The Kids Will Play

My parents have been out of town for the week, so I thought I'd post some pictures to give you an idea of just how messy the house (kitchen) gets when my mom isn't around. It's really not that bad, but well, let's just say that one pan has been there for a few days...

The kitchen...not too bad. But then again, we've been eating frozen pizza's for the last two days. At least the pizza boxes aren't there anymore.

When Mom is away...we don't use silverware. Or plates.

Kitchen table. Confession: the lasagne dish was a plant, it's actually been on the island all week long.

I think this dish thingy ended up in the sink sometime after I told the sqiurt to clean up the kitchen. That was Tuesday. Today is Friday. Maybe that's where the weird smell is coming from.

So, that's what the kitchen looks like. I have actually cleaned the kitchen this week, on Sunday I think. But hey, that's what Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons are for, right?

The Long Summer Hours

Sorry I haven't updated this blog recently. My life for the past month or so has been pretty boring, so there has been little inspiration to write. I go to work every day and do the same things that I did the day before, which quite frankly is mind numbingly boring to experience, let alone write about. Thus there hasn't been much to write about. I beat "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker" for the first time and am currently working on the second time. There really is no rhyme or reason why, other than I am bored, and it is easier to stay awake until bedtime playing the GameCube than reading or watching TV. I'm beginning to think that I should really get out of the house more in the evenings. Maybe I should go find a coffee shop that has a big comfortable chair and read there where the caffeine is in the air. I promise that was not intended to rhyme, it just turned out that way, okay. Alright, that was intended to rhyme. I think it's about time. I read a book about Gabriel Syme. I like to eat lime. I need to find a way to pass the time. Maybe I'll learn to be a mime. I'm stopping now, because, well, that's a little embarrassing.

I haven't done as much reading as I would have liked. The long days at the office staring at a computer screen gets to me after a while, so I'm disinclined to spend my evenings staring at small print. That and I like playing Nintendo. I'm still reading A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan. It's interesting, but sometimes I just want a plot. George Orwell's 1984 has been sitting on my nightstand just waiting to be read, but I don't like reading more than one book at a time. But I'm less than half way through A Bridge Too Far and I'm craving a solid plot line and a limited number of characters. A Bridge Too Far is interesting, but it jumps around a lot between the various companies as they advance on Arnhem and the surrounding towns. I might set it aside for a while and read some fiction then come back to it. I don't know how many times the library will let me renew it though. It's fun hauling around a book like that though, it definitely gets some weird looks. "It's about Operation Market-Garden," I say. Most of the time I get a blank stare. It's all good though.

Reading A Bridge Too Far has brought to my attention the fact that I don't think I would mind being a history teacher. Sometimes history can be so fascinating, thinking about the causes and effects of wars and thinking about the people that fought in them. In high school the readings Mr. Rowland gave us always piled up in my room, unread and collecting dust, only to find their way to a trash can later. But now I wish I had actually read some of them. I'm sure I would have done better in the class, but perhaps more importantly, I actually would have learned something and realized that I liked history before going off and getting a degree in something else.

Summer Reading

Do you remember in high school when you would get a list of books from your next English teacher detailing what your assignment was for the summer? I do. Most of the time the dreaded piece of paper was met with a groan. I would say to my friends, "We work hard all year, why do they have to give us homework for the summer?" Now that I'm out of high school and into college, a land barren of summer reading, I find that I miss that sheet of paper. I can imagine the incredulous looks that are crossing your faces. What? Misses summer reading? How can that be? But it's true. In the back of my notebook, there is an ever growing list of books I want to read, and I miss having someone tell me which ones I must read.

I was on the library website a few moments ago search for books that I've wanted to read. I was about to order three more when I realized I have two books on my night stand that are still unread. So I resisted the urge to click the "Request Home Delivery" button (thank heavens for the Orange County Library System which lets me check out books without having to actually go to the library). When I've whittled away at the pile of books, I'll order another one. I really can't wait.

Laura's List of Books to Read (in no particular order):

• The Great Raid on Cabanatuan - William B. Breuer
• Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
• The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson (I think I'm will sit on that one for a while, having been up to my eyeballs in the 19th Century literature for the last semester)
• Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson (see parenthetical note on previous)
• The Princess Bride - William Goldman
• 1984 - George Orwell
• Cold Mountain - Charles Frazier
• A Bridge Too Far - Cornelius Ryan (already ordered from the library)
• Follow the River - James Alexander Thorn
• A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
• The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
• Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
• Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
• The Little House Books (nine titles in all) - Laura Ingles Wilder (childhood favorites)
• Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (see parenthetical note for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)
• Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
• Les Miserable - Victor Hugo (okay, this has been on my reading list for more than five years. . .I think I've finally decided to give in and read the abridged version, although I am generally against that)
• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
• Running in the Family - Michael Ondaatjee
• The English Patient - Michael Ondaatjee
  

I'll probably keep adding to this list as the summer progresses.
If there are any books you think I should add to this list, let me know. . .I'm always looking for a good read.

The books I've read this summer:

• Little House in the Big Woods - Laura Ingles Wilder
• Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingles Wilder
• The DaVinci Code: A Quest for Answers - Josh McDowell
• Ghost Soldiers - Hampton Sides (a great read if you're interested in WWII and Philippine history)
• The Man Who Was Thursday - G.K. Chesterton
• Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason - Helen Fielding (an audiobook)
• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (on audiobook, but I'm going to actually read it at some point in time)

Question: do you think it counts as reading a book if I listen to audio books at work?

Click.

I have this daily tradition, maybe more of a habit, of clicking. During the summers it's not daily, more like. . .whenever I'm bored and avoiding something I know I should do--clean my room, go to the john, sleep at a descent hour. It usually starts with me moaning, then rolling out of bed. At school the distance from bed to desk chair is generally less than a foot, so I find myself there, shuffling things around the desk so there is room for my mouse. Then it starts.

Click.

My computer wakes up and the screen goes on. There's a picture of autumn on the desktop background. I don't see autumn anymore, a real autumn that happens from September to November and is precipitated by warm summers and succeeded by snowy winters, so I put one on the background of my laptop all year round. I have one hundred eight square inches of autumn all year round to compensate for two and a half months of autumn all 'round me.

Click. Click.

Firefox opens. While my homepage loads I scan the instant messenger box to see if my friends are awake and admitting it. I change my away message from "sleeping" to "class" or perhaps "not here," or simply "not available." Microsoft Outlook opens and I see that I have a few emails. Usually they aren't important: some article from my dad, or a fellow theatre major informing me of free theatre this weekend. I go back to Firefox and scroll down on my homepage, this very page you're reading right now. I bit narcissistic, I know. I had it on MSN for a time, but realized that my life could be better spent doing something other than looking at the latest celebrity gossip. Besides, I live with a bunch of girls, I get enough of that anyway. So I changed it to my blog. I visit it every day anyway on the off chance that someone actually posted a comment. Usually they don't. Not a biggie.

Click. Click. Click.

There are three sites that I visit every day. For Better or For Worse strip fix. Pearls Before Swine on comics.com. Homestar Runner. Every day. There's usually something new. Well, maybe not on Homestar, but I still get a kick out of the guy in lederhosen saying "Ricola" when I scroll over the "e-mail" button.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

When I have time, I hit up the blogs of various friends. I visit a few of people I've never met, and probably never will. The first I read almost religiously. He's a missionary in Amsterdam and an amazing writer. A friend of a friend referenced him in her prayer letter several months back, and I found that I loved reading it. There are blogs of several friends, in some cases the only way I keep up with what's going on in their lives aside from a phone conversation once in a blue moon.

Click.

I close the browser.

Ouch

So, I've got this ginormous zit on the side of my nose, one of those ones that just kind of sits there and hurts. I just thought I'd share that. Oh, and it hurts...a lot.

I got to be an invigilator for the IB Math exams today for UHS. That was fun...sort of. I sat there and read a book for half of it, peering over the top of the page at the students as they sat and squirmed. I looked through the exam, then realized that I don't remember half of the stuff in there. Although I didn't actually take that exam. I was in the next math up, and we didn't even study Venn diagrams. Anyway. It was fun...sort of. I talked to my senior year English teacher/IB Coordinator for an hour after the exam, which was pretty cool. Caught up, reminisced, blah blah blah.

Anyway, I'ma go now, mkay.

Floating In Puddles

Today was a day to sleep. I woke up this morning-if it was still morning-to the sound of rain battering my window. Sleep, I thought, I should just sleep. So I did for a while longer, although I knew in the back of my brain that I should have been awake and doing homework. After a while the rain stopped and I got up. It was still gloomy outside. That's okay, I thought, gloomy is nice sometimes, maybe it'll rain again later. So I got up and ate a waffle, Eggo, not homemade. The flavor didn't really sink in though, my tongue and the inside of my lip are a little scorched from drinking tea last night. I came down with a tingle in the back of my throat yesterday. So I drank tea, that always helps.

I spent the rainy day watching the telly and thinking about how I should be reading Frankenstein, and how perfect a day it is to be reading a Gothic horror novel. A while later I found myself in my bed, gazing at the work of an 18-year-old Mary Shelley, wondering if I'll ever be published. It was raining again. The heavy drops battered my window, and I fell asleep again.

I dreamed something. I don't remember what. My suitemates voices floated in and out of my consciousness, but I never woke up from my dream. I wasn't happy, that's all I know. Restless, like I had something to do. Reality seeps into dreams sometimes. I wish it wouldn't.

I woke up a while later, it was around six o'clock I think. Something hard was hitting my window. That's odd, I thought. So I listened again, and there was the hard thing hitting my window again. I popped out of bed and gazed through the wet glass at the rain and the hail bouncing off the picnic table on the patio. I ran to the front door, flung it open, and gazed at the ice falling from the sky. There was more rain than hail, and it wasn't even that large--at most the size of an average grape--but I watched just the same, a few of the pebbles hitting my bare shins as I stood in the open doorway. The rain was really coming down, so much that the small steps across the street had become an impressive waterfall. I went around to all the doors to see what each view had to offer. I saw the hail bouncing off the windshield and roof of my car. I watched it float in the massive puddle outside the back door.

Before long it stopped hailing, but the rain kept coming, so I sat at my desk and watched it. I like rainy days. When I was little I always liked when it rained hard. There was a hemlock tree in my yard that always had a deep puddle under its low branches when it rained hard. When the rain stopped and my parents let us out, my brothers and I would make paper boats and float them in the puddle. We would push them with long sticks, stepping through the puddle in our big rubber boots. We would race them until they got waterlogged and wouldn't stay upright anymore. We tried racing paper boats in the gutters with the neighbor kids on rainy summer afternoons when we moved to Orlando. It wasn't the same though.

I tried to make a paper boat the other day. I couldn't remember how.

A Little Metal Sink To Spit In

I found myself wandering through the stacks in Strozier Library today. I had to figure out who wrote the article I referenced for an essay I wrote earlier in the semester, and rewrote for our last assignment before finals week. I was in a hurry, so I asked directions from the man at the information counter. He was a veteran at the job, and new exactly where the periodicals section was. I gave him the call number and he directed me right to it. I still had to wander through the stacks a little though.

So I got up to the second floor and made a left and then a right into the periodicals section. Its amazing. Row after row of books filled with bound periodicals published ages ago. Walking past one stack, I saw the Saturday Evening Post. The clock was the only thing that prevented me from stopping and thumbing through the thick books. Images of famous Norman Rockwells popped into my head; a family at Thanksgiving Dinner, the one of the kid in the doctor's office. I want to say there was a painting of a kid in the dentist's office, but I'm not sure. Anyway, it reminded me of the Norman Rockwell I used to look at it when I was little and someone in my family had to go see Dr. Brockmeier. That's where I was the day the Pulaski County Courthouse burned down in the early 1990s, sitting in Dr. Brockmeier's waiting room looking at a copy of that Norman Rockwell. Funny the things you remember.

Dr. Brockmeier had an old style dentist office, one where there was a bowl to spit in next to the chair. No suction tube things in that place. I want to say the tile was green or maybe aqua, but that might just be me imagining things. I never got to sit in the chair, although I always wanted to. I liked the kid in the Norman Rockwell, I guess I wanted to be like him a little. I had perfect teeth when I was little, so I never got to sit in that chair and spit in the little metal sink. It looked so complicated, so high tech. Before we moved, Dr. Brockmeier retired. I think he had worked on my dad's teeth when he was a kid, so it was probably about time. I was sad though, when we went to the dentist after that. His office was new, and actually high tech, and there wasn't a little metal sink to spit in.