I was not impressed. Yes, I could see that hours upon hours of hard work and preparation went into it, but I really couldn't stand most of the show. The entire first half embodied all that I hate about Christmas, and there's an awful lot to dislike about what Christmas has become.
First I will present a brief commentary on the aesthetic impact of the thing. While being rather important to any performance, my opinions of it successes and shortcomings are overpowered by the worldview reasons I will be sharing shortly. Everything was executed very well according to its own style. I'm not a huge fan of some of the style, but I will admit that it was well-performed. The first act was so loud and brassy and glittery and over-the-top. And this is coming from someone who loves musicals. The overall visual impact from the Cantata (the second part) can best be summed up in one word: trippy. It was a nice, mellow, soft, pastel colored sort of trippy, but it was trippy nonetheless. In fact, I said as much to Adrianne the second the curtains opened. But the second half was much better as far as music goes. I love listening to songs in Latin, and there were a few during the Cantata.
Before I go off on a tirade about the first half, I'd like to give a few additional compliments to the content of the Cantata. It contained lots of songs that use words like "God," "Jesus," "Christ," "Lord," etc. Words that ought to be essential to the holiday - and indeed to every day.
And now for my attack on the ideology of the first half. Oh dear heavens, it was atrocious. Apparently PMO would like to wish you a very merry humanist Christmas. I couldn't decide whether I'd like to punch someone, puke, or sit there open-mouthed. The overall message was that you need to use your imagination so you can believe in Santa Claus (because we all know that belief is a wishy-washy sort of thing that requires wishful thinking and suspension of reality - unlike knowledge) so that you can be inspired by him to love other people. So I'm fine with the loving other people part, but everything leading up to that was total garbage. I mean, the final song said that love was the reason for the season, and that only by believing in Santa Claus could you spread the holiday love. Bullshit. Will people stop watering down Christmas? Love doesn't mean you share toys and food with the needy around the holidays because that's what Santa Claus did. Love means you share your life with everyone all the time, whether they deserve it or not. You know, kind of like God did by becoming a human and dying in our place. The infinite lord and master of the universe inhabiting a human body for a few decades and then dying a horrendous death is the most extravagant and humble display of love and power this world will ever know. That's what Christmas is about. It's time for us all to refocus.
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
In my opinion, the most wonderful time of the year starts at Thanksgiving and reaches all the way through Christmas. Things changed a little bit since I've gone off to college, but a lot has remained the same.
Tradition starts the day before Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Preparation Day, on which we do most of out cooking and cleaning on that day. As of four years ago, it is tradition that I prepare the turkey. This often involves doing strange things with it to make my mom cringe. It started when I discovered that the liver has a fun consistency. Now in addition to playing with the liver, we investigate the kidneys and heart, wiggle the neck around, massage the turkey's skin, and tickle its armpits.
Thanksgiving Day itself probably has more traditions than any other day in the Gast house. I get up at 7:00 or 8:00 am to start the Thanksgiving puzzle. More people trickle out of bed as the morning goes on. By 9:00 when the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade starts, pretty much everyone is awake. My dad or Rachel starts making cinnamon rolls, and we watch the parade and work on the puzzle. After the parade, sometimes we leave the TV on to make fun of the dog show. Ronda usually arrives around noon to help us finish the cooking. I always take care of the green bean casserole, and usually forget to add seasonings unless my mom reminds me. Uncle Andy along with Abby and Theresa get there sometime in the early afternoon and bring with them cocktail shrimp to snack on alongside Ronda's famous chip dip. At 4:00 we start dinner. Around 4:30 Uncle Mike arrives and we subtly make fun of him until he leaves. Things die down over the evening as friends and relatives leave one-by-one. Once it's dark, the Christmas lights come on for the first night of the season.
The next day is Christmas decoration day. We leave the house sometime in the late morning and head out to a tree farm in Morrow to pick out the perfect Christmas tree. It used to take us hours. Now we're becoming more and more efficient. I think we had our tree in 10 minutes last year. This year it took about 20 if you count cutting it down, but that's still not too shabby. After we've picked the tree we each get a new ornament to put on it. For a while we went to Elder Beerman's, then switched to Delhi Garden Center, and now we just get them at the tree farm. Many of us have gradually drifted from picking ornaments we actually like to picking the strangest ones we can find. The tree is weirder and weirder every year. As we drive home with the tree inside the van, we listen to Christmas music stations. Once we get home, Mom puts in the Oakridge Boys or the Partridge Family Christmas CDs. The day usually ends with watching the first Christmas movie of the season.
Christmas traditions are much more varied and have changed quite a lot over the past decade or so, so I'll just describe what we do now. On and off we participate in Advent, whether it's on our own or with the whole church. The weekend before Christmas my mom's side of the family gets together. We have a four-year location rotation between my mom, her sister in southern Michigan, her brother in Indianapolis, and her parents in northern Michigan. This year we'll be at Aunt Wendy's house. Every year we do something different together and then eat and open gifts. Christmas Eve we go to church, and Rachel and I usually play in an orchestral ensemble.
Christmas day, nobody is allowed to leave their room until 6:00 am. At that time, we can open our stockings. Everyone has to be awake by 8:00 am for official gift opening. When Cathy and Chris Gowen are in town, they join us. After we open gifts, we eat Panera bagels or cinnamon rolls for breakfast and hang out around the house until lunch time. Around 1:00 in the afternoon we head over to my dad's parents' house in Kenwood and repeat the process with his side of the family. When we get back home in the evening, we often watch a Christmas movie together.
I like tradition. I'm no Reb Tevia, but I like knowing that certain things will be roughly the same every year. I don't mind adding new things, but I am not a huge fan of taking away old traditions. I guess it goes along with being a person of habit. I wonder how things will grow and change as our family grows and changes. One day all seven of us kids will be out of the house. Will we live close enough to get together? Will we have our own kids to add to the mix? Will we still get up to do puzzles on Thanksgiving or open Christmas stockings at 6:00 am? Who knows. Only time will tell.
Tradition starts the day before Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving Preparation Day, on which we do most of out cooking and cleaning on that day. As of four years ago, it is tradition that I prepare the turkey. This often involves doing strange things with it to make my mom cringe. It started when I discovered that the liver has a fun consistency. Now in addition to playing with the liver, we investigate the kidneys and heart, wiggle the neck around, massage the turkey's skin, and tickle its armpits.
Thanksgiving Day itself probably has more traditions than any other day in the Gast house. I get up at 7:00 or 8:00 am to start the Thanksgiving puzzle. More people trickle out of bed as the morning goes on. By 9:00 when the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade starts, pretty much everyone is awake. My dad or Rachel starts making cinnamon rolls, and we watch the parade and work on the puzzle. After the parade, sometimes we leave the TV on to make fun of the dog show. Ronda usually arrives around noon to help us finish the cooking. I always take care of the green bean casserole, and usually forget to add seasonings unless my mom reminds me. Uncle Andy along with Abby and Theresa get there sometime in the early afternoon and bring with them cocktail shrimp to snack on alongside Ronda's famous chip dip. At 4:00 we start dinner. Around 4:30 Uncle Mike arrives and we subtly make fun of him until he leaves. Things die down over the evening as friends and relatives leave one-by-one. Once it's dark, the Christmas lights come on for the first night of the season.
The next day is Christmas decoration day. We leave the house sometime in the late morning and head out to a tree farm in Morrow to pick out the perfect Christmas tree. It used to take us hours. Now we're becoming more and more efficient. I think we had our tree in 10 minutes last year. This year it took about 20 if you count cutting it down, but that's still not too shabby. After we've picked the tree we each get a new ornament to put on it. For a while we went to Elder Beerman's, then switched to Delhi Garden Center, and now we just get them at the tree farm. Many of us have gradually drifted from picking ornaments we actually like to picking the strangest ones we can find. The tree is weirder and weirder every year. As we drive home with the tree inside the van, we listen to Christmas music stations. Once we get home, Mom puts in the Oakridge Boys or the Partridge Family Christmas CDs. The day usually ends with watching the first Christmas movie of the season.
Christmas traditions are much more varied and have changed quite a lot over the past decade or so, so I'll just describe what we do now. On and off we participate in Advent, whether it's on our own or with the whole church. The weekend before Christmas my mom's side of the family gets together. We have a four-year location rotation between my mom, her sister in southern Michigan, her brother in Indianapolis, and her parents in northern Michigan. This year we'll be at Aunt Wendy's house. Every year we do something different together and then eat and open gifts. Christmas Eve we go to church, and Rachel and I usually play in an orchestral ensemble.
Christmas day, nobody is allowed to leave their room until 6:00 am. At that time, we can open our stockings. Everyone has to be awake by 8:00 am for official gift opening. When Cathy and Chris Gowen are in town, they join us. After we open gifts, we eat Panera bagels or cinnamon rolls for breakfast and hang out around the house until lunch time. Around 1:00 in the afternoon we head over to my dad's parents' house in Kenwood and repeat the process with his side of the family. When we get back home in the evening, we often watch a Christmas movie together.
I like tradition. I'm no Reb Tevia, but I like knowing that certain things will be roughly the same every year. I don't mind adding new things, but I am not a huge fan of taking away old traditions. I guess it goes along with being a person of habit. I wonder how things will grow and change as our family grows and changes. One day all seven of us kids will be out of the house. Will we live close enough to get together? Will we have our own kids to add to the mix? Will we still get up to do puzzles on Thanksgiving or open Christmas stockings at 6:00 am? Who knows. Only time will tell.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Happy Lists
Last year several happy lists emerged from Mr. Rahn's AP calculus class. There were some days when Courtney, Sara, and I simply couldn't listen to calculus anymore, so we passed around sheets of paper and listed things that made us happy. Here's the original list. My additions are in the Trebuchet font, Sara's are in the Georgia font, and Courtney's are in the Courier font.
** I was wearing my colorful stocking cap from Colombia.
- • soup
- • blue eyes
- • reading a good book on a rainy day
- • this pen*
- • a hillside when its leaves change color
- • Benny and Joon
- • the scent of fallen leaves
- • books/movies that make you cry
- • chocolate, anytime, anywhere
- • the wind
- • perfectly golden roasted marshmallows
- • doing random things at random times without caring what other people think about it (ex: taking jumping pictures in the rain during lunch)
- • singing in the rain (both the musical and the actual activity)
- • singing in general (the girls 100 building bathroom, best acoustics EVER)
- • feeling good for no reason
- • climbing trees (especially if I get covered in sap)
- • trying on clothes at stores and striking poses in the mirror
- • maria's hat**
- • the oscillating universe (both the awesome dance move and the woefully obsolete astrophysical hypothesis)
- • decorating Christmas trees (the good-smelling kind in your living room and x-mas tree shaped cookies)
- • going through the day with a good song stuck in your head and dancing to it at random moments
- • walking barefoot in nice, cool mud
- • the smell of an herb garden
- • the dog at Imago
- • Imago in general
- • harvest moons on midnight-black nights
- • Halloween
- • Reese's cups
- • being in love
- • being in love with someone who loves you back
- • playing "Adagio" on the piano
- • playing any piece in 6-8 time
- • not playing class music
- • bubbles
- • saying "je ne sais pas"
- • swinging
- • prismacolor colored pencils
- • the color of KMnO4
- • photo booth pics!
- • separation of photosynthetic pigments on chromatography paper
- • cozy sweatshirts
- • caution tape and duct tape
- • gaff tape and glow tape
- • the Festival of Lights
- • any shade of green
** I was wearing my colorful stocking cap from Colombia.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Concert Week
Concert week technically started on Thursday the 4th and won't end until Thursday the 18th, but seven of the ten concerts fit between Monday the 8th and Friday the 12th, so I'm considering that week to be concert week.
The first concert was the elementary instrumental concert. Heather played in the fourth grade orchestra (the first group), and Allison played in the sixth grade band (the last group), so we got the joy of staying for the entire concert. Before the concert, I got to help tune the seventy-some stringed instruments in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade orchestras. I'll admit, I wasn't all that concerned with absolute perfection. Their instruments go out of tune quickly, and they can't play in tune to begin with, so I figured I wouldn't be adding a whole lot of pain to the listening experience by letting a few of the instruments remain slightly out of tune. The fourth-graders weren't supposed to get to use their bows, but my sister brought hers out anyway and had to be sent back to put it away. The fourth and fifth grade orchestras performed at the expected skill level, but the 9-member sixth grade orchestra should have been much better. The fifth grade band played as expected, but the sixth grade band played exceptionally well. They were actually pleasant to listen to for the most part.
On the Monday of the main concert week, we got to hear the fifth and sixth grade voices of Whitaker along with the Whitaker percussion ensemble. The songs were surprisingly un-hokey, considering the director. He's really quite a character. I don't know how else to describe him. You should see how high he crosses his lowercase t's (I'm not sure if I wrote that properly, but I'm sure that you all get the idea). As usual, the percussion ensemble played painfully repetitive songs that lasted somewhere between five and ten minutes each.
I guess it's typical for local churches and other groups to ask the high school's audition choir (Chorale) to come and sing around Christmastime. This year we're singing at two or three churches and an assisted living home, along with our annual concerts for the senior citizens of the community and the middle and high school students. Our first in a long series of concerts came on Tuesday during school. We drove over to St. Paul's Church of Christ in North College Hill to play for a group of elderly women. I called them the Widow Brigade in my head. Our first song didn't go so well, but the others went just fine. Our last song was a version of the "Ave Maria" that is evidently sung at many funerals. It actually caused several of the old women to cry. In the last song, my friend Eddie and I sing a tenor solo as a duet. He never wanted to sing it in the first place, but I think our conductor felt bad about giving both tenor solos to girls, so he had Eddie and I sing the lower one together. Since he had never intended to try out for the solo, he didn't know the words until today. The fact that he had no idea what he was singing would always make me a nervous wreck during rehearsals, so I'm glad he fixed it in time for our first concert. I felt that we did well, and several of the Chorale members told us that our balance and blend was excellent. Hurrah! I have one last thing to mention about the kind old ladies: one of them looked a little spacey and was wearing a pair of reindeer antlers tied on top of her head with a large bow under her chin. We had a hard time looking in her direction with a straight face.
Tuesday night was the high school and middle school instrumental concert. Before the concert, we did some last minute practicing. A week before, we had started looking at a variation of Greensleeves, and it wasn't coming together well at all. She told us to pull out the song, and I raised my hand and politely asked if she really thought we were prepared to perform the song. She completely blew up and yelled something about how we never listen to her or do anything she says. So we played through the last section of the song. The ending part is just the traditional Greensleeves. When we were done, she told us that we would just be playing the ending since that was the only part we could play even moderately well. I know that she's been under a lot of stress these past few weeks, but I don't still don't feel that she was justified in biting my head off. The concert started out with the jazz band, and they were excellent (as usual). They were followed by the middle school orchestra. They were not excellent. Between the middle and high school orchestras, I played a piece in a quintet with two violins, a cello, and a harp. It went pretty well...except for the fact that the first violin can't count to save her life. She came in a beat late on one of her entrances and bungled things up. She always misses that part. You'd think that she would hear that something wasn't fitting together correctly, but she never seems to notice. Until this year, she's been a soloist taking private lessons. She can't play with groups very well, but she doesn't seem to notice that. The high school orchestra did okay. We always do a lot better during actual performances than we do during practices. The high school band was wonderful like they always are. For the finale, we had the high school orchestra cram on stage with the full high school band to play a song together. The orchestra has 27 people, and the band has 70-something. And we were behind them. The cellos had a mic, but that was it. Evidently, it sounded fantastic, but I have to wonder if the strings were heard.
Wednesday evening we went to the third and fourth grade chorus concert at my old elementary school. The director has been rotating through the same set of songs since Dan was in third grade. This year she actually added a new one. We were shocked.
The final official concert was Thursday night's high school choir concert. Between choirs, we have solos or ensembles. For this concert, almost all of them were fantastic. The first one was horrible, but it just made the others look even better. Adam Weber sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," and he has the perfect voice and attitude for that song. It may have been my favorite of the solos. Chorale went last, and all of our songs went pretty well. The audience about died laughing during "Fruitcake," and we got a standing ovation after "Ave Maria." Both Sean and Dan (the opening soloists) and Eddie and I (the second set of soloists) blended better than we had for any previous rehearsal, and Victoria finally fixed the pronunciation on her solo. I love singing that song. I love singing in Latin in general. It fits my tone very well. If I sing a senior solo, it will probably be something in Latin.
On Friday during the day, the high school choruses sang a condensed version of Thursday's concert in the morning for the middle school and our community's senior citizens. We had to cut one of our songs, we never felt as comfortable with that one as we did with the others. In the afternoon, we sang for the high school, but the principal took away ten minutes of our concert time, so we had to skip "Ave Maria." It's somewhere between seven and eight minutes long, and our conductor didn't think that very many of the students would have the attention span to sit through it. He may have been right, but I still really wish that we could have sung it for everyone.
I have two more chorale concerts this week, but they aren't likely to be very eventful. If something exciting happens, I'll make a comment.
The first concert was the elementary instrumental concert. Heather played in the fourth grade orchestra (the first group), and Allison played in the sixth grade band (the last group), so we got the joy of staying for the entire concert. Before the concert, I got to help tune the seventy-some stringed instruments in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade orchestras. I'll admit, I wasn't all that concerned with absolute perfection. Their instruments go out of tune quickly, and they can't play in tune to begin with, so I figured I wouldn't be adding a whole lot of pain to the listening experience by letting a few of the instruments remain slightly out of tune. The fourth-graders weren't supposed to get to use their bows, but my sister brought hers out anyway and had to be sent back to put it away. The fourth and fifth grade orchestras performed at the expected skill level, but the 9-member sixth grade orchestra should have been much better. The fifth grade band played as expected, but the sixth grade band played exceptionally well. They were actually pleasant to listen to for the most part.
On the Monday of the main concert week, we got to hear the fifth and sixth grade voices of Whitaker along with the Whitaker percussion ensemble. The songs were surprisingly un-hokey, considering the director. He's really quite a character. I don't know how else to describe him. You should see how high he crosses his lowercase t's (I'm not sure if I wrote that properly, but I'm sure that you all get the idea). As usual, the percussion ensemble played painfully repetitive songs that lasted somewhere between five and ten minutes each.
I guess it's typical for local churches and other groups to ask the high school's audition choir (Chorale) to come and sing around Christmastime. This year we're singing at two or three churches and an assisted living home, along with our annual concerts for the senior citizens of the community and the middle and high school students. Our first in a long series of concerts came on Tuesday during school. We drove over to St. Paul's Church of Christ in North College Hill to play for a group of elderly women. I called them the Widow Brigade in my head. Our first song didn't go so well, but the others went just fine. Our last song was a version of the "Ave Maria" that is evidently sung at many funerals. It actually caused several of the old women to cry. In the last song, my friend Eddie and I sing a tenor solo as a duet. He never wanted to sing it in the first place, but I think our conductor felt bad about giving both tenor solos to girls, so he had Eddie and I sing the lower one together. Since he had never intended to try out for the solo, he didn't know the words until today. The fact that he had no idea what he was singing would always make me a nervous wreck during rehearsals, so I'm glad he fixed it in time for our first concert. I felt that we did well, and several of the Chorale members told us that our balance and blend was excellent. Hurrah! I have one last thing to mention about the kind old ladies: one of them looked a little spacey and was wearing a pair of reindeer antlers tied on top of her head with a large bow under her chin. We had a hard time looking in her direction with a straight face.
Tuesday night was the high school and middle school instrumental concert. Before the concert, we did some last minute practicing. A week before, we had started looking at a variation of Greensleeves, and it wasn't coming together well at all. She told us to pull out the song, and I raised my hand and politely asked if she really thought we were prepared to perform the song. She completely blew up and yelled something about how we never listen to her or do anything she says. So we played through the last section of the song. The ending part is just the traditional Greensleeves. When we were done, she told us that we would just be playing the ending since that was the only part we could play even moderately well. I know that she's been under a lot of stress these past few weeks, but I don't still don't feel that she was justified in biting my head off. The concert started out with the jazz band, and they were excellent (as usual). They were followed by the middle school orchestra. They were not excellent. Between the middle and high school orchestras, I played a piece in a quintet with two violins, a cello, and a harp. It went pretty well...except for the fact that the first violin can't count to save her life. She came in a beat late on one of her entrances and bungled things up. She always misses that part. You'd think that she would hear that something wasn't fitting together correctly, but she never seems to notice. Until this year, she's been a soloist taking private lessons. She can't play with groups very well, but she doesn't seem to notice that. The high school orchestra did okay. We always do a lot better during actual performances than we do during practices. The high school band was wonderful like they always are. For the finale, we had the high school orchestra cram on stage with the full high school band to play a song together. The orchestra has 27 people, and the band has 70-something. And we were behind them. The cellos had a mic, but that was it. Evidently, it sounded fantastic, but I have to wonder if the strings were heard.
Wednesday evening we went to the third and fourth grade chorus concert at my old elementary school. The director has been rotating through the same set of songs since Dan was in third grade. This year she actually added a new one. We were shocked.
The final official concert was Thursday night's high school choir concert. Between choirs, we have solos or ensembles. For this concert, almost all of them were fantastic. The first one was horrible, but it just made the others look even better. Adam Weber sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," and he has the perfect voice and attitude for that song. It may have been my favorite of the solos. Chorale went last, and all of our songs went pretty well. The audience about died laughing during "Fruitcake," and we got a standing ovation after "Ave Maria." Both Sean and Dan (the opening soloists) and Eddie and I (the second set of soloists) blended better than we had for any previous rehearsal, and Victoria finally fixed the pronunciation on her solo. I love singing that song. I love singing in Latin in general. It fits my tone very well. If I sing a senior solo, it will probably be something in Latin.
On Friday during the day, the high school choruses sang a condensed version of Thursday's concert in the morning for the middle school and our community's senior citizens. We had to cut one of our songs, we never felt as comfortable with that one as we did with the others. In the afternoon, we sang for the high school, but the principal took away ten minutes of our concert time, so we had to skip "Ave Maria." It's somewhere between seven and eight minutes long, and our conductor didn't think that very many of the students would have the attention span to sit through it. He may have been right, but I still really wish that we could have sung it for everyone.
I have two more chorale concerts this week, but they aren't likely to be very eventful. If something exciting happens, I'll make a comment.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Happy Earth Day!
I really didn't do much to celebrate earth day, except remind people what day it was. Although I do enjoy my role as a steward of the gift of the earth and its life forms, I didn't have time to do anything "special". I spend a lot of my time doing "earthy" things anyway.
Note that I said earlier that I'm a steward of the earth. I don't want to be its saviour, redeemer, or whatever else you may think of, since it's going to cease to exist sometime anyway. I believe it's good for people to take care of the earth because it's one of God's gifts to us, not because its spirit and mine are entwined in one big fat cosmic one-ness. Unfortunately, it seems like all my environmental friends are rather monistic about the earth, and they aren't the only ones. I was trying to find some quotes about nature to use in an art project, and more than half of what I found had at least an overtone of pantheistic monism, if not more. Then I got the idea that a search of Bible verses might give more of what I was looking for, and everything turned out nicely. But now I ramble. I do that a lot.
Anyway... to sum up what I've been trying to get at here, do something nice to the world as a service to others or as a token of appreciation to the God who gave is to us. Not because we all share the same essence of spiritual being that unites the world. We don't.
And with that, I wish you a Happy Earth Day once more.
Note that I said earlier that I'm a steward of the earth. I don't want to be its saviour, redeemer, or whatever else you may think of, since it's going to cease to exist sometime anyway. I believe it's good for people to take care of the earth because it's one of God's gifts to us, not because its spirit and mine are entwined in one big fat cosmic one-ness. Unfortunately, it seems like all my environmental friends are rather monistic about the earth, and they aren't the only ones. I was trying to find some quotes about nature to use in an art project, and more than half of what I found had at least an overtone of pantheistic monism, if not more. Then I got the idea that a search of Bible verses might give more of what I was looking for, and everything turned out nicely. But now I ramble. I do that a lot.
Anyway... to sum up what I've been trying to get at here, do something nice to the world as a service to others or as a token of appreciation to the God who gave is to us. Not because we all share the same essence of spiritual being that unites the world. We don't.
And with that, I wish you a Happy Earth Day once more.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Le Printemps Est Ici!
Spring is here. It officially started yesterday, so I turned in all my papers with a note stating that it was the first day of spring. I even sang it as I walked into my final bell of my final day of school before the break. It actually feels like springtime outside, too. That's impressive considering how confused Cincinnati weather has been. There are signs everywhere in the great outdoors where I spent three or four splendid hours earlier. Unfortunately, my camera is a battery-devouring villain. I had only taken two pictures when it exclaimed "les piles sont faibles" (the batteries are weak) and turned itself off, and we're out of batteries.
I don't have much homework to do over break, and I don't really have any actual plans, so I can get ahead and do things I haven't done in a while. Yesterday I played the piano for roughly a half hour, which I haven't done in ages. After I finish this, I'm going to do some drawing that's not for art class, which I haven't done since the summer. Even more importantly, I slept like a normal person, which I haven't done in far too long. I actually slept for eleven hours last night! That's almost double my normal dose of sleep.
Spring cleaning started yesterday as well. I cleaned my room completely for once. After that was done, I noticed that I had taken most of my artwork off of my walls several months ago in hopes of rearranging it, but I had never finished. I proceeded to take the rest of it down and hang some of it back up along with several pieces that I've made in the past few months. This late morning/afternoon the entire family helped clean up the yard and gardens. During all this, our lovely little mutt decided she wanted to go for a run without us, so we had to chase her. In doing so, I discovered that I really need to get in shape. I had hardly run a quarter of a mile when I started huffing and puffing.
I don't have much homework to do over break, and I don't really have any actual plans, so I can get ahead and do things I haven't done in a while. Yesterday I played the piano for roughly a half hour, which I haven't done in ages. After I finish this, I'm going to do some drawing that's not for art class, which I haven't done since the summer. Even more importantly, I slept like a normal person, which I haven't done in far too long. I actually slept for eleven hours last night! That's almost double my normal dose of sleep.
Spring cleaning started yesterday as well. I cleaned my room completely for once. After that was done, I noticed that I had taken most of my artwork off of my walls several months ago in hopes of rearranging it, but I had never finished. I proceeded to take the rest of it down and hang some of it back up along with several pieces that I've made in the past few months. This late morning/afternoon the entire family helped clean up the yard and gardens. During all this, our lovely little mutt decided she wanted to go for a run without us, so we had to chase her. In doing so, I discovered that I really need to get in shape. I had hardly run a quarter of a mile when I started huffing and puffing.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
I started to write this yesterday, as you can probably deduce, but it's not too late to wish you all a happy St. Patrick's Day (or happy Irish Day, as I accidentally said at one point yesterday). I have absolutely nothing of real import to ramble about today. Even less so than normal. But I haven't posted much this month, and I really just feel like rambling on and on right now*. I'll keep my wanderings somewhat concise. And yes, I think that was an oxymoron. Feel free to give up at any point.
Yesterday was St. Patrick's day. Hopefully you already knew that, if for no other reason than the fact that I just wrote it a few sentences ago. I wore green, but that was the extent of my celebration. On this day in seventh grade, one of my friends put a sign on my back that read "kick me I'm Irish" and eventually someone did. I kicked the guilty friend back because I had some anger issues in seventh grade. I liked to cause my friends pain. I don't do that anymore. In biology, we played a game as a method of covering two chapters in one day (I'll cover biology insanity at some other point), and my team had a St. Patrick related name, but I forget what it was. We vanquished our foes, for the topic was biomes, and biomes are near and dear to my heart.
In orchestra, my teacher finally called it quits on our improvisation unit (if you could even call it that) and gave us new music for the next concert. One possibility is a selection of snippets from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and I would completely geek out if we got to play it. Two out of the three scenes are deeply interwoven into my childhood memories, and Tchaikovsky is just fantastic in general. One year we played a watered down version of "Waltz of the Flowers" from The Nutcracker, and it was great fun even in its watered down form. I inevitably move with the music, but during that song I pretty much subconsciously waltzed in my seat.
Wow, I just discovered a forum dedicated to freshwater crayfish while doing some taxonomy research for biology in conjunction with rambling (hurrah for quasi-multi-tasking). I had no idea they had such a following. There are 318 members of the crayfish forum. I thought about joining it, but then I reconsidered after realizing how incredibly ignorant I am about freshwater crayfish.
Anyway, I think I'm done rambling about yesterday like an ADD five-year old after his/her first day in preschool (you can only stand it for so long, I've tried). Just a few notes about today.
I'm now part of a select septet of band and orchestra members that will be performing a song at the final orchestra concert... that is if we can pull it off. We're playing "Introduction et Allegro" by Ravel. It's freaking insane, but it sounds neato. I'll probably end up having to simplify parts of it. We practiced today, and the second violin quite frankly admitted that there was no way he could play part of the beginning until he dedicated a lot of practice to it, and he's quite the talented individual. Of course we'll get something to work, and it will sound nice. However, we probably won't be quite up to tempo for the Allegro portion, and most of us will end up having to simplify our parts in a few places.
In English, we started reading The Crucible. Nobody wanted the part of Abigail Williams since she's kind of a harlot, so I took the role. I typically end up taking the part that nobody else wants, and the part normally fits me worse than it could fit anyone else. That's the fun of it. Last year I was Mama in A Raisin in the Sun, and I'm not exactly a big black grandmother. This year I'm Abigail, but I'm not exactly a seductress. I love playing the roles that nobody would expect out of me. And I pull them off pretty well too. I'm proof that type casting isn't always necessary.
I think that's just about it for now. I have an obscene amount of homework to do, thanks to the fact that I lost my USB drive today. It had a math project on it... and that project is supposed to be due tomorrow... and I haven't restarted it yet. Plus, I have to finish my biology outline, biology worksheets, and French packet, and it would be nice to work on the art project, physics lab, physics homework, and additional biology homework that are due on Thursday. For consolation I get to remind myself that I have only two more days until spring "break"! Hip, hip, hurrah for sleep!
Yesterday was St. Patrick's day. Hopefully you already knew that, if for no other reason than the fact that I just wrote it a few sentences ago. I wore green, but that was the extent of my celebration. On this day in seventh grade, one of my friends put a sign on my back that read "kick me I'm Irish" and eventually someone did. I kicked the guilty friend back because I had some anger issues in seventh grade. I liked to cause my friends pain. I don't do that anymore. In biology, we played a game as a method of covering two chapters in one day (I'll cover biology insanity at some other point), and my team had a St. Patrick related name, but I forget what it was. We vanquished our foes, for the topic was biomes, and biomes are near and dear to my heart.
In orchestra, my teacher finally called it quits on our improvisation unit (if you could even call it that) and gave us new music for the next concert. One possibility is a selection of snippets from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and I would completely geek out if we got to play it. Two out of the three scenes are deeply interwoven into my childhood memories, and Tchaikovsky is just fantastic in general. One year we played a watered down version of "Waltz of the Flowers" from The Nutcracker, and it was great fun even in its watered down form. I inevitably move with the music, but during that song I pretty much subconsciously waltzed in my seat.
Wow, I just discovered a forum dedicated to freshwater crayfish while doing some taxonomy research for biology in conjunction with rambling (hurrah for quasi-multi-tasking). I had no idea they had such a following. There are 318 members of the crayfish forum. I thought about joining it, but then I reconsidered after realizing how incredibly ignorant I am about freshwater crayfish.
Anyway, I think I'm done rambling about yesterday like an ADD five-year old after his/her first day in preschool (you can only stand it for so long, I've tried). Just a few notes about today.
I'm now part of a select septet of band and orchestra members that will be performing a song at the final orchestra concert... that is if we can pull it off. We're playing "Introduction et Allegro" by Ravel. It's freaking insane, but it sounds neato. I'll probably end up having to simplify parts of it. We practiced today, and the second violin quite frankly admitted that there was no way he could play part of the beginning until he dedicated a lot of practice to it, and he's quite the talented individual. Of course we'll get something to work, and it will sound nice. However, we probably won't be quite up to tempo for the Allegro portion, and most of us will end up having to simplify our parts in a few places.
In English, we started reading The Crucible. Nobody wanted the part of Abigail Williams since she's kind of a harlot, so I took the role. I typically end up taking the part that nobody else wants, and the part normally fits me worse than it could fit anyone else. That's the fun of it. Last year I was Mama in A Raisin in the Sun, and I'm not exactly a big black grandmother. This year I'm Abigail, but I'm not exactly a seductress. I love playing the roles that nobody would expect out of me. And I pull them off pretty well too. I'm proof that type casting isn't always necessary.
I think that's just about it for now. I have an obscene amount of homework to do, thanks to the fact that I lost my USB drive today. It had a math project on it... and that project is supposed to be due tomorrow... and I haven't restarted it yet. Plus, I have to finish my biology outline, biology worksheets, and French packet, and it would be nice to work on the art project, physics lab, physics homework, and additional biology homework that are due on Thursday. For consolation I get to remind myself that I have only two more days until spring "break"! Hip, hip, hurrah for sleep!
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Imago Again!
For the first time since December, today was Imago Saturday! My friends and I had been pumped about it for the past few weeks, and today it finally came.
Imago (other than being a Greek word) is an ecosystem restoration project located on a thirteen-acre plot of wooded land in Lower Price Hill. On the first Saturday of every month (except for January and February, to my dismay), we head out there to do whatever they need us to do. We've cut down honeysuckle, rescued native plants from a little bit of the NKU campus that was about to be paved over (as if that place didn't have enough concrete already), weeded a community garden, dismantled an abused wigwam, and done other things down there.
Today, we moved shovels, rakes, and other equipment to a "new" shed someone gave them. After that, we spent quite some time chipping away at a half-frozen mulch pile to cover some unsightly black plastic that's being used to smother weeds. When it warms up more, prairie grasses and flowers will be planted where the plastic is now. Finally, we planted some redbuds. Well, everybody else planted several, but my partner and I were having equipment issues, so we only planted one. I snapped the "heavy-duty fiberglass" shaft of a shovel, and my hole-digging partner bent a trowel out of shape.
It was all great fun. The air was that pleasant temperature that makes your face and fingers cold, but doesn't make you wear a coat. I absolutely love the feeling of a chilled face, but I hate coats, so this weather me fait heureuse. Spring weather is on it's way, and will eventually be bringing the thunderstorms back! However, as we all know, spring can't really start for fifteen more days at least since Punxsutawney Phil did indeed see his shadow. As far as I'm concerned the winter weather can linger on if it likes. We get along well, even though it doesn't normally bring thunderstorms.
Imago (other than being a Greek word) is an ecosystem restoration project located on a thirteen-acre plot of wooded land in Lower Price Hill. On the first Saturday of every month (except for January and February, to my dismay), we head out there to do whatever they need us to do. We've cut down honeysuckle, rescued native plants from a little bit of the NKU campus that was about to be paved over (as if that place didn't have enough concrete already), weeded a community garden, dismantled an abused wigwam, and done other things down there.
Today, we moved shovels, rakes, and other equipment to a "new" shed someone gave them. After that, we spent quite some time chipping away at a half-frozen mulch pile to cover some unsightly black plastic that's being used to smother weeds. When it warms up more, prairie grasses and flowers will be planted where the plastic is now. Finally, we planted some redbuds. Well, everybody else planted several, but my partner and I were having equipment issues, so we only planted one. I snapped the "heavy-duty fiberglass" shaft of a shovel, and my hole-digging partner bent a trowel out of shape.
It was all great fun. The air was that pleasant temperature that makes your face and fingers cold, but doesn't make you wear a coat. I absolutely love the feeling of a chilled face, but I hate coats, so this weather me fait heureuse. Spring weather is on it's way, and will eventually be bringing the thunderstorms back! However, as we all know, spring can't really start for fifteen more days at least since Punxsutawney Phil did indeed see his shadow. As far as I'm concerned the winter weather can linger on if it likes. We get along well, even though it doesn't normally bring thunderstorms.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Story Time!
First things first: yesterday was Groundhog Day, and Punxsutawney Phil did in fact see his shadow. We now have six more weeks of "winter". Maybe that means that we'll actually have a real winter sometime in the next few months.
Now it's time for a random, amusing little thing that happened as I was leaving church. My brother decided to only look in one direction as he turned left out of the parking lot onto Winton Road, so he ended up clipping a large SUV. He and the other driver pulled over into the St. Barts parking lot to decided what to do. The oldest two of my younger sisters and I were left in the car as he talked to the other person. The hazard lights were on, so there was a ticking noise in the car - one that could even be described as a Mysterious Ticking Noise, if you so desired. I turned around and told my sisters that it was pipe bomb that had been planted by Lord Voldemort, not expecting them to know what I was talking about (if you don't know what I'm referring, go to YouTube and type in "mysterious ticking noise"). Much to my surprise, Allison (the younger one) immediately did a perfect imitation of the puppet Snape.
Allison: "What is that mysterious ticking noise?"
Me: "It's kind of catchy though. Snape. Snape. Severus Snape. Snape. Snape. Severus Snape."
Rachel: "Dumbledore!"
Me: "Snape. Snape. Severus Snape."
Allison: "Ron. Ron. Ron Weasley."
and so forth
We re-enacted the entire thing, but it was a little hard with just three people when Hermione and Harry were added into the mix.
After we had finished our unexpected burst into chant, I turned around to see how my brother was doing with the other driver. Much to my surprise, the other person was Ms. Mascari, the director of TX (St. X's theather program). It was really quite odd. I'm glad she didn't recognize me, because it may have been hard for me to find something pleasant to say to her and vice versa. We were not always the best of friends.
Anyway, that's it for my story today. Unfortunately, it's just not the same to type stories as it is to tell them orally. Why has the art of storytelling been lost in our society? I think it was a wonderful little talent, and truly an admirable one. While we may have people that like to tell what happens to them in dramatic and interesting ways, the days are long gone when troubadours, bards, and minstrels roamed the land, welcomed in the halls of lords and kings as they told tales both new and old of laughter, sorrow, heroism, and the like. If someone wandered the countryside today, offering to sing ballads and arias, someone would call the police in a heartbeat. Okay, so I'd probably be a little uncomfortable if a bard came to my front door, but if only we lived in the days when such happenings were commonplace. The times when patriarchs' stories were the bread and butter that sustained a little hamlet through the winter months and the word of a poet was worth more than the verdict of a king. Sure, life was harder then. To reach forty years of age was no small feat, with threats of all sorts lurking about your very doorstep. Illness, famine, war, bandits, beasts, bipolar rulers, consistently cruel rulers, crop failure, kelpies, dragons, imps - take your pick.
Now it's time for a random, amusing little thing that happened as I was leaving church. My brother decided to only look in one direction as he turned left out of the parking lot onto Winton Road, so he ended up clipping a large SUV. He and the other driver pulled over into the St. Barts parking lot to decided what to do. The oldest two of my younger sisters and I were left in the car as he talked to the other person. The hazard lights were on, so there was a ticking noise in the car - one that could even be described as a Mysterious Ticking Noise, if you so desired. I turned around and told my sisters that it was pipe bomb that had been planted by Lord Voldemort, not expecting them to know what I was talking about (if you don't know what I'm referring, go to YouTube and type in "mysterious ticking noise"). Much to my surprise, Allison (the younger one) immediately did a perfect imitation of the puppet Snape.
Allison: "What is that mysterious ticking noise?"
Me: "It's kind of catchy though. Snape. Snape. Severus Snape. Snape. Snape. Severus Snape."
Rachel: "Dumbledore!"
Me: "Snape. Snape. Severus Snape."
Allison: "Ron. Ron. Ron Weasley."
and so forth
We re-enacted the entire thing, but it was a little hard with just three people when Hermione and Harry were added into the mix.
After we had finished our unexpected burst into chant, I turned around to see how my brother was doing with the other driver. Much to my surprise, the other person was Ms. Mascari, the director of TX (St. X's theather program). It was really quite odd. I'm glad she didn't recognize me, because it may have been hard for me to find something pleasant to say to her and vice versa. We were not always the best of friends.
Anyway, that's it for my story today. Unfortunately, it's just not the same to type stories as it is to tell them orally. Why has the art of storytelling been lost in our society? I think it was a wonderful little talent, and truly an admirable one. While we may have people that like to tell what happens to them in dramatic and interesting ways, the days are long gone when troubadours, bards, and minstrels roamed the land, welcomed in the halls of lords and kings as they told tales both new and old of laughter, sorrow, heroism, and the like. If someone wandered the countryside today, offering to sing ballads and arias, someone would call the police in a heartbeat. Okay, so I'd probably be a little uncomfortable if a bard came to my front door, but if only we lived in the days when such happenings were commonplace. The times when patriarchs' stories were the bread and butter that sustained a little hamlet through the winter months and the word of a poet was worth more than the verdict of a king. Sure, life was harder then. To reach forty years of age was no small feat, with threats of all sorts lurking about your very doorstep. Illness, famine, war, bandits, beasts, bipolar rulers, consistently cruel rulers, crop failure, kelpies, dragons, imps - take your pick.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Cults, Societies, and So Forth
It has recently occurred to me that I am the member of many a cult/secret society/not-so-secret society/what-not. Without further ado, here they are in order of creation (I am, was, or will be a charter member of all of these societies).
SSC:
It's a super secret cult, but that's not what SSC stands for. If you ask what it does stand for, we tell you that it's a super secret conundrum, but that's not what SSC stands for either. There have been a wide variety of guesses about what SSC really stands for (mostly things starting with "super", such as "super secret crew", "super special crew", "super (p)sycho crew", and some others), but all of the suggested meanings are much more interesting than what SSC really stands for. It's actually a rather boring and unexciting name, considering the strange people that named it.
The SSC started close to show week of St. Xavier's production of Miss Saigon. The very impatient and somewhat unreasonable director decided that the reason running crew didn't get the cues perfectly right on our first run of Act II was that there were too many crew members in hte wings. This wasn't the real issue, as others would discover later, but she took it into her own power to winnow out the ranks of the running crew without consulting crew heads about who was actually useful. I was cut along with several other very experienced and helpful crew members, so we formed our own backstage crew. Another guy, Brad, and I organized a crew of the people who were booted plus some others who were never nominated for running crew in the first place (it's a high honor), and we rotated set pieces in and out of the wings so that the actual running crew wouldn't have to. We even wrote up a detailed list of what needed to be where and when, complete with illustrations of Trogdor and other barely relevant pictures.
The High Order of Dipodism:
I already wrote about this. For review, click here.
My position as founder and High Priestess of Dipodism will probably be included in my title for the next cult on my list.
The Chivalric Order of the Sword Organum:
Approximately one third of the three semi-regular readers of my blog is very well acquainted with The Chivalric Order of the Sword Organum (originally called the Brethren of the Sword, but that was changed due to the facts that not all the members are brethren and Brethren of the Sword would have an undesirable acronym). In fact, this reader is the founder so he knows much more about this cult than I.
Assembly of the High-Fiving Shark and Gorilla - Nice:
This actually came into existence before I received my official invitation to the previous society, but I had a better transition for the dipod-to-sword organum jump. This group has technically perhaps been around for ages, by the way we refer to it. In this society, the "we" refers to my siblings and I. Over winter break, my family got the delight of driving nine hours for some quality extended family togetherness. with that side of the family, togetherness always results in fierce subconscious competition over the most unreasonable "accomplishments". It can be quite maddening. Anyway, back to the explanation of this cult. On the drive up there, we passed a sign for Nunica, a city in Indiana. Nunica spontaneously became a holiday in memory of a the day a bus full of blind nuns holding baby refugees was driven off the edge of a cliff, exploding at the bottom (based on an utterly purposefully ridiculous song that was written by some of my dad's brother's classmates for a contest that they won). There are various rules, traditions, and the like associated with Nunica, but I will not enumerate these details at this time. With Nunica in existence, it needed a cult/religion to support it. Based on a pre-existing t-shirt from the Dr. McNinja, the Assembly of the High-Fiving Shark and Gorilla - Nice was created. So far the only purpose of the Assembly is to support Nunica and place its seal of approval (usually a leopard seal, sometimes harper seals will do) on random deeds, sights, or sounds.
Native American LSD Ritual Cult:
This one doesn't have a real name yet, but one day in French class my friend randomly invited me and some others to join her in creating a cult based off of Native American rituals involving hallucinogens. She hasn't really gotten very far yet. We're working on it.
Herbivore-Omnivore Alliance:
Several of my classmates, most of which are my friends, are vegetarians. They want to start a vegetarian club, but they'd like us non-vegetarian friends to be part of it too because that would make it more fun. Essentially, it would just be an excuse to make up some random collection of people who already hang out together and talk on a daily basis, which we could then write on college applications. A couple of my friends are already trying to find ways to "pad their resumés" as people say. Us omnivores refuse to give up meat, so our club needs to have a way to include everyone anyway. One girl came up with the idea that if there's a Gay-Straight Alliance, we should form a similar group called the Herbivore-Omnivore Alliance. The idea still needs some tweaking, especially in the name category. One of our more sarcastic friends who is completely opposed to the idea was quick to point out that the original name would end up being the HO Alliance for short. We quickly dropped that moniker. I will say, I'm more inclined to agree with the sarcastic friend though. What on earth would the society do?
Angsty Girls Society:
This final cult was first thought of yesterday. It was inspired partially by a YouTube video that makes fun of how much of an angsty, moody drama queen Harry Potter is in the 5th book. Such a cult wouldn't require much organization. After all, we're all so angsty that nobody in our cult could really understand what anyone else was going through. Our cult's t-shirts would be all black with black writing on them. Both blacks would be blacker than the blackest black times infinity (but not dealing with coffee in any way), so nobody could really read our shirts, another symbol of how much nobody understands us. Our shirts would have meaningful slogans such as...
SSC:
It's a super secret cult, but that's not what SSC stands for. If you ask what it does stand for, we tell you that it's a super secret conundrum, but that's not what SSC stands for either. There have been a wide variety of guesses about what SSC really stands for (mostly things starting with "super", such as "super secret crew", "super special crew", "super (p)sycho crew", and some others), but all of the suggested meanings are much more interesting than what SSC really stands for. It's actually a rather boring and unexciting name, considering the strange people that named it.
The SSC started close to show week of St. Xavier's production of Miss Saigon. The very impatient and somewhat unreasonable director decided that the reason running crew didn't get the cues perfectly right on our first run of Act II was that there were too many crew members in hte wings. This wasn't the real issue, as others would discover later, but she took it into her own power to winnow out the ranks of the running crew without consulting crew heads about who was actually useful. I was cut along with several other very experienced and helpful crew members, so we formed our own backstage crew. Another guy, Brad, and I organized a crew of the people who were booted plus some others who were never nominated for running crew in the first place (it's a high honor), and we rotated set pieces in and out of the wings so that the actual running crew wouldn't have to. We even wrote up a detailed list of what needed to be where and when, complete with illustrations of Trogdor and other barely relevant pictures.
The High Order of Dipodism:
I already wrote about this. For review, click here.
My position as founder and High Priestess of Dipodism will probably be included in my title for the next cult on my list.
The Chivalric Order of the Sword Organum:
Approximately one third of the three semi-regular readers of my blog is very well acquainted with The Chivalric Order of the Sword Organum (originally called the Brethren of the Sword, but that was changed due to the facts that not all the members are brethren and Brethren of the Sword would have an undesirable acronym). In fact, this reader is the founder so he knows much more about this cult than I.
Assembly of the High-Fiving Shark and Gorilla - Nice:
This actually came into existence before I received my official invitation to the previous society, but I had a better transition for the dipod-to-sword organum jump. This group has technically perhaps been around for ages, by the way we refer to it. In this society, the "we" refers to my siblings and I. Over winter break, my family got the delight of driving nine hours for some quality extended family togetherness. with that side of the family, togetherness always results in fierce subconscious competition over the most unreasonable "accomplishments". It can be quite maddening. Anyway, back to the explanation of this cult. On the drive up there, we passed a sign for Nunica, a city in Indiana. Nunica spontaneously became a holiday in memory of a the day a bus full of blind nuns holding baby refugees was driven off the edge of a cliff, exploding at the bottom (based on an utterly purposefully ridiculous song that was written by some of my dad's brother's classmates for a contest that they won). There are various rules, traditions, and the like associated with Nunica, but I will not enumerate these details at this time. With Nunica in existence, it needed a cult/religion to support it. Based on a pre-existing t-shirt from the Dr. McNinja, the Assembly of the High-Fiving Shark and Gorilla - Nice was created. So far the only purpose of the Assembly is to support Nunica and place its seal of approval (usually a leopard seal, sometimes harper seals will do) on random deeds, sights, or sounds.
Native American LSD Ritual Cult:
This one doesn't have a real name yet, but one day in French class my friend randomly invited me and some others to join her in creating a cult based off of Native American rituals involving hallucinogens. She hasn't really gotten very far yet. We're working on it.
Herbivore-Omnivore Alliance:
Several of my classmates, most of which are my friends, are vegetarians. They want to start a vegetarian club, but they'd like us non-vegetarian friends to be part of it too because that would make it more fun. Essentially, it would just be an excuse to make up some random collection of people who already hang out together and talk on a daily basis, which we could then write on college applications. A couple of my friends are already trying to find ways to "pad their resumés" as people say. Us omnivores refuse to give up meat, so our club needs to have a way to include everyone anyway. One girl came up with the idea that if there's a Gay-Straight Alliance, we should form a similar group called the Herbivore-Omnivore Alliance. The idea still needs some tweaking, especially in the name category. One of our more sarcastic friends who is completely opposed to the idea was quick to point out that the original name would end up being the HO Alliance for short. We quickly dropped that moniker. I will say, I'm more inclined to agree with the sarcastic friend though. What on earth would the society do?
Angsty Girls Society:
This final cult was first thought of yesterday. It was inspired partially by a YouTube video that makes fun of how much of an angsty, moody drama queen Harry Potter is in the 5th book. Such a cult wouldn't require much organization. After all, we're all so angsty that nobody in our cult could really understand what anyone else was going through. Our cult's t-shirts would be all black with black writing on them. Both blacks would be blacker than the blackest black times infinity (but not dealing with coffee in any way), so nobody could really read our shirts, another symbol of how much nobody understands us. Our shirts would have meaningful slogans such as...
- got angst?
- Don't talk to me. You wouldn't understand.
- I ♥ nothing
- I can't ♥ anything anymore because my ♥ has been cruely torn out and trampled into the dust
- you can't see my eyes because the windows to my soul are so filled with pain that you wouldn't understand
- I am filled with angst, even unto overflowing
- and other deep and marvelously angsty phrases that "could be turned into some pathetic emo song on the radio" as my mom puts it
Sadly, most of these societies haven't gotten very far. I fear that the most successful group (the SSC) may have already crumbled, but I'll find out in April if not sooner.
Please note that I am not actually a member of any real cults. We have given up the red-pen ritual of dipodism, neither me nor any of the people in the hallucinogen group have ever done elicit drugs and I don't plan to, and neither me nor my friends are really filled with angst even unto overflowing.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Happy Day After Thanksgiving/Black Friday!
In the Gast house, Thanksgiving preparations started Wednesday. We cooked pies, turkeys (yes, plural, we had about 30 guests and made enough bird for everyone to take home leftovers), sweet potatoes, cake, homemade cinnamon applesauce, a cheese ball, and I think that's it.
I got the supreme joy of dressing the turkey. I had no idea that playing with the raw poultry could be so fun, but, surprisingly, it was. There was just something about the texture and the way it was kinda squishy and rubbery that was unexpectedly simply delightful. I also got to look inside it's ribcage and pull its neck out of its backside where the turkey slaughtering company had stored it in the event that you wanted to use it to make gravy, along with a packet of mystery flesh from some organ that the bird once used.
I also got to make the most delicious sort of cheese ball, and I'll admit I ate quite a bit of the "scraps" after I was done "thoroughly scraping" the mixing bowl onto a cookie sheet.
We always sprinkle cinnamon on top of our pumpkin pies, and we frequently make it more interesting by making a stencil out of paper, laying it on top of the pie, and filling in the uncovered portion with cinnamon, leaving the shape of the stencil. I was in charge of making stencils for the pies. The first one was a perfectly normal, fall-esque sugar maple (Acer saccharum), but the second stencil was a sea serpent. I get a strange sense of elation from weirding out my extended family. I actually made a little story for the dragon and wrote it out in calligraphy and French, because it was a remarkably stupid story, and I would rather nobody else could read it.
Then came Thursday, the official Thanksgiving Day. I woke up at 7 when the sun started coming up above the trees to the east of my house and then proceeded to do what I've done every Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember: start the traditional jigsaw puzzle. Every year we get a new jigsaw puzzle of a thousand pieces or so (this year we got two, because I have a habit of finishing one by noon) to be solved as a family on Thanksgiving. I'm pretty much the only person who does it now, but after dinner I sometimes get some help.
There were no specific episodes that were especially interesting, but things followed the same pattern as normal. My uncle Mike showed up just in time for dinner (which is actually unusual I suppose, since he's normally at least a half hour late) and then got picked on for the entire time he was there without realizing it, my uncles and my grandpa all ate Reddi-Whip in strange ways and taught two of my sisters to do the same, my aunt moped around like the apocalypse was coming and she was the only one who knew or cared, my youngest sister threw a fit about something completely trivial, and one aunt and uncle decided to stay well past their welcome. I think they were having some sort of stand-off against the Corbins to see who could stay longer. They weren't even doing anything. They just sat silently on a sofa until they took the hint that it was time to go.
And so now it's Black Friday, and I pity anyone who has to work today. I also question the sanity of anyone who tries to shop today. Later today, my family and a couple from church will go pick out a Christmas tree from a tree farm, and we'll each pick out a new tree ornament like we do every year. Then we'll stuff the tree into the van (and I'll sit as close to it as possible, because surprisingly they make good pillows, plus they smell like frost and sap) and drive back home being forced to listen to the Partridge Family Christmas Album while me and at least three of my other siblings wish we could gouge our ears out, or stuff them with someone else's or something like that. Once we get home, we will drink hot chocolate and get out all our decorations to make the house all festive looking.
For now, I get to just sit here occasionally stirring some homemade chicken soup with rice and staring out the window at the delightful snow. This has been your host, Maple Gast, with a full report on a Gast Thanksgiving.
I got the supreme joy of dressing the turkey. I had no idea that playing with the raw poultry could be so fun, but, surprisingly, it was. There was just something about the texture and the way it was kinda squishy and rubbery that was unexpectedly simply delightful. I also got to look inside it's ribcage and pull its neck out of its backside where the turkey slaughtering company had stored it in the event that you wanted to use it to make gravy, along with a packet of mystery flesh from some organ that the bird once used.
I also got to make the most delicious sort of cheese ball, and I'll admit I ate quite a bit of the "scraps" after I was done "thoroughly scraping" the mixing bowl onto a cookie sheet.
We always sprinkle cinnamon on top of our pumpkin pies, and we frequently make it more interesting by making a stencil out of paper, laying it on top of the pie, and filling in the uncovered portion with cinnamon, leaving the shape of the stencil. I was in charge of making stencils for the pies. The first one was a perfectly normal, fall-esque sugar maple (Acer saccharum), but the second stencil was a sea serpent. I get a strange sense of elation from weirding out my extended family. I actually made a little story for the dragon and wrote it out in calligraphy and French, because it was a remarkably stupid story, and I would rather nobody else could read it.
Then came Thursday, the official Thanksgiving Day. I woke up at 7 when the sun started coming up above the trees to the east of my house and then proceeded to do what I've done every Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember: start the traditional jigsaw puzzle. Every year we get a new jigsaw puzzle of a thousand pieces or so (this year we got two, because I have a habit of finishing one by noon) to be solved as a family on Thanksgiving. I'm pretty much the only person who does it now, but after dinner I sometimes get some help.
There were no specific episodes that were especially interesting, but things followed the same pattern as normal. My uncle Mike showed up just in time for dinner (which is actually unusual I suppose, since he's normally at least a half hour late) and then got picked on for the entire time he was there without realizing it, my uncles and my grandpa all ate Reddi-Whip in strange ways and taught two of my sisters to do the same, my aunt moped around like the apocalypse was coming and she was the only one who knew or cared, my youngest sister threw a fit about something completely trivial, and one aunt and uncle decided to stay well past their welcome. I think they were having some sort of stand-off against the Corbins to see who could stay longer. They weren't even doing anything. They just sat silently on a sofa until they took the hint that it was time to go.
And so now it's Black Friday, and I pity anyone who has to work today. I also question the sanity of anyone who tries to shop today. Later today, my family and a couple from church will go pick out a Christmas tree from a tree farm, and we'll each pick out a new tree ornament like we do every year. Then we'll stuff the tree into the van (and I'll sit as close to it as possible, because surprisingly they make good pillows, plus they smell like frost and sap) and drive back home being forced to listen to the Partridge Family Christmas Album while me and at least three of my other siblings wish we could gouge our ears out, or stuff them with someone else's or something like that. Once we get home, we will drink hot chocolate and get out all our decorations to make the house all festive looking.
For now, I get to just sit here occasionally stirring some homemade chicken soup with rice and staring out the window at the delightful snow. This has been your host, Maple Gast, with a full report on a Gast Thanksgiving.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Happy October!
Today is the last day of October, and it's finally acting like it. Hurrah for mornings when I can see my breath and I have to scrape the frost off my windshield!
Since today is the last day of October, it's also Halloween. Normally, I pay a negligible amount of attention to this holiday, but it was more interesting than usual this year. The high school and middle school orchestras played a Halloween concert last night (in which only three out of the eight songs played had anything to do with today), and today we went around to all the elementary schools and played the music there for the kiddies. It went pretty well, but not super exciting and atrociously horrible or anything. After two weeks of trying, I finally got my stand partner/friend's little brother to voluntarily talk to me. That's pretty much the only noteworthy thing that happened. Can't you tell how incredibly exhilirating it was?
As part of this, we were all expected to wear costumes. I was super geeked about mine. I haven't quite decided what I was/am (I'm still wearing it because I love it and it smells delightful). The original goal was to be the personification of autumn/a tree in autumn, which is what most people interpreted it as. There were a couple other thoughts on it though, including a forest goddess and a fairy. I wore a long flowing brown skirt (pretty much the only skirt I've actually liked since 5th grade), my orange crush shirt turned inside out, and brown tank top on top of that. My hair was in two braids, and pinned to the shirts and braids were dozens of beautiful fall leaves (there's currently still a fallen oak leaf right next to my face and it's smelling really good). To add to the effect, I went barefoot for most of the day (which I normally do anyway), painted dark brown spiraling vine patterns all down my arms, wore bracelets of all sorts of fall colors, and wore four pairs of fall colored earrings at once. I currently have two hooks through each earring hole (it wasn't a pleasant process and my earlobes are still kind of sore) and hanging from each of those hooks is another hook. I'll have to post pictures because it was a fun little get-up.
Gathering the leaves for my costume was quite an interesting experience. On Tuesday afternoon I got a phone call from my friend Morgan who told me that she was bored out of her mind and wanted to come over to my house. I told her I had to go on a stroll to get leaves to stick to myself. She called me "such a freaking hippie" and said she'd be over in a few minutes to come with me. When she pulled up, we didn't go walking right away. In her car she had a bunch of leftover baguettes from the Panera where she works so we had sword fights with a couple and then each took one to chomp on while we walked. So we walked around my neighborhood (which consists primarily of Catholic families who send their kids to private schools to avoid the depravity of public education) singing and talking about random things while picking beautiful leaves off trees and carrying whole baguettes which we occasionally took a bite out of. To make matters even more interesting, halfway through her bread, Morgan decided she didn't want to eat all of it so every once in a while she would tear off a piece and see how far she could drop-kick it down the street. I was walking around barefoot in rolled-up jeans and a vintage t-shirt with my signature purse trying to hold all the leaves we picked, and Morgan had on a mismatched pair of chucks (one was purple and the other was leopard print) an old pair of jeans with a hole at the knee, and a hoodie that belonged to her dad. We probably looked like we were on something. Some of the looks we got were priceless.
The only thing I did that I normally do on Halloween (ever since freshman year) is what my school calls Treat the Hungry. Small groups of people sign up to walk door to door on a certain street and collect canned goods for the Free Store/Food Bank. I went with Amy and Erin, two of my friends. The experience as a whole was unusual, and not always in a good way. All three of us had unorthodox costumes. I've never heard of anyone being fall (there was one girl in the orchestra who said she would've done it if she had had time to collect leaves), Amy was a Christmas-y elf, and Erin was something from some British movie called Clockwork Orange that I hadn't heard of and nobody got the reference until we dropped the food off at our school.
First we'll make some general statements. The street we did was very long (in fact, it was called Long Lane, but we only did the short part of Long Lane, which was still pretty long), and most of the people who live on it didn't pass out candy. There were therefore very few kids trick-or-treating so whenever we got to a house they were very eager to give us candy in addition to cans. And they were handing out the good stuff too. It was mostly chocolate and there were a lot of Reese's. Mmmmm..... There's also a little valley to help water drain away from the yards between nearly every house, and my 10+ year old wagon really wasn't handling it too well. My wagon had other issues too, such as the fact that it tipped over easily, was excessively noisy, and only had three sides. We managed to fix the last problem to some degree with a plastic bag and some thread and rubber bands (which I of course was carrying with me in my purse).
Now for some specific instances. We all met at Amy's house because she lives close to Long Lane. Once we actually started going to the houses, our adventures began. The first house gave us Reese's, which got me extra pumped because I love Reese's and the people in my neighborhood normally pass out the cheap stuff since there are so many kids running around.
The next house actually had candy bars for each of us. Not the little fun-size snickers, but decent sized candy bars.
The next house with people at it had a little girl and her mom sitting on the front porch. When we told the woman we were there to collect the canned goods, she told us to hang on a second and talk to Hannah (the little girl) while she went and got something. I had no issue with that as I'm around kids all the time, so I proceeded to say hello and ask her what grade she was in at school. No response. I asked her what her favorite game to play was. No response (I have to admit, at that point it was reminding me of a random encounter in Dungeons and Dragons where we fought a mindflayer and its thralls who didn't respond much to anything we said). So the three of us just stood there awkwardly glancing around and every now and then looking back at the kid. The poor thing looked absolutely terrified of Erin, and I can see why. Her costume was a bit dark. Eventually, we stopped trying to start conversation. Out of nowhere, Hannah just yelled "Hi!" and looked vacantly past us and didn't say anything else. It was weird. Finally her mom came back out and we went on our way waving to both of them. I think the little girl had some sort of mental deficiency. I wish we had known that before so we wouldn't have responded so awkwardly.
Nothing overly momentous happened until close to the end of the first side of the street. The three of us walked up to a house with a strobe light on in the garage and music blasting from a CD player. The song was, of all things, "My Humps". Standing in front of the garage was and old man with a pipe to smoke in one hand and a bottle of strong liquor in the other. He directed us towards the house where we were greeted by a handful of adults who looked, smelled, and acted completely intoxicated. They also had a toddler with them, and I felt very sorry for the tyke.
By the time we headed down the other side of the street, it was dark and some of the unlit houses looked very menacing. After knocking on a few on the darkened doors, we decided that it was best to just skip them. Who knows how many adventures we might have missed out on because we didn't have the time and my two comrades were unwilling to go up to each house.
The second side of the street didn't really have much worth telling. All the people wanted to get rid of their candy so we got like two handfuls each at every door. There were however two things that might deserve mention.
We split up towards the end to go quicker, and one of the houses Erin and I went up to had an adorable old man living in it. He urged us both to take the rest of his candy (a lot of it will probably end up feeding Tim, Amy's older brother) and then proceeded to give us a little history lesson about the origins of Finneytown High School. It was interesting to meet someone whose grandson had been part of the first class to graduate from our high school.
There was another house that provided us with quite an unpleasant, awkward, disturbing, etc. experience that the reader could do without knowing.
When we arrived at the school to drop off our collections, Erin's costume was recognized for the first time all evening. One of the history teachers (the best history teacher)/coordinators of community service stuff had seen the movie. He's a rather unusual person, and what's even more unusual is that his name is Lynn, until last year his mom (whose name is Gay) worked at the same school he did, he went to college with both my parents, he gave my older brother his first nosebleed, and his best friend grew up in the first house my family owned in Finneytown. At the school I also got to see my friend Anna's final costume (she had been trying to decide what to be for weeks), and another argument broke out about what specifically my costume was supposed to be.
That's just about it. I don't have any nice concluding statement to finish with, so there you go.
Since today is the last day of October, it's also Halloween. Normally, I pay a negligible amount of attention to this holiday, but it was more interesting than usual this year. The high school and middle school orchestras played a Halloween concert last night (in which only three out of the eight songs played had anything to do with today), and today we went around to all the elementary schools and played the music there for the kiddies. It went pretty well, but not super exciting and atrociously horrible or anything. After two weeks of trying, I finally got my stand partner/friend's little brother to voluntarily talk to me. That's pretty much the only noteworthy thing that happened. Can't you tell how incredibly exhilirating it was?
As part of this, we were all expected to wear costumes. I was super geeked about mine. I haven't quite decided what I was/am (I'm still wearing it because I love it and it smells delightful). The original goal was to be the personification of autumn/a tree in autumn, which is what most people interpreted it as. There were a couple other thoughts on it though, including a forest goddess and a fairy. I wore a long flowing brown skirt (pretty much the only skirt I've actually liked since 5th grade), my orange crush shirt turned inside out, and brown tank top on top of that. My hair was in two braids, and pinned to the shirts and braids were dozens of beautiful fall leaves (there's currently still a fallen oak leaf right next to my face and it's smelling really good). To add to the effect, I went barefoot for most of the day (which I normally do anyway), painted dark brown spiraling vine patterns all down my arms, wore bracelets of all sorts of fall colors, and wore four pairs of fall colored earrings at once. I currently have two hooks through each earring hole (it wasn't a pleasant process and my earlobes are still kind of sore) and hanging from each of those hooks is another hook. I'll have to post pictures because it was a fun little get-up.
Gathering the leaves for my costume was quite an interesting experience. On Tuesday afternoon I got a phone call from my friend Morgan who told me that she was bored out of her mind and wanted to come over to my house. I told her I had to go on a stroll to get leaves to stick to myself. She called me "such a freaking hippie" and said she'd be over in a few minutes to come with me. When she pulled up, we didn't go walking right away. In her car she had a bunch of leftover baguettes from the Panera where she works so we had sword fights with a couple and then each took one to chomp on while we walked. So we walked around my neighborhood (which consists primarily of Catholic families who send their kids to private schools to avoid the depravity of public education) singing and talking about random things while picking beautiful leaves off trees and carrying whole baguettes which we occasionally took a bite out of. To make matters even more interesting, halfway through her bread, Morgan decided she didn't want to eat all of it so every once in a while she would tear off a piece and see how far she could drop-kick it down the street. I was walking around barefoot in rolled-up jeans and a vintage t-shirt with my signature purse trying to hold all the leaves we picked, and Morgan had on a mismatched pair of chucks (one was purple and the other was leopard print) an old pair of jeans with a hole at the knee, and a hoodie that belonged to her dad. We probably looked like we were on something. Some of the looks we got were priceless.
The only thing I did that I normally do on Halloween (ever since freshman year) is what my school calls Treat the Hungry. Small groups of people sign up to walk door to door on a certain street and collect canned goods for the Free Store/Food Bank. I went with Amy and Erin, two of my friends. The experience as a whole was unusual, and not always in a good way. All three of us had unorthodox costumes. I've never heard of anyone being fall (there was one girl in the orchestra who said she would've done it if she had had time to collect leaves), Amy was a Christmas-y elf, and Erin was something from some British movie called Clockwork Orange that I hadn't heard of and nobody got the reference until we dropped the food off at our school.
First we'll make some general statements. The street we did was very long (in fact, it was called Long Lane, but we only did the short part of Long Lane, which was still pretty long), and most of the people who live on it didn't pass out candy. There were therefore very few kids trick-or-treating so whenever we got to a house they were very eager to give us candy in addition to cans. And they were handing out the good stuff too. It was mostly chocolate and there were a lot of Reese's. Mmmmm..... There's also a little valley to help water drain away from the yards between nearly every house, and my 10+ year old wagon really wasn't handling it too well. My wagon had other issues too, such as the fact that it tipped over easily, was excessively noisy, and only had three sides. We managed to fix the last problem to some degree with a plastic bag and some thread and rubber bands (which I of course was carrying with me in my purse).
Now for some specific instances. We all met at Amy's house because she lives close to Long Lane. Once we actually started going to the houses, our adventures began. The first house gave us Reese's, which got me extra pumped because I love Reese's and the people in my neighborhood normally pass out the cheap stuff since there are so many kids running around.
The next house actually had candy bars for each of us. Not the little fun-size snickers, but decent sized candy bars.
The next house with people at it had a little girl and her mom sitting on the front porch. When we told the woman we were there to collect the canned goods, she told us to hang on a second and talk to Hannah (the little girl) while she went and got something. I had no issue with that as I'm around kids all the time, so I proceeded to say hello and ask her what grade she was in at school. No response. I asked her what her favorite game to play was. No response (I have to admit, at that point it was reminding me of a random encounter in Dungeons and Dragons where we fought a mindflayer and its thralls who didn't respond much to anything we said). So the three of us just stood there awkwardly glancing around and every now and then looking back at the kid. The poor thing looked absolutely terrified of Erin, and I can see why. Her costume was a bit dark. Eventually, we stopped trying to start conversation. Out of nowhere, Hannah just yelled "Hi!" and looked vacantly past us and didn't say anything else. It was weird. Finally her mom came back out and we went on our way waving to both of them. I think the little girl had some sort of mental deficiency. I wish we had known that before so we wouldn't have responded so awkwardly.
Nothing overly momentous happened until close to the end of the first side of the street. The three of us walked up to a house with a strobe light on in the garage and music blasting from a CD player. The song was, of all things, "My Humps". Standing in front of the garage was and old man with a pipe to smoke in one hand and a bottle of strong liquor in the other. He directed us towards the house where we were greeted by a handful of adults who looked, smelled, and acted completely intoxicated. They also had a toddler with them, and I felt very sorry for the tyke.
By the time we headed down the other side of the street, it was dark and some of the unlit houses looked very menacing. After knocking on a few on the darkened doors, we decided that it was best to just skip them. Who knows how many adventures we might have missed out on because we didn't have the time and my two comrades were unwilling to go up to each house.
The second side of the street didn't really have much worth telling. All the people wanted to get rid of their candy so we got like two handfuls each at every door. There were however two things that might deserve mention.
We split up towards the end to go quicker, and one of the houses Erin and I went up to had an adorable old man living in it. He urged us both to take the rest of his candy (a lot of it will probably end up feeding Tim, Amy's older brother) and then proceeded to give us a little history lesson about the origins of Finneytown High School. It was interesting to meet someone whose grandson had been part of the first class to graduate from our high school.
There was another house that provided us with quite an unpleasant, awkward, disturbing, etc. experience that the reader could do without knowing.
When we arrived at the school to drop off our collections, Erin's costume was recognized for the first time all evening. One of the history teachers (the best history teacher)/coordinators of community service stuff had seen the movie. He's a rather unusual person, and what's even more unusual is that his name is Lynn, until last year his mom (whose name is Gay) worked at the same school he did, he went to college with both my parents, he gave my older brother his first nosebleed, and his best friend grew up in the first house my family owned in Finneytown. At the school I also got to see my friend Anna's final costume (she had been trying to decide what to be for weeks), and another argument broke out about what specifically my costume was supposed to be.
That's just about it. I don't have any nice concluding statement to finish with, so there you go.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Happy September 23rd!
I hope you had a wonderful first day of fall!
Okay fine, it doesn't feel like autumn considering it was about 90º F out there, but fear not, for a cold front's a-comin' mid-way through this week.
Okay fine, it doesn't feel like autumn considering it was about 90º F out there, but fear not, for a cold front's a-comin' mid-way through this week.
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