Let's pictorally document the Nashville trip!!! Yeyyy for independence and open interstates and Ben Folds!
and Jen, gettin' pretty
Oh, and Melissa, Austin, Lindsay and I were all in one room. We can't get a GSIS reunion together this summer to save our lives but Ben Folds/Weezer have us running ... even Jay was going to come. Oh, yeah, Weezer played too. But by that point, we were all loudly proclaiming that we could die happy from being in a room with the most talented person we've ever had the good fortune to come across. They put on a fucking awesome show, but it was awesome because of the incredible light cues and technology. Ben Folds was an awesome fucking show because of him and his piano. And that, my children, is why I was not in the least interested in the headliner.
And back to the pictures. So, at the hotel, Jen's and my door is stuck shut. As in, you have to turn the handle and then hold it while you ram the door with your entire body and develop massive bruises. So we complain. And we get ....
And then we got hungry. So we called all the pizza places. No one delivered. And then we had one guy tell us that all the Pizza Huts in the world closed five minutes ago. Well, snap. However, undeterred, Jen and I get all dolled up(or ... not?)
and proceed to convince the desk clerk, Terrell, the one who gave us the suite who liked us a lot, that he REALLY REALLY wanted to take us to get food in one of those hotel shuttle van things. We're magic. So, we go to White Castle
The rest of us just got fries, but Jen was REALLY hungry so she decided to brave a cheeseburger ... I just don't think food should be that small. Makes me suspicious. Anyways, she decided to try it ...
In case you were wondering, she was sick later. I don't recommend them. Anyways, here I am with Terrell (we paid him many more visits.)
And then things got really funny really fast.
pretty sleepy baby.
we heart black and white pictures.
And then we went to the guitar-shaped pool (we asked Terrell first!)
And then we were removed by the rent-a-cop. What can you do? The next morning, we woke up like this ...
and Jennyfer and I HAD to go on a quest (seriously, An Hour of Driving) to find an IHOP. It was totally worth it.
I was bothered by the butter on my pancakes. So I put it in my creamer. Yes, we left a big tip.
I got out some of my frustrations on a (surprisingly small) life-size cutout in Opry Mills
and then there was SHOPPING. and K eiran called just in time to remind us to leave and I was very close to being on time for opening night of the show and we sang Disney songs and Gavin DeGraw and Rent all the way back and had a spectacular time.
Jennifer's bday was Sunday, so I took the babies and Kyle (loaded up in the minivan and I totally felt like a mom - settling squabbles, being offended by their topics of conversation) and then we took a more attractive picture than any of those I just unwisely put up.
Iluyou, Jennifer!! (And Melissa and Rachel. You guys rock my socks.)
And, I know I'm still younger, but for some reason I just can't take being treated like such a baby anymore. I love you guys but you don't even know what's upsetting me because you don't even recognize the emotion of Me Mad At You - I've never let you see it before! Please don't scold, please don't condescend ... I would understand if you asked it of me, so I guess it's about time to see how two-sided this relationship is. I'm not angry, just different. And what are you?
Goodness, but this is long. I took Jen (from the lab) and Justin to the rope swing today and they loved it, as I knew they would. Nothing like screaming as you plummet to sure death, and then coming back up and wanting to do it again. The show continues to go well. Audiences aren't as large as they should be, probably because too many people are offended, but the people who come scream and whistle and applaud the likes of which I've never heard inside the Playhouse. I. Love. It. I was sitting tonight staring at the board and letting my eyes glaze over when the blinking green dots of the main out volume caught my eye. Katy was belting out a solo and I stared and listened as she lit up 2, 4, 6, 14 of the lights and thought about how cool it would be to be able to command a house like that, completely mesmerize them with solely the sound of your voice. I don't know why it suddenly seemed so fantastical for a single person to be causing all that blinking and output and speaker volume, but all of the sudden I was caught up in one of the moments that makes me glad I do theatre. It's something special going on at the PH right now.
For crying out loud, somebody say something!
I do believe that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which I shall hereafter refer to as Willy Wonka) is perfect. I watched the whole thing glued to the screen with an expression of pure glee, with occasional breaks where I almost suffocated from laughing. Judging by the alternating awe-stricken silence and gut-splitting laughter from my right, Mark felt the same way. Johnny Depp blew me away. So, so creepy and wonderful. I was a little annoyed with the backstory, which I thought was unnecessarily sappy and something of a cumbersome annoyance, but I'm even willing to forgive that because of the BRILLIANT idea of making Willy Wonka's father a dentist -- even I, who cowers at the sight or thought of a dentist, got a big kick out of that (but it did add to the overall Creepy of the movie for me).
Also, oh my GOD, the Zorro preview? Yes. Yes please, and thank you. I saw a second of a clip from a dance scene, so here's hoping there's a good long one of those in the sequel ... definitely the hottest movie scene, ever. Antonio and Catherine Zeta-Jones are such gorgeous people. I could do without the repeated scratching of the Z into what I assume the writers think are funnier and funnier places, but I'm sure I'll be distracted from that. And Tim Burton? Is brilliant. Cannot wait for his latest - due out in September!!
And then I had one of those I-left-the-gas-oven-on moments on the way home (except it wasn't the gas, it was my column study, and I hadn't exactly left enough test tubes to catch all the effluent that was gonna come out tonight) so I sped over to the lab and marveled at how no one even thinks to wonder why an 18-year-old intern might be heading into a government compound at 10 30 at night. What's up! So I fixed that and cleaned up the mess and then chilled out with my camera - which Dustin just taught me has a timer!! I couldn't find that anywhere, definitely went through the entire manual, DEFINITELY would have helped us with Nashville pictures. But anyways, so here's my lab ... That's my favorite thing, the centrifuge, and my least favorite thing, the total organic carbon analyzer. Stooopid machine with no off button, so if you load the wrong samples or program it slightly off, you're just gonna be hanging out until it's done. Pretty cool, though.
And this is the wreck that is one of my workspaces. Funny, I always pictured government labs as shiny and sterilized.
Wish I could pretend I'm having a scientific epiphany, but really I just figured out how to work the timer.
And since that LAST timer shot worked so well, let's try it AGAIN! (this one was tricky, I had to prop the camera up a little bit and bend down to get into the shot!) This is me and my column study, after I cleaned up the mess.
None of the lab clocks agree with each other or with real time. Just to prove that point, the timestamp on my camera says this picture was taken at 10:40. Riiight.
Also ... suuure, whatever you say ... don't make the stairs so easy to find, then!
Hmm. Pictures are super easy on a mac now that I've figured out how to do them. Sooo, let's have some CABARET pictures!!! Yes, yes, yes! (This installment is disturbingly drag-queen heavy. Next time there will be hot girls. But until then ...)
The boys are a LOT into this ...
Paint up, Jasyn! (he's brilliant in two ladies, let me tell you)
The adorable tech crew! I love being surrounded by Cunninghams, because it means that no matter what breaks, it's totally taken care of.
Even the orchestra is beautiful ... for very, very lenient definitions of beautiful ...
Heh. That was fun. Plus, I promised that there would be (more?) pictures of K eiran in women's clothing on the internet when I was done. Except, I'm definitely just getting started.
"But that, my children, is called cannibalism and it is frowned upon in most societies."
I've got to sleep before work, but I just wanted to say that Jennifer and I survived Nashville, and Nashville survived us (how, I don't know) and I love everything except things I don't understand, and the first person who can explain exactly what's going on in the song Landed to me I will love forever and that is a promise. I'm sure it's super obvious but let's take a moment to remember that I was the one who totally missed the whole abortion theme in Brick for the longest time, and would prefer to believe that Not The Same is about a religious experience instead of an acid trip ... so, yeah, Ben Folds is kinda cryptic to me. It happens. I Love Him anyways. Whee, I have pictures and stories, but right now I can't keep my eyelids open - my Ashley June wore me out tonight with incredibly bad movies and incredibly entertaining stories. So, they shall wait until later.
Goodnight, goodnight, sweet baby. The world has more for you than it seems ..."
And if you can figure out what you're right about, you get a gold star - and you earned it.
I'll leave that to you to wonder.
"Your wife? What would she want with me?"
So in the past twenty minutes, I have counted the characters in my abstract fifteen times. Oh that's right. I hardly have time to TYPE anything what with all the character-counting. At first I thought it was pretty cool that we count characters instead of words and we even get to include spaces, thought it'd make it go faster, but I quickly realized my mistake. It's like when you start off counting down seconds because, hey, you get to knock one off the countdown every SECOND (what a coincidence) and realize all too soon that one off of 5,436,864,265 is really not a whole lot. Add that disappointment to the fact that Jen just told me the margins have to be 1 inch and, well, damn. She's upstairs right now reading my Harry Potter book. She finished already. Damn Asians.
And apparently having a couple of months off from paper-writing did not change my work habits because I've got something due tomorrow, and here I am.
I think time is actually slowing down as we get on towards quitting time tomorrow, at which point Jennifer and I will be hopping into the minivan (because Jasyn apparently isn't safe enough for the 3-hour trip ... hm, the van needs a name ... we'll work on that) and jetting off to Nashvegas. Tickets? Check. Anticipation? Check. 4.0 GB of music for the ride over? Check. Hotel room? Check.
Hotel room?? you say. Ah yes, that's correct. My parents decided I'd be too tired to drive back, so I get to use (abuse?) my newfound legality to rent my own little piece of real estate. Love it. I feel so old!
I'm taking Jen to the rope swing, and hopefully some of the other interns as well. What is it with people from other states - or just cities, even - and their lack of initiative to jump off of tall objects into bodies of non-chlorinated water? I totally don't get it. I was trying to explain the draw at lunch today, and people were just giving me blank stares. So we're going. We'll start easy, w/the swing. Then, to the CLIFFS. oh yes. Haha, I warned them to not eat the catfish bc they're radioactive and whatnot and they got all distraught and started wondering loudly why someone would want to jump into that kind of liquid, and I just giggled. Weak. They're weak.
A little bit of me really loves the Ridge.
"My conclusion is that my data is inconclusive."
"....huh."
In the mail in the past week:
Hehe. Went to the Electric Ballroom on Friday with Nicole, Kevin, Oren and Allan to see Hollow play. Umm. So, that's not really somewhere I want to go on a daily basis. Or like ever again, even though I think the opportunity to dance in a cage is actually really intriguing. Apparently I was the only one that knew it was a gay club, so I had a moment of entertainment when everyone else did an incredibly obvious double take at the sight of a couple of girls all over each other (and here I thought the boys would think that was hott!) And then we skittered out of there so's Nicole could get her Harry Potter book. And I think we have Harry Potter literary discussion group later today. Rock on. I'm so glad we've accepted that, even if the damn books are for kids, they're still addictive on the level of crack. I mean, we interrupted our Friday night for it. That's devotion, right there.
Caaabaaaa-aaaret with Dustin is a rollicking good time. Enough of the show is really wonderful that I'm not bitter about having to watch it repeatedly, and even when I am making my usual caustic comments, I don't have too much too complain about. And K eiran is home!!! Sooo exciting. Thought we'd lost him to the marshy clutches of FL for good. God I love the costumes for this show. My truck's namesake is wearing a bousteire, itty bitty panties, hose and a garter belt, I do believe, and has decided that if he all falls out and totally reveals himself to the entire audience, we can't be sued because hey, there IS a disclaimer that this show is not for children! I think he's maybe a little overconfident, but if that makes him feel better about strutting his stuff like that, then more power to him. Kile's choreography is really truly awesome, and makes me so proud of him. I love that boy more every day. You can really see how it's matured from the days where he would learn all the new Britney Spears music video dances and kinda incorporate the moves into stuff he was doing ... it really fits well with the show, equal parts commentary and sleazy. So, so, so impressed with him.
Even the orchestra is beautiful.
"Forgotten? I told you so!"
Today at work I got to play with URANIUM SAMPLES. Yes, they were pretty diluted, but still I got all kinds of safety lectures and had to dispose of my hazardous radioactive waste differently than normal, and everyone stayed strangely far away from me and then I had to pat myself down with the handheld radiation detector.
Love my job. So much. And I was worried 5 weeks ago that I was just going to be a test tube monkey ... nooooot quite. Also, I worked a 5 hour day today, but that was kinda by accident. And the 5 hours were totally hardcore.
And now I'm off to take East TN by storm with Holly and Joan. Ahh, a good day.
"What kind of stripper do you take me for?"
So I tried to quit the internet. I really did. I hardly touched the computer at home for more than a month. Until today, I'd been online maybe 15 minutes in two weeks. I don't check my email (I do admit to checking facebook, but honestly, how DO you people expect me to get through the work day without it?!), and I don't read anyone else's page and I read the news in NEWSPAPERS (a novel concept!!) and I purchase CDS from a STORE when I get the urge to listen to music. And, I don't even carry my cell phone anymore because I got so used to having it not work. I have been seriously technology independent for quite some time now and I was loving it.
Until today, that is. Because today, my beautiful new laptop arrived. PowerBook G4 15" SuperDrive. It's gorgeous. It's so fast. It's got everything (including TIGER). And it's MINE. I've never had a computer to myself before. Also it came with an iPod. I had no hope. I fell in lust and quickly (over the span of the past two or three hours) felt the lust develop into love. It came with stickers (decals?) with the apple logo on it for crying out loud. I've never seen such an attractive computer box. Attractive and minimalist, is actually what I liked about it. The same for the iPod packaging.
I should mention at this time that I'm typing with the lights off because I adore the keyboard backlight. Yeah. It's serious.
In other news, I graduated, turned 18, took New York by storm with Ashlee, and got a full-time job. In that order. I thought the job was going to suck, but so far, and I'm halfway done with my 10 week tenure, it's totally awesome. I haven't come home after work yet (except today when I drove at the speed of light to come home to unwrap my PowerBook) so it's not even like I'm not getting to hang out with people. And the best part is, anything I do after work is totally guilt-free. I never wonder if I should be accomplishing something because, clearly, I already have - no matter if I'm wasting time watching movies, swimming, getting ice cream, I totally earned it because I worked an 8-hour day!! LOVE it.
I may write about my experiments at some point even though I know good and well that no one is going to understand them or their point. Suffice it to say that I'm not curing cancer, but I may be curing pollution, or contributing a tiny amount. That's good enough for me. Oh yeah, I'm working at ORNL. Everything I wanted for this summer came true!! (yeeees I pined for this job. I'll admit it. I'm a nerd, and it'll look spectacular on my resume)
Also, I have a confession to make. You heard it here first, folks ... I'm going to be a Biology major. I know, I know - I spent all year complaining about biology and cursing the teacher and the class and the book and Campbell and labs and cells and microscopes and ... I could go on. But honestly? I love the subject. I did have a serious issue with the teacher, but after a while the complaining was kinda empty (except when I complained about the workload, that was real.). In truth, I don't like alllll of biology - plants, animal behavior and ecosystems can shove it - but I LOVE genetixxxx, microbiology and evolution. So yeah. I'm majoring in it. Don't think I'm dropping Econ, because I'm not, but a double major is in order. Also, I'm going to take an English class (but just one) by choice - there's an entire one focusing on Virginia Woolf, what could be more awesome?!? ummm and I may try physics again, too. So yeah, grab your ice skates and head on down to hell for some hockey. College is apparently making me adventurous already and I haven't even gotten there.
That's another thing. I'm so damn tired of people being scared of college and worrying about it and freaking out about how your life is changing and you're leaving people and blah blah blah. Yeah, everything will be different. But the people who matter will always be in your life. And if you never leave, never go anywhere totally foreign, put yourself out there and try something new, you stagnated on graduation day (actually, knowing the work habits of the typical ORHS senior, you stagnated somewhere in September). Yeah, it's gonna be radically different from anything we've ever done. That's why you should be excited. I'm leaving my Ashleee and that's going to tear me in two, but she'll visit me and I'll visit her and there will be letter-writing and traveling pants (or maybe a necklace bc it's cheaper to ship) and we'll have infinitely more things to talk about, and TWO places to party instead of one.
Come on, guys. We all know high school wasn't the best four years of our lives. We're too good for that.
But I guess I just don't have time to think like that. Don't have time anymore for anything that's not important. I realized the other day that this is quite possibly my last summer in the Ridge, the last time I will ever be here for any extended period of time, and it was bittersweet but not sad. I've gotten everything I ever could have asked for from this place, and a lot of things I didn't even know I wanted or needed. I have five weeks left before I go off to start the rest of my life, and that'll be enough time if I don't waste any of it worrying about how it might not be..
Speaking of excited, I'm going to BEN FOLDS in A WEEK. Jennyfer and I are road-tripping it, and we're going to meet Melissa there!!! Could I BE more thrilled? (umm, no, the answer is no. Because then Weezer is playing, too. wowwww. and tickets were like $30. we win)
My computer keeps making little swooshing noises. I kinda like them. I need to name the computer. Ben named my iPod. Her name is Cynthia. Yeah, that's the name that shows up on my desktop when it's plugged in. I didn't realize that when I typed it in (hey, it was like, Name Of iPod? and I told it!) buuuut yeah. She's silver and pretty.
Ahh everything is peaceful and right with the world. Except that wireless doesn't reach to my bedroom right now. Other than that ...
"Oh, Fritzi, would you stop that? Already this week we have lost two waiters, a table, and three bottles of champagne up there like this."
