Kicks and Giggles

The third installment of my Life At College series. A bit belated, I know, but let's all enjoy reliving the memories, shall we? We're far enough removed to laugh about it now....



Installment four to be completed in the (semi) near future (i.e. hopefully before installment five starts up in August!)

The snow is falling and friends are calling yoo hoo.

New Year's Resolution #1: Suffer for my Art

Got up at 7 this morning and went out to take pictures in the Gordon woods. Okay, saying I got up at 7 is sort of a lie, but that was the time I set my alarm for and it was only quarter to eight when I made it out the door with my digital camera (sadly I didn't have any film for the other one) and a double dose of hot green tea with honey to keep me from turning into a walking igloo. I was wading through snow as high as my knees at times. That hasn't happened since I was about five. Doubleplusawesomexcore.











By the time I got to these wacky trees, I'd walked quite some distance and had long since drained my supply of green tea, so I plopped down in the snow and took a little nap. I know that sounds crazy, but I swear it was the most comfortable nap I've taken in ages. The snow formed perfectly to the shape of my body and I was hardly even cold. It was just... peaceful. Unlike my second-floor hall of Ferrin on the east side.









After wandering the woods for two hours and eating a carbtastic breakfast to cancel out all that good exercise, I got invited to go sledding with Sarah and Jess, so I re-bundled up and we went to dig out Jess's car. This was an adventure unto itself, as apparently it had snowed about a foot in the less-than-24-hours since she'd parked it. Then we packed up the ol' storage bins (i.e. makeshift sleds with a bit more to them than Lane trays... even the fiberglass ones ^_^) and drove to Marblehead, where Sarah teaches and knew of a good hill.






Amber thought we were crazy for using storage bins instead of going out to buy cheap $5 sleds at the store. But none of us had five dollars. We didn't even have five collective dollars. Plus, being inventive is far more entertaining and makes for much better stories (and photos) in the end.

On top of fun times in the snow, I'm happy because my sister's been talking to me. Of course I'm not going to spew the details of her life across the internet (I only inflict that sort of abuse upon myself XD), but I'll say that she was telling me about a certain boy she's got a sort of date with this weekend. Apparently they texted back and forth just shy of 70 times within the span of four hours last night. I have a boyfriend and we don't talk that much. Good grief. But I'm happy for her, and I'm happy she's telling me about her life like I'm her friend or something. That's all I've ever wanted to be for her.

First day of winter... Third day of non-stop snow

"Right now things are perfect; I don't deserve this." I'm in the middle of reminding myself how amazing Kiros is. I can't decide which song to post. I want to share "Speak Softly" because it feels sort of thematic right now and its sound fits the snowy mood. But "Beautiful" is probably the most amazing song on "A Single Strand." Okay, that's it; you're getting both. And you'd better LISTEN to both. XD

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Ebby does the white window test. Yep, it's sticking, all right. A lot.






My little Derry, dwarfed by the pile of snow from shoveling the driveway like 12 times.

Sweetbitter

An overwhelming number of my favorite people bundled into a single track:

"Bittersweet" sort of embodies how I'm feeling about a few things right now. Snow. My family. Life... and its lack of talking animals and epic clashes of good vs. evil. The usual.

It snowed so bad today that it took us at least half an hour to make it home from Marshall's (it should've been half that), and when we got to the road that my street branches off of, there were some guys pushing cars up the little slope because none of them could make it up. So far at least eight inches of cold, white fairy dust have collected on the tree branches and wrought iron furniture outside.

I am starting to see some of the reasons adults dislike snow. Aside from the perilous roads, there's the issue of shoveling. I don't think I'd mind so much except we have a long, gravel driveway and, oh yeah, I have spaghetti for arm muscles. There's nothing like manual labor to make you resent one of nature's most beautiful mood swings.

For now, though, I'm hunkering down in my chilly little cave of a bedroom after watching two of my favorite movies with two of my favorite people. Horton Hears a Who, if you haven't seen it, is SO not "just for kids." It's got drugs - I mean, fuzzy dandelions - and emo kids in it. Really, with those factors, you can't go wrong.

After that we watched Prince Caspian. I adore fantasy movies like that, but I felt really bad for my sister because she couldn't understand why a little girl coming back to a magical world where trees and animals used to be her friends would try to talk to a bear. I said she just needed to read more fantasy books and use her imagination a little, which for some reason made her kind of mad at me.

Then, when the movie ended, I got all melancholy as I always do at the end of fantasy movies and said to my mom, "I always hate when the adventure has to end and everything has to go back to normal." She looked at me the way she used to when she wanted to talk me out of believing in fairies in sixth grade and said, "Fantasy isn't real, darling."

Well, yeah, but are you saying you don't get sucked into the story? Are you saying you don't suspend your disbelief and start to believe lions really talk? How can you not want that to be real? Le sigh. Apparently I am the only one in this household with a taste for high fantasy. Tragic.

But I am trying to highlight the sweet. Snow is magical. I can't wait to go walking in the fresh, clean, black and white world tomorrow. I should buy film and take pictures. We have storytellers to make up for the things that are impossible in real life, and hey, real life isn't so bad, anyway. In fact, right now it's kind of...

Sweet.

Snowy with a high of 32

"It's funny how you find you enjoy your life when you're happy to be alive."

Reasons I am happy to be alive:

- I had a fantastic time on my date last night. For the record, though, Twilight is a pretty awful movie. Awful acting, plus some of the camera work really aggravated me/made me dizzy. And as Paul pointed out, the special effects left a lot to be desired. Anyway, let's get back to reasons I'm happy.

- Driving around, all the houses have Christmas lights twinkling on the trees. And I'm sure that I've not seen the Christmas lights this bright before.

- I woke up this morning and the skylight was blanketed with snow! I call it the white window test. It's how I know the snow is sticking. It's always nice to look out the window and see those very first few flakes of snow. Later on, we can go outside and create the impression of an angel that just fell from the sky.

- The bare trees don't look so naked now in their robes of white.

- Now that it's snowed and we have a beautiful evergreen sparkling in our living room, I feel that it is totally acceptable for me to blast my holiday playlist in the car.

- The only thing that makes me happier than Relient K's old-skool punk-rock Christmas album, "Deck the Halls, Bruise Your Hand," is their cover of "Sleigh Ride." When Megs and I saw them last year, they played that song and some random guys we'd befriended and started a mosh pit with insisted that we "slow mosh" to it. Soooo imagine a slow-motion mosh pit to this:


- I also feel that it is totally acceptable for me to laugh my head off listening to "Sleigh Ride" alone in my car while all the drivers around me wonder if I'm completely nuts. The answer is yes; yes I am.

And you know what?

I am okay with that. ^_^

One day, robots will cry.

I feel like this whole break is shaping up to be eating and sleeping. If my family didn't make so much noise, I'd probably just sleep through the whole thing. At any rate it would be entertaining; I had a lot of dreams last night. First I dreamed I was seeing Kiros, but half the band had left and the other half looked like completely different people and I didn't recognize them. Then I dreamed I was a Pokemon trainer and somehow I got pushed into a raging river or something and got hurt pretty bad. Then I dreamed my teeth were falling out, which is positively the worst kind of dream to have. Then I dreamed I was spooning with this guy I've met like one time, and it was really random but I was totally cool with it. I think that's it. I kept waking up in the middle of stuff because my head was cold and my covers kept coming off. Brr. I'm going to sit in front of the fire now and try to be a little more excited about life.

It kind of bothers me how early Christmas starts. Don't get me wrong, the Christmas season is one of my favorite times of year. I love all the twinkling lights and I love how happy everybody is. Walking around the streets is like walking around Gordon - you can talk to anyone and you'll get a smile or a laugh, whether you've ever met them or not. But seriously, the stores have been playing Christmas music for two weeks already. Don't wear it out, people.

It sickens me how the materialism of the season just gets worse and worse every year. This year I'm trying not to ask for a lot of things I don't need. I need a new phone, for instance, and socks that don't have holes in them. But I'm refraining from asking for a new iPod, even though mine fails, because at least it still plays music. I'm not asking for clothes or CDs, either. I could go for tickets to see Reel Big Fish at the Palladium in January, though... *hint hint* Yeah, but the best price I can find is $75. Boo.

Ok. La-la-la-laundry time, then left-overs. Routine. Blah. I hate predictability.