godream

so last night i nearly fell asleep on my feet about 11pm at a concert. (the second band of the three playing was not so impressive.) woke up for the last set (it would've been hard not to) but almost gone again when we went to grab pizza afterwards, and on the walk home. i swear i used to be able to stay up till 2am easy, what happened? i can't afford 8 hours of sleep, unfortunately...

yesterday: apple picking with beat_the_beaver & others, which was awesome -- the weather was absolutely perfect, the apples were (are) crisp and delicious, and i now have pie fodder. mmmmmmmmm. we also had delicious ice cream (pumpkin!) and voyaged to the place where overstocked cvs merchandise goes to die, which was pretty cool -- i now have a fuckton of formal cocoa gift wrap supplies, including purple plaid paper. (!)

then concert, with different subset of others. say hi to your mom was decent, though not as world-rocking as friends had promised, at least partially because the venue's sound techs were asleep on the job, as usual. the wrens were amazing. their singer/bassist has this fantastic manic energy charisma something, directing the whole audience through sheer willpower and focus. he ran from one guitarist's mike to the other's, across the equipment lining the front of the stage, balancing with one hand on the low ceiling -- a cord came loose and wasn't back in place in time for the vocal entrance, he turns to the audience with half a bar's notice and shouts SING and right on cue the wave of sound comes. (on the third song! after an unpopular opener! that's how fast the crowd went from dead to owned --) and some strange and neat messing around on stage: part of one song delivered by one guy singing into a cellphone cupped to his mouth, while the guy on the recieving end of the call holds the phone up to the pickup on his guitar. they gave a dozen kids from the audience drumsticks and brought them up to beat percussion on the stage and wide-eyed shout the chorus into the mike with the singer. one hell of a band & one hell of a show. i'm not terribly familiar with their music; i want more but i'm almost afraid to go envelope myself in mp3s 'cause i'm pretty sure it's not going to be as awesome.

and besides, what i should be doing is tooling anyways...

lessons for the evening:
a.) organizing 27+ people by yourself doesn't work well, partly because
b.) just because you're watching out for everyone else doesn't mean they're watching out for you.

i have thus far managed not to yell at people i feel should be yelled at, though, so that's a bit of a victory, i suppose.

10 lb flour. 5 lb brown sugar. 10 lb white sugar. 7 lb chocolate chips. 7.5 lb butter. Lots of eggs and salt and baking soda and powder and vanilla.

600 cookies. 2 hours. Zero notice. I love my hall.

Blue curtains purchased -- you're all such enablers, I love you THIS MUCH.

Home now, mildly sunburnt, a few inexplicable freckles by the bridge of my nose (I never freckle besides the half-dozen permanent ones, this is weird), salt-crusted, wave-battered, happy and tired and everything I own has sand in the cracks, I have salt water taffy to share, and now for a whole bunch of sleep. (and then digging through books to bring to school with me 'cause I miss them and then repacking and then back to school and then work and then rush and then class and omg where is my summer?)

Oh, and the federal jury duty folks took mercy on me! *happy dance*

This update dedicated to beat_the_beaver.

So I'm in New Jersey with my family, both immediate and extended -- there's something like 22 of us around? It's pretty awesome. There are people here I haven't seen in six years -- I didn't even recognize one of my cousins at first. Tragically the average geek quotient in my extended family is lower than in my immediate family, which in turn is lower than in the dorm, so I get laughed at even more than normal when my comment on an efficiently packed room is "dense". I just barely resisted making a metastability joke about an ambiguously closed door, realizing that the audience probably would not appreciate it. MIT folks, I miss you guys. :P

The water is warm -- for the ocean, at least! -- and the waves were huge, especially today since the wind was strong. My brother was in the water twenty feet from me shouting "come over here!" and I was swimming as hard as I could and ducking under the waves when they came and digging my feet in and just generally doing my best to go against the waves and the undertow and failing miserably for about ten minutes before I gave up, got out, walked down the shore past where he was and went back in on the easy diagonal. The ocean is pretty awesome, in all senses of the word.

And now I'm going to shut down the laptop and go back to enjoying the terrific weather and the company. ;)

What's left in summer: 1 day and 1 week of work, 1 week vacationing on the beach with family, another week of work... then dorm/hall rush stuff starts, new frosh start arriving, the new school year begins. Wow.

I was trying to explain to someone that June and August are both incredibly short months but July lasts forever. At this point, clearly the summer's almost over, whereas last week it was set to go on forever. Just as well, since my job is driving me batshit insane and my motivation is pretty much done. But still: whoa.

In other news: oh baby, show me that warm front, et cetera. Warning: link is entirely work-safe and not nearly as entertaining as I had hoped from its headline.

So I got tagged for this year's US census -- evidently they chose ten random residents of my dorm, and I got lucky. Which meant I had to fill out a survey booklet and hand it in. Whatever, I've got no problem with the stand up and be counted business, it was twenty minutes out of my life, but I can cope. Hurrah for being a statistic.

Today I got an email reminding me to turn it in. Fine, that makes sense. There were two really fabulous things about this email, though: first, my name was spelled wrong -- even though it was spelled right on the census, and presumably this email came from the same mass database that that did. Secondly, it was sent from a hotmail address. Seriously. With a number on the end of the username and the ad for the MSN toolbar on the bottom and everything. I guess representatives of the census bureau don't rate a .gov email address? Way to suck, US government. (God I am such a geek snob.)

Anyone want to volunteer ways to not worry about things that {aren't my business; aren't my responsibility; I can't change} or some subset thereof?

Keeping busy is probably the ideal one. I should get right on that.

I donated blood today. And actually filled the pint thingie, unlike last time I tried. Yay for being hydrated, for once, & go team alison. And the inside of my elbow is now bright orange with a bandaid over it and ready to gross out the squeamish guys on my hall with. Whee!

(It's vitally important to balance out the selfless altruistic acts with the immature stupid ones, I think.)

The lady taking my information accidentally put down Swaziland instead of Switzerland for the question about whether you've been to any foreign countries lately, but it was only a mild snafu -- I definitely like donating at Kendall Square better than the Student Center: less crowded, less frazzled staff, and you get to look up out the skylight while you bleed instead of just at the dark student center ceiling.

Saw the new Pirates movie -- pretty awesome, although they're not shy about diving for the obvious joke. Also went to the beach, yay! The ocean makes me inordinately happy, and we're going again this weekend. :D And I met one of blueeverglades's friends from home, who is really cool. And a mob of us watched the fireworks over the Charles -- beat_the_beaver found the Best Spot Ever -- which were even better than usual, I think, and all in all it's been a pretty gleeful week.

1.) I'm remembering my dreams lately, which is sorta unusual for me. Not a bad thing by any means: I like being able to recall the bizarre stuff going on in my head. But it's a new thing. No details, mostly, just moments and characters. And of course, my very favorite dream-consequence: waking up and distinctly remembering having been told something by someone, and wanting to respond belatedly to it, and then on further consideration not being sure whether it actually happened. This I get even when I'm not remembering dreams much, and it does add that extra awesome surreal touch to life.

2.) I'm careening all over the emotional roadmap, which is exciting but non-fun, and may or may not be connected to and/or causing 1.

3.) I'm rapidly developing a list of summer do and don't-dos, practically resolutions, which will probably last about as long as the new year's ones do (bah). Summer, three months, what a weird span of time -- they say habits take a month to set, and boy do I have a pile to build and break -- September looks years away and moments. The hall's already quiet and only going to get quieter. :/ (but clearly this just means we need to get out more often.)

4.) Probably much more interesting to most people than me talking about the state of my mind: for those of you who I haven't already mentioned this to, a friend and I went and saw Hurra Torpedo in concert. It was pretty spectacular. If you haven't already watched their Total Eclipse of the Heart video, you really need to.