Semester in a Sentance

It's finally happened.

I never thought it would come to this, but, as you can see, I've arrived at that point.

I'm an apoloblogger.

This is at least the third time I've had to start a post by apologizing to the internet at large for not updating sooner. (don't count them, please.) I'm not going to make another promise to keep updating (as I always seem to do and then fail to do) but I am going to promise to finish writing this one, post it, and then perhaps speak about it to someone who brings up the subject at a later date. Rather than belabor that fact, however, I'm going to dive right in to trying to catch up to things I actually remember and can blog about.

Three things you need to know which have occured since the last time I blogged:

1. I dyed my hair teal.

2. I opened an internet poker business.

3. I learned how to play Tetris.

And with that I'm sure you don't need any more information on the months of...let's see...September-November, so let's start in on December! ;)

Yeah...that's not quite going to fly, is it? Hmm.. let's see.

 September:

Was so long ago the only thing I remember doing was being attacked with fans. I also remember eating rice.

October:

Tried out for, got cast in, played a publisher in Confessions at Knifepoint (pretty sure that went into November but it started here so there you go.) Went to Disney World with mom over Fall Break, which was pretty epic even though she decided to create an album of photos of me with as many Disney Princesses as she could find. Because I'm a good sport and because the last time I refused to get a picture taken with Disney characters I was attacked by Bambi animals, I agreed. The first one she paired me with was Pocahontas, who was, for a Native American musical star, rather a smart aleck. I said "My mom would like me to get a picture with you for her scrapbook (all true)." She replied, eyebrow raised, "Your mom wants a photo, eh? Sure." Then she turned and smiled at my mom's camera. This would have been a minor incident if my mom hadn't spotted Mulan the next day in Epcot and sent me over, where I realized that it was the same person in a kimono, and worse, she recognized me, as evidenced by her greeting "Ah, the brave warrior from the Indian village! How are you?" I think I'm justified in wishing an ancestral curse of sarcasm on both mom and Miss Disney.

After getting back from Disney, my mom gave me a rice cooker, which is the coolest thing ever to come out of Japan since sushi. Basically, it's a pot with a button. You put rice and water in, press the button, and food comes out. Woot.


November:

Freshman Wynn Bennett scarred my turtle concerning a knife in her possession and Alan and Jordan became Third Lobby Pokemaniacs. I held a prop gun in Alia Hollback's face for Confessions at Knifepoint every day for a week and then I went home for Thanksgiving, where I ate a ridiculous amount of food and helped my mom bake 73 dozen cookies, which I finally got rid of the last of the day before I came back here for Christmas break.

December:

I finished classes, studied for finals, took finals, and in between my hall became addicted to Dexter, a tv show about a serial killer who kills serial killers. Odd thing to watch around the holidays but such is dorm life (and I think quite a few people were projecting their finals into all of the victims.)

Then I flew back home on an airplane, went to a retirement party for our neighbor, Mr. Freeman (who, since he is no longer an employee of the Federal Government, wears a t-shirt with the FedEx logo rearranged so that it says "ExFed".) and then I watched a movie with my sister.

I started back to work at Pottery Barn last night and when I arrived home at midnight realized that I was locked out of the house and had to tempt the dog to start making noise and alert someone that I was freezing at the front door.

That's the story till now, I guess. The next time I update I promise that I will write some words here and maybe push the publish button. :) Now I'm going to post this and go back to the Skype conversation with Alysha I've been neglecting while writing this.

The Results of An Experiment

As with all experiments, the results of my venture into video blogging yielded unexpected results. Not bad, but intriguing. The consensus was mainly that people liked the video blog, but they wanted the text updates to continue. Thus, they continue. I also learned that video blogging isn't very good for communicating the facts of an event, but it is an excellent format for going into more detail on important or interesting events that I've already communicated. So for now, what I think I'm gonna do is chronicle the week's events here in text updates and then elaborate on a couple of them in a video blog. I also had a couple requests for a Q+A segment, so if ya'll send me questions then I'll answer them. If not, then I'll just fill the time answering fake e-mails from India.

Okay, well some of this is going to be a re-hash of stuff I said in the video, but some of it will be new stuff.

Last week I started joining Brethren's weekend pastime: Brethren Lawn Club (we want to get t-shirts made). Basically BLC is a bunch of Brethren guys heading out to the chapel lawn to play lawn games like croquet, frizcup, bocce, or frisbee. This past week we mostly played croquet, and after making it all the way to the second wicket before Steve won the first time around, I actually won the next game through a series of blind luck moments and being as cutthroat as I ever get when playing a game.

Learned Ladies has been quite fun to start working on. We're blitzing through the rehearsals since we only have about 2 weeks before we need to be totally ready for tech week. Rehearsals themselves have been a TON of fun. In addition to Jordan apparently thwacking Seth Marsh a good one with her fan (by accident, I'm sure) we've had a couch that actively tries to trip people, a hilariously flirty Katie Jenkins (in character), and I've had to practice getting really angry. Last night we practiced a scene where my character gets quite mad at Jordan's character. I had been playing it as perturbed, but Prof. Slav told me to "take it from 2 to 9.5" at which point I realized that I am not good at being that angry. I eventually got it, but now I actually have to practice working myself up (mostly by re-playing the finale to LOST in my head). The first time I actually achieved "angry" Jordan was surprised and kind of jumped backwards, which ruined the whole thing and made me start laughing.

Speaking of laughing and Jordan; Alan, Ann, and I last night decided to play a prank on Jordan to get her back for various bits of mischief she'd perpetrated this week. It started when Alan filched her backpack after rehearsal (where Jordan inexplicably decided to hang around an empty Sanderson building). We then decided to hang said backpack from the Founder's lamppost. Not satisfied, we enlisted Ann to bring us some more of Jordan's stuff from her room, which we taped to the other lamppost/put in a tree with a huge masking tape arrow pointing to it. It took Jordan a really long time to find all of it (and a surprisingly long time to realize that Ann had been involved even though it was closed dorms and thus neither Alan or I could possibly have gotten her stuff.) She was a fairly good sport, even when we made her root through a bunch of bushes since she didn't believe she'd found everything (which she had, so she was rooting for nothing).

Hmm..that kinda brings us up to today. Sorry for the short post! I promise it will be longer next week!
Until then, have a good week. And Skype me!

Back on Da Hill

Yeah, I know. I'm late again. I can't even claim ignorance since the last time I updated I named the thing "T-minus three weeks". Well, I'm back at Covenant now. Oops. Well, let's dive right in then, shall we?

The last few weeks at home were pretty largely uneventful (with a few notable exceptions). Mostly it was just get up, go to work, veg, sleep, repeat. I did go to see the Expendables with Josh and Adam Bernitt, which proved that while Stallone can do action, he cannot write a very good script. It was basically a lot of explosions, car chases, and gunfights punctuated by the occasional failed attempt to be deep. Good explosions, bad dialogue.

The last week before I left Angela Beall came down from PA and we got the chance to hang out before I left back for Chattanooga. We kayaked on the West River, which was a ton of fun, and then afterward ventured to downtown Annapolis to tour the main drag. From art shops featuring fantastically complicated sculptures to "oriental markets" with lots of Asian kitsch to joke shops selling Bacon tuxedos and mugs with pictures of Henry VIII and wives who disappear as hot liquid is poured into the mug, we discovered that Annapolis is a very eclectic place to be. They even had a shop devoted entirely to hats.

Along the way we met a street painter who told us that Annapolis was the best place for an artist to be compared to other cities, and that "the Mexicans even asked me to leave after I did this." and then proceeded to turn a spray can into a flamethrower to dry his paint. Very talented, mildly crazy? Sounds like most artists I know.

After Annapolis we checked out Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World, which although I will refrain from publishing another nerd-rant about, probably beat out Inception as my favorite movie this summer, check it out by all means.

After Angela left Sunday afternoon, I got down to getting the finishing touches done on packing before my flight on Monday. This was pretty easy since my Mom and Emily had already left for Tennessee for totally unrelated reasons and had taken most of my stuff with them. I just had to pack my suitcase and my new computer.

Oh yeah, I didn't mention that in my last post, but about two and a half weeks ago I got a brand new Macbook Pro 15-inch laptop. I'm really really pleased with it and will probably not go back to PC. Sorry Bill.

So Monday morning this amazing machine wouldn't boot up (through no fault of its own, mind you, I messed it up due to ignorance of Mac software) so on the way to the airport I stopped at the Apple store and got it fixed. Funnily enough, the guy who fixed it happened to be someone I was in fourth grade with and haven't seen since. Odd how that works.

Anyway I caught my flight, and since my sister had classes the next day, she got on the exact same plane and turned around back to DC. Mom and I went to Tony's for dinner (great pasta, if you happen to be in Chattanooga). We did some last minute shopping and then Tuesday I moved back to Brethren.

It's been really awesome seeing everybody again, and Dan Rienstra, my roommate, is a really great guy. He had the brilliant idea to buy a very comfortable green folding chair that has made studying so much easier. After Mom left I went to the O-Team (orientation team) skit night and laughed my head off, then re-connected with Liz and Mary Simpson, Ann Jones, Liz Brink, and Alan Cheney.

Classes started on Thursday, continued into Friday, and nothing very eventful or blog-worthy occurred. I'm taking Principles of Management with Dr. Quatro, Intermediate Accounting with Dodson, Doctrine with Kapic, Statistics with Eames, and Microeconomics with Wescher. Fun stuff. Friday night Alan, Liz, Liz B, and I went to go see Scott Pilgrim again, just as good the second time, and then I read a lot of stuff for classes. I continued reading when I woke up and finished just in time not to have anything left to read during the ridiculously cheesy OSHA video we had to watch this morning. Fail.

Anyway, didn't really do much of note today. Hopefully this semester won't be too busy and I'll remember to update more regularly.

As if...

Anyway, arrievederci!

T-Minus 3 Weeks

With only a few more weeks left before I return to that brownish-adobe-sorta-looking-castle-thingy on a mountain I take classes in, I'm beginning to feel odd about my whole summer. When I came home from Covenant it sort of felt like I was pressing pause on forward progression in my life. Now, after being home for three months, I'm beginning to think I learned a lot more this summer than I thought I would and have grown a lot. Soon, I'll be back at Covenant and it'll be another lurching jump back to a different reality. Almost like waking up from a dream...or a dream within a dream....

...and with that incredibly forced segway, I want to delve into something I only vaguely hinted at in my last post which was Christopher Nolan's new movie: Inception. I didn't really dwell on the movie at all last week when I saw it, mostly because I knew that the post was going to be long already and that I had a good bit to say about it, being a huge Nolan fan. Now, before I begin I know that several people (one in particular) who read this did not like Inception at all. I'm not going to argue with you about it's merits, I can see how people might not like it. They'd be wrong, but still. (I'm also going to do my best to avoid spoilers for those of you who have been amiss and not seen it yet).

Basically, Inception is about a man named Dom Cobb, an "extractor" who can use an IV like machine to enter your dreams with his team of other extractors and basically pull corporate espionage on people by taking ideas or information out of their heads. In order to clear himself of charges which prevent him from going home to his children in the States, Cobb is given the task of pulling off what most extractors believe to be impossible. Instead of stealing an idea, Cobb's team must plant an idea in someone's head (in this case the heir of a corporate empire) and get that person to accept the idea as his own without knowing Cobb put it there. In other words: Inception.

The plot is confusing if you aren't invested in following it (and you didn't come here to read a movie review, so I'll try to be more concise) so I'm not going to go much further than that. I will say that I really enjoyed the movie and found it to be great food-for-thought. Even better was when I realized the whole movie was sort of like a parable about filmmaking itself. This concept might not make sense if you don't know the movie, but think of Cobb as a director, Ariadne as a screenwriter, Arthur as the film crew, and Seito as the producer. Each fills a distinct role within the creation of the dream (or film) for their audience: Fischer and his subconcious. Think about it. What are the filmmakers/Inceptioniers trying to do? Get a message across to the audience, and get them to accept it. They're bound by the fact that if the audience realizes that it's being manipulated, it'll focus on that and the filmmaker has failed, much like when the subconcious realizes the dreamers are there, it rejects them and drives them out. Anyway, nerdy filmbabble over now.

As for what actually happened in my real life this week, I hung out with some friends over the weekend since I didn't have to work for a good couple of days in a row. I did a little bit of back-to-school preparation Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday afternoon my sister was accidentally given a full-caffeine coffee, which is bad since she's rather allergic to caffeine, and got really ill very fast. This resulted in her getting off of work an hour early, but not being able to get home since I couldn't leave my job until my shift was over and nobody else could come and pick her up. Eventually I got her home and now she's feeling better, but at the time I thought she was going to faint in the middle of the napkin section.

Today I relaxed a good bit since I didn't have to go to work until 5pm. Once I got to work I found out that I was going to be in the Bedding section for the first time. "No big deal," I thought. It wasn't. Bedding was perhaps the easiest and most boring assignment I could have gotten. Almost nobody needs help doing anything, since they just walk in, grab what they want, and leave to buy more complicated things. Bedding is the only thing we have fully stocked on the shelves, meaning that they don't have to interact with me at all to buy it, and since there isn't a cash register in Bedding, unless I'm specifically helping someone, they usually just go somewhere else to pay and I just continue to hope somebody needs me to help them. There are also a ton of mirrors over in Bedding, which is creepy. Everywhere I look, four of me are staring back. I swear that one of them kept winking at me.

So yeah. That was this week. I played video games with friends, bought some new clothes and books, worked, and read a book called "The Book of General Ignorance." From this amazing tome, I have learned of the existance of and become gripped by an intense desire to visit the city of Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. This translates to The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarma. Look it up, it's real.

Alrighty then. The Countdown to Covenant has officially begun. Until next week, Adios! And go see Inception!


(I should get an advertising stipend from Warner Bros.)

Be Careful What you Whine About...

...because God has a sense of humor. So last week I spent half the post complaining and making excuses for the lack of things happening in my life...so naturally this week has been packed with craziness.

After last Saturday's tie confusion, Sunday was pretty quiet (aside from nearly being run off the road by a crazy motorcyclist). I mostly just relaxed at home and hung out with my family. And worked. That too. Oh...and a thunderstorm hit which my mother thought was the storm of the century because she was driving the same speed and direction as it for the greater part of her trip home from the grocery store. While watching the storm from the garage, I noticed some kids across the street partaking in a sport that I loved as a child: abject futility. Specifically they were golfing into the wind (which was bending trees over) in blinding rain (with metal golf clubs) and kickballs that had even less ability to go forward in the wind than a regular golf club.

Monday was when the real excitement began. After work I hung around the mall since my accounting class is an hour after my job shift ends most of the time. I got dinner at the Potbelly Sandwich shop my sister works at and then drove to class. On the way there I got caught in a backup caused by workman repairing damage caused by a storm caused by the foolishness of humankind in attempting mad science in Baltimore city. (or maybe just weather patterns, I dunno) Whilst in said backup, I accidentally bumped into the trailer hitch of the person in front of me, resulting in my first time swapping insurance info. Nothing came of it though, and no damage was done, so I think I lucked out.

Tuesday I blitzed a bunch of accounting assignments that I needed to get done and then attempted to stay cool as the heat which has been oppressing our area returned and made even air conditioning feel less comfortable.

Wednesday...was interesting. I started the comedy of errors off by leaving an hour early for work by accident...which would turn out to be a very good thing. As I pulled into the post office to mail a package for my mom, I noticed that the front right wheel was really dragging. I parked and took a peek, which confirmed my fears that the tire had been slashed, and judging by the marks I think my car was attacked by Wolverine. I do not know how the tire managed to slice so big a gash in itself without my noticing. Anyway, I got out to change the tire. I jacked the car up, put it in park, put the parking brake on, and set to work. I got the blown tire off and started to put the new one on...when the jack slipped. The car apparently rolled backwards a bit (despite the parking brake) and the whole minivan came down on top of my right thumb. I think it hit a nerve or something because the whole digit went numb for about 20 minutes except for right at the base. I didn't think it was broken so I went inside and just got an ice pack from the post office staff (who were very nice). By this time a handyman happened to drive by and, noticing my plight, came and changed the tire for me. (Thank you very much, mystery mechanic!)

Now that I was mobile again, my thumb was really starting to hurt. My mom told me that I needed to get it x-rayed, so I drove to the Sears car repair station at the mall and dropped the car off, while my mom came and picked me up. (she had been there when the car fell and afterward). We then drove across the chesapeake bay to my doctor, who told me he wanted my thumb x-rayed. TO THE DIAGNOSTICS CENTER! Once there I told another doctor my story (this one was very surprised that I had ever considered not coming for an x-ray.) She then scanned my hand with a very star-trek looking ceiling mounted x-ray cannon and said that the thumb was fortunately not broken. Back to the doctor we went, and he put me on a course of advil to keep the swelling down and a thumb splint for at least a week to keep it from being further injured.

After all of this I finally got to work.

When I arrived my boss (whom I'd called) checked up on me and then let me get to work. Several coworkers and customers asked about the terminator-hand I had and I told my story about a dozen times that day. Reactions ranged from "Oh my lord!" to "That's why you drink, milk, Geoffry." (directed at the reactor's five year old.)

Thursday my sister and a couple of friends we hadn't seen in a while went to watch a movie, which might have been a dream, or else a movie in disguise as a dream. If you don't know what I'm talking about...then shame on you. If you do, then you'll also know that I thought it was epic, amazing, and totally mind blowing, although the ending didn't bother me as much as most people. I was oddly at peace with not knowing the outcome of the circulating object. If you wonder why I am being so cryptic, I just don't want to spoil anything for you...because you must go and see Inception, or I will be very unhappy with you. :)

So that brings us to today. I began the day by saying goodbye to my family for the weekend. (literally, I woke up and said goodbye. That's what I get for sleeping too much.) They're off to New York to visit my Uncle, and if it wasn't for work I'd be going too. I'm getting paid for that, though, so I'm not complaining. Most of the day I did various house chores, put some work in on a take home accounting test, watched an episode of White Collar on tv, banged my thumb into everything since I'm a klutz, and mailed more packages for my entrepreneurial mother who sold books on amazon after leaving home (and thus the ability to deliver them.)

At Pottery Barn tonight I received, for the first time ever, a "guy question" from a seven year old boy. I had no idea what he meant when he said he needed to ask me a "guy question" but he wouldn't ask his mom and she figured it'd be better to just answer whatever it was. He leaned in really close and whispered, with mild urgency "How on earth do you get out of this place!?"

I nearly fell over laughing.

Other than that it was a pretty normal evening. I did get stuck behind a rear-end collision on the way home, but that was only mildly exciting. Now I'm going to go to bed. And never again will I complain about a lack of excitement in one week. Adios, goodbye, and enjoy August. It's my birth month and therefore blessed above all others.

The Doldrums of Routine

I fear this is destined to be a short update, as my life of late has been less than noteworthy. Go to work, come home, do homework, sleep, go back to work, then take a class. At any rate I'll do my best to find enough happenings to make it a decent post. Here we go.

I don't think I talked any about my accounting class in any of my previous updates, so I'll start there. I decided to take a six-week accounting class at the local community college to help boost my GPA and free up some room in my schedule so I don't have 18 credit semesters down the road. My previous experience with Anne Arundel Community College had prepared me for a thoroughly wacky, yet ultimately positive experience I took Spanish and Math there during my senior year of high school. During those classes, I met among others: A bubbly goth girl, an architect who I think might have been Israeli, or at least of Israeli descent, a crazy spanish professor, and a substitute math professor who wrote "Klaatu Barata Nikto" on the board during a final exam, with no explanation (I later googled it and found out that it was what the alien in "The Day The Earth Stood Still" said which saved the world, apparently.

So needless to say I expected some wackiness, and I got it. The class is great, and only at a community college will you have such a diverse mix of people in a class. An Arab man, a Ukranian girl, a dude who already has his MBA but for some reason is taking Accounting 212, a guy who has left both his wallet and a pair of Oakley's sunglasses behind on succeeding Wednesdays, and a guy who spends class playing what I suspect is illegal online poker. Maybe he counts his losses as "accounts payable". (Did I just make an accounting joke? Yeesh.) We're already almost at the second test, and moving at a good clip towards the end of the class. Kinda weird considering we've only had 5 classes. Overall I'm liking it, so I guess that's good.

In addition to classes, I'm working more and more as time goes on. My bosses have been giving me more hours, which is good. However, depending on how slow/busy we are, time can move pretty dang slowly. If we're empty, and I've got nothing to do to occupy my mind, no matter how long my shift is it feels like an eternity. On the other hand, if we're busy, and I have plenty to do, an eight and a half hour shift can feel like ten minutes. It's hit-or-miss I guess. I'm especially glad to just have something to do during the days. Back when I didn't have a job I was unbelievably BORED. Now that I'm at Pottery Barn, my life feels much more balanced.

If you're reading this post for the first time then congratulations! Everything from here until the last paragraph is material which was not in the original blog post since it happened the night after I wrote it. Consider yourself as reading the "Special Extended Edition" of WDJP.

Well, since originally writing this entry, I realized that it was sorely lacking in the sort of semi-amusing life incidents I normally try to stock this thing with. Fortunately, life decided to heap such things upon my head during the shift I just finished working. Strangely enough, for the first time, I heard comments about my wearing a tie to work every day, and not just one or two, but about six different incidents centered around my tie today, and I have never before even had one person mention it before now, and I've worked at Pottery Barn for about a month.

First off, about ten minutes after I got there, my coworker Mary asked "Why do you always wear a tie? Nobody else does, they all just wear collared shirts." I replied that I actually preferred having a tie on if I had to wear a collared shirt, just because that's what I'm used to, since I spent my high school years as a debate nerd. Next, a coworker who had never worked with me before started acting kinda weird and showing me around the story like I didn't work there. About ten minutes later I discovered that, because of my tie, she had assumed that I was an inspector sent by corporate headquarters to check up on performance.

As if this wasn't enough notice of my neck adornment for one day, two hours later some employees from other companies in the mall owned by Williams-Sonoma Corp. (which owns Pottery Barn) were shopping, and they kept asking me design questions, "in my professional opinion." Finally they realized that, contrary to what my tie had apparently led them to believe, I was not the new visual coordinator but was in fact just a dude who had a tie on. Even this was not the end of my adventures in confusing people with a striped piece of silk. On my dinner break no less, I was approached in Borders by a man who wanted to know where he could find the biography of Nelson Mandela, only for him to realize that I was not an employee of Borders, but was, in fact, just an overdressed browser. Finally, after we closed, the final tie incident occured. I had been teasing Katherine, one of my coworkers, while I was stuffing some pillows, and she decided to retaliate by announcing loudly to the entire remaining workforce over her walkie-talkie that I wore a tie "because I was a proud member of the Williams-Sonoma Workforce." Fortunately, no one else heard because unbeknownst to her (and I somehow forgot to mention to her) that her battery light was flashing and the walkie wasn't transmitting.

Other than that I've not really been doing a whole lot of any interest. Once I save up enough to get my new computer I hope to make a video out of the "Real History of the Roman Empire" notes I wrote on Facebook, but writing about what I plan to do is sorta cheating, so I'll go ahead and end here. Until next time, sayonara!

Outdoor Pillows, Box Cutters, and Neil Patrick Harris

Whew! It's been a long time since I updated and for that I sincerely apologize. There just...hasn't been a whole lot worth writing about going on. Last time I updated was right after Nats, and since then I've pretty much just been job hunting, though I'm glad to say I was finally successful (more on that later). Unless you wanted an entire blog post devoted to my adventures in job hunting (I applied at X...and they didn't need me. So I applied at Y...and they didn't need me. So I applied at z...and they didn't need me. Then out of desperation I tried to apply at the solution to the equation...but since X,Y, and Z were all undefined they were stumped and couldn't hire me.) I suppose this is the best option after all (deft rear-end covering maneuver, yes?).

So...let's see. Last Tuesday I got a phone call following up an interview following several phone calls following up an application and was hired as a sales associate at Pottery Barn in the Annapolis Mall. Basically my job is to greet "guests" as we're supposed to call customers, see if they need help, then ring them up when I'm done. Also, if I'm closing I have some basic re-stocking work to do as well. All and all it's not a bad gig, and once I figure out where/what everything is (seriously, half of the things we sell I swear we just made up names for. "Yes, the Sienna Paisley Cross-Stitched Gromet-Socketed Duvet Flatware Set is just over here ma'am, next to the glass thingies.")

My awesome coworkers/bosses are a real benefit of working at PB. Since the store is kinda starting from scratch (new managers, new sales staff, new stockroom workers) there really aren't many people who've been there more than a few months to a year. In addition to the extremely friendly attitudes of my coworkers and employee-focused policies that the company has, this relative freshness has made starting the job much less intimidating (since most of the stuff I'm figuring out, they're still figuring out to, and rather than them telling me how to do it, we just figure it out together.)

In between shifts at Pottery Barn, I've noticed an alarming trend this past two weeks. Nathan Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris are invading my life. At first I didn't think much of it, but they KEEP SHOWING UP everywhere I turn around. It's like being stalked by famous people. Last week I went to a friends house, where I was introduced to a show called "How I Met Your Mother," with Neil Patrick Harris playing one of the main characters. I then returned home and two days later all the commercials on Hulu are for Castle, a show where Nathan Fillion is one of the main characters. This seemed innocuous, but then later that day I recognized Fillion's voice in a voice acting role, looked it up, and sure enough...there he was. Creepy, but not a trend, I hear you say. Just wait. This week I was trying to ignore the sounds of Regis and Kelly, which my mom had accidentally left playing on the TV while I was checking my e-mail, and who should be hosting a commercial but Neil Patrick Harris. As if that wasn't bad enough, my sister told I should watch a short film called Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and when the title screens rolled I realized that the two main roles are played by NATHAN FILLION AND NEIL PATRICK HARRIS!!! Coincidence? I think not!

Aside from being stalked by celebrity actors, today I was schedules to work a 9 hour shift in the stockroom (with an hour for lunch, which I guess makes it an 8 hour shift with an hour for lunch tacked on at the end.) Normally I work sales, (hence "sales associate") but for some reason there was a gap in the stockroom schedule and some shifts needed covering. Since I haven't finished training for sales, my boss asked if I would mind putting it on hold for a week, covering two shifts in the stockroom, and then picking up sales again. "Sure," I said "no problem." And it wasn't. I'm really tired and my feet hurt, but otherwise it wasn't bad. The morning was hectic because we got a massive shipment and had to unload it, but my two coworkers for the day (the disco/showtunes-loving Richard and Jay the helium-breathing, normally deep-voiced black dude (who was a riot) showed me what to do and we got it done. The rest of the day was spent slicing open boxes with a box cutter and putting the items where they go on the shelves.

So now I'm home and am tired, however, I felt I could not justify going another day without publishing at least something to WDJP here. I need to stick to my schedule better. My bad. :)

See ya next week! (feel free to put the spurs to me if I'm lazy about it.)

The Highest Level...The Cream of the Crop...The Bee's Knees...

For those of you who don't know, in high school I competed in the National Christian Forensics and Communication Association speech and debate league. Every two weeks during the second half of the school year I would don a suit and drive with my family to a random location about the country (I believe determined by throwing debate pens at a map of churches in America) to compete in speech events and debate. After graduating, I'm no longer eligible to compete, which means that I am allowed to judge the events, and in fact since judges are always in demand I really couldn't politely have not come to judge, had I even wanted to miss the *drumroll, trumpets, and acapella choir of triumph* The 2010 NCFCA National Championship Tournament at Regent University in Virginia Beach Virginia Boy Do We Need To Shorten The Name!

To those students I know who competed and those who will compete next year I have just one thing to say: HA! HA! and again HA! I don't have to wear a suit to these things anymore. I can bask in my casualness and snigger at the suffering of the formalwear masses.

Ahem... now that I've fulfilled a lifelong wish...

Tuesday morning I hopped in the car and popped in an audiobook chronicling the journey of a writer down China's version of Route 66 for the four hour drive to Regent University for the tournament. Along the way I followed the instructions of Lady Tom-Tom (our GPS), and only killed a smattering of pedestrians. I did notice several people I'm sure had to take the Sticker-Man's Oath, though, from the number of bumper stickers they were sporting. Four hours and several thousand miles down China Road later, I arrived at Regent, only to get lost in the parking lot. Oops.

I walked over to Robertson Hall, which was to become my home for most of the week, as it was Judge HQ and also home to the much-coveted Judge Hospitality Table, aka the Cornucopia of Plenty. Mom met me at the door and helped me get what I needed to do figured out. I checked in, grabbed a nametag, and went over to Judge Orientation. Here they told me how to judge both debate and speech, which I knew how to do already but it's a requirement to make sure that everyone judges according to the rules. I then got the dreaded "Alumni Orientation" which includes a list of do's and don'ts. Here's a few examples:

1. Do not doodle on your judging sheet. (Someone once doodled a guillotine and didn't think this would bother the debaters.)

2. Do not be overly critical or mean.

3. Do not ask out the high schoolers. (Apparently cradle-robbing by college students is a problem? I'd have thought there were enough members of the opposite gender in their schools.)

After a stern warning that asking a girl out solely on her ability to convince me of the need for change in our current coal ash disposal policies was a bad idea, I headed out to try and judge my first round, only to be pulled aside for an alumni skit meeting. Each year at the mid-tournament banquet where the competitors advancing to outrounds (debate octofinals and speech semifinals) are announced, that year's chosen Alumni Players present a skit for amusement and to stall so that the tabulation team has more time to put all the results together.

This year I had been allowed to join the group, which has to have been one of the best groups of alumni we've ever had in terms of the quality of the people I met through it, at least. I got to play an Avatar from the movie in the second bit (making fun of policy debate) and an "Extemporaneous Speaking Biathlon" competitor in the third bit. We worked on the skit for about an hour, during which I consider to have actually met Mr. Mike Larimer, president of the league.

I'd met Mr. Larimer before when I was competing, but I count this time as the first time I met the real him. Mr. Larimer has long been famed as the mustache-sporting man who encourages, congratulates, and warns the competitors at Nats (as nationals is called) not to get too big a head before announcing who advanced or who won events. However, I got a glimpse behind the mustache this time around and met the hilarious, somewhat goofy man that lives behind it. After entertaining us with his impression of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, Mr. Larimer helped us with some of the script writing for the skit, and then, unable to ignore the buzzing in his phone telling him to go to a meeting any longer, he bid us farewell.

After the scriptwriting session, I grabbed some dinner from the Cornucopia and went over to the ballot table, where judges are assigned to rounds after assuring they don't know any of the competitors personally and haven't competed against them before, to avoid bias. I was assigned to help judge the second round of persuasive speaking. I heard eight speeches, ranging in topics from the church's need to love homosexuals to the right of citizens to own handguns. Then, after all the speakers were finished, I had to rank them 1-8 and give comments and constructive criticism on my ballots. *gulp*. After poring over the notes I'd taken and remembering the speeches, I finally finished and took the pack over to Ballot Check, where staffers make sure I haven't accidentally ranked 3 people first, or written "DIE DIE DIE" on any of my ballots. Unfortunately they did find one problem with my ballots, in that I'd forgotten to write my name on them. Oops again.

After a good night's sleep on a pull out sofa back at the hotel, I headed back to the tournament Wednesday morning. Immediately I was placed as the judge in a Lincoln-Douglas debate round. By way of explanation, LD debate is a debate between two speakers, who are each given an allotment of speaking time divided into 2 speeches for the "Affirmative" team and 3 for the "Negative" team. The Affirmative team attempts to prove the statement "Competition is superior to Cooperation in the pursuit of Excellence" (or whatever that year's topic is) true, and the Negative speaker tries to disprove it. I got to judge two very charismatic guys named Isaac Somers and Kasey Leandry. After 45 minutes, I still hadn't picked a winner, and had to go back to the judge room and puzzle until I could figure out whose arguments were most compelling. If this paragraph has convinced you that I am a colossal nerd, you're probably right.

I took the following speech round off from judging and caught up with a lot of old friends from my time in NCFCA, including Matt Silver, a fellow alumni, and a bunch of current competitors. After that I was plunged into another LD round, followed by a lunch break and a round of Impromptu speaking, where speakers get a topic two minutes before they have to give a five minute speech on it. After that I headed over to the banquet hall to help prep for the alumni skit that night. We built props, practiced lines, marveled at the fanciness of the dining hall, and made some last-minute logistical plans. Then, the banquet hall began to fill as competitors and parents made their way in. At this point two of the banquet hall staff struck up a conversation with me about homeschooling and our league, and this carried on for about 45 minutes until the banquet began. I was pleased with the interest and my chance to dispel some common myths about homeschooling (i.e. we're all introverted loners who live secluded lives) as well as meet some great people.

The banquet itself was far better than any banquet we've had thus far. Cesar salad, broiled chicken over a rice pilaf with beans, and chocolate raspberry cake. The wait staff were very attentive and made sure my water glass never ran out, resulting in a pressing need to visit the men's room two minutes before we were scheduled to perform. Oops part 3. Fortunately I wasn't the only one and we were able to sneak out and get back before our start time. Overall the skit went very well, and I was pleased with it. Mr. Larimer arrived at the end and we had the pleasure of introducing him and his package of names who would be advancing. Again the man behind the mustache emerged, and he was heard to comment on how boring his bio was, and when identified as "the man in the suit right there" promptly removed his coat and feigned ignorance.

Thursday I returned to judging, though this time I got a chance to judge a Team Policy round, which is similar to LD, but it's twice as long, each team has 2 speakers, and they were trying to convince me that the U.S. Environmental Policy should/shouldn't be changed. After that I hung out for a while and took a few rounds off before returning to judge LD Quarterfinals later on. While waiting for the announcements at the end of the day, I found a bunch of students playing "ninja" and joined in, having learned the game at Covenant. It was fun, but after being accidentally punched in a sensitive region, I retired to chat with some friends. Later that night, a group of us went to the midnight premier of the A-Team movie, which I'm happy to report was the best movie I've seen this summer.

Friday, the final day I judged Team Policy Semifinals in the morning and then signed on for speech finals. I was assigned Duo Interpretation, which is essentially a two man show with no props, eye contact, or physical interaction between the speakers allowed. Little did I know this was being held in Regent's theater auditorium, which was massive and packed with students watching the final round in this popular event. It was rather intimidating, especially since all I could think to write on the ballots was "That was amazing!" for almost every speech. I saw a rendition of Charlie and the Chocolate factory and a ten minute version of West Side Story, which was hard to stay focused on because I kept hearing Justin Johns reading all of Tony's lines. It was very good though.

Friday evening the alumni helped with parts of the final Awards Ceremony. Being backstage in the auditorium made me highly jealous of Regent's theater. Comparing it to Sanderson was like comparing your old, faithful pickup truck with a shiny, yet useless Lamborghini. I took solace in the face that Regent's backstage, though impressive, had a sterile feel to it that (to me) meant that the actors couldn't possibly be permitted to have fun while in it. Yes...that's what I told myself....

We presented a box full of thank-you cards to Mr. Larimer on stage and then stood in the staging area to congratulate the winners in the various events. Several of my good friends did extremely well, including Jay Reid, who took 7th place in Humorous Interpretation, Susanna Sewall, who did well in something but the cheering was too loud for me to hear what it was (oops pt. 4), and Ellie Lewis, my former Duo Interp partner, who took 2nd place in Thematic Interpretation. Congrats guys! And congrats to everyone else I know who won and I didn't hear! (oops pts. subjective to the number of applicants)

After the awards ceremony I helped distribute the packets of judge ballots, which had been arranged so that each competitor had an envelope containing every ballot from every round and every judge who had seen their speeches/debates. I had the box of ballots with the names from M-N in it, and I just have to say to you M-N'ers out there: You let me down!! I had way more ballot packs left over than anybody else. What gives guys? ;)

That night Region 9 (competitors from Maryland, Virginia, and ostensibly Delaware, although Delaware NCFCA'rs have utterly failed to exist) headed to Fuddrucker's to spend the night eating burgers, drinking milkshakes, and generally partying. During the night I: ate buffalo, swapped stories with lots of old friends, busted several guts laughing, was called a fish by Zach Voell, reinstated as a Bozo by Suzu, and lamented Levi Payne's covers of several Lady Gaga songs.

Today was the post-nats Region 9 Beach Party. I spent the day playing Ultimate Frisbee, dodging waves, burning the soles of my feet off on the scalding sands of Hell at the top of the beach, absorbing sunlight, and generally having a great time. Tomorrow we drive home, and I return to the job hunt. It's been a good week.

Until next time, adios!

The Most Pointless Crime in the World

What happens when Chinese nerds have too much time on their hands? I'll tell you a bit later on when I get to earlier today, but I don't want to get ahead of myself (besides, if I tell you all of the interesting bits now you'll just stop reading.)

Since we got back from the beach I've gone back to job hunting, still unsuccessfully. I'll keep going, but I'm beginning to think my only choice soon will be falling in with the mafia side of my family and performing contract hits for money. Anybody know where I can get a garroting wire? In all seriousness I have a possibility at Macy's working in sales, but that's starting to dwindle as they still haven't contacted me about the interview they said they wanted. So until then I'll keep looking (oh, and if you need someone disappeared... I'm here.)

Beyond job hunting the first couple of days this week were rather dull. Wednesday I went over to Josh Bernitt's house, where we caught up and played a game about a man in Texas in 1911. Think John Wayne meets the slow-mo action sequences of the Matrix.

Last night I was both in charge o making dinner and in getting my sister to a birthday party. To do so, I had to use the GPS for the first time. It took some getting used to not knowing where I was going until 6 feet before I had to turn, and this wasn't helped by the fact that our GPS system likes to mumble. This does not bode well for my upcoming car trip to VA. More on that later though, first, as I promised, I will explain the Chinese thing. Well, today, after helping my neighbors move most of their possessions into storage (they're moving) I checked my e-mail, and found a strange e-mail from Blizzard Entertainment, telling me that my password for World of Warcraft had been successfully changed.

Now, this was odd both because I had not requested a password change and because my account has been inactive and unpaid for months. I don't play WoW anymore, so this raised alarm bells. Five minutes later, they sent me another e-mail telling me that I'd been suspended for conducting "real world cash for gold" transactions. Que??? I didn't even have the game installed on my computer. Thus, I checked my recent e-mail activity and found that China had been accessing my e-mail account remotely. This led me to one of two conclusions:

a) My old World of Warcraft account is of national importance to the Chinese government.

b) I was the victim of a bunch of nerds from china who wanted to use my account to sell non-existent money to people dumb enough to want to pay for fake money instead of playing the game they pay real money for access to to get it.

I figured the latter was more likely. I changed my password and locked them out, so no harm was done. Basically what happened was that someone in China hacked my e-mail account, sent a password change e-mail to my account, changed my password for WoW, and then started using my characters to sell in-game money for real money to nerds. (or people who own this) The really weird thing is that in order to do this, they had to re-activate my account, which costs money because you buy game time, and as I don't play the game I didn't have any. Instead of using my billing information which was in the account, the Chinese guy paid for it himself. Basically, the only practical result of all of this criminal activity was that he gave me $15 worth of game time for a game I don't have. What a nice hoodlum!

So aside from international nerd crime today's been relaxed. Tuesday I'm heading down to Virginia Beach to help judge at the National Speech and Debate championships for the league I competed in in High School. I learned this morning that I'm also going to be in the Alumni program/skit thing, which basically means that Wednesday night I get to get up in front of a large crowd of assembled homeschoolers with some other league alumni and essentially put on an episode of SNL. Fun!

Until next time, or until some Korean dude hacks my e-mail and starts blogging about his kimchii collection, see ya!

Hmm...Crispy?

Well, I'm back from Topsail Island, NC, where I've spent the past week baking in the sun, swimming, reading, and walking on the beach. Overall, great fun, want to specifically mention a couple of events which stand out against the sandy backdrop.

We drove up Saturday and arrived late in the afternoon at "Beach Coma" a rental house halfway down the island. Upon entering we discovered that the house had been completely remodeled since the last time we were there, which was quite cool. In addition, we found that as usual, my mom had come prepared with a plan of how things were going to work. This was not just any plan, however, this was a color-coded excel spreadsheet complete with dates, food to be served at each meal of the day, who was to prepare said meal, and who was in charge of cleaning it up. This would have worked great, had it not been for the fact that my mom was the only person who consistently forgot to read the chart before starting in on a meal. As a result, (quite humorously) the plan was pretty much obsolete by day two. Mom did manage to cook/clean whenever she was supposed to, but the rest of the schedule was thrown into disarray by the maternal instinct to just tell me and my sister to do it. :) She would always apologize for it afterward, but I'd was more amused than anything else. (and we really didn't mind doing in the first place)

The next day my aunt, uncle, and cousins came down for the day and we managed to get some good time in the water as well as head down the beach to look for shark's teeth. (Which are everywhere on Topsail, as I may have mentioned before, due to currents in the Atlantic. Seriously, it's like walking in a giant mouth. 9 times out of 10 if you crouch down and look at the ground, there will be a shiny, black tooth sitting right there in front of you.)

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were mixed between rain, overcast weather, and the occasional patches of sunlight. While some of my family was rather cantankerous about it, (my swimming-addicted sister) I actually enjoyed the excuse to just read. Over the course of the week I managed to catch up on all the reading I meant to do over the course of the second semester at Covenant. All told, I started and finished:

"The Kite Runner" By Khaled Hosseini: Tells the story of Amir, an Afghan boy who grows up in Kabul, and then emigrates to America with his father during the Soviet occupation.

"A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini: Tells the story of two women, Leila and Mariam, who both end up married to the violent middle aged shoemaker, Rasheed.

"The Tipping Point" by Malcom Gladwell: A look at why social epidemics (from crime waves to fashion trends) get started and what is necessary to cause a given idea to "tip".

"Blink" by Malcom Gladwell: An examination of the power of unconscious thought, from first impressions to the tiny, involuntary facial expressions we all make which often betray when we lie.

"Outliers" by Malcom Gladwell: A look at how situations, cultural legacies, and blind luck conspire to overthrow our traditional view of successful individuals.

"What the Dog Saw" by Malcom Gladwell (I did read other things than just him, I promise.) A collection of articles from the New Yorker, ranging from why late-night infomercials work to how the dog whisperer handles hopeless canines.

"The Topsail Island Realty Brochure" by unknown office drones: A catalog of houses available for sale or rent on Topsail Island.

"Nutrition facts for Honey Bunches of Oats" by Gen. Mills (presumably retired if he's writing for a living): The nutrients and amounts of said nutrients contained in one serving of Honey Bunches of Oats, both with and without 1/3 cup of skim milk.

Thursday the weather cleared and we were able to head back out to the beach and bake for a while. Although mostly I successfully avoided sunburn, I did manage to scorch my chest a bit, which is an odd feeling. Thursday evening my mom, sister, and I went mini-golfing. Despite the best efforts of a small, flightless, sleeping infant bird to terrify my competitors into taking 5 stroke penalties to skip the hole it was snoozing on, I still lost to my sister and tied my mom. I blame irregularities in the Earth's rotation as I putted.

Friday we soaked up the last bits of sun we could before packing up in the evening to come home. Whether due to the amount of sun which my cabeza absorbed or due to some strange phenomenon, Friday night I had a BIZZARE dream where I was Freddy Kreuger running away from myself (David P.) wielding a "Wet Floor" sign and chasing Freddy-Me through the hallways of a middle school we used to use for church meetings when I was a kid. Needless to say, waking up was a pleasant and welcome change.

This morning we packed the rest of the gear up and hit the road. My sister and mom traded turns at the wheel as we drove back so that Em could get some time logged towards completing the requirements to get a full driver's license. Once home, I moved a TV around so that our neighbors (who've sold their house but can't move till December) will have one to watch while they rent out our basement apartment. Then I finally got back onto my workout schedule and now I'm writing about everything. Phew! That brings us up to now, as I sit in front of my computer and listen to "Back in the U.S.S.R." by the Beatles. I have a job interview as a stocker at Macy's on Tuesday (and yes, I know what it sounds like if you read that sentence aloud.) Hopefully that goes well, and I can finally stop worrying about finding a job.

Till next week: shalom!

Radioactive Apples on the Beach

As of now I'm still job hunting, though that may change in the next twenty minutes. My friend Adam's working for a contractor, and he said he'd talk to his boss, who's looking for more help. Otherwise I'm still unemployed.

Since I last blogged....not much has happened. I've been applying/nagging just about everyone I can find to get a job. In addition, I've been chilling out with my sister quite a bit. Next week my family's heading off to Topsail Island, NC (you're not allowed to say "top SAIL" its pronounced "topsal".) to chill at the beach for a while. Topsail is home to both the largest deposit of shark's teeth in the general East Coast region as well as the best frappuchinos in the world. We'll be there till next Saturday, so it should be a good vacation.

Actually, I was writing this post Adam called, and while his boss might hire me, he's not sure if he's going to hire anyone at this point. So, I'm still looking for a job. Phooey.

I've been a bit ADD this go round, sorry. Earlier this week I actually cooked something. Hmm... I don't actually know what it was called, but it involved apples. I don't think it tasted bad... and nothing exploded, or mutated... there was a bit of geiger-counter wackiness, but what's a bit of gamma radiation, eh?

Anyway, until something interesting happens, I'll be available by skype: my skype name's "davidjpick" (and that's actually right for all the people whom I told differently). Adios, goodbye, and make sure to keep in touch.

Homeward Bound

Well, I'm home again after the completion of finals, may they rest uneasily and have a terrible afterlife. Anyway, they didn't go as bad as that makes them sound, things were actually okay. After finals ended I said my goodbyes to everyone on the hall, specifically those who aren't coming back, like Robbie or Will. Friday my mom came to pick me up, and we got the chance to go to dinner and catch up. It was good to get to talk to her. Saturday we went to graduation, said goodbye to a lot of graduating seniors, and hit the road home. Well, hit the road home after the obligatory haircut, which mom photographed and then e-mailed to several people. Grr.....

The drive home took about 11 hours total, but it was made less boring by the fact that Mom and I had a lot of things to talk about, since I'd missed a lot of things back home during the year I was gone. We chatted and caught up, and then listened to a couple of books on tape. Finally, we got home Sunday afternoon, and found that Dad and Em had prepared a fantastic dinner, with more of Dad's bread (he still makes a ton of that apparently.) Em also told me that last week, during the final cooking class, she fell off the pier, which I found amusing.

Monday I started in earnest to try to land a job. I had an interview at the Lego store, and I'm still waiting on them to tell me whether they want to hire me, they said they'd call me this week. I'm also waiting for a call from Red Robin, to set up an interview. They also promised to call this week. Calling other places hasn't produced any results. Hopefully one of the two places which expressed interest still wants to hire me.

That brings me up to this morning. Umm... I took a shower and walked the dog....my laundry's done...Oh! and I wrote this blog entry. It's been an exciting morning. Ok then, until next week (I promise) I'll see you later.

The Final Blog Update While You Can Still Call Me Freshman

Well, it's been a while, but I've been busy! With finals approaching and Math class still a pain in whichever part of the body you prefer I've had my hands full. Let's see, since Niada closed (a pretty spectacular success for Alysha, I think :) ) I've been acting in the Directing class finals for both Liz and Alysha (although getting shoved over is about all I did in Alysha's. Does that count as method acting?) For Liz's I got to play Oberon the fairy king in a scene from Midsummer Night's Dream. It was fun, and I hope we did well enough to get Liz an A.

After Niada closed, we had the Cast Party. This time we headed to Issac Spiecher's apartment and had pizza while watching Iron Man. Fun stuff. Issac threw Hershey's kisses at our car as we left (he explained later that he was throwing them at me... another "fangirl" reference.) Later that week directing class rehearsals started in earnest, so in Liz's scene we had Katelyn as Dewdrop the fairy, Winter as Titania, and Chloe Payne as Puck, although about a week before the we presented for Liz's grade she had to re-cast Jordan as Puck. Kudos to her for learning all her lines in a week! It went pretty well I think. Alysha did an earlier scene from Midsummer, and we had the hilarious duo of Mitch and Justin playing Oberon and Puck, respectively. I played Demetrius, a love-struck stooge chasing after Mary Simpson's character, Helena. Basically I just run on stage, back into her accidentally, ask why she doesn't love me, get pushed over, then run off after her. She had way too much fun with that, I think.

This week went by fast, with much work being put into Math and Arabic. I came to realize that if you summarize the "stories" that accompany each chapter of my Arabic textbook you get quite a jaded picture of the world our two characters inhabit. Check it out.

Story One: Maha
Maha is an Egyptian girl living in New York. Her dad works for the United Nations and her mom is a prof. at her University. She never sees her parents since they are so busy, she has no friends because she dislikes people in general, and she hates New York for a variety of reasons. I dub her a whiner.

Story Two: Khalid
Khalid is a twenty-something teaching assistant at the University of Cairo. He wasn't allowed to study literature like he wanted, so he had to go to business school because his dad thought that business had a better future. Now, since his mom died and his grandmother won't let him sleep past six A.M., he has to raise his brother's, because apparently Dad can't be bothered. Khalid spends most of his free time in sports bars playing chess and smoking, a habit he hides from his grandmother. Reverse Cinderella?

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Khalid and Maha are first cousins, and that later on Maha apparently goes to Egypt and they get romantically involved.

What???


Anyway, after the parade of homework and studying and putting off studying by writing silly articles, we arrived at the weekend. Friday night we had the dueling events of the Sock Hop hosted by the ballroom club and the Invisible Children presentation in the Chapel. I went to the dancing lessons at the Sock Hop first, reasoning that I could come back after the Invisible Children presentation. Invisible Children is an organization working to put Ugandan children orphaned by AIDS and the war (which until recently devastated the country) through school. They showed a very powerful video and then two Ugandan people (the grandfather of the boy who was the main subject of the video, and an IC employee on the ground in Uganda) spoke to us. It was very good, and I was about to donate some of the eighteen dollars I have to them, when I realized I couldn't find my wallet. I spent about an hour and a half looking for it before I finally found it next to the sink in the Sanderson Men's room. How it got there I have no idea, I'm just glad I found it. Later that night Isaiah and I watched Blade II and enjoyed riffing it at every opportunity for taking itself WAY to seriously.

Saturday night we had a double feature in Jordan's room: Zombieland and Hot Fuzz. Gareth Jones, myself, Liz Brink, Liz Simpson, Alan Cheney, and Jordan herself spent the evening laughing and (at least I) enjoyed the fact that since Jordan hadn't seen the movies, I could have fun keeping her in the dark as to what was about to happen, kinda like watching LOST with Josh Bernitt. :) Needless to say it was awesome.

Sunday was pretty quiet, although I did finish my penultimate math assignment and started on the final one. It's almost done, and then my nightmare of a class is mostly over. We went to the Founder's picnic, played cornhole and frizzcup, had hamburgers, and generally had a good time.

That brings us up to today, and pretty much the only memorable thing was dinner. Me, Ann, Jordan, Lauren Hartzell, Zach McElrath, Laura Vickery, and briefly Chris Musser had a great time telling stories and eventually Jordan literally dragged my chair (with me in it) about fifty feet away from the table. I can't even remember why, but it was hilarious.

So, that's it for now. I'll try and update again on the flipside of finals. Oy vey...

"I think you are confused...there's no one there."

It hasn't been a week, but I wanted to blog about the brush up rehearsal we had tonight while it was still fresh. For anyone unfamiliar with the way theater works at Covenant, we usually have one rehearsal, very informal, right before the second weekend starts, just to get everyone back into the show and make sure they remember their lines. Since Niada was in pretty good shape last weekend, the pressure was off and we could have some fun with it, especially because Alysha was a good sport about all the joking.

I've tried to put together a full, chronological list of the pranks we pulled, but I'm sure I've missed some, so I apologize in advance.

1. Wes Simmonds

2. In the first scene the "drowning" scene was exaggerated to comic heights.

3. Apparently the only really preplanned prank. As I walked onto the stage for my first scene, I heard a lot of screaming coming from the audience. Since I was in the scene, it didn't really register to me what they were screaming, or that they were coming on stage until Liz Simpson tackled me and Ann Jones and Jordan joined her in grabbing me and screaming. This was supposed to be the "screaming fangirls" that Alysha has joked would jump me ever since I started playing Kade.

4. Jacob Corbett pretended to be talking on a cell phone while setting up the scene in Istre's cavern.

5. Wes Simmonds got slapped.

6. The transformation of Merin from mermaid to human was apparently pretty funny, but I didn't see it since I was backstage.

7. Kade told Dorian to "king me" instead of "checkmate" during the chess scene.

8. Wes Simmonds some more. :)

9. Since Chris Hartwell wasn't there, instead of saying "I think you are confused, this is Aislyn" Kade said "I think you are confused, there's no one there."

10. The Sea King, when told what it will cost to save Merin's life, fell to his knees and screamed "NOOOOOOO!!" then after saving her muttered "she was right about you..." before leaving.

11. Kade carried Merin offstage instead of walking off with her.

Anyway, I'm positive I've forgotten a ton of them, and I know that we tried to get "Under the Sea" to play during Curtain call, but tech difficulties prevented it. We had a blast, and I can honestly say it was the most fun I've had at a brush up at Covenant.

After brush up we went to see the Senior Art Gallery in the Library, which was really amazing and I was thoroughly impressed. Among the pieces was a sculpture representing two ways people respond to God's calling and gifts, a set of hand-thrown pottery, several sculpted hands, a set of really cool paintings, a photo-stitched thing I wasn't sure what to call but it was cool, and a neat dresser/book/bunch of other cool stuff. There were a lot of people there, so I didn't get as good a look as I would have liked at some of the pieces, but it was still awesome. Afterward Liz, Audrey Brown, Jared Menard and I headed to the Blink and hung out for a while.

Well, only 2 1/2 more weeks left 'till finals. I'm really ready to be done with all of the classes (though I could hang out with my friends a good while longer). Just gotta push through!

I'm done.

:)

"You look like a...Patella?"

Well, I was accosted today about my failure to update my blog (and by accosted I mean that I am writing this blog post with a knife at my throat.) Anyway...

The last time I think I left off right before Easter break, which means that's probably where I should start... but I'm not going to. I'm going to back up and tell you about something that happened just before we left.

Friday was technically the first day of Easter break, which meant that there was no Great Hall for me to go and get food at. Thus, I woke up, learned this, and resigned myself to a diet of Jolly Ranchers, water, and Icebreakers. That is, I was resigned until Katie Jenkins saved my by having my come down to her apartment, where she provided me with pizza, fruit salad, and someone to talk to. I am extremely thankful and so are the roommates I was planning on eating before long.


This year Mitch invited me to join the group heading to his house for Easter break (he also managed to get me to agree to marry one of his sisters before I realized what I was saying. Nothing wrong with either of them, I just hadn't met them at the time.) So, come Friday afternoon we loaded up Jon Davis' car and drove down to Katelyn's apartment to pick her up. By the end of the five minute drive, I was sufficiently (and justifiably) terrified J.D.'s driving to switch over to ride in the car with Katelyn and Mitch's friend Michelle. This wasn't much better. Finally, I car hopped again to Angela's car at the florists shop she works at and found that thankfully Alan Cheney can drive smoothly.

The car ride was pretty uneventful, except for the time we formed into a V formation on the highway and the last hour of the ride when Alan got a nosebleed and drove the rest of the ride one handed... in a stick-shift. After we got to Mitch's we met his mom (who is awesome!) and debated taking out the Golf Cart for a spin. We didn't all fit, so Mitch introduced J.D. and I to Prince of Persia until the girls got back. After dinner, we played a late night game of Pictionary, which was hilarious because J.D. was mildly buzzed and had trouble drawing the things on the cards. In addition, even though we won, Angela and I had a roller coaster ride getting to the end of the board since she's a graduated art major and I can't draw a straight line.

Saturday Alysha and Liz came and hung out with us for the day. We spent a bunch of time at a strip mall looking into various stores and letting the girls try on dresses. While in Books-a-Million, we found a rather amusing book: the Serenity Roleplaying Game. Anybody who knows Serenity or Firefly will understand that reading through this provided us with a good couple of laughs. Since everyone in our group had been "dubbed" a certain member of the cast we each got pictures holding the book open to our character's entry. I'm still trying to get them off my phone, so look on FB for them once in a while, they might show up. For those of you who don't know Firefly... shame on you.

Sunday we went to Mitch's church and everyone but Alan and I sang in the choir. Sunday afternoon I actually met Mitch's sisters who I supposed to marry (a fact Mitchell made sure to remind me of before they got there) and we had a hamburger cookout provided by Mr. Mitchell. Oh, and in case this is confusing anyone, Mitch's last name is Mitchell, he doesn't go by his first name. So when I say Mr. Mitchell, I mean his dad. Anyway, we had a great time and by the time we got back to school we were all sufficiently rested and ready to start again (at least, as ready as one can be...)

Since Niada opened last night I should mention tech week. By now, if you've been reading this blog for a while you'll know what tech week is, but just in case, tech week's when everything comes together for a play and we start running the full show with lights, costumes, sounds, and scene changes thrown together just like they'll be when we're doing the show for an audience.

So, opening night was last night, and things went really well! Everything came together, we had a pretty good crowd for a Thursday, and we got some unexpected publicity from the Student Development Office. About two hours before the show, they sent out an e-mail which proves that they don't always read things before they send them out. Mitchell had sent in an e-mail to them asking that they send an e-mail out advertising the show, and he provided an example ad to get them started. Rather than read it, they simply e-mailed out his example. I've pasted it below, and keep in mind that this is being sent out by an official school department which usually writes things that sound like this: "The music department will give a free concert tomorrow evening – Friday, April 9, 8 PM – Manhattan Piano Trio – to students with their ID card. This is to replace the concert in January that was cancelled. This is the final Covenant Arts concert for this year."

Instead we received this:

"Come see "Niada" - a play written, directed and produced by one of our finest.

This play - based on a fairy-tail classic - features a mermaid more beautiful than a moon-rise, a witch more graceful than melted butter on a bald monkey, two men so manly they make Xena-Warrior Princess look like a woman, a small army of magical sea-creatures with strange fascination with shiny objects, and a masquerade more sophisticated and enjoyable than a box of Godiva Chocolates!

It happens tonight (4/8), Saturday(4/10), and all next weekend (4/16-18)! Don't miss it! Buy tickets in the great-hall at lunch!"

And with that: I've screwed up the formatting and can't get it to return to normal. Thus the rest of this blog will be typed out in "Font" font. Fortunately nothing else has really happened since last night, so I really don't have anything else to blog about. Except that I stole Jordan's jacket a lunch during a friendly dispute over a chair and forgot that I was wearing it until I had walked all the way back to Founders. I gave it to her roommate, so hopefully she won't have too much trouble getting it back. With that, I'd like to turn my blog over for a moment and remember someone near and dear to all of us: Alysha McCullough's Patella.

Alysha's Patella has been a great friend and a hard worker for many years, but has struggled with identity issues and feeling out of place. Last Sunday, the pressure became too much, and he snapped. Believing himself to be a part of the Fibula, he lunged sideways, out of his usual position between the Femur and the Tibia, and around to the side of the knee. After much icing and anti-inflammatory, it's still touch and go. Adding strain to the problem is that Alysha has revealed a hidden passive-aggression for her poor Patella, taking every opportunity to stand on it and walk around, causing him great stress in his hour of need. Please pray for Pat... and that Alysha will come to forgive him, and me for writing this paragraph.

Until next time. :)

Umm.... Al Ham Du Allah?

Yesterday, Brethren went dark. Quite literally. It's "Energy Conservation Weekend" or something like that, which means that whichever dorm building reduces it's energy consumption the most gets an ice cream party. Thus, our hall has gone dark, as everyone is trying to turn off the lights as much as possible, even to the point of turning off the bathroom lights, permanently. This is hard to get used to, since there's no windows, and the door is blocked off from the rest of the bathroom by a wall. This means that when one is taking a shower, one does so in total, absolute, and indisputable pitch black darkness. It takes some getting used to, but it's actually kind of cool.

In addition to conserving energy and learning to shower while blind, This week I got to struggle with the impossibility of having a reading light by my bed. I had a lamp at the beginning of the semester, but it's developed a nasty habit of turning off 30 seconds after I turn it on and refusing to turn back on. I then borrowed another lamp from Brett Borland since he wasn't using it, only to find that it had a short somewhere and sputtered like a candle, rendering reading impossible. God's way of telling me just to go to bed? Maybe.

Wednesday was Student Appreciation Day, which was really cool. The whole day was devoted to trying to make us feel special with free ice cream, professors who wore "I love Covenant Students" t-shirts, and better food in the Great Hall. Ironically, by replacing the omelet bar with a French Toast bar and normal food with chocolate chip pancakes, Chartwell's compelled me to eat cereal for breakfast. I'm not complain though, since lunch was fantastic and dinner was steak.

Rehearsals for Niada are going swimmingly (haha...pun...yeah...) I still need to learn to dance, which is a bit daunting, but compared to last week I feel like things are coming together really well. We have most of the set, lines are pretty much memorized, and costumes are coming together. Plus the opening scene looks really cool when synced with the music and dancing that Alysha's put together.

This afternoon I got to go to a special lecture put on by the Pre-Law Society (and advertised by Gareth Jones) by Salem al-Hasi, a practicing Muslim and eminent Islamic Scholar, who spoke on the idea of Modern Sharia Law. It was fascinating, and I'm going to summarize it in a moment, but before I do, I want to mention an interesting incident just before the lecture started. Dr. Haddad, my Arabic professor, was speaking with Mr. al-Hasi just before we were allowed into the lecture hall, and she called Jeremy Mosley, aka Corporal, over to demonstrate his Arabic. After he'd said hello, he literally grabbed my from the water fountain and interposed me between him and Mr. al-Hasi. It would have been hilarious had I not been completely unable to remember how to say hello. I finally managed to blurt out "Marhaba! Ahlan wa Sahlan" which means "Greetings, Welcome." but which at the time for some reason I thought meant "Hello! Hello!" and was unnerved. I then said "Kuwayis?" meaning "How are you?" he said he was well and asked me how I was doing. I stood there for a moment and then, seizing upon the correct phrase, exclaimed a bit too enthusiastically "Al Ham Du Allah!" Praise be to God! He laughed kindly and complimented me and Corporal on our Arabic, and then the lecture began. Heh heh.

Basically, Mr. al-Hasi told us that, much like the media's portrayal of Christian morality, Sharia law is mostly misrepresented in today's culture as a Machiavellian medieval code of law, much like the Spanish Inquisition. Instead of this, he defined Sharia (which means "stream of life") and said that it stemmed from 5 main sources. First, anything the Qu'ran says is instantly allowed to be Sharia, however, he made sure to clarify that a lot of assumptions that people make about how the Qu'ran is interpreted by mainstream Muslims is incorrect. For example, "Kill the infidel" is interpreted under the larger "theme" verse that says basically: "Kill those who attack you, and kill them no more than a limit, for Allah hates those that exceed this limit". So a modern Muslim would read that verse as saying: "Kill a nonbeliever who kills your own, but do not escalate." He even used the example of black powder, which was banned by Islamic teachers when it was first discovered because they were afraid that it would cause innocents to die.

Second, Sharia law comes from the Hadiths, or sayings of Muhammed. He explained that while the Qu'ran is universally agreed on, the Hadiths are not. Many "fabricated" and "weak" hadiths were composed during the years after Muhammed's death, because, as he put it: "One of the best ways to get someone to do something is to tell them that god wills it." The third source of Sharia law are the Consensuses, which he said are exceedingly rare because they require all of the various leaders in Islam to agree that something needs to be in Sharia.

Fourth comes reasoning anlogy, which means that when the Qu'ran is unclear on a specific issue, Muslims examine the Qu'ran for something which they can use to reason out the Qu'ran's teaching. For example, the Qu'ran forbids alcohol, which it defines as a liquid with a certain smell, certain taste, and which causes one to lose control of their actions. However, when drugs first entered the scene, some Muslims argued the Qu'ran did not forbid them, since they did not fit the definition. However, since they cause a loss of control, the Islamic leaders used the reasoning analogy to argue that they qualify as Qu'ranic alcohol and thus were banned.

The fifth and final source was the Purpose of the law, which Mulsim scholars agree is to make life better for those in society. Basically, if a law does not make people's lives better, it's a bad law. I'm not sure how totally mainstream al-Hasi is, but still, it was really fascinating

Overall, it was really cool, and I felt much more informed about what Islam is and what Muslims believe. I was glad I went and I'm thankful that Gareth put the whole thing together.

That's about all I have to say about this week, so I'm going to wrap up. Oh, I forgot to mention that I'm trying to get my hands on an alarm clock that wakes you up with the call to prayer and has spikes around the snooze button. :) :) :) Until next week! Ma'a Saalama, and props to my sister for getting to octofinals (and possibly more at this point) in debate!

I'll Bet Tiger Woods Never Tried This

Well, this week has been quite interesting to say the least. Just a taste of the lunacy that this week contained: If you had happened to walk onto Brethren last night, you would have found twelve shirtless men standing around a cardboard box with two holes in it set in front of a ramp made of cardboard leading to a mug turned on its side near the wall playing putt putt golf. More on that later though.

Getting back to school after fall break was less of an adjustment than I thought it would be, though for some reason Brethren was totally empty Sunday night, and after trekking all around campus looking for our hallmates, Dan Rienstra and I ended up touring other halls looking for people we knew. We started on Carter, (which, incidentally meant that I actually saw what a Carter hall looked like for the first time) and then moved to Mac. We never did find anyone from our hall, but we still had fun exploring.

Niada rehearsals have started in earnest, which have been a great deal of fun. I'm convinced that Katie Jenkins is having entirely too much fun playing the Sea Witch, however, and her glee at the prospect of having sea monster pets is both amusing and mildly frightening. Additionally, working with Beth Mixon and John Hollback has been pretty entertaining. The three of us have quite a few scenes together, and the interactions Alysha's put into the script are hilarious. I also learned that I get to slap Dorian upside the head in scene one while calling him an idiot. :D

Early in the week, we were given the opportunity to host two members of African Bible College-Malawi's band Mingoli which means "beautiful sound". I got to talk with Yunjin (I have no earthly idea if I've spelled that even remotely correctly.) and Ronald (RON-ald) for a while, which was really cool. Brandon even traded two American-style shirts for one really cool African shirt with Ronald. I'm slightly jealous. In addition to Mingoli, Covenant also received a visit yesterday from Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World Magazine, who spoke in Chapel about the concept of social justice. Very interesting.

Last night I finally got to see West Side Story, the musical production which has been preparing to perform since September. It was a pretty spectacular show, and I could definitely tell all the work that had been put into it. Justin Johns as Tony was awesome, and the music was extremely well done. Also, I bumped into Marianne Sterne and her roommate (my friend who attends Bryan College), and until I realized that I was in Q104, not S104, I thought that I'd been sat right next to them. Instead, I got to sit next to my good friend the Pillar in the back right of the Chapel.

After West Side, I returned to Brethren to find a very large crowd of people in the commons either watching or attempting to putt a golf ball from one end of the commons into a mug at the opposite end. We added a twist by forcing putters to bank their putts off of a box of instant rice and then into the mug (I made it on the first try!) After open dorms ended and all the girls left, we started adding difficulty to the shots by putting a ramp in front of the mug, and then adding a "barn" which was a cardboard box with two holes cut in it in front of the ramp. Tim Van Vliet made it through the box on his first try, which was deemed to be worthy of forcing everyone else to remove their shirts.

That brings us up to this morning. Somehow I actually felt like getting up at 8:00, eating breakfast, and then realizing that I was one of three people on campus who were awake. It felt like being in I Am Legend. I even saw a dog on my way back from breakfast. It's about ten thirty, now, which means that I've seen some movement around campus, but still nothing that looks like signs of life. Since I'm out of things to talk about, I must wrap up. (Wait, I have nothing to say? The world has ended. :) ) Anyway, adios amigos!

Like living after Noah's flood with better food.

Well, I'm back in Maryland for a Spring Break! The massive snowstorm in January still hasn't completely melted, meaning that the ground is incredibly wet and spongy. Small piles of snow dot the landscape, and our dog must keep constantly moving to prevent from sinking into the ground and being swallowed up. Getting to hang out with family and friends back home has been a refreshing break from life a school. I was definitely ready for the break, and fortunately I was able to get to the airport earlier than I expected, thanks to Jeremy Mosely offering to give me a ride at 1:30, which judging by the time it took to get to the airport, was exactly when I had to leave to make my flight.

Before I left school, the Trifectas (Me, Ann Jones, Jordan Linkston, Katie Jenkins, Justin Johns, and Alysha McCullough) went to Yellow Deli for a "Trifecta Date" and had one of the most amusing evenings, which spawned about a million inside jokes. I also learned the meaning behind the necklace Jordan always wears, the plot (basically) of the play Katie wrote for next year, and that Alysha's glasses give me a headache.

After getting to the airport later the next day, I was again subjected to Dr. Oz because my flight still didn't leave for an hour. After failing to ignore the show for forty-five minutes, I managed to learn that diet pills are bad, not being able to breath at night can threaten your health, and that Dr. Oz has absolutely no reason to be wearing surgical scrubs on every episode.

I got home about dinnertime, and was welcomed back with an awesome homemade meal and a huge loaf of bread. Apparently since I left, Dad's hobbies have expanded into making massive amounts of bread in various varieties. His favorite is sourdough, and he has a thing in the basement fridge that he uses to make sourdough bread sour. It's basically a lump of yeasty dough from what I understand. Emily calls it Stanley. After dinner, Em and I played "Beatles Rock Band" (which I didn't know existed) and I learned that everything they produced after '67 makes no sense at all.

Josh Bernitt came over Saturday and we caught up for a while. He's headed to UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County) next year, and he's going to be studying Physics. (May God have mercy on his soul.) Cooking class was on last night, and I was tasked with making dessert for the students (my sister must hate them all). It started as a cake, became a fiasco, and ended up mixed into ice cream to disguise my mistake(s).

Anyway, since Alysha wants Niada off-book when we get back from break: I've been practicing in the basement apartment. Since during the times I was practicing my family were all out of the house, I had to use stand in's for the characters. I've cast the drum set from Rock Band as Dorian, an armchair as Princess Aislyn, and an oriental lamp as Merin the mermaid. I'm glad no one was home to see my trying to give CPR to a lamp.

That's about it for now, I think. Oh, and when thinking things over on the airplane, I realized that in starting this blog, I made no arrangements for the continuation or cancellation of it in the event of my death. Rest assured that if I die an at an inconvenient time I will do my best to find a computer and update. If heaven hasn't got wifi. I'll haunt one of you and ask you to deactivate my account. (Alternatively, you could make up fictitious adventures for me, but if you make my afterlife too confusing, I'll have to ask you to stop.) :)

Anyway, with that bit of long-neglected housekeeping out of the way, I'll wrap this up. (also, if anyone has any ideas for a new wrap-up gimmick to replace my usual and exhausted habit of saying good-bye in foreign languages, let me know.)

Until you do.... gis la revido!

In Which Many Many Things Happen and I Italicise a Lot

Right, so first things first. My sister totally dominated her competition at a speech/debate tournament in Virginia, so BOO-YAH! In addition to her awesomeness, our club's debate teams (1 with my sister in it) advanced to the out rounds, even though both teams are made up of people who've debated 1 year or less (with the exception of my sister.) Great job Em!

While my sister was crushing the competition, Lucifer had two more shows, and then closed. As always, I'm happy/sad to be done with it, and I'm even happier that due to some ingeniousness by Prof. Slav, the chariot (usually called the "stupid chariot" or worse) finally worked right, and didn't get stuck bringing it on stage. Hopefully it looked good, I couldn't really see around Lucifer's awesome wings. Afterwards, we struck the set, and I got to keep Raphael's branch of peace, a demon dagger made of plexiglass, and one of those cool angel torches, which I call my epilepsy stick, since it flashes with three different colors on one setting. Immediately afterward, we started to construct the set for Alysha's play: Niada, which, due to my friend Mitch having to drop his role, I get to be in after all.

Niada is basically a re-telling of the original Little Mermaid story. I play Kade, the older brother of the man whom the mermaid (named Merin in this play) falls in love with. Since my younger brother is kind of an idiot (though well intentioned) I get to roll my eyes and make sarcastic comments, which suits me just fine. However, as much as Kade may make fun of him, it's obvious that he cares about his brother, so it won't be all sarcasm.

Anyway, after Lucifer closed I had a bit of a chance to catch my breath and enjoy the weekend. Earlier this week I got an e-mail asking me to go on a "mystery date" with someone unknown from Imani hall. I said yes, since I'd heard stories about people saying no to these things and it making people feel bad, and I immediately started worrying that it would be a very awkward day spent with someone I didn't know. I needn't have worried though. Come Sunday afternoon I found out that my mystery date was good friend Liz Brink, and we had a great time on a scavenger hunt through downtown Chattanooga with the other 20-some people in our group. We had a great time, and even though we came in nearly last, we still finished the whole list of things to find.

Sunday night we had the cast party for Lucifer, where we recorded a lot of testimonies about how God worked in the production, and it was all very encouraging and amazing to hear about everyone's experiences and how they grew during the show. Later on, we also played that awesome game we always play at cast parties (the question-answer game thing. I know I've mentioned it before here). It got recorded too, which will no doubt be a hilarious recording if anyone ever finds it. Highlights included:

Q: "What would you do if the whole world thought you were a rabbit?
A: "Well, I would avoid the taxidermy department."

Q: "What would you do if Justin Johns told you he had unlimited psychic abilities, was about to conquer the world, and asked you to be his queen?
A: "I would call Janel Corbett and yell 'It's true! It's true!"

Anyway, we had a blast, and several of the seniors read Prof. Hallstrom a very moving bible passage from Isaiah, as a thank-you gift for all her hard work. The iGallop made another appearance, and we had an awesome time.

Monday was a normal day, but today we had a snow day. Again. Oh, well. I guess we'll eventually get a week without snow. On the plus side, a bunch of people built an awesome igloo between Mac and Founders. It's absolutely massive, and has little snowmen carved into it. I'm not sure whether they're supposed to live there or if this is more like what Calvin does to his snowmen.

Oh, and last week at the Niada read-through, Katleyn and Alysha joked that because I'm playing Kade, I'd have a lot of fans. This prompted Jordan to make a Facebook group called "David Pickering's Screaming Fangirls." with some very amusing descriptions of me written in the info boxes. Highly flattering, and also really funny. If any of you happen across this, don't worry, I don't really have screaming fangirls, just a bunch of awesome friends. :)

Anyway, ciao for now.

Lars and the Real iGallop

So tonight we had an impromptu "Mommy Movie Night", at Prof. Hallstrom's house, named thusly due to Prof. Hallstrom's nickname: "Mommy Dearest". A bunch of us headed down the mountain to watch "Lars and the Real Girl", a movie about a man who falls in love with a mannequin. We had a great time, and a torch was passed on... sort of.

"Lars and the Real Girl" tells the story of a man named Lars, who is emotionally damaged after his mother dies giving birth to him, leaving him alone with his brother and severely depressed father. His brother leaves as soon as possible, and Lars is left with deep scars. Later in life, he lives in the garage/apartment of his brother's house, while his sister-in-law frets that something is wrong because Lars spends all his time by himself. Eventually Lars receives a huge package, and introduces his family to his new girlfriend: Bianca, a Brazilian/Danish woman raised by nuns and confined to a wheelchair. Bianca also happens to be a mannequin, though Lars speaks and responds to her as though she were real. The rest of the movie follows Lars' relationship with Bianca while the people of the town he lives in "play along" because the local doctor says that's the best thing that they can do. Bianca becomes part of the town ("volunteering at the hospital, and even joining the school board.") while Lars talks through his problems with the doctor as though they were Bianca's. I don't want to spoil it, but suffice to say that it's an excellent movie, and very thought provoking.

After the movie was over, we got to talking and "mommy" pulled out something she said was going on craigslist soon. An iGallop. Basically, it's a chair that imitates the motion of a horse, supposedly to work out your abs, though I think it was invented for the amusement of physical therapists. We had fun laughing at people riding it, and we even forced Jordan to sit on it (though not before she curled up in fetal position in protest.)

Speaking of Jordan, I learned recently that the Trifecta (Alysha McCullough, Katie Jenkins, and Justin Johns) has elected Ann Jones, Me, and Jordan Linkston as the next Trifecta. Basically, that means that we three are expected to do...something. Not really sure what, I guess have comedic chemistry or something. We apparently are rather amusing to watch interact (i.e., dragging Jordan onto a galloping chair while she "cries" and goes into fetal position at my feet.) I guess the combination of hilariously insane, faultlessly innocent (seemingly), and then whatever it is that I am is funny. Eh, works for me.

Also, we proved that Zach McElrath is not a cat, once and for all, since he can open catproof doors.(Although, it does take him a while.)