, I sat in my room. If I needed to move for any reason, I hopped as much as possible. A giant crippled flamingo kangaroo.
Chris, on the other hand, loved my crutches. He hopped around on them all the time. One day Maggie cleaned her side of the room so we had actual floor space, and Chris came in and said, "Cool - room to practice!"
He's silly.
He also gave me these gorgeous flowers on Valentine's Day:
mmmm gerbera daisies...
So anyway, to summarize: I got a hole in my foot. I have 28 Ultram pills that I don't know what to do with. I wonder how much those would sell for? JOKE. BIG JOKE. Crutches are miserable and I wish I'd known that in elementary school. My boyfriend is a goofball with wonderful taste in flowers. My foot is now all better. I've never been so grateful fo the ability walk in my life.
my list of reasons could go on for a while, but here's the one on my mind right now as i sit here at half past midnight working on a research paper:
he lives ten minutes away and he left the warm comfiness of his apartment on this very yucky day (night?) to bring me a gigantic chai latte. that i didn't even ask for. twenty minutes and five bucks just for me. :) he totally rocks.
My philosophy is, live life "two days at a time." One day at a time is unrelenting. Two days, well, if I drink too much or eat too much I can just do better tomorrow, on my second day. Honestly, I don't even understand the success that "One day at a time" is having.
- paul lieberstein
