Yep... done with classes, final exams, getting my room cleaned, packing, and all that stuff, and now I'm going to head back home within a few hours. Hopefully I don't get too bored back home... I don't really know very many people back there (the few friends I had over the years have mostly moved away by now, as far as I know) so it'll pretty much just be me and my family. Plus the Internet connection at home is terrible (we have the worst dial-up ever) and I'll barely be able to take showers at my mom's house due to the nastiness of the water (something got into our well and now it smells awful.)
Hopefully the break isn't too boring. I at least have Christmas presents (I'm hoping for a 3DS now that the price dropped; just need to figure out what games to ask for along with it), eating at Victor's, going to the shooting range, and goofing off with my sister and the cats to look forward to. I got almost all of my pictures delivered to the people that asked for them this week (only five didn't make it--three people left before I could get in touch with them, and two more are unaccounted for and probably already gone too), my grades are looking pretty good so far (A+ in Spanish, A- in painting, B+ in Art History, passed jogging... the rest unknown at the moment), and the semester was the best semester of school I've ever had, by far. I mean, I actually had friends that invited me to stuff outside of school, and went on dates, and randomly ended up talking to people for hours at a time... yeah, I'm going to miss being here for the next two weeks and I'll definitely be looking forward to coming back.
Even if my lunch break next year will only be 15 minutes most days of the week...
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Friday, December 16, 2011
Exams done. Nothing left to do but draw stuff, eat, and talk to people!
...yeah, the title pretty much says it all. XD
I finished my last exam today (Thursday, actually--I count it as still "today" since I haven't gone to bed yet), and I think I did at least decently well on all of mine; I should pass them at the very least, probably get B's or A's on them if I did as well as I usually do. I've been drawing little pictures for people and giving them to them as Christmas presents this week, and so far I've finished drawing all but five of them. Only one of those five actually leaves tomorrow (as far as I know--another one of them hasn't responded to my Facebook message yet so I have no idea when she's leaving... she may have left already, even), so I should be able to rest a bit once I'm done with this last one and have it delivered to the person who wanted it. I'll still have to deliver the Friday ones that I still have and work on the Saturday ones (since I'm leaving on Saturday!), but there's not too many left overall, considering I started with 22 requests and now I only have 5 unfinished and I'm working on one of them right at this moment. A lot of today was spent walking around to different places trying to track people down and give them their drawings--I walked up to the Lofts two or three times (found two people randomly on the first trip, and the other trips were made specifically to find people I knew would be up there at that time), way out to Carriage once (she was leaving at 3 AM! there was no way I'd get it to her in time otherwise), and then finally to the Library Mods (which I've only been to once before... I got lost and had to ask for directions. XD) I've gotten so many hugs lately--apparently people really like these little drawings, because out of all the people I've given them to (especially on Thursday) half of them have given me hugs immediately afterward. I have missed two people so far; I wasn't able to get their pictures to them before they left earlier today, since they left really early Thursday morning. But it looks like I'll probably get most (if not all) of the others delivered on time.
Food has been... not so great lately, in the dining hall anyway. Well, today it was okay (they had pizza for supper!), but it seems like overall they've slipped a bit since the start of the semester... I guess they've just ran out of most of the really good stuff, or something. Twice recently I've walked down to random restaurants in town just to not eat there, even though the dining hall food is free for me. I've also eaten at Jonzzey's several times too, but that happens a bit more often than walking down to restaurants. But yeah, speaking of the random restaurants--in addition to Subway, I've also been to Hardee's once, and I tried that hand-breaded chicken sandwich they've been advertising for a little while now. Turns out it really is hand-breaded: when I asked about it, the guy in the back cooking the food said "This is what it looks like before I cook it" and held up this huge chunk of raw chicken. Was actually pretty good, too, though I did find a yucky part that probably should've been trimmed off before it was cooked (of course, I pretty much only like white meat on chicken, so a lot of people probably wouldn't have minded it... but this one little part was a little gross to me, so I pulled it off and then ate the rest.)
Since classes are done and final exams don't take up too much time, there hasn't been a lot to do lately besides talk to random people. Have been doing some of that (more today than most days, actually!), along with working on these drawings and trying to get them to everyone before they leave. And tomorrow I'm going to walk down to Burger King with some people and get free french fries (because they're apparently giving them out tomorrow), which will be a combination of my two recent pastimes in one. XD
I finished my last exam today (Thursday, actually--I count it as still "today" since I haven't gone to bed yet), and I think I did at least decently well on all of mine; I should pass them at the very least, probably get B's or A's on them if I did as well as I usually do. I've been drawing little pictures for people and giving them to them as Christmas presents this week, and so far I've finished drawing all but five of them. Only one of those five actually leaves tomorrow (as far as I know--another one of them hasn't responded to my Facebook message yet so I have no idea when she's leaving... she may have left already, even), so I should be able to rest a bit once I'm done with this last one and have it delivered to the person who wanted it. I'll still have to deliver the Friday ones that I still have and work on the Saturday ones (since I'm leaving on Saturday!), but there's not too many left overall, considering I started with 22 requests and now I only have 5 unfinished and I'm working on one of them right at this moment. A lot of today was spent walking around to different places trying to track people down and give them their drawings--I walked up to the Lofts two or three times (found two people randomly on the first trip, and the other trips were made specifically to find people I knew would be up there at that time), way out to Carriage once (she was leaving at 3 AM! there was no way I'd get it to her in time otherwise), and then finally to the Library Mods (which I've only been to once before... I got lost and had to ask for directions. XD) I've gotten so many hugs lately--apparently people really like these little drawings, because out of all the people I've given them to (especially on Thursday) half of them have given me hugs immediately afterward. I have missed two people so far; I wasn't able to get their pictures to them before they left earlier today, since they left really early Thursday morning. But it looks like I'll probably get most (if not all) of the others delivered on time.
Food has been... not so great lately, in the dining hall anyway. Well, today it was okay (they had pizza for supper!), but it seems like overall they've slipped a bit since the start of the semester... I guess they've just ran out of most of the really good stuff, or something. Twice recently I've walked down to random restaurants in town just to not eat there, even though the dining hall food is free for me. I've also eaten at Jonzzey's several times too, but that happens a bit more often than walking down to restaurants. But yeah, speaking of the random restaurants--in addition to Subway, I've also been to Hardee's once, and I tried that hand-breaded chicken sandwich they've been advertising for a little while now. Turns out it really is hand-breaded: when I asked about it, the guy in the back cooking the food said "This is what it looks like before I cook it" and held up this huge chunk of raw chicken. Was actually pretty good, too, though I did find a yucky part that probably should've been trimmed off before it was cooked (of course, I pretty much only like white meat on chicken, so a lot of people probably wouldn't have minded it... but this one little part was a little gross to me, so I pulled it off and then ate the rest.)
Since classes are done and final exams don't take up too much time, there hasn't been a lot to do lately besides talk to random people. Have been doing some of that (more today than most days, actually!), along with working on these drawings and trying to get them to everyone before they leave. And tomorrow I'm going to walk down to Burger King with some people and get free french fries (because they're apparently giving them out tomorrow), which will be a combination of my two recent pastimes in one. XD
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Hark the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king! After that, I don't know the words, mumble mumble hmm hmm hmm...
Heh... me and a bunch of friends went caroling earlier tonight, and the title of this post was actually said, word-for-word, by me toward the end (apparently I'm the only one who has basically no ability to remember song lyrics... well, I did remember "Silent Night" but that was the only one, the rest I maybe knew one line and then just hummed along with the general tune of it if I didn't have the words right in front of me.) Despite my lack of singing ability, it actually went really well--this was the first time I'd ever been caroling, and it was kind of fun to just wander around to different houses surprising people (by singing) like that. And it seemed like most of the places we went, we got invited inside and given food (candy several times, and once cookies!)
Also found out that there are apparently multiple versions of "Joy to the World"--the one I was familiar with said "and heaven and nature sing," while the one they were singing today was "and saints and angels sing." Which I guess technically makes more sense, since people (dead or otherwise) are generally a lot better at singing than places or vague concepts are, but... still kind of unexpected. I guess it's a Mormon thing, since it seems like they use the word "saint" even more than the Catholics do, while most other Christian denominations I know of don't talk about saints much if at all.
In other news, went home over the weekend and got kinda bored for a while before I left to come back here to school today. I hope my family actually does stuff over the Christmas break, because otherwise I just might die of boredom staying home and not having any contact with the friends I've made here at SVU (between bad Internet and even worse cell phone reception, I might not hear from them even if someone does try to get in touch with me! maybe I should tell people my home phone number or something...) Final exams are coming up but those should be no big deal, aside from the ones that are at 8:00 in the morning for some insane reason. Wouldn't it make more sense to give the 8 AM exam times to the classes that actually happen at 7 or 8 in the morning, rather than the 9:30 or 10:00 classes?? There's a reason people avoid early morning classes, y'know--so they don't have to get up that early!
Also got started on both of my last two painting assignments over the weekend; did some of the wood frame parts of the door for the stained-glass window one on Saturday, and almost got my self portrait finished on the first try earlier today (the only thing that's definitely not done is my eyes, so I look kinda creepy right now with weird blank white pupil-less eyes...) Should definitely be able to get those done by 3:00 on Tuesday, especially since I have no exams at all on Monday.
Also found out that there are apparently multiple versions of "Joy to the World"--the one I was familiar with said "and heaven and nature sing," while the one they were singing today was "and saints and angels sing." Which I guess technically makes more sense, since people (dead or otherwise) are generally a lot better at singing than places or vague concepts are, but... still kind of unexpected. I guess it's a Mormon thing, since it seems like they use the word "saint" even more than the Catholics do, while most other Christian denominations I know of don't talk about saints much if at all.
In other news, went home over the weekend and got kinda bored for a while before I left to come back here to school today. I hope my family actually does stuff over the Christmas break, because otherwise I just might die of boredom staying home and not having any contact with the friends I've made here at SVU (between bad Internet and even worse cell phone reception, I might not hear from them even if someone does try to get in touch with me! maybe I should tell people my home phone number or something...) Final exams are coming up but those should be no big deal, aside from the ones that are at 8:00 in the morning for some insane reason. Wouldn't it make more sense to give the 8 AM exam times to the classes that actually happen at 7 or 8 in the morning, rather than the 9:30 or 10:00 classes?? There's a reason people avoid early morning classes, y'know--so they don't have to get up that early!
Also got started on both of my last two painting assignments over the weekend; did some of the wood frame parts of the door for the stained-glass window one on Saturday, and almost got my self portrait finished on the first try earlier today (the only thing that's definitely not done is my eyes, so I look kinda creepy right now with weird blank white pupil-less eyes...) Should definitely be able to get those done by 3:00 on Tuesday, especially since I have no exams at all on Monday.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Okédoké!!
Not a huge amount of stuff going on lately, since the semester's almost over... but I think I'll have enough stuff to fill up some space here now. XD
Anyway, the title--not related to my game Okédoké! La Leyenda Mexicana at all, actually. In Spanish class today, since it's the last day of class, we had to bring in Hispanic-related food of some sort and we'd get extra credit points if we did (along with being able to eat it.) Made up for the fact that I had a very small breakfast (just Pop-Tarts since I woke up at 9:00 and had to rush to get my shower, breakfast, and tooth-brushing out of the way in time) and lunch (just a salad)... ate some tomato pizza, chips and salsa, and these two desert-type foods people brought in, one of which was like cinnamon sugar tortilla chips and the other was sort of like French-toast-mini-pancake things. And drank some Jarritos, which were what I brought to the class (I think I freaked the Jonzzey's workers out a bit, coming in there and saying I was going to buy 16 Jarritos... XD) We also watched part of The Polar Express in Spanish... but it was just the end of the movie pretty much, so I wasn't sure what was going on, heh.
Earlier this week... well, not much earlier, since it was just yesterday... it was Ruth's birthday, and Elizabeth and I had a sort of mini surprise birthday party for her at Carriage. Elizabeth made muffins (with birthday candles in them!) and I made a birthday card, and there was lots of talking and general silliness for a while before Ruth had to live (and then some more talking afterward, because I have a hard time leaving abruptly when I'm in the middle of talking to people and there is absolutely nothing else to do.) After that, though... I ended up making the mistake of agreeing to go along with some random people I met in the library, who said they were going to Wendy's. I thought Wendy's would be open (it's not--apparently the Wendy's around here closes at midnight except on Fridays and Saturdays), just like how I thought there'd be four people going and they ended up picking up someone else along the way, making the back seat incredibly uncomfortable and basically turning a short car ride into torture for me. The last... 2 minutes or so on the way back weren't so bad, since someone figured out "hey maybe the guy who freaks out in crowded place shouldn't have to sit in the back seat of a small car with two other people," but by that point it was already so bad that there was no way to really make things much better. Fortunately, today's been pretty good, even though I didn't get too much sleep after that (didn't get back until after 1:00, didn't go to bed until 2:00, probably didn't actually get to sleep until 2:30 or later... bleh.)
And I've finally got my Historic Virginia trip journal turned in (hopefully they'll give those back after the semester's over, I actually had some pretty good drawings of stuff in there and I'd hate to lose them forever), along with my Leader-Servant packet. That means the only homework-type stuff I have left are those two paintings, a self-portrait (ugh!) and the stained glass window from Main Hall (bigger paper, so it'll take a while.) They need to be done by Tuesday, and I'll probably be going home to visit my parents this weekend, so... I have what's left of today, part of Saturday, part of Sunday, all of Monday, and part of Tuesday to get them both done. Shouldn't be too hard, considering I managed to get five paintings done in a week once and I didn't even know what I was going to do for most of those ahead of time.
Also, I got people to playtest The K'hyurbhi Lands! Well, the first little part of it, anyway. With some advice here and there, neither of them got killed even on their first try playing the game, though they came a bit closer sometimes than I'd expect people who are familiar with OHRRPGCE games to. I was actually kind of surprised that someone managed to play through Kirber's segment of the "training to fight King Numm" part, since it's pretty long and a lot harder than either Nummer's or Upchukk's, but she managed to get through by running away from every encounter that had Rock Bugs or multiple snails/slugs, using lots of Yums, and usually not wandering too far off the right path up the mountain. Upchukk's, on the other hand, ended up being a bit harder than it should've been due to the playtester's refusal to buy any armor at all. XD
But still, they both managed to make it through (albeit with hardly any money, due to buying tons and tons of Yums during Kirber's story) without ever having to start over once. They only found two minor glitches--the chef in Nummy's sometimes gets in the wrong spot and blocks the way during the last part of Upchukk's story, and it's possible to run into random encounters during the "finding the cookbooks" scene of Nummer's story. Shouldn't be too hard to fix, though I thought I had fixed the chef already...
Anyway, the title--not related to my game Okédoké! La Leyenda Mexicana at all, actually. In Spanish class today, since it's the last day of class, we had to bring in Hispanic-related food of some sort and we'd get extra credit points if we did (along with being able to eat it.) Made up for the fact that I had a very small breakfast (just Pop-Tarts since I woke up at 9:00 and had to rush to get my shower, breakfast, and tooth-brushing out of the way in time) and lunch (just a salad)... ate some tomato pizza, chips and salsa, and these two desert-type foods people brought in, one of which was like cinnamon sugar tortilla chips and the other was sort of like French-toast-mini-pancake things. And drank some Jarritos, which were what I brought to the class (I think I freaked the Jonzzey's workers out a bit, coming in there and saying I was going to buy 16 Jarritos... XD) We also watched part of The Polar Express in Spanish... but it was just the end of the movie pretty much, so I wasn't sure what was going on, heh.
Earlier this week... well, not much earlier, since it was just yesterday... it was Ruth's birthday, and Elizabeth and I had a sort of mini surprise birthday party for her at Carriage. Elizabeth made muffins (with birthday candles in them!) and I made a birthday card, and there was lots of talking and general silliness for a while before Ruth had to live (and then some more talking afterward, because I have a hard time leaving abruptly when I'm in the middle of talking to people and there is absolutely nothing else to do.) After that, though... I ended up making the mistake of agreeing to go along with some random people I met in the library, who said they were going to Wendy's. I thought Wendy's would be open (it's not--apparently the Wendy's around here closes at midnight except on Fridays and Saturdays), just like how I thought there'd be four people going and they ended up picking up someone else along the way, making the back seat incredibly uncomfortable and basically turning a short car ride into torture for me. The last... 2 minutes or so on the way back weren't so bad, since someone figured out "hey maybe the guy who freaks out in crowded place shouldn't have to sit in the back seat of a small car with two other people," but by that point it was already so bad that there was no way to really make things much better. Fortunately, today's been pretty good, even though I didn't get too much sleep after that (didn't get back until after 1:00, didn't go to bed until 2:00, probably didn't actually get to sleep until 2:30 or later... bleh.)
And I've finally got my Historic Virginia trip journal turned in (hopefully they'll give those back after the semester's over, I actually had some pretty good drawings of stuff in there and I'd hate to lose them forever), along with my Leader-Servant packet. That means the only homework-type stuff I have left are those two paintings, a self-portrait (ugh!) and the stained glass window from Main Hall (bigger paper, so it'll take a while.) They need to be done by Tuesday, and I'll probably be going home to visit my parents this weekend, so... I have what's left of today, part of Saturday, part of Sunday, all of Monday, and part of Tuesday to get them both done. Shouldn't be too hard, considering I managed to get five paintings done in a week once and I didn't even know what I was going to do for most of those ahead of time.
Also, I got people to playtest The K'hyurbhi Lands! Well, the first little part of it, anyway. With some advice here and there, neither of them got killed even on their first try playing the game, though they came a bit closer sometimes than I'd expect people who are familiar with OHRRPGCE games to. I was actually kind of surprised that someone managed to play through Kirber's segment of the "training to fight King Numm" part, since it's pretty long and a lot harder than either Nummer's or Upchukk's, but she managed to get through by running away from every encounter that had Rock Bugs or multiple snails/slugs, using lots of Yums, and usually not wandering too far off the right path up the mountain. Upchukk's, on the other hand, ended up being a bit harder than it should've been due to the playtester's refusal to buy any armor at all. XD
But still, they both managed to make it through (albeit with hardly any money, due to buying tons and tons of Yums during Kirber's story) without ever having to start over once. They only found two minor glitches--the chef in Nummy's sometimes gets in the wrong spot and blocks the way during the last part of Upchukk's story, and it's possible to run into random encounters during the "finding the cookbooks" scene of Nummer's story. Shouldn't be too hard to fix, though I thought I had fixed the chef already...
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Hard to believe the semester's almost over...
Yeah, only two weeks of school left now, and one of those is just final exams. It really doesn't seem like it's been that long at all... though that's probably just because school actually hasn't been boring at all (the whole "time flies when you're having fun" thing, I guess.)
Lots of stuff going on lately. First of all, I had a weird dream a few nights back where I for some reason had to walk across some boardwalk-type thing to this other building just to take a shower, and when I finished I forgot to put clothes on and didn't notice until I was almost back to the building I had started out in (which looked sort of like SVU's dining hall, but more "restaurant-ish" on the inside and it had a wooden porch thing on the outside.) I kind of ducked back outside for a while trying to make sure nobody saw me, but eventually someone (a girl I know at school, actually) saw me anyway... but she barely even reacted to seeing someone walking around naked, she just said "Oh, you're naked" and then walked back in the direction she had come from to begin with. After that I went back to the shower place, put clothes on, and then bumped into someone else (can't remember who) outside on the boardwalk/porch area. We were talking and for some reason slavery came up, at which point this tall, skinny black guy sitting on a bench nearby randomly said "You're against slavery, right? Well, did you know insurance is a form of slavery?" ...yeah, apparently he thought that insurance companies were somehow enslaving people, or something. Like I said, a weird dream.
Finishing up work in my classes, too. Seems like there's only a couple more paintings left in that class; we read 1984 in Western Civilization recently (and had a little quiz on it, which was probably the first quiz I've done well on in that class for a while--the days where there's quizzes are always the same days where I didn't read the stuff in the book beforehand!), and it turns out that the paper we were supposed to write for Art History is going to be optional (in other words, I'm not going to do it.) Did a presentation in Spanish, which actually went surprisingly well; had to talk about my family for 5 minutes, and I managed to pull it off by including the cats, dogs, and chicken along with the human members (since I, unlike a lot of people, have a pretty small family and I don't know many of my more-distant relatives.) I've got a bit of Spanish homework left, but after Monday there won't be anymore--that's the last day we have to turn in all homework that's due, or overdue, for that class. I'm still a bit behind on my reading for my Institute class, but not quite as badly as the week or two where I was still back in the middle of 2nd Nephi when the rest of the class was multiple books ahead of me. Also learned recently that Mormons believe in life on other planets, and that they say the oldest planet (or the oldest inhabited planet, anyway) is called "Kolob" and has a day as long as a thousand Earth years. Kind of interesting, considering a lot of Christian denominations don't like the idea of aliens much and some actively believe that Earth is the only planet in the entire universe with any life at all.
Have had a lot of stuff to do lately besides classes, too. Unfortunately one of those things has been "go to the bathroom constantly because I was sick Monday and I've had this minor lingering case of diarrhea ever since," but it hasn't been bad enough to really get in the way of anything and it seems to finally be going away now. I've been playing Kirby: Mass Attack a lot recently since I bought it at Wal-Mart a couple weeks back, and I think I'm getting close to the end of the game now, or at least close to the point where it does the traditional "that wasn't really the last level--this is!" thing that most Kirby games seem to do. Also been working more on The K'hyurbhi Lands; I've finished the town of Yumboro and Moray's Island (or, at least, what little bit of Moray's Island you can get to right now) and have started on Roastiso Island. Once that's done, I just need to finish up Spam Valley and make a few more little optional areas like Christy's house and Plekoboro before I'll be ready for something resembling a demo release. I'll probably keep going until the point where the Alligator Teacher gets released instead, though, since stopping short of that would mean you'd run into an "End of Demo" right after Spam Valley and going beyond that would mean I'd have to make a ton of new maps... maybe cut it off after the first encounter with the Alligator Teacher, if not after the scene where she's released from her prison by the Umpupu.
Earlier this week, I ended up going to this open-house thing a couple days back with Elizabeth (in which we ate free food and hot chocolate, and watched little kids goof off), and then yesterday almost went to the Five-Star Quintet show at the free-cookies place down in Buena Vista with her and Ruth... "almost" because we realized after showing up that it was super crowded and you had to pay to get in. Oh well.
And today was insanely busy--first at 3:00 there was a Doctor Who club meeting, where we ate TARDIS-cupcakes, watched a couple of Christmas-related episodes (one of which I'd never seen before, the other of which I'd seen around 75% of before but not the very early bits), and made hats for the Angel Tree. Well, I didn't make any hats because they only had so many of the little hat-loom things and they seemed a bit complicated for me (since I haven't really done any weaving/knitting/etc. whatsoever), but several other people started on hats with them. Nobody actually finished but one of the hats was at least starting to look like a hat by the end!... it just had a hole in it. After that, I had a half-hour break before going over to Elizabeth's house down in Carriage and watching a movie (How to Train Your Dragon) with her and Ruth. I'd never seen the movie before, and it's one that's been on my "movies I should watch sometime" list ever since very, very early in the semester when Ruth told me about it (and kind of freaked out when she heard that I hadn't seen it.) Actually really liked it, though. I wasn't expecting the one dragon (Toothless) to act like a kitty half the time, heh... he even did the "cat wiggling its butt before pouncing on something" thing. And also barfing up half-eaten fish. XD
And then once the movie was over, almost immediately I had to leave and get ready for the dance which started at 9:00... it was one of those "dress up in somewhat formal-ish clothes" ones, so I had to change beforehand. It was actually a masquerade ball type thing; I didn't have a mask to bring with me, but that was okay since a lot of people didn't bring one (some got one face-painted onto them after they got there, but I got an octopus on my face instead. XD) The dance went really well; like the last couple of dances, I actually managed to ask someone to go with me (Melissa this time), and she ended up sort of teaching me how to dance! Still a bit clunky, but at least I can actually move around somewhat now; I even managed to do a couple of those "move a certain way when the song says so" dances, which had always really confused me before for some reason. And learned how to spin girls around while slow-dancing, heh. Kind of unexpected, but definitely not a bad thing at all; maybe now I won't be so unable to do anything at dances, even if I don't end up going with anyone. And, as mentioned before, I got an octopus painted on my face... I also ate a few of these little ham-and-cheese croissant sandwich things, some tomatoes, and a chocolate mini-eclair-ball thing from the food trays they had out. The dance seemed to go by insanely fast--by the time I actually thought to check the time, it was almost 11:00 already! They ended up keeping it going until 11:40 rather than 11:30, and I hung around a little bit afterward to talk to random people, but it still seemed like it was over too fast.
Lots of stuff going on lately. First of all, I had a weird dream a few nights back where I for some reason had to walk across some boardwalk-type thing to this other building just to take a shower, and when I finished I forgot to put clothes on and didn't notice until I was almost back to the building I had started out in (which looked sort of like SVU's dining hall, but more "restaurant-ish" on the inside and it had a wooden porch thing on the outside.) I kind of ducked back outside for a while trying to make sure nobody saw me, but eventually someone (a girl I know at school, actually) saw me anyway... but she barely even reacted to seeing someone walking around naked, she just said "Oh, you're naked" and then walked back in the direction she had come from to begin with. After that I went back to the shower place, put clothes on, and then bumped into someone else (can't remember who) outside on the boardwalk/porch area. We were talking and for some reason slavery came up, at which point this tall, skinny black guy sitting on a bench nearby randomly said "You're against slavery, right? Well, did you know insurance is a form of slavery?" ...yeah, apparently he thought that insurance companies were somehow enslaving people, or something. Like I said, a weird dream.
Finishing up work in my classes, too. Seems like there's only a couple more paintings left in that class; we read 1984 in Western Civilization recently (and had a little quiz on it, which was probably the first quiz I've done well on in that class for a while--the days where there's quizzes are always the same days where I didn't read the stuff in the book beforehand!), and it turns out that the paper we were supposed to write for Art History is going to be optional (in other words, I'm not going to do it.) Did a presentation in Spanish, which actually went surprisingly well; had to talk about my family for 5 minutes, and I managed to pull it off by including the cats, dogs, and chicken along with the human members (since I, unlike a lot of people, have a pretty small family and I don't know many of my more-distant relatives.) I've got a bit of Spanish homework left, but after Monday there won't be anymore--that's the last day we have to turn in all homework that's due, or overdue, for that class. I'm still a bit behind on my reading for my Institute class, but not quite as badly as the week or two where I was still back in the middle of 2nd Nephi when the rest of the class was multiple books ahead of me. Also learned recently that Mormons believe in life on other planets, and that they say the oldest planet (or the oldest inhabited planet, anyway) is called "Kolob" and has a day as long as a thousand Earth years. Kind of interesting, considering a lot of Christian denominations don't like the idea of aliens much and some actively believe that Earth is the only planet in the entire universe with any life at all.
Have had a lot of stuff to do lately besides classes, too. Unfortunately one of those things has been "go to the bathroom constantly because I was sick Monday and I've had this minor lingering case of diarrhea ever since," but it hasn't been bad enough to really get in the way of anything and it seems to finally be going away now. I've been playing Kirby: Mass Attack a lot recently since I bought it at Wal-Mart a couple weeks back, and I think I'm getting close to the end of the game now, or at least close to the point where it does the traditional "that wasn't really the last level--this is!" thing that most Kirby games seem to do. Also been working more on The K'hyurbhi Lands; I've finished the town of Yumboro and Moray's Island (or, at least, what little bit of Moray's Island you can get to right now) and have started on Roastiso Island. Once that's done, I just need to finish up Spam Valley and make a few more little optional areas like Christy's house and Plekoboro before I'll be ready for something resembling a demo release. I'll probably keep going until the point where the Alligator Teacher gets released instead, though, since stopping short of that would mean you'd run into an "End of Demo" right after Spam Valley and going beyond that would mean I'd have to make a ton of new maps... maybe cut it off after the first encounter with the Alligator Teacher, if not after the scene where she's released from her prison by the Umpupu.
Earlier this week, I ended up going to this open-house thing a couple days back with Elizabeth (in which we ate free food and hot chocolate, and watched little kids goof off), and then yesterday almost went to the Five-Star Quintet show at the free-cookies place down in Buena Vista with her and Ruth... "almost" because we realized after showing up that it was super crowded and you had to pay to get in. Oh well.
And today was insanely busy--first at 3:00 there was a Doctor Who club meeting, where we ate TARDIS-cupcakes, watched a couple of Christmas-related episodes (one of which I'd never seen before, the other of which I'd seen around 75% of before but not the very early bits), and made hats for the Angel Tree. Well, I didn't make any hats because they only had so many of the little hat-loom things and they seemed a bit complicated for me (since I haven't really done any weaving/knitting/etc. whatsoever), but several other people started on hats with them. Nobody actually finished but one of the hats was at least starting to look like a hat by the end!... it just had a hole in it. After that, I had a half-hour break before going over to Elizabeth's house down in Carriage and watching a movie (How to Train Your Dragon) with her and Ruth. I'd never seen the movie before, and it's one that's been on my "movies I should watch sometime" list ever since very, very early in the semester when Ruth told me about it (and kind of freaked out when she heard that I hadn't seen it.) Actually really liked it, though. I wasn't expecting the one dragon (Toothless) to act like a kitty half the time, heh... he even did the "cat wiggling its butt before pouncing on something" thing. And also barfing up half-eaten fish. XD
And then once the movie was over, almost immediately I had to leave and get ready for the dance which started at 9:00... it was one of those "dress up in somewhat formal-ish clothes" ones, so I had to change beforehand. It was actually a masquerade ball type thing; I didn't have a mask to bring with me, but that was okay since a lot of people didn't bring one (some got one face-painted onto them after they got there, but I got an octopus on my face instead. XD) The dance went really well; like the last couple of dances, I actually managed to ask someone to go with me (Melissa this time), and she ended up sort of teaching me how to dance! Still a bit clunky, but at least I can actually move around somewhat now; I even managed to do a couple of those "move a certain way when the song says so" dances, which had always really confused me before for some reason. And learned how to spin girls around while slow-dancing, heh. Kind of unexpected, but definitely not a bad thing at all; maybe now I won't be so unable to do anything at dances, even if I don't end up going with anyone. And, as mentioned before, I got an octopus painted on my face... I also ate a few of these little ham-and-cheese croissant sandwich things, some tomatoes, and a chocolate mini-eclair-ball thing from the food trays they had out. The dance seemed to go by insanely fast--by the time I actually thought to check the time, it was almost 11:00 already! They ended up keeping it going until 11:40 rather than 11:30, and I hung around a little bit afterward to talk to random people, but it still seemed like it was over too fast.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Williamsburg/Jamestown/Yorktown travel study trip
Yep... that's where I've been for most of this week! I went on the Historic Virginia travel study trip. Was a little worried about it at first, since most of the other people going were total strangers (only one person I actually knew at all, and only one other that I'd ever even talked to once before)... but it turned out pretty well. I ended up getting to know the "not quite total stranger, but not someone I knew either" person of the group and talking to her a lot, about all sorts of weird random things (things that came up--Art History assignment, since we're both in that class but at different times; asparagus turning people's pee green; how conversations tend to wander into weird seemingly-unrelated things if they go on for a long time uninterrupted; silly things to do to fight off boredom... and so on.) And of course looked around at tons of stuff in Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown (but mostly Williamsburg--we were there two days, while with the other two we had to split a day between them.) Watched a bunch of reenactments of Revolutionary War-era stuff going on, sat in on a fake witch trial (based very closely on partial records left from an actual witch trial), visited a bunch of colonial-era shops and stuff that actually did things the way they would've been done back then, ate food (including some really good pizza and an Italian sub at this restaurant called Stephano's, fish & chips at the Jamestown visitor's center, and a very mediocre "Thanksgiving dinner" at another restaurant followed by a much-better bowl of pasta, orange soda, and some pumpkin pie at the same restaurant), got some random silly souveniers (a wooden toy pistol, alphabet-dice, chocolate covered peanuts, and a bag of pasta shaped like turkeys!), and so on. I even got some work done on both the NaNoWriMo story I'm writing (not much, but...) and The K'hyurbhi Lands (started on another of the few maps I need to make before I can release a demo.)
...I would say more here, but I already had to write journal entries for the trip in order to get credit for it, and I have a pizza that needs to be eaten.
EDIT: Silly quotes and assorted randomness from the trip...
...I would say more here, but I already had to write journal entries for the trip in order to get credit for it, and I have a pizza that needs to be eaten.
EDIT: Silly quotes and assorted randomness from the trip...
- Little stone Daleks. Yes, apparently the parking area of the hotel we stayed in had these short squat little stone things around the edges that were shaped a bit like Daleks. Oddly, I don't remember seeing them still there when we were leaving... uh-oh. They must've un-statuified like that one in the Pandorica episode.
- Bumper Stickers: "Keep honking, I'm reloading" and "Politicians and diapers need to be changed often, and for the same reason." Both on the same vehicle, too.
- The reason why the bakery is hidden behind the tavern--because its "the secret bakery where they make the bread that the British don't approve of."
- "No butts and snakes." A quote from when we were talking about how the courtroom where the witch trial took place had an apse, which I misheard as "ass" and then "asp."
- "We're not Roman Catholics, we don't torture and burn people..." ...shortly after talking about how the punishment for perjury is to put someone in the stocks and then possibly cut off their ears.
- "It's allowed in the Massachusetts courts!" "This is not Massachusetts!"
- "I doubt Georgia not being able to send representatives, because Jamaica did!"
- "I understand that the cell reception in '79 is pretty bad." (1779, that is.)
- "You're free to explore the property, they're not home."
- "Olde English Bulldogge" (overheard in the street; someone apparently was telling someone that you had to spell the name of the dog breed that way)
- Pineapples: they were everywhere. Apparently a symbol of hospitality; I didn't know that.
- Odd things you see when glancing at someone's "things I'm thankful for" list: Vacuums, tennis shoes, Winnie the Pooh, and... sex!? Wait a second... on a Mormon's thankfulness list? On a non-married Mormon's thankfulness list?? Hmmm...
- "Shrimp Dip Kit with recipe for party shrimp dip -- contains tiny wild cocktail shrimp."
- "HAPPY THANK GIVING"
- "That's the poopdeck. You can take a poop right off the deck."
- "No projectile... we'd like to sink the ferry, but I don't think VDOT would appreciate that."
- "Professor Brotherson convinced both of us to kiss the pig."
- "If you ignite the powder what happens? ...A boom! ...Hopefully..."
- "What belt do you have? It's not one of the light-colored ones, is it?" An older guy, to a little kid showing off his karate skills.
- "A faggot of sweet herbes" -- from a 1607 recipe
- "Who wins?" "The girl!"
- "It's artillery, it's close enough, get out of the way!"
- "Pig bladder: nature's saran-wrap."
- "I did not cook the bladder."
- "Now I've got pig bladder juice all over me."
- "You guys actually eat that stuff?" "...Not really."
- "How many of us have taken the lid off a jar and eaten it?"
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Board games, movies, and random silliness
Actually had a lot to do this weekend so far! Painting homework, however, was not one of those things... even though this still-life is due tomorrow and I only have the cloth on the table painted (plus part of one of the dishes, but.... yeah, I doubt I'll get this one done on time, even if I show up to class early to work on it. At least I'll be able to turn my rocks in on Monday, though, since I got those done a while back.)
But anyway... Friday I ended up getting invited to go and play board games with a bunch of people (most of which I knew or at least had talked to once or twice, though there were a couple of total strangers), which turned out pretty well for the most part though I was pretty disoriented at first (unfamiliar games + big crowd + lots of noise tends to throw me off pretty bad, so it was the usual "just as soon as I get used to the rules of one game, they put it away and bring out another one" thing.) Saturday was the first meeting of the SVU Doctor Who Club, which so far is basically made up of almost nobody except people I know (there was one girl I didn't recognize, whose name I still don't know, but other than that everyone at the meeting was someone I at least had talked to a couple times before.) We started out in Durham (where we came up with ideas for a service project to do later; seemed like we'd probably end up doing something Christmas-related), then moved toward the Institute building when we found out that we couldn't use the projector in Durham, and then moved up to the Lofts when we found out that the Institute building was locked... yeah, lots of moving around that day. But eventually we did manage to watch an episode of Doctor Who, which was the one with the Weeping Angels in the old abandoned house. Since we didn't have any way to connect the computer it was on (on Netflix I think) to a TV or projector, we ended up all huddled around this one laptop, but it ended up working a bit better than I expected it to and I was only feeling overcrowded at the very start. Also had cookies, which were pretty good. And I took pictures of the whole group (...one of which had half of them covering their faces like the Angels, heh.)
Later on Saturday, I was going to go to the play (Pride and Prejudice) that the school was showing, but I ended up changing my mind because there was a good chance it was going to be extremely crowded and I'd probably freak out. I'm not sure how it would've gone if I did go, since I did have someone to sit with at least (she even said she'd save a seat for me...) so I might not have freaked out quite so much since I wouldn't have been completely surrounded by people I don't know or anything, but... oh well. Instead, I ended up going over to Carriage and watching Despicable Me with Ruth and her friend Elizabeth. The movie was good, and the whole thing turned out really well and ended up fighting off the boredom for pretty much the entire night (I was there from 7:20ish until midnight... we sat around playing chess, talking, watching silly videos, talking, looking through my notebook, and talking after the movie was over. XD) Also kind of kept me from getting any more writing done, buuut... I should have plenty of time to catch up on that today, and I think there was probably more than enough talking and general silliness to make up for not getting much done.
And, randomly, one of the topics that came up was weird misconceptions people have about Mormons. One that I had never heard before is that Mormons have horns--no, seriously, apparently some people believe that converting to the LDS church will make you magically sprout horns, and that's apparently one of the questions that missionaries get a lot: "if I get baptized, will I grow horns?" Another one I had never heard was that they're building a secret underwater tunnel across the Atlantic to transport women in from other countries so they can have them for the polygamists to marry. And amazingly, neither of the two Mormons in the room had ever heard the "won't accept blood transfusions because it's the same as drinking blood" one, which is... one of the only ones I've actually heard before (and apparently it's also not true at all, or at least neither of them had any problem with blood transfusions or had even heard of anyone having that problem.) But yeah... apparently there's a lot of weird Mormon conspiracy theories. XD
Last night I had a weird dream, but unfortunately I didn't write it down as soon as I woke up from it so I only remember one part of it right now. I was walking around at some place and came upon a table where a girl I know here at school was sitting, and for some reason she was talking about how many guys she "had to" kiss in the past. I'm not sure why she said "had to," as that sort of implies she didn't have any other choice... but she didn't sound like she was saying it like it was a bad thing, so the whole thing was really weird. There was a lot more to the dream than that (I think completely unrelated to the first part, though I can't remember for sure), but I can't remember any of it now since I waited too long before writing anything down about it.
But anyway... Friday I ended up getting invited to go and play board games with a bunch of people (most of which I knew or at least had talked to once or twice, though there were a couple of total strangers), which turned out pretty well for the most part though I was pretty disoriented at first (unfamiliar games + big crowd + lots of noise tends to throw me off pretty bad, so it was the usual "just as soon as I get used to the rules of one game, they put it away and bring out another one" thing.) Saturday was the first meeting of the SVU Doctor Who Club, which so far is basically made up of almost nobody except people I know (there was one girl I didn't recognize, whose name I still don't know, but other than that everyone at the meeting was someone I at least had talked to a couple times before.) We started out in Durham (where we came up with ideas for a service project to do later; seemed like we'd probably end up doing something Christmas-related), then moved toward the Institute building when we found out that we couldn't use the projector in Durham, and then moved up to the Lofts when we found out that the Institute building was locked... yeah, lots of moving around that day. But eventually we did manage to watch an episode of Doctor Who, which was the one with the Weeping Angels in the old abandoned house. Since we didn't have any way to connect the computer it was on (on Netflix I think) to a TV or projector, we ended up all huddled around this one laptop, but it ended up working a bit better than I expected it to and I was only feeling overcrowded at the very start. Also had cookies, which were pretty good. And I took pictures of the whole group (...one of which had half of them covering their faces like the Angels, heh.)
Later on Saturday, I was going to go to the play (Pride and Prejudice) that the school was showing, but I ended up changing my mind because there was a good chance it was going to be extremely crowded and I'd probably freak out. I'm not sure how it would've gone if I did go, since I did have someone to sit with at least (she even said she'd save a seat for me...) so I might not have freaked out quite so much since I wouldn't have been completely surrounded by people I don't know or anything, but... oh well. Instead, I ended up going over to Carriage and watching Despicable Me with Ruth and her friend Elizabeth. The movie was good, and the whole thing turned out really well and ended up fighting off the boredom for pretty much the entire night (I was there from 7:20ish until midnight... we sat around playing chess, talking, watching silly videos, talking, looking through my notebook, and talking after the movie was over. XD) Also kind of kept me from getting any more writing done, buuut... I should have plenty of time to catch up on that today, and I think there was probably more than enough talking and general silliness to make up for not getting much done.
And, randomly, one of the topics that came up was weird misconceptions people have about Mormons. One that I had never heard before is that Mormons have horns--no, seriously, apparently some people believe that converting to the LDS church will make you magically sprout horns, and that's apparently one of the questions that missionaries get a lot: "if I get baptized, will I grow horns?" Another one I had never heard was that they're building a secret underwater tunnel across the Atlantic to transport women in from other countries so they can have them for the polygamists to marry. And amazingly, neither of the two Mormons in the room had ever heard the "won't accept blood transfusions because it's the same as drinking blood" one, which is... one of the only ones I've actually heard before (and apparently it's also not true at all, or at least neither of them had any problem with blood transfusions or had even heard of anyone having that problem.) But yeah... apparently there's a lot of weird Mormon conspiracy theories. XD
Last night I had a weird dream, but unfortunately I didn't write it down as soon as I woke up from it so I only remember one part of it right now. I was walking around at some place and came upon a table where a girl I know here at school was sitting, and for some reason she was talking about how many guys she "had to" kiss in the past. I'm not sure why she said "had to," as that sort of implies she didn't have any other choice... but she didn't sound like she was saying it like it was a bad thing, so the whole thing was really weird. There was a lot more to the dream than that (I think completely unrelated to the first part, though I can't remember for sure), but I can't remember any of it now since I waited too long before writing anything down about it.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Assorted randomness from the past few days, and silly quotes here and there
Yeah... I haven't posted anything on here in a few days, have I? Heh, whoops. I guess I've been so busy with school stuff and NaNoWriMo that I just forgot about this thing. Anyway, a few things from the past few days... Monday I ended up going to this open house thing that the church was having here, partly because I had nothing else to do and partly because I was invited by four different people (one of which agreed to actually go with me and hang around the whole time so I wouldn't run into the "crowded rooms full of people I don't know" problem while I was there.) So I went to the open house with her and went through the tour of the church building, getting a look at various rooms, finding out what the various paintings on the wall are supposed to be, hearing about the classes and different parts of the three-hour Mormon church service (which weren't entirely new to me, though I did get to find out a general idea of what goes on in the girls' Relief Society meetings), and having a little bit of free food at the end (ice cream and Oreos.) Found out a few new things about Mormon beliefs, such as how they believe that Adam (as in Adam and Eve) is the same person as Michael the archangel--Mormons believe that everyone's souls exist before they're actually born and hang out somewhere before they end up in their bodies, and that angels are essentially those people who either don't have bodies yet or who already had them but then died and are now just souls once again. Apparently this isn't an especially well-known fact even within Mormonism, however, since Caitlyn (the girl I went with) had never heard that before either!
After the open house, we ended up hanging out together for a while and she actually made me food, after I mentioned that I hadn't had time to eat earlier and was getting kind of hungry. Okay, it was just some ramen noodles (spicy chicken flavor, which were actually really good), some peanuts, a little package of cookies, and some strawberry-flavored appleasauce... but still, I was kind of amazed at the fact that someone would even bother to make food for me just because I hadn't had any earlier, rather than just... telling me to go eat at Jonzzey's or something.
On a somewhat related note, I found out yesterday that the random Volkswagen Beetle that honked at us as we were walking up the hill was being driven by a few other friends from here, who apparently thought I was on a date with Caitlyn at the time, just because we happened to be walking up the hill to the lofts together. Seriously, one of them asked me "who were on a date with yesterday?" when the topic came up, and I was a bit confused for a second. XD
Speaking of dating, my other basket-auction date (with Shannon) should be coming up... sometime soon? She said she'd let me know when, but I haven't heard a specific day or time from her yet. Apparently we're going to be playing a board game rather than watching a movie, since she's going to be kind of busy with a research paper this week, but that probably would work better anyway since people can actually talk while playing a board game (while talking a lot during a movie just means you're not paying much attention to the movie. XD)
Also, I had a weird dream the other night. It involved this huge (2 feet long) red centipede showing up in a dorm-like area (which looked very different from the Craton dorms, though I think I have had another dream that took place in the exact same building... I wonder what that place actually is? if it exists at all...) and me chasing it around from a distance, trying to take pictures of it apparently. I eventually followed it outside, and managed to get a picture of it when it dove into the water of this creek-type area and then came up to the surface again, almost like it was doing the "whale breaching" thing. After that it got back up onto some of the rocks, but this hawk or eagle swooped down and grabbed it. The centipede squirmed around a bit and tried to break free, and the bird eventually tossed it over onto a different rock. I went over and took a picture of it, and apparently the bird misinterpreted what I was doing and came over and started swiping at me with its claws, squawking at me. In the dream I was able to "translate" the bird-talk into English, but since it was only a literal translation of the words rather than the actual meaning as a complete sentence, it came out as something broken-English-ish like "friend not take my prey." Apparently the bird considered me a friend, but wanted to eat the centipede and though that I was trying to snatch it away from the bird and eat it myself. I don't remember anything after that; I think I just woke up.
And apparently my hair was finally getting too shaggy for the school's rules, as my HRA came up to me during one of the meals this weekend and said it was getting a little long and I should probably get a haircut soon. So I did exactly that today; walked down to one of the haircut places in Buena Vista around 4:00-ish and then walked out less than half an hour later with "short enough to not get fined $50 at SVU" hair. Since I was in town I went ahead and checked out that gun shop I had seen a few times before, looking at the guns and other stuff (like crossbows, and a carved wooden statue of a bear with an assault rifle!) that they had in there for a while before leaving and walking over to Frank's for the Memories, another place in town that I had never actually had a chance to stop by before. Had some nachos (with everything but chili on them) and a hot dog; the nachos were good but not quite the best I'd had (though that was only because Jack Mason's Tavern back home has the most amazing nachos I've ever seen), while the hot dog was one of the best I'd ever had. I really liked the way they make the buns there; the bun itself is a bit different than the usual ones, and they also toast them before serving them, so it wasn't just a "hot dog wrapper" made of bread like some of the blander buns end up being. The only downside is that the buns are so hot when they bring the food out that it's hard to hold onto them until they've cooled down a bit, but that just means there's some time to eat the chips, pickle, nachos, etc. before starting on the hot dog itself. Plus they have an absurd amount of toppings you can put on a hot dog; I had just mustard, onions, and green peppers on mine, but they have something like 35 different things you can get on a hot dog. I might end up trying a few different things whenever I end up going back there.
They also have cats inside the place, one of which (the bigger black-and-white one) really liked me and kept rubbing my hand and walking around me while I was sitting there after eating. The little black kitten-like one (which reminded me of Midget, though not quite as skinny and with slightly different-colored eyes) didn't like me that much, though. XD I could never get that little thing to even come close to me, even after sitting there attempting to do so for several minutes.
Unfortunately, by this point it was pouring down rain outside, and I hadn't brought an umbrella or a jacket at all... it looked like it had finally stopped raining when I first walked down there, but no, it was just waiting for an hour or so before coming back even stronger than ever. Fortunately, Ruth wasn't busy with anything at the time so she was able to come down there and give me a ride back to the school... so I ended up not getting soaked (and if I had tried to walk back, I definitely would have gotten soaked, since Frank's is probably three or four blocks away from campus...)
And now, the silly quotes! Previously there was only one here, but another one happened today so I added it.
"These are happy little Puerto Ricans."
"He doesn't have to step in the horse poo-poo!"
After the open house, we ended up hanging out together for a while and she actually made me food, after I mentioned that I hadn't had time to eat earlier and was getting kind of hungry. Okay, it was just some ramen noodles (spicy chicken flavor, which were actually really good), some peanuts, a little package of cookies, and some strawberry-flavored appleasauce... but still, I was kind of amazed at the fact that someone would even bother to make food for me just because I hadn't had any earlier, rather than just... telling me to go eat at Jonzzey's or something.
On a somewhat related note, I found out yesterday that the random Volkswagen Beetle that honked at us as we were walking up the hill was being driven by a few other friends from here, who apparently thought I was on a date with Caitlyn at the time, just because we happened to be walking up the hill to the lofts together. Seriously, one of them asked me "who were on a date with yesterday?" when the topic came up, and I was a bit confused for a second. XD
Speaking of dating, my other basket-auction date (with Shannon) should be coming up... sometime soon? She said she'd let me know when, but I haven't heard a specific day or time from her yet. Apparently we're going to be playing a board game rather than watching a movie, since she's going to be kind of busy with a research paper this week, but that probably would work better anyway since people can actually talk while playing a board game (while talking a lot during a movie just means you're not paying much attention to the movie. XD)
Also, I had a weird dream the other night. It involved this huge (2 feet long) red centipede showing up in a dorm-like area (which looked very different from the Craton dorms, though I think I have had another dream that took place in the exact same building... I wonder what that place actually is? if it exists at all...) and me chasing it around from a distance, trying to take pictures of it apparently. I eventually followed it outside, and managed to get a picture of it when it dove into the water of this creek-type area and then came up to the surface again, almost like it was doing the "whale breaching" thing. After that it got back up onto some of the rocks, but this hawk or eagle swooped down and grabbed it. The centipede squirmed around a bit and tried to break free, and the bird eventually tossed it over onto a different rock. I went over and took a picture of it, and apparently the bird misinterpreted what I was doing and came over and started swiping at me with its claws, squawking at me. In the dream I was able to "translate" the bird-talk into English, but since it was only a literal translation of the words rather than the actual meaning as a complete sentence, it came out as something broken-English-ish like "friend not take my prey." Apparently the bird considered me a friend, but wanted to eat the centipede and though that I was trying to snatch it away from the bird and eat it myself. I don't remember anything after that; I think I just woke up.
And apparently my hair was finally getting too shaggy for the school's rules, as my HRA came up to me during one of the meals this weekend and said it was getting a little long and I should probably get a haircut soon. So I did exactly that today; walked down to one of the haircut places in Buena Vista around 4:00-ish and then walked out less than half an hour later with "short enough to not get fined $50 at SVU" hair. Since I was in town I went ahead and checked out that gun shop I had seen a few times before, looking at the guns and other stuff (like crossbows, and a carved wooden statue of a bear with an assault rifle!) that they had in there for a while before leaving and walking over to Frank's for the Memories, another place in town that I had never actually had a chance to stop by before. Had some nachos (with everything but chili on them) and a hot dog; the nachos were good but not quite the best I'd had (though that was only because Jack Mason's Tavern back home has the most amazing nachos I've ever seen), while the hot dog was one of the best I'd ever had. I really liked the way they make the buns there; the bun itself is a bit different than the usual ones, and they also toast them before serving them, so it wasn't just a "hot dog wrapper" made of bread like some of the blander buns end up being. The only downside is that the buns are so hot when they bring the food out that it's hard to hold onto them until they've cooled down a bit, but that just means there's some time to eat the chips, pickle, nachos, etc. before starting on the hot dog itself. Plus they have an absurd amount of toppings you can put on a hot dog; I had just mustard, onions, and green peppers on mine, but they have something like 35 different things you can get on a hot dog. I might end up trying a few different things whenever I end up going back there.
They also have cats inside the place, one of which (the bigger black-and-white one) really liked me and kept rubbing my hand and walking around me while I was sitting there after eating. The little black kitten-like one (which reminded me of Midget, though not quite as skinny and with slightly different-colored eyes) didn't like me that much, though. XD I could never get that little thing to even come close to me, even after sitting there attempting to do so for several minutes.
Unfortunately, by this point it was pouring down rain outside, and I hadn't brought an umbrella or a jacket at all... it looked like it had finally stopped raining when I first walked down there, but no, it was just waiting for an hour or so before coming back even stronger than ever. Fortunately, Ruth wasn't busy with anything at the time so she was able to come down there and give me a ride back to the school... so I ended up not getting soaked (and if I had tried to walk back, I definitely would have gotten soaked, since Frank's is probably three or four blocks away from campus...)
And now, the silly quotes! Previously there was only one here, but another one happened today so I added it.
"These are happy little Puerto Ricans."
"He doesn't have to step in the horse poo-poo!"
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Hairy Potheads
Yep... I've now seen the last two Harry Potter movies, since they were showing them both (in a row, with only a half-hour break in between!) over in the SAC. Even though I probably should have started on that paper I still need to write, I ended up going and watching both movies instead. Started out kind of badly since the only seats around were either crowded around tons of people I don't know, or right in the middle of huge empty spaces with nobody around at all... but eventually I bumped into someone I knew (or more accurately she walked up to me and said hi) and we ended up sitting together for the whole five hours of the two movies, talking a little bit here and there (not enough to disrupt the movies though, so it was okay) and sharing some popcorn.
Of course, I just had to screw it up by mentioning, at the very end just a few minutes before she was about to leave, the fact that I had a dream the other night with her in it. There wasn't anything weird about the dream really (other than the fact that I usually don't have dreams with people I know in them), we were just sitting in the cafeteria talking for a few minutes before the dream switched over to something completely unrelated... but almost as soon as I mentioned it I started to feel bad, like I probably shouldn't have mentioned it at all. I know it's probably just me worrying over nothing and getting a little paranoid, since she didn't really seem to freak out or anything when I mentioned it and we still talked a bit afterward (she didn't like... try to avoid me or anything), but I was kind of hoping I'd be able to walk with her back home afterward and talk some more... instead she got a ride with some other people, so the whole talking thing got cut off kind of abruptly... which probably contributed to the weirdness of it all. I'm guessing the only reason why this one tiny little thing worries me at all is because I think I'm starting to like this girl, and lately it's almost seemed like she might actually like me too in some way--she seems to be smiling pretty much constantly whenever I talk to her (and from what I've seen it's not always quite as constant with other people, though she still does smile a lot); she actually came over and said hi to me today, when the movie had already started and she probably could have just as easily gone ahead and sat down somewhere; she was the one who suggested that we sit together and (later on) that we share the same bag of popcorn; she even thanked me for letting her sit with me at the end, when I had tried to thank her for the same thing, she just insisted that it was the other way around. And she seemed to like the idea of me walking her back home, she only ended up getting a ride with someone because it is pretty far to where she lives and it was getting kind of cold out by then.
It seems like I can never like just one or two girls at a time, it always has to be at least three... so I guess when one drops off of the "girls I like in that way" list, another one moves in to fill in the empty slot or something. XD
In other news, I've gotten over 4000 words of my NaNoWriMo story written and I drew a bunch of Killer K'hyurbhi's minions from the 1995-1996 (4th/5th grade) era. Cruncho, Darno, Eato, Grakker, Uposo, Slambosh and Yummerplet, Crobombug, Christy (who is now Christy Telamora, I finally came up with a last name for her last year!), the Alligator Teacher, and General Yourgh. I wasn't sure who to put in the last space on the second page (with Christy, the Alligator Teacher, and Yourgh), but looking over the list it seems like the only major Killer K'hyurbhi minions I've left out so far are Count Crappaddoo, Badmazz, and Captain Smash (who was basically a palette swap of Badmazz... which means I'll need to do at least a little bit of redesigning there.) Unfortunately, I probably won't have time for much of anything tomorrow since I'll be working on that paper for history class... will probably end up having to skip the fireside tomorrow (assuming that's actually when it is, I can't remember for sure... it might actually be next weekend) just to have time. Either that or skip church, which is what I did last time (though not for the same reason, I just ended up getting there late last time and couldn't find a decent seat among all the crowdedness.)
Of course, I just had to screw it up by mentioning, at the very end just a few minutes before she was about to leave, the fact that I had a dream the other night with her in it. There wasn't anything weird about the dream really (other than the fact that I usually don't have dreams with people I know in them), we were just sitting in the cafeteria talking for a few minutes before the dream switched over to something completely unrelated... but almost as soon as I mentioned it I started to feel bad, like I probably shouldn't have mentioned it at all. I know it's probably just me worrying over nothing and getting a little paranoid, since she didn't really seem to freak out or anything when I mentioned it and we still talked a bit afterward (she didn't like... try to avoid me or anything), but I was kind of hoping I'd be able to walk with her back home afterward and talk some more... instead she got a ride with some other people, so the whole talking thing got cut off kind of abruptly... which probably contributed to the weirdness of it all. I'm guessing the only reason why this one tiny little thing worries me at all is because I think I'm starting to like this girl, and lately it's almost seemed like she might actually like me too in some way--she seems to be smiling pretty much constantly whenever I talk to her (and from what I've seen it's not always quite as constant with other people, though she still does smile a lot); she actually came over and said hi to me today, when the movie had already started and she probably could have just as easily gone ahead and sat down somewhere; she was the one who suggested that we sit together and (later on) that we share the same bag of popcorn; she even thanked me for letting her sit with me at the end, when I had tried to thank her for the same thing, she just insisted that it was the other way around. And she seemed to like the idea of me walking her back home, she only ended up getting a ride with someone because it is pretty far to where she lives and it was getting kind of cold out by then.
It seems like I can never like just one or two girls at a time, it always has to be at least three... so I guess when one drops off of the "girls I like in that way" list, another one moves in to fill in the empty slot or something. XD
In other news, I've gotten over 4000 words of my NaNoWriMo story written and I drew a bunch of Killer K'hyurbhi's minions from the 1995-1996 (4th/5th grade) era. Cruncho, Darno, Eato, Grakker, Uposo, Slambosh and Yummerplet, Crobombug, Christy (who is now Christy Telamora, I finally came up with a last name for her last year!), the Alligator Teacher, and General Yourgh. I wasn't sure who to put in the last space on the second page (with Christy, the Alligator Teacher, and Yourgh), but looking over the list it seems like the only major Killer K'hyurbhi minions I've left out so far are Count Crappaddoo, Badmazz, and Captain Smash (who was basically a palette swap of Badmazz... which means I'll need to do at least a little bit of redesigning there.) Unfortunately, I probably won't have time for much of anything tomorrow since I'll be working on that paper for history class... will probably end up having to skip the fireside tomorrow (assuming that's actually when it is, I can't remember for sure... it might actually be next weekend) just to have time. Either that or skip church, which is what I did last time (though not for the same reason, I just ended up getting there late last time and couldn't find a decent seat among all the crowdedness.)
Friday, November 11, 2011
Apparently double-dates are not quite as strange as I thought they'd be.
Yep... earlier today (4:30-ish until almost 6:00), I was at the basket auction thing they had in the ballroom here at SVU. Basically how it worked was girls would put together food and stuff in a basket, then guys would bid on the baskets (based only on what food was in there; we weren't told which girls made what basket until after the bidding was finished!), with starting bids of $5.00. Only a couple of the baskets really went much higher than that (I think one went for $20.00, another for $13.00, and a third for $12.00 or $10.00 or so)... most of them were right at $5.00 (the starting bid) or $6.00. I made bids on five of the baskets, and for the longest time I was the only bidder on those... until a ton of people started bidding on the one with New York Deli sub sandwiches, then I was only the lone bidder on four of them. XD
I ended up being the winning bidder on two of them in the end; one of only two bidders on one (a picnic-type meal with sandwiches, tiny carrots, chips, Capri Sun juice pouches, Oreos, and Uno cards), and the only bidder on the other one (brownies, cookies, hot chocolate, and a movie.) Obviously can't go on two dates at once, so I talked to the girls who made both of the baskets and found that the girls with the picnic lunch were planning on having their date right after the auction, while the one with lots of chocolate-based food was okay with it being sometime later (especially since the brownies hadn't actually been made yet--there was literally a box of brownie mix just sitting in the basket. So no worries about the food going back before the date even happens! XD)
But yeah... ended up going on one of my two dates earlier today, which turned out pretty well and was a lot of fun (and not as strange as I had originally imagined the whole "double date" thing being--I couldn't figure out how the heck it was even supposed to work, having two guys and two girls instead of just one of each, but it really wasn't that weird after all.) We ate most of the food (a couple of sandwiches left over, along with a handful of Oreos and half a bag of chips, which I brought back to my room with me), talked about all sorts of random things, goofed off, and played half a dozen games of Uno, three of which I actually won, amazingly enough. I guess my luck was abnormally good today--got to go on one date, have another one planned for next week sometime, and actually won at something for once. I guess the Uno victory isn't really quite so impressive compared to the other stuff, heh. By the end, it had actually been close to three hours; first we were over in the breezeway (that hallway thing between Chandler and Main Hall), using the random church pews in there as booth-type seats and the mini-tables as... well, tables. But apparently the people watching the play next door could actually hear us from there, so after someone came out and told us that we decided we should probably move to somewhere else. After looking around for a bit we decided on the Main Hall lobby area, right there in front of the door; we sat this big green blanket down on the floor and just took our shoes off and sat on it, then picked up right where we left off with the food and Uno (and the other guy who was there taught everyone how to throw cards--apparently it's not quite as simple as "grab card, throw card," you need to hold it a certain way and flick your wrist to get it to actually go very far.) Lots of talking, food, Uno, and other assorted random stuff before eventually everyone figured they should probably wind the whole thing down and go off to other stuff they needed to do (a bonfire, giving the money raised by the basket auction to the guy in charge of it, and... my history paper.) Overall it went pretty well, and now I won't be so weirded out if someone ever suggests a double-date to me since I know it won't necessarily be really strange and/or "leave Eddie out of everything"-ish.
I never did figure out which of the two girls was "my date" and which was the other guy's, though. I guess it doesn't really matter too much since it wasn't like... the "holding hands and cuddling and possibly kissing" kind of date, more of just a random silly thing for fun... but still, kind of funny how that happened. XD
Now I just have to finish that paper for Western Civilization... and then figure out when my other basket-auction date is going to be. (Kind of funny how one of the two baskets I ended up winning--the one that nobody else even made any bids on, even!--just happened to belong to one of the girls that I was wanting to try asking on a date eventually anyway. Odd coincidence there.)
Oh, and in completely unrelated news, I've started (a bit late) to write something for NaNoWriMo, based on that picture I drew of the mountain with the pointy-eared people and such. So far I've got around 3600 words done, which is... about 13000 behind where I'm supposed to be, since I didn't even start until 10 days into the month. Oh well! I doubt I'll get anywhere near 50,00 but at least I'll have started on this story, and maybe I'll get around to finishing it sometime later on.
I ended up being the winning bidder on two of them in the end; one of only two bidders on one (a picnic-type meal with sandwiches, tiny carrots, chips, Capri Sun juice pouches, Oreos, and Uno cards), and the only bidder on the other one (brownies, cookies, hot chocolate, and a movie.) Obviously can't go on two dates at once, so I talked to the girls who made both of the baskets and found that the girls with the picnic lunch were planning on having their date right after the auction, while the one with lots of chocolate-based food was okay with it being sometime later (especially since the brownies hadn't actually been made yet--there was literally a box of brownie mix just sitting in the basket. So no worries about the food going back before the date even happens! XD)
But yeah... ended up going on one of my two dates earlier today, which turned out pretty well and was a lot of fun (and not as strange as I had originally imagined the whole "double date" thing being--I couldn't figure out how the heck it was even supposed to work, having two guys and two girls instead of just one of each, but it really wasn't that weird after all.) We ate most of the food (a couple of sandwiches left over, along with a handful of Oreos and half a bag of chips, which I brought back to my room with me), talked about all sorts of random things, goofed off, and played half a dozen games of Uno, three of which I actually won, amazingly enough. I guess my luck was abnormally good today--got to go on one date, have another one planned for next week sometime, and actually won at something for once. I guess the Uno victory isn't really quite so impressive compared to the other stuff, heh. By the end, it had actually been close to three hours; first we were over in the breezeway (that hallway thing between Chandler and Main Hall), using the random church pews in there as booth-type seats and the mini-tables as... well, tables. But apparently the people watching the play next door could actually hear us from there, so after someone came out and told us that we decided we should probably move to somewhere else. After looking around for a bit we decided on the Main Hall lobby area, right there in front of the door; we sat this big green blanket down on the floor and just took our shoes off and sat on it, then picked up right where we left off with the food and Uno (and the other guy who was there taught everyone how to throw cards--apparently it's not quite as simple as "grab card, throw card," you need to hold it a certain way and flick your wrist to get it to actually go very far.) Lots of talking, food, Uno, and other assorted random stuff before eventually everyone figured they should probably wind the whole thing down and go off to other stuff they needed to do (a bonfire, giving the money raised by the basket auction to the guy in charge of it, and... my history paper.) Overall it went pretty well, and now I won't be so weirded out if someone ever suggests a double-date to me since I know it won't necessarily be really strange and/or "leave Eddie out of everything"-ish.
I never did figure out which of the two girls was "my date" and which was the other guy's, though. I guess it doesn't really matter too much since it wasn't like... the "holding hands and cuddling and possibly kissing" kind of date, more of just a random silly thing for fun... but still, kind of funny how that happened. XD
Now I just have to finish that paper for Western Civilization... and then figure out when my other basket-auction date is going to be. (Kind of funny how one of the two baskets I ended up winning--the one that nobody else even made any bids on, even!--just happened to belong to one of the girls that I was wanting to try asking on a date eventually anyway. Odd coincidence there.)
Oh, and in completely unrelated news, I've started (a bit late) to write something for NaNoWriMo, based on that picture I drew of the mountain with the pointy-eared people and such. So far I've got around 3600 words done, which is... about 13000 behind where I'm supposed to be, since I didn't even start until 10 days into the month. Oh well! I doubt I'll get anywhere near 50,00 but at least I'll have started on this story, and maybe I'll get around to finishing it sometime later on.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Balloons make your hands smell funny.
...as I found out today when I helped set up for a surprise birthday party, and I had to tape balloons to the walls... afterward I smelled my hand for some odd reason, and it had this weird smell which hadn't been there at all before I had been handling all those balloons. So yeah... balloons make your hands smell funny.
But yeah, today was kind of busy toward the later end, since I went to the murder mystery/spaghetti date night thing at the Institute building at 5:00 and then Katie's birthday party around 7:00. The spaghetti thing actually went pretty well; there were a few different possibilities that I was worried about (getting matched up with someone I couldn't stand, bad food, the murder-mystery thing being too confusing or disruptive of the date part) but it turned out that none of those happened! I actually didn't end up being paired up with a total stranger like I was expecting; instead my date ended up being Julie, one of the several girls I met when everyone was locked up in the gym after the bomb threat happened. We had lots of random stuff to talk about, and also ended up talking with one of the other couples at the table a bit (except they were an actual couple, since they were engaged!) The food was good, too; the spaghetti was real edible spaghetti (where you get some spaghetti on your plate and then add the sauce on top) and not the "noodles and sauce all mashed up together before serving" cafeteria-food junk, the salad had giant croutons, and there were also breadsticks and cake. Nothing but water to drink, but surprisingly even that sort of worked. The murder-mystery part was kinda entertaining as well, since the people playing the suspects all did these really goofy accents and walked around visiting people's tables occasionally so we could ask them questions (and then a few times they all got up in front of the room and gave their "clues," since nobody had enough time to get around to all of the tables.) It turned out that it was the guy announcing everyone else who did it, rather than any of the actual suspects. XD
After that I went to a surprise birthday party for Katie (who I know mainly because she sits right behind me in Spanish class... wasn't expecting to get invited to her birthday party, but one day in lunch this guy came over to my table and passed me an invitation out of nowhere.) This is when I found out that balloons make your hands smell funny, of course. Also watched I Am Legend (which was on a laptop and the volume was too low to hear what anyone was saying unless they were yelling at the time... so basically Will Smith's only line in the movie, as far as I could hear, was "DAMN!"), ate some random snack food (including a cake that looked like a giant cookie!) and generally goofed off for a while.
Also found out that Ruth's car is repaired (new radiator!), so I'll be volunteering at the Boxerwood nature park place for a few hours tomorrow. I think Ruth mentioned that she was giving someone else a ride also, but I can't remember who... guess I'll find out tomorrow. But yeah, I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing over there but it should be a good way to pass some time, see stuff, and get some of those service hours out of the way (I've already got six down, so two or three more should put me pretty close to the end!)
But yeah, today was kind of busy toward the later end, since I went to the murder mystery/spaghetti date night thing at the Institute building at 5:00 and then Katie's birthday party around 7:00. The spaghetti thing actually went pretty well; there were a few different possibilities that I was worried about (getting matched up with someone I couldn't stand, bad food, the murder-mystery thing being too confusing or disruptive of the date part) but it turned out that none of those happened! I actually didn't end up being paired up with a total stranger like I was expecting; instead my date ended up being Julie, one of the several girls I met when everyone was locked up in the gym after the bomb threat happened. We had lots of random stuff to talk about, and also ended up talking with one of the other couples at the table a bit (except they were an actual couple, since they were engaged!) The food was good, too; the spaghetti was real edible spaghetti (where you get some spaghetti on your plate and then add the sauce on top) and not the "noodles and sauce all mashed up together before serving" cafeteria-food junk, the salad had giant croutons, and there were also breadsticks and cake. Nothing but water to drink, but surprisingly even that sort of worked. The murder-mystery part was kinda entertaining as well, since the people playing the suspects all did these really goofy accents and walked around visiting people's tables occasionally so we could ask them questions (and then a few times they all got up in front of the room and gave their "clues," since nobody had enough time to get around to all of the tables.) It turned out that it was the guy announcing everyone else who did it, rather than any of the actual suspects. XD
After that I went to a surprise birthday party for Katie (who I know mainly because she sits right behind me in Spanish class... wasn't expecting to get invited to her birthday party, but one day in lunch this guy came over to my table and passed me an invitation out of nowhere.) This is when I found out that balloons make your hands smell funny, of course. Also watched I Am Legend (which was on a laptop and the volume was too low to hear what anyone was saying unless they were yelling at the time... so basically Will Smith's only line in the movie, as far as I could hear, was "DAMN!"), ate some random snack food (including a cake that looked like a giant cookie!) and generally goofed off for a while.
Also found out that Ruth's car is repaired (new radiator!), so I'll be volunteering at the Boxerwood nature park place for a few hours tomorrow. I think Ruth mentioned that she was giving someone else a ride also, but I can't remember who... guess I'll find out tomorrow. But yeah, I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing over there but it should be a good way to pass some time, see stuff, and get some of those service hours out of the way (I've already got six down, so two or three more should put me pretty close to the end!)
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
A mostly crappyish day yesterday, and a weird dream from last night
Yeah... yesterday kind of sucked, at least until later (where it briefly stopped sucking and went back to "average-ish," then resumed sucking for a while, then eventually got a lot better.) Won't go into detail about why most of the day sucked, though, because that'd be kind of boring and I don't really want to go over that stuff again anyway. A few good things, though: I got to eat pumpkin pie and drink apple cider, I went around dressed as Mario for several hours (from around 5:00-ish until maybe 9:00 or so?), I talked to people (as always), and so on. Toward the end of the day, though, I ended up bumping into some people who were going to go watch a movie (The Nightmare Before Christmas) in one of the library mods (basically, little rectangular houses near the library) and they invited me to come along. I did, and... that probably saved my day from crappiness, actually--talking to people, watching a movie, eating popcorn and cake, and getting to see a part of the school that I've never seen before (I had never actually been into one of the library mods before this time.)
Also, I had a weird dream last night! I'm not entirely sure what was going on, but the dream was really long and there was a mountainous area where I was apparently living (sort of resembled the mountains back home, but not exactly), and these weird tentacley plant monsters kept showing up, stronger and stronger every time. The dream sort of seemed video game-ish during the parts where I was fighting the plant monsters; kind of vaguely similar to the Kingdom Hearts series in the way the movements and maps were set up (I've been playing Re:Coded more lately so that may be why.) For a while I was able to fight the plant-monsters, but eventually a really big one (the main body wasn't too big but its tentacles extended a really long way--there was a scene that showed one tentacle going probably close to 100 feet burrowing through the ground after extending from its body) showed up and I just started throwing random rocks at it and stuff like that instead of... whatever it was I was doing to fight them before (I can't remember that part.) I'm not sure what happened, but everyone fighting the plants apparently gave up and left or something. There was also something in the dream about a guy with a gun, but when someone asked about going to see him apparently that wasn't a good idea because he had gone crazy already and someone else had to beat him up. Eventually Pokémon became involved somehow, and there was a Rhydon attacking me... so I randomly brought a Cloyster out of nowhere and had it fight the Rhydon for me (and for some reason it was able to just turn around and block attacks with the back of its shell, though this only worked when the Rhydon used Rock Blast... not when it used some attack that doesn't really exist called "Bone Bash," which didn't actually look bone-related in the dream, more like a huge ball of gray dust-ish stuff.) I think the Cloyster eventually beat the Rhydon, without taking much damage at all (only a little bit from "Bone Bash"), but I can't remember for sure.
There was also another dream, probably completely unrelated, about little kids drawing pictures comparing Mario with Sonic the Hedgehog, and one kid had drawn this huge long description on Mario's side and then on Sonic's side wrote nothing except for "Sonic is cool too, he can go really fast." There were others too, but I can't remember any of them except that one, though I think there may have been one where one of the kids accused Mario of writing his own description once and calling him a "liar" (on the one where Sonic barely had anything? or on another one? I'm not sure which.)
Compared to yesterday, today's been a lot better so far. Classes are going okay, and I've been playing Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded a bit more lately--I may actually be getting close to the end of the game (I think? Maleficent and Pete have shown up now, anyway.) I actually managed to ask someone to the spaghetti date night thing earlier today, and I didn't really have any trouble asking this time... it kind of surprised me how much easier it is to ask girls on dates now that I've actually done it before (and, probably more importantly, actually had a girl say yes when I asked.) I just walked up to her, said hi, and then asked her if she was planning on going (and if she'd want to go with me), just off the top of my head like that. Of course, it turned out that she wasn't really planning on going at all and if she did decide to sign up at the last minute, she wanted to sign up on the "people without dates" list rather than having a date set up for her ahead of time... but oh well. I'm kind of surprised that this didn't bother me at all--I actually sort of felt better after asking, even though it didn't exactly work out... just because I was actually able to ask in the first place, I guess. And now I know for sure that I'll either have to ask someone else (which means actually coming up with someone else I would want to go on a date with, which... might be the hard part now that I've run out of ideas) or sign up as a "no date" person and see how the randomly-picking-a-date-for-you thing works out, so there aren't so many annoying "what if" type possibilities to get too paranoid about.
I've been making some progress on that drawing (the "as many of my characters as possible crammed into one page" one) lately; now there's close to 140 different characters on there, which is... a lot. It's getting harder to think of characters that aren't already on there now. XD
Oh, and I might get to work on The K'hyurbhi Lands more sometime soon. Talking about it with other people recently (and even showing part of the game to Ruth once) has reminded me of how much I really want to get this thing finished, or at least get it to "long enough demo to put on the Internet" level. Maybe I'll even manage to win the Heart of the OHR contest in 2012 if I end up getting enough done in time to release it for that? Even if I don't, this game still needs to get finished; it'll probably be the last time I use Nummorro (and the First Nherbi as a whole) as a setting for a game, so I want to finally have something good in that setting before I "retire" it. I might post something about it on my Fnrrf Ygm Schnish blog sometime soon, and maybe even upload some of the first screenshots of it (which really will be the first screenshots of it ever posted on the Internet, aside from a few used as pictures for the FYS wiki.)
Also, I had a weird dream last night! I'm not entirely sure what was going on, but the dream was really long and there was a mountainous area where I was apparently living (sort of resembled the mountains back home, but not exactly), and these weird tentacley plant monsters kept showing up, stronger and stronger every time. The dream sort of seemed video game-ish during the parts where I was fighting the plant monsters; kind of vaguely similar to the Kingdom Hearts series in the way the movements and maps were set up (I've been playing Re:Coded more lately so that may be why.) For a while I was able to fight the plant-monsters, but eventually a really big one (the main body wasn't too big but its tentacles extended a really long way--there was a scene that showed one tentacle going probably close to 100 feet burrowing through the ground after extending from its body) showed up and I just started throwing random rocks at it and stuff like that instead of... whatever it was I was doing to fight them before (I can't remember that part.) I'm not sure what happened, but everyone fighting the plants apparently gave up and left or something. There was also something in the dream about a guy with a gun, but when someone asked about going to see him apparently that wasn't a good idea because he had gone crazy already and someone else had to beat him up. Eventually Pokémon became involved somehow, and there was a Rhydon attacking me... so I randomly brought a Cloyster out of nowhere and had it fight the Rhydon for me (and for some reason it was able to just turn around and block attacks with the back of its shell, though this only worked when the Rhydon used Rock Blast... not when it used some attack that doesn't really exist called "Bone Bash," which didn't actually look bone-related in the dream, more like a huge ball of gray dust-ish stuff.) I think the Cloyster eventually beat the Rhydon, without taking much damage at all (only a little bit from "Bone Bash"), but I can't remember for sure.
There was also another dream, probably completely unrelated, about little kids drawing pictures comparing Mario with Sonic the Hedgehog, and one kid had drawn this huge long description on Mario's side and then on Sonic's side wrote nothing except for "Sonic is cool too, he can go really fast." There were others too, but I can't remember any of them except that one, though I think there may have been one where one of the kids accused Mario of writing his own description once and calling him a "liar" (on the one where Sonic barely had anything? or on another one? I'm not sure which.)
Compared to yesterday, today's been a lot better so far. Classes are going okay, and I've been playing Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded a bit more lately--I may actually be getting close to the end of the game (I think? Maleficent and Pete have shown up now, anyway.) I actually managed to ask someone to the spaghetti date night thing earlier today, and I didn't really have any trouble asking this time... it kind of surprised me how much easier it is to ask girls on dates now that I've actually done it before (and, probably more importantly, actually had a girl say yes when I asked.) I just walked up to her, said hi, and then asked her if she was planning on going (and if she'd want to go with me), just off the top of my head like that. Of course, it turned out that she wasn't really planning on going at all and if she did decide to sign up at the last minute, she wanted to sign up on the "people without dates" list rather than having a date set up for her ahead of time... but oh well. I'm kind of surprised that this didn't bother me at all--I actually sort of felt better after asking, even though it didn't exactly work out... just because I was actually able to ask in the first place, I guess. And now I know for sure that I'll either have to ask someone else (which means actually coming up with someone else I would want to go on a date with, which... might be the hard part now that I've run out of ideas) or sign up as a "no date" person and see how the randomly-picking-a-date-for-you thing works out, so there aren't so many annoying "what if" type possibilities to get too paranoid about.
I've been making some progress on that drawing (the "as many of my characters as possible crammed into one page" one) lately; now there's close to 140 different characters on there, which is... a lot. It's getting harder to think of characters that aren't already on there now. XD
Oh, and I might get to work on The K'hyurbhi Lands more sometime soon. Talking about it with other people recently (and even showing part of the game to Ruth once) has reminded me of how much I really want to get this thing finished, or at least get it to "long enough demo to put on the Internet" level. Maybe I'll even manage to win the Heart of the OHR contest in 2012 if I end up getting enough done in time to release it for that? Even if I don't, this game still needs to get finished; it'll probably be the last time I use Nummorro (and the First Nherbi as a whole) as a setting for a game, so I want to finally have something good in that setting before I "retire" it. I might post something about it on my Fnrrf Ygm Schnish blog sometime soon, and maybe even upload some of the first screenshots of it (which really will be the first screenshots of it ever posted on the Internet, aside from a few used as pictures for the FYS wiki.)
Sunday, October 30, 2011
It's-a-me! Mario!
Yep... I ended up getting all the pieces of my Mario costume together in time for the Halloween dance yesterday; got my overalls and (backup) hat when I went home Friday, and then ate tons of pizza at Victor's before coming back over here yesterday. Even had the gloves this time (and they were actual completely-white gloves, not ones with black bits and straps and stuff like the ones I ended up using two years ago.) The hat from the kids' Mario costume was a bit too tight (actually seemed to be cutting off circulation to my head after wearing it for a while), but it worked; the mustache also started to fall off after wearing it for several hours, but then I was able to just stick it back on without problems not long afterward. I think the problem was that I tried to eat and drink with it on, and ended up partially knocking it off with the cup I was drinking out of; hopefully the adhesive stuff on the back will still work tomorrow, since that's Halloween and I'm going to need the costume again then. Not sure if I'll wear it around school all day or if I'll just dress up to go to supper and FHE... I doubt the mustache has enough stickiness to last the full day, and wearing that hat around all day probably wouldn't be such a good idea either, so I'll probably just change into it later rather than wearing it around all day.
Speaking of the Halloween dance, that went really well; hardly anyone showed up without any sort of costume, so there were tons of things to go around seeing. A few random little things around the sides this time, but not as much as at homecoming; there was a costume contest, a donut-eating thing (of course, I just got a donut without bothering with the "eat donuts hanging from strings" contest... might be hard with my mustache getting in the way, after all), a picture-taking booth as always, and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head. Went with Ruth, and we did dance a couple of times (to slower songs) but mostly we just walked around, talked to all sorts of people, goofed off, and tried to see how many different costumes we could find and take pictures of. I kind of get the feeling that I could have actually gone to this dance by myself and not gotten bored, since so many people were just wandering around talking and showing off their costumes rather than just dancing and I ended up bumping into and talking to a ton of other people the whole time... but hey, having someone to go with is always good too, even if it's not 100% necessary to avoid boredom.
And after the dance, a few people I bumped into decided they were going down into Buena Vista to get the free cookies that this place was giving out... so I tagged along and talked some more (and of course, ate my free cookie) for a while there before finally going back to my dorm and changing back to regular clothes. It's hard to sit down on the floor in overalls, I found (and it's also hard to eat or drink anything with a giant mustache hanging down halfway over your mouth, heh.) Overall, it's been a pretty good couple of days! Let's hope it doesn't suddenly go downhill out of nowhere next week.
EDIT: Oh, and there'll probably be another couple failed attempts to ask a girl on a date this week, what with that spaghetti thing at the Institute building going on this Friday. In fact, there's been one already! (Actually not a "couldn't get any words out" problem this time... more of a "girl will not stay still long enough for me to even try asking her" problem. I sorta considered calling her to ask her that way afterward, but that seemed a little weird, so I decided not to.)
I probably won't even go into much detail about those this time, though, so this is probably the last time I'll mention it this week until/unless I actually manage to ask someone (or give up on that and just sign up on the "people without dates" side of the paper so the people running the thing can randomly set me up with some girl I've never even met before.) And of course, if the girl I'm trying to ask out this time is already going with someone else (or already has a boyfriend, or wasn't planning on going, or just says no for whatever reason... or no reason at all), I'm pretty much out of ideas as far as people to ask goes, so I'll probably have to sign up on the "no date" list anyway.
Speaking of other people I thought about asking out, the other girl I liked earlier this semester doesn't seem to want to be around me at all anymore, and I have no idea why... she used to talk to me quite a bit (though we didn't see each other too often, we usually at least talked for 10-15 minutes pretty much every time we did see each other, sometimes much longer), but now... she just doesn't talk, beyond saying "hi" and sometimes answering questions. And the weirdest thing is, she actually seems to talk to other people just as much as (if not more than) she used to... as far as I've seen it's just me who gets the "say-hi,-maybe-smile-a-little,-and-then-just-stand/sit-there-silently-making-me-feel-really-uncomfortable-to-even-be-around-her" thing. She's... pretty much completely dropped off the "girls I'm considering asking on dates in the future" list, at least for now... it's just so uncomfortable being around her lately (what with the not talking, and just kind of staring at me not saying anything unless I ask her something first, and especially the fact that I seem to be the only one she does that to) that I can't really imagine how going on a date with her could ever work. No idea what's going on there, but it kind of bothers me...
Speaking of the Halloween dance, that went really well; hardly anyone showed up without any sort of costume, so there were tons of things to go around seeing. A few random little things around the sides this time, but not as much as at homecoming; there was a costume contest, a donut-eating thing (of course, I just got a donut without bothering with the "eat donuts hanging from strings" contest... might be hard with my mustache getting in the way, after all), a picture-taking booth as always, and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head. Went with Ruth, and we did dance a couple of times (to slower songs) but mostly we just walked around, talked to all sorts of people, goofed off, and tried to see how many different costumes we could find and take pictures of. I kind of get the feeling that I could have actually gone to this dance by myself and not gotten bored, since so many people were just wandering around talking and showing off their costumes rather than just dancing and I ended up bumping into and talking to a ton of other people the whole time... but hey, having someone to go with is always good too, even if it's not 100% necessary to avoid boredom.
And after the dance, a few people I bumped into decided they were going down into Buena Vista to get the free cookies that this place was giving out... so I tagged along and talked some more (and of course, ate my free cookie) for a while there before finally going back to my dorm and changing back to regular clothes. It's hard to sit down on the floor in overalls, I found (and it's also hard to eat or drink anything with a giant mustache hanging down halfway over your mouth, heh.) Overall, it's been a pretty good couple of days! Let's hope it doesn't suddenly go downhill out of nowhere next week.
EDIT: Oh, and there'll probably be another couple failed attempts to ask a girl on a date this week, what with that spaghetti thing at the Institute building going on this Friday. In fact, there's been one already! (Actually not a "couldn't get any words out" problem this time... more of a "girl will not stay still long enough for me to even try asking her" problem. I sorta considered calling her to ask her that way afterward, but that seemed a little weird, so I decided not to.)
I probably won't even go into much detail about those this time, though, so this is probably the last time I'll mention it this week until/unless I actually manage to ask someone (or give up on that and just sign up on the "people without dates" side of the paper so the people running the thing can randomly set me up with some girl I've never even met before.) And of course, if the girl I'm trying to ask out this time is already going with someone else (or already has a boyfriend, or wasn't planning on going, or just says no for whatever reason... or no reason at all), I'm pretty much out of ideas as far as people to ask goes, so I'll probably have to sign up on the "no date" list anyway.
Speaking of other people I thought about asking out, the other girl I liked earlier this semester doesn't seem to want to be around me at all anymore, and I have no idea why... she used to talk to me quite a bit (though we didn't see each other too often, we usually at least talked for 10-15 minutes pretty much every time we did see each other, sometimes much longer), but now... she just doesn't talk, beyond saying "hi" and sometimes answering questions. And the weirdest thing is, she actually seems to talk to other people just as much as (if not more than) she used to... as far as I've seen it's just me who gets the "say-hi,-maybe-smile-a-little,-and-then-just-stand/sit-there-silently-making-me-feel-really-uncomfortable-to-even-be-around-her" thing. She's... pretty much completely dropped off the "girls I'm considering asking on dates in the future" list, at least for now... it's just so uncomfortable being around her lately (what with the not talking, and just kind of staring at me not saying anything unless I ask her something first, and especially the fact that I seem to be the only one she does that to) that I can't really imagine how going on a date with her could ever work. No idea what's going on there, but it kind of bothers me...
Thursday, October 27, 2011
More random quotes, Mario costumes, and... spagghetti?
Yep... I now have most of my Mario costume. I still have to get the overalls from back home, and possibly the hat (the one I borrowed from a kids' Mario costume from Wal-Mart that I bought today looks more like Mario's hat overall, but it's also really small on me, so I'll have to decide between the two at some point.), but now I have a mustache and a red long-sleeved shirt (and, again, possibly the hat)... along with a hammer! Which is actually a Thor hammer rather than a Mario-ish hammer, but hey, it works. Plus it's a Nerf hammer, so I can go around bonking people with it and not get in trouble. The only thing I'm really missing are the gloves, but I think the Covington Wal-Mart may have actual Mario gloves... I'll need to check the next time I'm there.
Also, I found out today that there's this "date night" thing being held at the Institute building next Friday; they provide the food and you go on a date with someone, and you have to have a date to come... didn't sign up for it just yet (there were like five people actually signed up, though I didn't find out until later that the list they were circulating was only for the class I'm in--they pass those around in all of the classes, plus there's a list in Durham and another in Jonzzey's), but I'm kinda thinking about trying to ask someone to go to that with me. And if that doesn't work, then maybe I'll just sign up on the "people who don't have dates" side of the list and just see who they match me up with (because that's what they do if you sign up on the "people who don't have dates" side--they'll match you up with another dateless person! I'm not really sure how they end up deciding on who to match everyone up with, but hey, I might meet someone new that way, or end up on a date with someone I already kinda like but wouldn't think of actually asking on my own.)
But yeah... I'm planning on signing up for that sometime at least, even if I don't end up with an already-set-up-ahead-of-time date for it. I mean, hopefully I'll actually be able to ask the girl that I'm kind of thinking about asking, but if not then I'll always be able to sign up on the "doesn't have a date" part of the sheet and hope I get matched up with someone I can get along well with.
And finally, the random silly quotes! Not too many of them today, but hey.
"He's a god, he doesn't have to work hard." (from Art History class, about Zeus)
"If you pretend you're going to blow up Mormons, you get in the paper!" (my sister, talking about the bomb threat)
Also, I found out today that there's this "date night" thing being held at the Institute building next Friday; they provide the food and you go on a date with someone, and you have to have a date to come... didn't sign up for it just yet (there were like five people actually signed up, though I didn't find out until later that the list they were circulating was only for the class I'm in--they pass those around in all of the classes, plus there's a list in Durham and another in Jonzzey's), but I'm kinda thinking about trying to ask someone to go to that with me. And if that doesn't work, then maybe I'll just sign up on the "people who don't have dates" side of the list and just see who they match me up with (because that's what they do if you sign up on the "people who don't have dates" side--they'll match you up with another dateless person! I'm not really sure how they end up deciding on who to match everyone up with, but hey, I might meet someone new that way, or end up on a date with someone I already kinda like but wouldn't think of actually asking on my own.)
But yeah... I'm planning on signing up for that sometime at least, even if I don't end up with an already-set-up-ahead-of-time date for it. I mean, hopefully I'll actually be able to ask the girl that I'm kind of thinking about asking, but if not then I'll always be able to sign up on the "doesn't have a date" part of the sheet and hope I get matched up with someone I can get along well with.
And finally, the random silly quotes! Not too many of them today, but hey.
"He's a god, he doesn't have to work hard." (from Art History class, about Zeus)
"If you pretend you're going to blow up Mormons, you get in the paper!" (my sister, talking about the bomb threat)
Smash Bros. is good for killing boredom...
...and also keeping me from doing homework, unfortunately. XD Yeah, earlier today I ended up going over to one of the married student apartments and playing Smash Bros. with a couple of guys (and two of the guys' wives, though they didn't actually play Smash Bros. with the guys... they were just there talking, goofing off, and in one case making pumpkin pie. Which was good, but still so warm when we ate it that it melted the whipped cream and made it almost fall off.) The wives just happened to find out how old I am right after they were talking about how all the single girls they know are older than the single guys they know, which led to one of them saying that she might set me up on a date with one of her friends sometime... nothing definite yet, but still, that's pretty much the first time anyone's ever offered to do that. I have no idea what her friend is like, but I'd much rather go on a date with someone than just sit around thinking about it but never managing to actually ask people.
They also joked that it'd be funny if I got married and ended up living in that exact same apartment next year, since one of the guys (and his wife) lived there last year and now one of the other guys (and his wife) lives there now... seems pretty unlikely, though not because of the "living somewhere other than Craton next year if I have the money" part so much as the "being married by next year" part. Actually "unlikely" is kind of an understatement, more like "there is pretty much no chance that's going to happen." Actually having a girlfriend by next year, maybe... still pretty unlikely, but I can at least see it as a distant one-in-a-million-chance type of possibility. Married by next year? No way.
But anyway... I played Smash Bros. for the better part of 3 hours today. And got to eat some pumpkin pie afterward. The rest of the day, overall, not really much worth mentioning... though I did watch part of a movie in Spanish class (it was in Spanish, of course) and finished drawing some more stuff (well, made some progress anyway... I'm trying to draw as many of my 500+ characters on one page as possible, and so far I have around 95 of them on that page and more than half of the page still open for more.) No more real painting homework yet, though we did have an assignment related to drawing rocks that we're going to paint a still-life of next time. Found out that I got a near-perfect (just one point off, 79/80) score on my essay question on the last history exam, so even with how bad I did on the other part of the test, I still got a high B (89/100) on that one... which is something like a quarter of my grade by itself, so that's pretty good! Still way behind on reading for that Book of Mormon class, though.
Also, I just noticed that I randomly got this huge surge of people reading this blog today. I'm not sure where they're all coming from, since only two of the 25-ish hits on it for today came from Facebook (the only place I've posted a link to it is on my Facebook page.) My other blog on Fnrrf Ygm Schnish games and stuff also got a surge of hits; less overall, but more from Facebook (...well, one more anyway, there were only three.) Bizarrely, all 21 of the hits to the FYS blog came from people using Google's Chrome browser, which I have so far never actually seen anyone using--it's usually Firefox or Internet Explorer, and I think I may have seen Opera... once? But yeah, kind of odd how that turned out.
They also joked that it'd be funny if I got married and ended up living in that exact same apartment next year, since one of the guys (and his wife) lived there last year and now one of the other guys (and his wife) lives there now... seems pretty unlikely, though not because of the "living somewhere other than Craton next year if I have the money" part so much as the "being married by next year" part. Actually "unlikely" is kind of an understatement, more like "there is pretty much no chance that's going to happen." Actually having a girlfriend by next year, maybe... still pretty unlikely, but I can at least see it as a distant one-in-a-million-chance type of possibility. Married by next year? No way.
But anyway... I played Smash Bros. for the better part of 3 hours today. And got to eat some pumpkin pie afterward. The rest of the day, overall, not really much worth mentioning... though I did watch part of a movie in Spanish class (it was in Spanish, of course) and finished drawing some more stuff (well, made some progress anyway... I'm trying to draw as many of my 500+ characters on one page as possible, and so far I have around 95 of them on that page and more than half of the page still open for more.) No more real painting homework yet, though we did have an assignment related to drawing rocks that we're going to paint a still-life of next time. Found out that I got a near-perfect (just one point off, 79/80) score on my essay question on the last history exam, so even with how bad I did on the other part of the test, I still got a high B (89/100) on that one... which is something like a quarter of my grade by itself, so that's pretty good! Still way behind on reading for that Book of Mormon class, though.
Also, I just noticed that I randomly got this huge surge of people reading this blog today. I'm not sure where they're all coming from, since only two of the 25-ish hits on it for today came from Facebook (the only place I've posted a link to it is on my Facebook page.) My other blog on Fnrrf Ygm Schnish games and stuff also got a surge of hits; less overall, but more from Facebook (...well, one more anyway, there were only three.) Bizarrely, all 21 of the hits to the FYS blog came from people using Google's Chrome browser, which I have so far never actually seen anyone using--it's usually Firefox or Internet Explorer, and I think I may have seen Opera... once? But yeah, kind of odd how that turned out.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Mostly uneventful day, but it ended up pretty good overall.
Yeah... kind of odd how nothing really "big" happened today, and yet it ended up being pretty good overall due to a combination of little things. Not entirely good little things (example: me discovering that the chicken panini at Jonzzey's does not have the normal strips of chicken, but some weird-ass finely chopped-up chicken that was completely unappetizing to me), but overall the good outweighed the bad and today... definitely didn't suck.
Got a lot of jogging done (7 blocks straight without stopping, 11 blocks in one period of ten minutes or so... both new records for me), met a couple of new people (including one that I ended up talking to for at least an hour, only stopping because it was 11 PM and guys aren't allowed in the Lofts past 11:00), did a lot of talking with various other people that I already knew, asked Ruth to go to the Halloween dance with me this weekend (though of course it won't really be a "date" this time, it's still nice to have a close friend to go with so you have someone to talk to and don't ever get stuck in one of those "bored with nothing to do while everyone else is dancing with their dates/girlfriends/etc." times), decided that I'm going to dress up as Mario for Halloween again this year (just need a new mustache; may end up buying a Mario costume from Wal-Mart just for the 'stache and gloves, and maybe the hat if it's big enough to fit), drew some more stuff, got some Spanish homework done, heard people talk in silly British accents, and started thinking about who I might try to ask on a date the next time I get around to that.
...okay, it's actually not so much "thinking about it," since I've already pretty much decided who I'm going to try and ask next... but I guess it might be a good idea to have someone else in mind just in case the first girl I ask says no (or already has a boyfriend, or something else along those lines), and there are so many girls here that seem really nice, are really cute, and are easy to talk to and get along with... the problem is figuring out which ones are already taken or not interested at all.
Got a lot of jogging done (7 blocks straight without stopping, 11 blocks in one period of ten minutes or so... both new records for me), met a couple of new people (including one that I ended up talking to for at least an hour, only stopping because it was 11 PM and guys aren't allowed in the Lofts past 11:00), did a lot of talking with various other people that I already knew, asked Ruth to go to the Halloween dance with me this weekend (though of course it won't really be a "date" this time, it's still nice to have a close friend to go with so you have someone to talk to and don't ever get stuck in one of those "bored with nothing to do while everyone else is dancing with their dates/girlfriends/etc." times), decided that I'm going to dress up as Mario for Halloween again this year (just need a new mustache; may end up buying a Mario costume from Wal-Mart just for the 'stache and gloves, and maybe the hat if it's big enough to fit), drew some more stuff, got some Spanish homework done, heard people talk in silly British accents, and started thinking about who I might try to ask on a date the next time I get around to that.
...okay, it's actually not so much "thinking about it," since I've already pretty much decided who I'm going to try and ask next... but I guess it might be a good idea to have someone else in mind just in case the first girl I ask says no (or already has a boyfriend, or something else along those lines), and there are so many girls here that seem really nice, are really cute, and are easy to talk to and get along with... the problem is figuring out which ones are already taken or not interested at all.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Random quotes from Craton's hall meeting (and bomb threat!)
"Don't pee on the wall, it's gross."
"You've all been peeing for a long time."
"If you pick your nose in the shower, don't wipe it on the wall, that's gross."
"If you need to know what counts as sex or a sexual relationship, just come and ask me."
Also, we had a bomb threat and all the guys in Craton had to evacuate. Right now we're sitting in the church parking lot waiting for the SWAT team to search the building for the supposed bomb (if it exists.) Yeah, SWAT team guys... full gear, bulletproof vests and rifles and everything. They just came pounding on our doors randomly, telling everyone to put some warm clothes on and then evacuate. I grabbed my laptop and put on a coat... some people didn't bother even put on a coat and are now cold. And most people seem to have brought their phones, rather than something less boring like a computer... silly teenagers.
Update: Now we've been moved into the SAC (student activity center) and these morons decided to watch freakin' Spongebob, of all things. Hopefully something halfway-decent comes on at 1 AM.
Update update: They ended up letting us out around 3 AM. And then didn't cancel classes. Well, screw that, my 10 AM class is definitely cancelled no matter what the official word is... no way I'm getting up at 8 or 9 in the morning to get ready for classes after not even going to bed until 3:15 or so (and probably not going to sleep until closer to 4:00.) On a more positive note, I bumped into a bunch of girls that I'd never met before during the lockdown in the gym/SAC and actually had people to talk to (both in person and over Facebook chat) during most of the three hours we were in there. Including one girl who does not wear shoes... yep, not at all. I guess she has hobbit feet, but without the hair.
Also, random quotes from the bomb threat!
"Is anybody worried that they'll find something in your room, like R-rated movies or porn or marijuana?"
"They're bringing in a specialized dog with a specialized snout."
"It's over nine thousaaaand!"
(Yes, someone seriously made an "over 9000" joke... obviously not a real DBZ fan or he would've said 8000 instead. And if you're going to imitate something you heard on the Internet, wouldn't an All Your Base joke have made more sense anyway, since "someone set us up the bomb?")
"You've all been peeing for a long time."
"If you pick your nose in the shower, don't wipe it on the wall, that's gross."
"If you need to know what counts as sex or a sexual relationship, just come and ask me."
Also, we had a bomb threat and all the guys in Craton had to evacuate. Right now we're sitting in the church parking lot waiting for the SWAT team to search the building for the supposed bomb (if it exists.) Yeah, SWAT team guys... full gear, bulletproof vests and rifles and everything. They just came pounding on our doors randomly, telling everyone to put some warm clothes on and then evacuate. I grabbed my laptop and put on a coat... some people didn't bother even put on a coat and are now cold. And most people seem to have brought their phones, rather than something less boring like a computer... silly teenagers.
Update: Now we've been moved into the SAC (student activity center) and these morons decided to watch freakin' Spongebob, of all things. Hopefully something halfway-decent comes on at 1 AM.
Update update: They ended up letting us out around 3 AM. And then didn't cancel classes. Well, screw that, my 10 AM class is definitely cancelled no matter what the official word is... no way I'm getting up at 8 or 9 in the morning to get ready for classes after not even going to bed until 3:15 or so (and probably not going to sleep until closer to 4:00.) On a more positive note, I bumped into a bunch of girls that I'd never met before during the lockdown in the gym/SAC and actually had people to talk to (both in person and over Facebook chat) during most of the three hours we were in there. Including one girl who does not wear shoes... yep, not at all. I guess she has hobbit feet, but without the hair.
Also, random quotes from the bomb threat!
"Is anybody worried that they'll find something in your room, like R-rated movies or porn or marijuana?"
"They're bringing in a specialized dog with a specialized snout."
"It's over nine thousaaaand!"
(Yes, someone seriously made an "over 9000" joke... obviously not a real DBZ fan or he would've said 8000 instead. And if you're going to imitate something you heard on the Internet, wouldn't an All Your Base joke have made more sense anyway, since "someone set us up the bomb?")
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Fall Carnival wangledoo
Yep... this Friday ended up being surprisingly non-boring. Finished another painting (third out of the five that I need to get done before Monday; there's only two left now), volunteered at the front desk for an hour and a half (okay, this part was a little boring), and then at 7:00 decided to go over to the Fall Carnival thing that they were having in the parking lot of the Institute building. Turned out there was a lot of stuff to do there, and I ended up bumping into a bunch of people I knew, so I pretty much wasn't bored at all the entire time. They had hot chocolate (which was very hot, by the way... had to wait probably 10 or 15 minutes to let it cool down before it became drinkable without a spoon), tiny little pumpkins and markers you could use to draw on them (I drew a somewhat exaggerated version of my dad's face on mine XD), and a bunch of random silly games and stuff, like "fishing" for little plastic toys (I ended up with a noise-maker and a little smiley-face thing with balls on strings hanging off of it; originally I had a broken whistle, but I traded it to someone for the smiley-face thing), bowling with Nerf balls and pins, and the throw-beanbags-into-a-hole-in-a-board game which is apparently called "cornhole" (which... I did not know. I'd seen the game itself before years ago when I was a little kid, but had never heard anyone call it "cornhole" until last year.)
Afterward, I ended up staying to help clean up, and then me and a couple of girls ended up exploring the random creepy tunnels upstairs in the church, which I had no idea were there until then. Apparently the door leading to the stairs that go up to the second floor/attic/whatever-it-is is usually kept locked, but it was open today because they store all the game equipment up there. We walked around up there for a while and found such mysterious things as the device that runs the church's internet connection (kept in a locked box... with the keys hanging from the lock! whoops) and a bunch of pipes and ventilation shafts. Also, it was really dark up there, and we only had a tiny little finger-flashlight thing to light the way. Kind of a fun side-trip though, I never knew all that stuff was up there and I like walking around in random places like that.
After that I ended up walking Melissa (one of the girls I was hanging around with at the Fall Carnival; also one of the two who went up into the creepy attic) back to her house-dorm-thing at Carriage (the "sort of off-campus" student houses, I guess? I never knew exactly where they were until today, which is part of the reason I wanted to walk over there--I'd heard people mention the place but never actually seen it), and she kind of gave me a tour of the area (which had lots of Halloween decorations up--tons of fake spiderwebs and pumpkins everywhere!), stopping in at her house for a few minutes so I could see it and meet her housemates, and also dropping by someone else's for a second to drop off a hat that someone had left in the parking lot. I kind of got disoriented on the way back out, though, so she ended up having to walk me back over to the entrance area of Carriage where I could actually see the road leading back up to the school before she could go back home. Might be easier during the day, but it was dark and I had no idea where I was going. XD
And after that, I ended up bumping to a few more girls I knew at the Institute building when I ran in really quick to use the bathroom... and then ended up sitting in there and talking to them for a while, while they worked on puzzles and stuff. They ended up walking with me back to Craton afterward, and then they wanted to see what the lobby area of Craton looked like, so we all went in and sat on the couches for a while (and ate some chips and drank more hot chocolate, which the HRAs just happened to have with them at the moment we came by.) Ended up leaving the chips for anyone who wanted them, and one of the girls used a Bible to weigh down the top of the chip bag so they wouldn't fall out... and left a note on them saying "Eat! ...and read!" on little business-card type things that were laying around. I'm not sure if anyone's actually touched the chips yet, though, since they were still there (with signs still in place) this morning when I was down there.
Overall, a pretty good day! Now I just need to finish those other two paintings...
Afterward, I ended up staying to help clean up, and then me and a couple of girls ended up exploring the random creepy tunnels upstairs in the church, which I had no idea were there until then. Apparently the door leading to the stairs that go up to the second floor/attic/whatever-it-is is usually kept locked, but it was open today because they store all the game equipment up there. We walked around up there for a while and found such mysterious things as the device that runs the church's internet connection (kept in a locked box... with the keys hanging from the lock! whoops) and a bunch of pipes and ventilation shafts. Also, it was really dark up there, and we only had a tiny little finger-flashlight thing to light the way. Kind of a fun side-trip though, I never knew all that stuff was up there and I like walking around in random places like that.
After that I ended up walking Melissa (one of the girls I was hanging around with at the Fall Carnival; also one of the two who went up into the creepy attic) back to her house-dorm-thing at Carriage (the "sort of off-campus" student houses, I guess? I never knew exactly where they were until today, which is part of the reason I wanted to walk over there--I'd heard people mention the place but never actually seen it), and she kind of gave me a tour of the area (which had lots of Halloween decorations up--tons of fake spiderwebs and pumpkins everywhere!), stopping in at her house for a few minutes so I could see it and meet her housemates, and also dropping by someone else's for a second to drop off a hat that someone had left in the parking lot. I kind of got disoriented on the way back out, though, so she ended up having to walk me back over to the entrance area of Carriage where I could actually see the road leading back up to the school before she could go back home. Might be easier during the day, but it was dark and I had no idea where I was going. XD
And after that, I ended up bumping to a few more girls I knew at the Institute building when I ran in really quick to use the bathroom... and then ended up sitting in there and talking to them for a while, while they worked on puzzles and stuff. They ended up walking with me back to Craton afterward, and then they wanted to see what the lobby area of Craton looked like, so we all went in and sat on the couches for a while (and ate some chips and drank more hot chocolate, which the HRAs just happened to have with them at the moment we came by.) Ended up leaving the chips for anyone who wanted them, and one of the girls used a Bible to weigh down the top of the chip bag so they wouldn't fall out... and left a note on them saying "Eat! ...and read!" on little business-card type things that were laying around. I'm not sure if anyone's actually touched the chips yet, though, since they were still there (with signs still in place) this morning when I was down there.
Overall, a pretty good day! Now I just need to finish those other two paintings...
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
What a good/bad/average day. (Yes, all three at the same time.)
Sometimes literally. Yeah... today was a weird one.
First, the good. I actually managed to finish one of those paintings I need to do before next Monday. This means I only need to do... four more of them... which is still way too much. But now it should at least be somewhat manageable, at least if I decide for sure not to come home over the weekend (and this would be a great weekend to come home on--especially if Mom and Julia come get me on Friday instead of Dad getting me on Saturday, so I can go to the Shootaround and get away from school for a while... though for the most part I like being here, just get worn out sometimes when certain things happen.) Also, when I sent a text message to Ruth letting her know that I think she's cute, she didn't freak out and start avoiding me or any other of the "typical 17/18-year-old reaction to finding out I like them" things I ran into several times in high school... she actually still wants to be friends and said she really likes talking to me, so at least I didn't lose one of the closest friends I've ever had over a freakin' text message.
Now the bad part. Ruth pretty much came out and told me that she's not ready for an actual relationship yet, since it's her first year of college and she's trying to focus on her schoolwork and do well on it right now and it seems like she doesn't think she could handle all that and a relationship. At first it didn't really bother me (I was more relieved that my text message telling her that I thought she was cute didn't bother her or anything, and I wasn't going to lose a friend over something dumb like that), but afterward... yeah, the whole "Ruth most likely will not be my girlfriend" thing hit me pretty hard and I felt pretty terrible for a while.
The way she worded it didn't rule out the possibility of something happening between us eventually, but... not anytime really soon, possibly not even this whole year. Even as much as I like her (and I really like her, probably more than I've ever liked a girl before... though the fact that it isn't completely one-sided and she actually likes talking to me, going on dates, etc. probably helps), I really don't think it'd be a good idea to just wait around (not going on dates or anything with other girls, etc.) for a year or so for what basically amounts to a very vague "maybe" and a feeling that for the first time it might actually be possible for something to happen there (once the first-year-away-at-college problems are gone, anyway.)
Also, on a completely unrelated note, I think I may have slightly hurt one of my legs when I tripped in this random giant hole on the side of a hill and fell. Fortunately, no knees got busted up this time, but still... it hurt a bit.
And the average part? Everything else, pretty much. Just the usual school stuff, nothing really worth writing about here.
First, the good. I actually managed to finish one of those paintings I need to do before next Monday. This means I only need to do... four more of them... which is still way too much. But now it should at least be somewhat manageable, at least if I decide for sure not to come home over the weekend (and this would be a great weekend to come home on--especially if Mom and Julia come get me on Friday instead of Dad getting me on Saturday, so I can go to the Shootaround and get away from school for a while... though for the most part I like being here, just get worn out sometimes when certain things happen.) Also, when I sent a text message to Ruth letting her know that I think she's cute, she didn't freak out and start avoiding me or any other of the "typical 17/18-year-old reaction to finding out I like them" things I ran into several times in high school... she actually still wants to be friends and said she really likes talking to me, so at least I didn't lose one of the closest friends I've ever had over a freakin' text message.
Now the bad part. Ruth pretty much came out and told me that she's not ready for an actual relationship yet, since it's her first year of college and she's trying to focus on her schoolwork and do well on it right now and it seems like she doesn't think she could handle all that and a relationship. At first it didn't really bother me (I was more relieved that my text message telling her that I thought she was cute didn't bother her or anything, and I wasn't going to lose a friend over something dumb like that), but afterward... yeah, the whole "Ruth most likely will not be my girlfriend" thing hit me pretty hard and I felt pretty terrible for a while.
The way she worded it didn't rule out the possibility of something happening between us eventually, but... not anytime really soon, possibly not even this whole year. Even as much as I like her (and I really like her, probably more than I've ever liked a girl before... though the fact that it isn't completely one-sided and she actually likes talking to me, going on dates, etc. probably helps), I really don't think it'd be a good idea to just wait around (not going on dates or anything with other girls, etc.) for a year or so for what basically amounts to a very vague "maybe" and a feeling that for the first time it might actually be possible for something to happen there (once the first-year-away-at-college problems are gone, anyway.)
Also, on a completely unrelated note, I think I may have slightly hurt one of my legs when I tripped in this random giant hole on the side of a hill and fell. Fortunately, no knees got busted up this time, but still... it hurt a bit.
And the average part? Everything else, pretty much. Just the usual school stuff, nothing really worth writing about here.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Homecoming dance!
Yep... today (...technically yesterday now, since it's almost 1 AM), I went to the homecoming dance with Ruth. And also to an Italian restaurant, this time the one that's further away from school (Nick's Italian Kitchen.) Food was really good as usual--I had manicotti for the first time in a while, and she had eggplant parmesean (which apparently was pretty good, and the eggplant didn't taste weird or anything) with ziti. No cheese sticks this time--mainly because we'd probably be full enough without them; Ruth said she didn't want any because she wanted to still be able to move after eating! XD--though we did have salads and breadsticks (seems like most Italian restaurants give you those for free, heh.)
The dance was actually really fun this time--no sitting around feeling lonely and bored at all! I'm guessing this was partly because there were actually things to do besides sit around or dance (the dance was circus/carnival-themed and had lots of random games and such around the sides), and mostly because I actually went with someone, so I always had someone around to talk to, dance with, etc. rather than having to just wander around and hope to bump into people. Me and Ruth stuck together pretty much the whole time, usually talking and just goofing off (for a while we played with balloons, we had our pictures taken, got random stuff painted on our faces, and tried out a few of the games around the edges of the room) but occasionally actually dancing a little bit. Well, okay, she danced a lot more than I did, but most of those times I was kind of standing there attempting to dance and ending up... actually moving a little bit, for once?... but not really dancing. Except when they played slow songs a couple of times, we actually danced to those. Eventually she started getting a little sleepy, so she decided to leave and I went with her. I think we only left maybe 10-15 minutes early, because when I walked back down afterward it seemed like everyone else was leaving too. Anyway, we drove back up to the lofts (...okay, she drove, but I was in the other seat!) and then stood outside talking a little bit more... and as always, I hugged her before she left (twice this time, actually... the first hug wasn't nearly long enough. XD)
Overall the whole night went really well, I thought; Ruth seemed to be enjoying herself too, even to the point of staying a little longer to talk and goof off more despite the fact that she was starting to get sleepy. And thanks to something that came up in one of our random conversations toward the end, I now have an idea on where we could go on our next date... whenever that might happen to be (probably not next weekend, since I'm going to the Shootaround with Julia and the venture crew then.)
The dance was actually really fun this time--no sitting around feeling lonely and bored at all! I'm guessing this was partly because there were actually things to do besides sit around or dance (the dance was circus/carnival-themed and had lots of random games and such around the sides), and mostly because I actually went with someone, so I always had someone around to talk to, dance with, etc. rather than having to just wander around and hope to bump into people. Me and Ruth stuck together pretty much the whole time, usually talking and just goofing off (for a while we played with balloons, we had our pictures taken, got random stuff painted on our faces, and tried out a few of the games around the edges of the room) but occasionally actually dancing a little bit. Well, okay, she danced a lot more than I did, but most of those times I was kind of standing there attempting to dance and ending up... actually moving a little bit, for once?... but not really dancing. Except when they played slow songs a couple of times, we actually danced to those. Eventually she started getting a little sleepy, so she decided to leave and I went with her. I think we only left maybe 10-15 minutes early, because when I walked back down afterward it seemed like everyone else was leaving too. Anyway, we drove back up to the lofts (...okay, she drove, but I was in the other seat!) and then stood outside talking a little bit more... and as always, I hugged her before she left (twice this time, actually... the first hug wasn't nearly long enough. XD)
Overall the whole night went really well, I thought; Ruth seemed to be enjoying herself too, even to the point of staying a little longer to talk and goof off more despite the fact that she was starting to get sleepy. And thanks to something that came up in one of our random conversations toward the end, I now have an idea on where we could go on our next date... whenever that might happen to be (probably not next weekend, since I'm going to the Shootaround with Julia and the venture crew then.)
Saturday, October 15, 2011
I think that's the first time I've ever stayed up until 3 AM on purpose
Kind of a busy day yesterday! Well, busy night anyway... the day part was pretty normal, aside from the dining hall actually having pasta for once (tortellini for lunch!) Only bad thing: I found out that I have yet another painting homework assignment, and it's even worse than just painting--not only do I have to paint something, I have to write a freakin' paper. Only one page, but still!
Anyway, I ended up going to the homecoming concert (with the school's band/choir), which was good but very crowded... got a bit uncomfortable at some points, thanks to there not being any seats left by the time I got in there. I did end up standing with Ruth at the back of the room though, so I was at least around someone I knew (which probably helped keep me from freaking out from the crowding.) After that, it just so happened that Ruth was going to go watch a movie (in a room in Durham with a projector screen... apparently laptops can be connected to the projectors here at school, I didn't know that!) with some friends, and one of them ended up not being able to go, so I tagged along in her place.
Originally we were just going to watch one movie, but then somehow it turned into two movies, heh... so we were in there until close to 1:30 AM. First we watched Howl's Moving Castle, which I had never seen or even really heard of before (I had heard the title before, and Ruth has mentioned it before... but that's about it.) It's the first Miyazaki (...I hope I spelled that right) movie I've ever seen, and I thought it was pretty good (very, very weird, but definitely good!) After that we watched Little Shop of Horrors (the '70s?/'80s? musical version), which I've heard a lot about from my sister (who had seen it before) but had never actually watched before. So now I've finally seen the "giant singing carnivorous plant" movie. XD
So... yeah, we ended up staying up until 1:30 watching movies. And eating some random mandarin oranges that the other girl (Melanie, I think?) brought along with her. She also brought forks (and not even plastic forks, real metal forks!), which was really convenient since reaching into that can to get those tiny little oranges with your hands could get a little messy. Also got to try "Whales," which are basically exactly the same thing as Goldfish crackers except... shaped like whales. And after the movies and food, we all walked back up to the lofts and ended up staying up until somewhere around 3 AM just talking and goofing off. Melanie brought out her laptop and we ended up watching several really ridiculous videos of people doing silly dance moves that I had never heard of. Eventually she went off to bed, but me and Ruth stayed out there another half-hour or so afterward just talking about random stuff... and of course, before she left we hugged (seems like this happens a lot lately, heh... did not want to let go this time, partly because I really like her and I really like hugs... but also because it was getting a little cold out and I didn't have a jacket with me), and then I started to walk back to Craton to get some sleep.
...and right when I got to the top of the stairs going down from the lofts, I realized I had left my notebooks lying on the ground near the door. Whoops! So of course I had to walk all the way back across the parking lot and grab them. But oh well, overall yesterday was pretty good and I'm looking forward to today.
Anyway, I ended up going to the homecoming concert (with the school's band/choir), which was good but very crowded... got a bit uncomfortable at some points, thanks to there not being any seats left by the time I got in there. I did end up standing with Ruth at the back of the room though, so I was at least around someone I knew (which probably helped keep me from freaking out from the crowding.) After that, it just so happened that Ruth was going to go watch a movie (in a room in Durham with a projector screen... apparently laptops can be connected to the projectors here at school, I didn't know that!) with some friends, and one of them ended up not being able to go, so I tagged along in her place.
Originally we were just going to watch one movie, but then somehow it turned into two movies, heh... so we were in there until close to 1:30 AM. First we watched Howl's Moving Castle, which I had never seen or even really heard of before (I had heard the title before, and Ruth has mentioned it before... but that's about it.) It's the first Miyazaki (...I hope I spelled that right) movie I've ever seen, and I thought it was pretty good (very, very weird, but definitely good!) After that we watched Little Shop of Horrors (the '70s?/'80s? musical version), which I've heard a lot about from my sister (who had seen it before) but had never actually watched before. So now I've finally seen the "giant singing carnivorous plant" movie. XD
So... yeah, we ended up staying up until 1:30 watching movies. And eating some random mandarin oranges that the other girl (Melanie, I think?) brought along with her. She also brought forks (and not even plastic forks, real metal forks!), which was really convenient since reaching into that can to get those tiny little oranges with your hands could get a little messy. Also got to try "Whales," which are basically exactly the same thing as Goldfish crackers except... shaped like whales. And after the movies and food, we all walked back up to the lofts and ended up staying up until somewhere around 3 AM just talking and goofing off. Melanie brought out her laptop and we ended up watching several really ridiculous videos of people doing silly dance moves that I had never heard of. Eventually she went off to bed, but me and Ruth stayed out there another half-hour or so afterward just talking about random stuff... and of course, before she left we hugged (seems like this happens a lot lately, heh... did not want to let go this time, partly because I really like her and I really like hugs... but also because it was getting a little cold out and I didn't have a jacket with me), and then I started to walk back to Craton to get some sleep.
...and right when I got to the top of the stairs going down from the lofts, I realized I had left my notebooks lying on the ground near the door. Whoops! So of course I had to walk all the way back across the parking lot and grab them. But oh well, overall yesterday was pretty good and I'm looking forward to today.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Homecoming week
...most of which I've ignored so far. XD
But yeah, this week is turning out pretty well even though I haven't been involved at all with any of the homecoming-related stuff that's been going on (a lot of sports-related junk, people dressing up as different things, voting for homecoming king/queen, and so on.) No new painting homework to add to the endless pile (in this Wednesday's class, we just rearranged and threw out old stuff from the closets), which is a bit less endless now since I finished another assignment (though I still have... three, I think? left to do.) And I ended up getting a bunch of random books and a metal walking stick (actually an "extension pole," whatever that is, but I've been using it as a metal walking stick so far) during the closet clean-up, since they were going to throw them away and it was okay to take home anything you wanted from the "trash" piles. Not too much work in the other classes at the moment, either, though I still haven't come anywhere near catching up on the reading for my Institute class (it's on the Book of Mormon, and I've only gotten to chapter 3 of 2nd Nephi... while the class is 20-some chapters further in.) Jogging's been kind of hard this week due to rain (I really don't want to go jogging in the rain and risk slipping and bashing myself open again...), but if it stops being so wet I should at least be able to get halfway or most of the way there before the week's over.
Oh, and yesterday I finally finished my card thing I've been making... back around Monday I decided I'd ask Ruth to the homecoming dance by making a card-type thing for her and then putting it somewhere where she'd find it, rather than just handing it to her or asking the usual way. Wasn't so sure about the idea at first (since that's... kind of close to what I tried with Amber waaaay back in 2004/2005, and of course that didn't turn out all that well), but once I got started actually making the card I just kept going. Eventually I colored the whole thing (with colored pencils), which had Ruth's name on the front along with a bunch of random decorations, a picture of her (with a half-grass, half-desert background... including skeleton fish XD) on the first inside page, and then on the second page more decorations, a lot of shininess, and a short little note asking her if she'd go to the homecoming dance with me this weekend. I just happened to bump into her roommates in the library right after I'd finished making it, and got them to sneakily put the card in her room somewhere where she'd find it later. I'm not entirely sure where they put it, I forgot to ask, but I know she did find it at some point... because around 10:00 last night, I got a text message from her thanking me for the card (apparently she really liked it!) and agreeing to go to the dance with me. Which, of course, turned into another series of a dozen or so messages back and forth over the next half-hour, in which we decided that we'd go out and eat somewhere together before the dance. So... looks like I have a third date this weekend! That makes three weekends in a row that I've had dates with her, which I'm still kind of (okay, extremely) surprised by, considering how I thought for a long time that I most likely would never even find a girl who'd agree to one date with me. I guess I must be better at this sort of thing than I thought, or at least I'm getting a bit less nervous about the whole "asking girls on dates" thing... or at least less nervous about asking Ruth on dates, since she did say yes the first time (and the second, and the third... XD) after all.
Also ran into my first fanatically religious person at SVU. Who wasn't actually an SVU student, and was a lot nicer than the "angry screaming YER GOIN' TO HELL" type I'm used to, but still... very loud about her beliefs and seemed to be completely unable to see anything from a "non-religious" perspective. I'm actually not sure if she was a Mormon or some other type of Christian, since she didn't really say anything that seemed "Mormon-specific" to me and only referred to the Bible rather than the Bible and the Book of Mormon, but... oh well. We ended up talking for a while anyway, but it was a bit uncomfortable at certain points, and apparently she was one of those people with a pretty "black-and-white" view of the world (it seemed like the only two possibilities to her as far as how the world works were "the Bible is God's word and we should follow every single law in there, to the point of disregarding secular authorities entirely!" and "there are no rules! so do whatever you want without any fear of consequences, go crazy and have sex with everything! there's no reason for anyone to be a good person if there isn't one true religion with messages directly from God.")
She said she'd pray for me... if I prayed, I'd probably be praying for her too, because she seemed to need... um, a bit of help. Reminded me a bit of someone I used to know during her "ultra-religious" phases, and based on what she said about her own life I would not be surprised if there were more similarities than what I actually saw.
But yeah, this week is turning out pretty well even though I haven't been involved at all with any of the homecoming-related stuff that's been going on (a lot of sports-related junk, people dressing up as different things, voting for homecoming king/queen, and so on.) No new painting homework to add to the endless pile (in this Wednesday's class, we just rearranged and threw out old stuff from the closets), which is a bit less endless now since I finished another assignment (though I still have... three, I think? left to do.) And I ended up getting a bunch of random books and a metal walking stick (actually an "extension pole," whatever that is, but I've been using it as a metal walking stick so far) during the closet clean-up, since they were going to throw them away and it was okay to take home anything you wanted from the "trash" piles. Not too much work in the other classes at the moment, either, though I still haven't come anywhere near catching up on the reading for my Institute class (it's on the Book of Mormon, and I've only gotten to chapter 3 of 2nd Nephi... while the class is 20-some chapters further in.) Jogging's been kind of hard this week due to rain (I really don't want to go jogging in the rain and risk slipping and bashing myself open again...), but if it stops being so wet I should at least be able to get halfway or most of the way there before the week's over.
Oh, and yesterday I finally finished my card thing I've been making... back around Monday I decided I'd ask Ruth to the homecoming dance by making a card-type thing for her and then putting it somewhere where she'd find it, rather than just handing it to her or asking the usual way. Wasn't so sure about the idea at first (since that's... kind of close to what I tried with Amber waaaay back in 2004/2005, and of course that didn't turn out all that well), but once I got started actually making the card I just kept going. Eventually I colored the whole thing (with colored pencils), which had Ruth's name on the front along with a bunch of random decorations, a picture of her (with a half-grass, half-desert background... including skeleton fish XD) on the first inside page, and then on the second page more decorations, a lot of shininess, and a short little note asking her if she'd go to the homecoming dance with me this weekend. I just happened to bump into her roommates in the library right after I'd finished making it, and got them to sneakily put the card in her room somewhere where she'd find it later. I'm not entirely sure where they put it, I forgot to ask, but I know she did find it at some point... because around 10:00 last night, I got a text message from her thanking me for the card (apparently she really liked it!) and agreeing to go to the dance with me. Which, of course, turned into another series of a dozen or so messages back and forth over the next half-hour, in which we decided that we'd go out and eat somewhere together before the dance. So... looks like I have a third date this weekend! That makes three weekends in a row that I've had dates with her, which I'm still kind of (okay, extremely) surprised by, considering how I thought for a long time that I most likely would never even find a girl who'd agree to one date with me. I guess I must be better at this sort of thing than I thought, or at least I'm getting a bit less nervous about the whole "asking girls on dates" thing... or at least less nervous about asking Ruth on dates, since she did say yes the first time (and the second, and the third... XD) after all.
Also ran into my first fanatically religious person at SVU. Who wasn't actually an SVU student, and was a lot nicer than the "angry screaming YER GOIN' TO HELL" type I'm used to, but still... very loud about her beliefs and seemed to be completely unable to see anything from a "non-religious" perspective. I'm actually not sure if she was a Mormon or some other type of Christian, since she didn't really say anything that seemed "Mormon-specific" to me and only referred to the Bible rather than the Bible and the Book of Mormon, but... oh well. We ended up talking for a while anyway, but it was a bit uncomfortable at certain points, and apparently she was one of those people with a pretty "black-and-white" view of the world (it seemed like the only two possibilities to her as far as how the world works were "the Bible is God's word and we should follow every single law in there, to the point of disregarding secular authorities entirely!" and "there are no rules! so do whatever you want without any fear of consequences, go crazy and have sex with everything! there's no reason for anyone to be a good person if there isn't one true religion with messages directly from God.")
She said she'd pray for me... if I prayed, I'd probably be praying for her too, because she seemed to need... um, a bit of help. Reminded me a bit of someone I used to know during her "ultra-religious" phases, and based on what she said about her own life I would not be surprised if there were more similarities than what I actually saw.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Washington DC temple trip
Yep... got up at 6 AM (actually woke up around 5:50-ish) this morning, somehow didn't immediately fall back asleep, and went on the trip up to the Mormon temple in Washington, DC. Actually didn't turn out bad at all--I was expecting the combination of 6 AM and a crowded bus to pretty much ruin the day for me, but it turned out that I was surprisingly awake for that time of day and the bus wasn't all that crowded after all. Sat with Ruth the whole way over, talking pretty much constantly (as usual!), playing Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded for a while (I bought it at Wal-Mart several weeks back but hadn't had much time to play it before today; finally done with Traverse Town now!), listening to lots of music from obscure bands/singers I've never heard of before, and finding out that listening to music with one earbud in one person's ear and the other in another person's ear actually works pretty well (I had seen other people do it before, but I just figured it wouldn't really work, for some reason.)
Of course, I wasn't able to actually go into the temple since I'm not a Mormon, but I was able to look at it from outside and take pictures (that building is HUGE.) Also worked outside some for a service project (digging up plants, replacing with the bulbs for other plants) and looked around a bit in the visitor's center, which had a lot of exhibits (including this really neat model of Jerusalem from ~30 AD, and a table with copies of the Book of Mormon in about a gazillion different languages.) Ate some generic sandwiches and chips for lunch, and after more visitor's center-ing for a while, rode the bus back to SVU (once again sitting with Ruth the whole way... kind of surprising how well sitting next to someone you like can cancel out the boredom of a 3-and-a-half hour bus ride.) After we got back, I walked Ruth back up to the lofts once again, and this time she actually hugged me (rather than the other way around)--and it was just completely out of nowhere, right before she was going to leave! I think she must actually like me, since it's not often that someone just randomly hugs me with no warning like that.
Unfortunately, by the time we got back Jonzzey's and the cafeteria were both closed... so I ended up walking down to Domino's and getting a pizza and some cheesy bread. Probably should've gotten the hand-tossed crust; the thin crust isn't awful but the hand-tossed is way better. Still need to try their sandwiches (I had planned on it today but was distracted by the lure of a large pizza for even less than what I'd normally have to pay for a small with the same amount of toppings.)
Of course, I wasn't able to actually go into the temple since I'm not a Mormon, but I was able to look at it from outside and take pictures (that building is HUGE.) Also worked outside some for a service project (digging up plants, replacing with the bulbs for other plants) and looked around a bit in the visitor's center, which had a lot of exhibits (including this really neat model of Jerusalem from ~30 AD, and a table with copies of the Book of Mormon in about a gazillion different languages.) Ate some generic sandwiches and chips for lunch, and after more visitor's center-ing for a while, rode the bus back to SVU (once again sitting with Ruth the whole way... kind of surprising how well sitting next to someone you like can cancel out the boredom of a 3-and-a-half hour bus ride.) After we got back, I walked Ruth back up to the lofts once again, and this time she actually hugged me (rather than the other way around)--and it was just completely out of nowhere, right before she was going to leave! I think she must actually like me, since it's not often that someone just randomly hugs me with no warning like that.
Unfortunately, by the time we got back Jonzzey's and the cafeteria were both closed... so I ended up walking down to Domino's and getting a pizza and some cheesy bread. Probably should've gotten the hand-tossed crust; the thin crust isn't awful but the hand-tossed is way better. Still need to try their sandwiches (I had planned on it today but was distracted by the lure of a large pizza for even less than what I'd normally have to pay for a small with the same amount of toppings.)
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Kong Fu
...which is how my Spanish teacher misspelled "Kung Fu" earlier today, when trying to write "Kung Fu Panda" on the board. We had to say (in Spanish) what we planned on doing over the weekend, and pretty much all of the class were going to see Kung Fu Panda 2 today, so... that was the first thing that ended up being written on the "stuff people are doing this weekend" list on the board.
Anyway... I went to see Kung Fu Panda 2 earlier today. Or, I guess I should say, we went to see it... since I kinda asked Ruth if we could go and see it together, kind of like another date I guess. She finished that giant philosophy paper Thursday and just needed to get it proofread today, so she ended up being able to go after all. The movie was really good! I'm actually not sure which of the Kung Fu Panda movies I like more, since I really liked both of them (I've seen the first one a couple times, and the second one once now) and I generally have a hard time picking out one of several things I like better when all of them are good. And of course, me and Ruth sat together and talked the whole time (well, we talked before and after the movie with the occasional short comment during, since during we were usually too busy watching the movie.) Ended up having to sit directly on the grass, since neither of us had blankets or anything to sit on, heh... started out at normal sitting-next-to-each-other distance at first, but we kind of ended up drifting a bit closer together as the movie went on, though never quite into "guy and girl practically laying ontop of each other" closeness. Still, we ended up close enough that we'd bump into each other if either of us moved much, while at the start we could both sit cross-legged and neither of us would bump into the other... so she doesn't seem to mind sitting closer than that to me, which is always good.
After the movie was over we talked and walked back up toward the lofts, and while crossing the church parking lot we stumbled upon some random kid's book about an escape-artist hamster, just randomly sitting there in the parking lot, not even run-over or otherwise damaged at all. Ruth ended up putting it into her bag and taking it with her (though I think she said she'd take it to the lost-and-found tomorrow.) We always seem to find random odd things laying around on our dates... first the hubcap, and now a book about a hamster. But anyway, another "first" today--while walking back up the hill, I asked if it was okay if we held hands while we walked... and she had absolutely no problem with it! She actually said her hands were getting cold (she had previously had both of them in her coat pockets), and the one I was holding did feel a bit cold... hopefully I kept her hand a little warmer at least, heh. We didn't actually hold hands very long, since we bumped into another girl and talked to her a bit on the way up and Ruth was doing the "move hands around as you talk" thing (she does that a lot, heh)... but still, that's the first time I've ever held hands with a girl. Probably not exactly a huge deal, but I had never done it before, so... just one of those things I figured I'd try now that I actually know a girl who doesn't mind being around me, I guess. XD
And of course, just like the last time, I ended up giving her a hug before she left to go do homework and sleep. Didn't really ask this time, just held my arms out and said "Hug!"... which I guess is almost like asking but not quite as question-y, if that makes any sense. But anyway, she pretty much immediately hugged me after that, so I guess that means I don't really need to ask in complete sentences. XD
After that I ended up going to a bonfire with a bunch of random people (a couple of which I actually knew), where someone stuck a random Italian sausage on a bent coathanger and roasted (more like blackened!) it in the fire. Someone else brought cold Taco Bell food and reheated that using the fire. And we listened to lots of random music, talked, moved around to avoid the giant cloud of smoke coming off of the fire... that kind of stuff. No s'mores this time, but it still worked out pretty well... I ended up leaving around 1:00-ish, though I didn't get back to my dorm room until 1:40 due to standing around talking to random people afterward. Overall I'd say I had a pretty good day!
Anyway... I went to see Kung Fu Panda 2 earlier today. Or, I guess I should say, we went to see it... since I kinda asked Ruth if we could go and see it together, kind of like another date I guess. She finished that giant philosophy paper Thursday and just needed to get it proofread today, so she ended up being able to go after all. The movie was really good! I'm actually not sure which of the Kung Fu Panda movies I like more, since I really liked both of them (I've seen the first one a couple times, and the second one once now) and I generally have a hard time picking out one of several things I like better when all of them are good. And of course, me and Ruth sat together and talked the whole time (well, we talked before and after the movie with the occasional short comment during, since during we were usually too busy watching the movie.) Ended up having to sit directly on the grass, since neither of us had blankets or anything to sit on, heh... started out at normal sitting-next-to-each-other distance at first, but we kind of ended up drifting a bit closer together as the movie went on, though never quite into "guy and girl practically laying ontop of each other" closeness. Still, we ended up close enough that we'd bump into each other if either of us moved much, while at the start we could both sit cross-legged and neither of us would bump into the other... so she doesn't seem to mind sitting closer than that to me, which is always good.
After the movie was over we talked and walked back up toward the lofts, and while crossing the church parking lot we stumbled upon some random kid's book about an escape-artist hamster, just randomly sitting there in the parking lot, not even run-over or otherwise damaged at all. Ruth ended up putting it into her bag and taking it with her (though I think she said she'd take it to the lost-and-found tomorrow.) We always seem to find random odd things laying around on our dates... first the hubcap, and now a book about a hamster. But anyway, another "first" today--while walking back up the hill, I asked if it was okay if we held hands while we walked... and she had absolutely no problem with it! She actually said her hands were getting cold (she had previously had both of them in her coat pockets), and the one I was holding did feel a bit cold... hopefully I kept her hand a little warmer at least, heh. We didn't actually hold hands very long, since we bumped into another girl and talked to her a bit on the way up and Ruth was doing the "move hands around as you talk" thing (she does that a lot, heh)... but still, that's the first time I've ever held hands with a girl. Probably not exactly a huge deal, but I had never done it before, so... just one of those things I figured I'd try now that I actually know a girl who doesn't mind being around me, I guess. XD
And of course, just like the last time, I ended up giving her a hug before she left to go do homework and sleep. Didn't really ask this time, just held my arms out and said "Hug!"... which I guess is almost like asking but not quite as question-y, if that makes any sense. But anyway, she pretty much immediately hugged me after that, so I guess that means I don't really need to ask in complete sentences. XD
After that I ended up going to a bonfire with a bunch of random people (a couple of which I actually knew), where someone stuck a random Italian sausage on a bent coathanger and roasted (more like blackened!) it in the fire. Someone else brought cold Taco Bell food and reheated that using the fire. And we listened to lots of random music, talked, moved around to avoid the giant cloud of smoke coming off of the fire... that kind of stuff. No s'mores this time, but it still worked out pretty well... I ended up leaving around 1:00-ish, though I didn't get back to my dorm room until 1:40 due to standing around talking to random people afterward. Overall I'd say I had a pretty good day!
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