Thank You, VH1 for Reminding Me How Much I Love the 90s!

For those of you who don't have access to cable television, I am truly sorry. You are missing out on a GREAT show (series really): I Love the [insert decade here]. So far they have completed the 70s, 80s and my personal favorite, the 90s. I haven't actually seen all of the 90s yet, at least VH1's take on it, I saw the 90s in their entirety starting 14 years ago and ending 4 years ago. Even though the show aired over the summer, I was at home where we don't have cable and we devote our time to mastering the fine art of hybridizing plants on Harvest Moon. Anyway, I Love the 90s has revived my love for 90s music. As I sit here typing, the Spice Girls' "Wannabe" is flowing into my ears. The Spice Girls were by no means the pinnacle of 90s music, but man they were good, not talent wise, but their songs are so stinking catchy! If you were a 6th grade girl in 1996 like I was, you most definitely listened to the Spice Girls, and the Backstreet Boys, and you probably had a crush on Justin Timberlake or JC Chasez, although I was thankfully spared from the teenie-bopper crushes...no crying over inaccessible guys in this camp. Pining maybe, but no tears shed, really. I saved those for people I could actually talk to. Although there was that thing for Leonardo DiCaprio, but that was really because I needed someone to pine after, nothing serious, except for those dreams, I mean....never mind.

Sledding (Part 2)

(Before reading this you might want to check out the first part of this story)

Upon discovering the minefield of cow pies, my brothers and I prepared to attack the hill like never before. We knew that getting down the hill would take shrewd negotiations of the cow pies, we would have to steer. Our first attempts were miserable failures. We would start down the hill doing some strategic leaning, and end up with our faces in the snow. Time and time again we tried this, until we finally made it all the way down the hill, leaving an S-shaped path behind us.

One thing we hadn’t realized at the beginning of the expedition was that some of the cow pies had been dropped early that morning and they had not had time to freeze solid. The exterior appeared the same as all the others, but the insides were still soft and smelly. I discovered this phenomenon the hard way.

We had finally mastered the technique of leaning to navigate the hill; at least, that’s what we thought. The run began as all the others had, but on this occasion, I took a lean a little bit too far, steering us over a rather substantial cow pie. Our craft was thrown off balance, and we were sent sprawling in the snow. My lean caused me to be thrown one way, and my brothers the other. I hit the snow on my side and began rolling, why waste a perfectly good walk up the hill? I did not notice the cow pie ahead of me. I rolled over it and hear a definite crunch-squish sound, and, well, let say the odor wasn’t so nice either. I had discovered that candy isn’t the only thing that comes hard on the outside, soft on the inside.

By the time I got to the bottom of the hill much of the manure had rubbed off my jacket onto the snow, leaving dark spots on the otherwise white hill. The smell, however, had not rubbed off. My brothers doubled over in laughter as I huffed and puffed about it. Eventually I got over it, and we continued our sledding.

Letting My Thoughts Cook

It's 9:36pm. I have homework to do. I'm not doing it. After spending much of my afternoon reading Big Love over and over, I've decided to take a break and let the play cook in my mind for a while before I attempt to find something in it about which to write a paper. Letting it stew for a while is definately the best thing I could do right now. Earlier this evening I spent half an hour lying flat on my back, my right leg bent at the knee, my left fully extended, my toes playing with the electric chord for my alarm clock, wracking my brain for some way to tie a few thoughts together to at least getting rolling on my paper. I found nothing. Thoughts would fly through my head, and just as a reached out to grab them, they would dissipate, like fog on a sunny day. I'm tired of writing papers for this class. This is the second paper in one week, the fourth over all. There are 9 more to go. Each 1,000 words, each more difficult than the previous.

So I've decided to let it stew in my brain. These things take time. I'm waiting for that "ah hah!!" moment, when everything starts clicking, when everything falls into place. Until that moment comes, I am doomed to continue mulling over the work of Charles L. Mee (Chuck), hoping beyond hope that I will not be up into the wee hours of the morning.

On a completely different note, I've stumbled across a blog by a girl filming a movie in Italy. Seeing as we have somewhat similar choices of profession, I have found her blog interesting. And she's in Italy. Have I mentioned that I want to go to Italy next summer? Well, I do. I've been praying that it is in God's will to send me there. I spent this summer sorting checks for other students who got to travel all over the world for mission trips, and it sparked a desire in me to go too. So I want to go.

This afternoon I took a break from Big Love and lay down on our patio swing. My head propped up on a pillow, I watched the sun filter through the trees on a nearly perfect evening. Nearly perfect only because I still had homework to do. The air was perfect: warm, but not hot; the breeze cool and gentle. I dozed off, my book open on my stomach. I dared to imagine for a moment that I didn't have any responsibilities. The computers all were working perfectly, my essay was finished, printed and in my backpack for the trek to class tomorrow morning. There was nothing I had to do, nowhere I had to be. Then my courage floundered, and I returned to real life: the computers still ran slower than Fat Albert, I still had work to do, my essay was still a cluster of discombobulated thoughts colliding in my grey matter.

Current music: Fiona Apple-Sleep to Dream
"You say love is a hell you cannot bear, and I say give me mine back and then go there, for all I care." Awesome song. You should hear it.

They Finally Got the Hint

If you've watched the weather channel in the last week, you've certainly heard about Hurricane Ivan, which is scheduled to reach the Florida panhandle and gulf coast some time very very soon. Until the afternoon, my beloved Florida State University had not closed school for tomorrow, a fact which had the entire student body up in arms. Did they not know that a class 4 hurricane was bearing down on Florida? Even my Play Analysis instructor was put out by their apparent insensitivity towards the hurricane.

About 5:30 the university succumbed and cancelled classes for Thursday, and the celebration began. I happened to be in the living room when everyone found out, and there was a general eruption of joy from every voice in the house, except mine, I never have class on Thursdays. Everyone changed their plans for the evening. Instead of staying in and studying, everyone started getting ready to go out for a night on the town.

The boys from next door came over and we watched Donny Darko. Everyone was a little bit confused, but some more than others. Soon after the movie they left for a Halo tournament. Boys will be boys, eh? My roommates and I watched Hero, the version with translation by Chinese people, the one that is accurate. At least that's what my roommate says. I spent most of the movie making fun of goofy looking hats and slaughtering the Chinese language, unintentionally of course.

Now it's after midnight, and we're watching Peter Pan, the live action version made last year. If you haven't seen it, then you should. Forget that it was made for children; it's a great movie, especially if you can still let your imagination run away with you.

Just Stuff

Today has been a "blah" kind of day. I went to class this morning, and frankly, it didn't spark my interest. Once again in my Tech Theatre class we talked about the Florida State University School of Theatre Production Handbook. Despite being written by artists, it has to be one of the most boring pieces of writing I have ever encountered. Not that it's supposed to be interesting, but for goodness sake, for people who's jobs it is to teach people how to entertain, you'd think they could write something that would pique my interest. But no, we instead spent 50 minutes of valuable sleep time reading verbatim from the Production Handbook. It was mostly about fire safety, what to do in case of a fire, stuff like that. Stay calm and run for your life was basically the gist of it.

AND FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, WHY HAVEN'T I GONE TO THE POST OFFICE YET?!?

Anyway, after Intro to Tech Theatre, I had Intro to Shakespeare, where Dr. Barbour told us what to think about Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. We ended class right before everyone DIES. I was disappointed; I wanted to read about the deaths of Hamlet and company. We start Othello next class, after the dispatchment of every major character in our current play. Right.

I came back to my beautiful house on Jefferson St., the sidewalk of which is currently barricaded by our mountain of rubbish (crammed neatly into garbage bags) pulled from the bushes and flowers of our front yard last Saturday morning. I personally dug up five saplings from the maze of bushes which surround my front porch. I didn't want to, I like trees, but I would never hug one, unless it talked back, not that I talk to trees; never mind.

MTV kept me company while I ate my lunch, then I went upstairs and took a nap before my 1:25 class, to which I was on time for once. We analyzed a play, sort of, talked about it, yeah. It was pretty interesting though. I just don't want to write the paper for it which is due Wednesday.

After that, everything has been "blah." And this has been my "blah" day. Buy a llama.

Hurricane Charley

I first heard about Hurricane Charley Wednesday evening when they were starting to predict land fall on Florida's Gulf Coast. It didn't bother me. Local news channels are always warning of gloom and despair. It has happened before, I thought, and it will happen again; there is no way this hurricane will hit us. Hurricane Bonnie went through the Panhandle the next day. I went to a movie with my girls; "The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement." It wasn't much to crow about, but as we left the movie theatre the first bands of Charley began dumping rain on us. I wasn't worried. The last time there was a storm in the gulf we got buckets of rain. When I got home my parents were watching the weather. The newscasters were saying the storm would hit Tampa, and Orlando would probably get some fairly high winds, but the brunt of the storm would miss us. My parents decided we should start getting ready, just in case. We had been working on painting parts of our house, so the garage was full of painting supplies and paint dust from the doors which I had sanded to a satin-smooth finish before painting them creamy white. Since I had made the mess of white powder, I got to clean it up. I missed the last night of Ultimate Frisbee with the college group for the summer. I spent 2 hours cleaning and vacuuming the garage, and moving boxes around so there was room for both of our cars.

That night little changed in the weather forecast. The weather man was still saying Charley was headed for Tampa, and they evacuated the city. Thousands of people from the Tampa area flooded Orlando the next day.

I woke up late Friday, hoping that I had missed any further precautionary measures my parents had taken if Charley had shifted while I slept. They hadn't done anything more, but Charley had started to shift, and it was looking like he would come ashore a little farther south than originally predicted, but still steering far west of Orlando.

Dad came home from work around 1:30 and made the executive decision to tape up the windows like we had done for Hurricane Floyd a few years back. Fortunately we still had blue painters tape left over from our painting project. I went around the house putting blue Xs on the windows. By the time we had finished it was around 3 pm, and the Channel 9 weather man was saying that Charley was coming for us, and Charley was now a class 4 hurricane. It had jumped from 2 to 4 in under 30 minutes.

By the time Charley came aground at Punta Gorda, we were ready. The windows were taped, the cars were in the garage, and all of Mom's potted plants were inside the house, along with some friendly lizards. All we could do was wait. Orange county officials order mandatory evacuations for people in mobile homes. Folks with special needs started getting to shelters on the west side of Orange County. Around 7 pm tornado warnings went into effect for most of Central Florida. We sat in the living room watching reporters on the coast fight the wind and rain of Charley's fury. One cameraman caught an image of the roof of the Port Charlotte Post office losing its roof and all of the mail inside. Another cameraman captured footage of his reporter being struck by pieces of the roof of the building behind which they stood. As Hurricane Charley came inland it lost a lot of power, but there was still enough to do a lot of damage, it was still a class 2.

By 8:30 we were feeling the effects of Charley. The wind was rattling the windows, and the rain poured out of the sky. I looked out our front door and could hardly see the flowers 10 feet away at the end of the walkway. I went upstairs in search of my flashlight should the power go out, but came back downstairs quickly when a strong gust of wind shook the second story of my house. I could feel the floor quiver beneath my feet. My parents moved us into their bedroom which they deemed the safest room in the house that wasn't a closet. We sat there watching the TV as the storm tore through Orlando. Charley had come much farther east than anyone had anticipated. We watched as the radar showed the storm passing over our city, the eye of Charley coming within a few miles of our house. Every so often we would hear a thud as something struck the house or as tree branches fell to the ground. The door to my parents’ bedroom would vibrate as the winds pushed through tiny gaps around the front door. My dad and I went to check the house and make sure we hadn't lost a window. We could already see spots on the ceiling where rain water was coming through the roof. Tine bubbles of water formed and popped as the wind forced it through the cracks between the door and wall. Dad pushed furniture and one of Mom's plants against the door for reinforcement. Through the back window I saw branches from the neighbor's tree hanging on the sagging fence. Once the worst had passed my brother and I returned to the living room and watched the remainder of the Olympic Opening Ceremony. After the wind stopped howling I went to bed upstairs in a quiet house.

Sledding

I grew up on a farm in Virginia; at least that's what I tell people. My earliest memories were created on that farm, many of them fond, some not. The one that seems to come back to me the most is as follows.

One winter a big storm came through the valley, dumping inches of white fluffy snow on the ground. It was perfect for sledding. My brothers and I made the short hike out to our favorite sledding hill, which doubled as the front hay field when not covered in snow, dragging sleds behind us. We had borrowed our friend's toboggan sled, a long molded sheet of hard plastic on which three children could slide down the hill at incredibly fast speeds, or so it seemed to our young minds. Upon conquering the sledding hill, my brothers and I would pile onto the sled, Keith in the front, then me, then Paul bringing up the rear. The first few runs would take a minute to get started; the snow was still soft and the sled would stick. Paul would place his hands on my back and run and push us like an Olympic bobsled team going for the gold medal, jumping on just as the sled began to speed down the hill. Sometimes we would successfully make it all the way down the hill, coming to a stop slowly at the bottom. More frequently one of us would lean to one side throwing the sled off balance and thrusting us head first into the snow, sending us rolling and laughing all the way down the hill. We sledded for most of the afternoon, our cheeks and foreheads becoming rosy as the sun glinted off the tiny snow crystals, slowly baking our faces. The sun sank low on the horizon and our tummies told us it was time to go home. We walked home, pulling the sleds behind us, smiling and laughing, knowing that Mom would have grilled cheese and soup for us when we got back.

That evening the farmer who rented the land let the cows into the front hayfield. If you've ever been around cows, you know that they don't plan where they relieve themselves. In this case they relieved themselves on our nicely packed sledding hill. That evening it froze again. The snow which had partially melted during the day turned to ice, and on top of the snow was an ever so thin layer of ice. Also at the top of the snow on our sledding hill were frozen cow pies, dotting the hill like landmines ready to destroy a perfect trek down the hill. Soon after lunch we found those pies, and saw them as a challenge. We were determined that the cow pies would have no effect on our sledding for the day. WE WOULD NOT LET IT STOP US!!

more to come...