amalthya

For the first time since I moved, I walked to school today instead of taking the bus or the subway (otherwise known as "taxi")

And, while it's still not warm enough to go sans jacket or leave my hands out of my pockets, Spring is definitely sprunging.

I think the biggest impulse that the change in weather has brought about in me is the increased desire to socialize. As little as six months ago (I think), we had semi-weekly plans! What happened!?

On another side note, it's time for crafting again. I sent an email out to the Stitch & Bitch girls to see if we can plan our next meetup. I guess I was also prompted by yuki_onna's thirst for crafting.

Which leads me to the perfect segue - happy birthday to justbeast!!

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I take great pride in cracking walnuts; that is, getting people who are trapped in their shells to come out. So I'm feeling wildly successful that my (notoriously) surly coworker smiled TWICE in front of me today, and sang along to not one, but TWO different songs on my Energy playlist while we checked in books!

For the curious, the two songs were "September" by Earth, Wind and Fire and "Cecilia" by Simon and Garfunkel

When you haven't posted in a long time, it becomes difficult to think of a way to sum everything up. With highs, and lows, where does one find Flow? What is the overall emoticon? The takeaway message?

Happiness. (and I'm not even in Denton!)

I've been a little frustrated at the carrots on strings being dangled and snatched away in my life -- no one wants a chubby marionette. Sure, I may not live up to your expectations of me, but do you have to be so obvious while you punish me? Also, my refurbed Apple laptop - Renegade - is giving me the Grey Screen of Death. So, gotta take it into a "genius"

But aside from that, things are brilliantly good. Thanksgiving was spent in New Jersey with Adam's family - mother, father, sister, brother. I played a grotesque amount of Nerf Guns and saw why it was that families with multiple children have such a playful bond.

I think the best part was continuing my tradition of having Thanksgiving NOT with my family but still feeling like I was surrounded by family. Plus, yummy food. Is it actually possible to eat stuffing all year round?

The best thing about having no school too is the things you can do with your free time -- like GAME. D&D on Sunday with nothing but boys and football, and topped off with Black Friday gaming. The highlights of course having a big nerdy Labyrinth sleepover and all of us piling into ONE car and making fun of geeks... while we drove to a gaming store.

I ran into an old friend of pokaine and discovered that he's doing really well and is married and lives in California. Knowing that he's doing well made me really happy.

I've also now seen TWO movies -- Beowulf in Digital 3D (which I actually really enjoyed) and Enchanted (which made me want to vomit for nearly 2 hours). Good friends, good food, good entertainment. It's been a whirlwindedly wonderful week.

AND I might be moving. Fingers crossed, everyone.

And, of course, the real zenith of it all was getting to spend more than two days in a row with Adam, who continues to charm and delight me.

There will be many quotations from our over-too-quickly week together, but the first the that comes to mind is:

"Can I stay forever in your perfect world of mincemeat and Guitar Hero?

With that, I keep my good news and more detailed grievances to myself in order to motivate myself to find a part-time job and clean my room.

Has it really been so many days/weeks since my last post? Is it the busyness of school or the lack of really anything to complain about?

There are things to complain about, especially with regard to not seeing people that I miss on a regular basis. I feel that I've gone to a very interactively social lifestyle to one of phonecalls, IMs and smoke signals from the roof of 151st and Broadway.

Really the bottom line has been that I've been really happy. Not always as productive as I'd like, but my schedule is pleasantly full.

This past weekend, Adam came up to New York and we flew down to Tampa, Florida to see Rachel and Evan and go to Busch Gardens Howl-O-Scream. We'd gone to Halloween Horror at Universal Studios last year, and while the scare park itself was great, riding rides like "Twister" left something to be desired. I mean, no one rides "The Mummy" 3 times unless there's really nothing else to ride, right?

"Twister Reenactment"

I'm wet.
It's windy; now I'm wet and cold.
The animatronic tree split it two.
Now I'm wet and cold and deaf.
The End.

So, this year we opted for Busch Gardens. I will say, 100%, that the rides kicked ass. We even ventured on the SHIEKRA -- a ride that drops you 90º down 220 feet that was truly, utterly terrifying. To prove it, they take a photo of you at the bottom (which we'll upload soon). My mouth is open wider than my head, and Adam looks like he's passing a kidney stone.

We also rode Montu, and Shiekra again, and Adam and I rode the Log Flume. It was so much fun and so much riding that when it was time to go home to the hotel and recoup and head out to Howl-O-Scream, I was so pooped that I promptly fell asleep.

Either that or I was dead from the cheese fries I ate for lunch. Adam and I had also had sort of an adventure getting DOWN to Tampa -- our flight was about 5 hours delayed thanks to rain and fog. We amused ourselves by 1) reading Game Informer and 2) playing Fluxx on the floor.

By the time we finally got in the queue to take off, we were thankfully still in wonderful spirits, though our lunch from 1 pm was long since digested. We touched down in Tampa at around 11pm (our original estimation was 7pm) and discovered that the hotel room service was closed, despite it being a Friday, and that the only place open was... TACO BELL.

Transcript of our drive-thru-window conversation:

Me: Hi, can I get two Bean Burritos?
Taco Bell: I'm sorry, we're out of beans.
Me: You're out... of beans?
Taco Bell: Yes, and before you ask, we're also out of guacamole and tomatoes.
Me: Um, well, what is on your menu that's vegetarian?
Taco Bell: Umm, rice?
Adam: Do you have any chalupas?
Taco Bell: No, we're out.

I ended up eating potatoes with cheese, and nachos with cheese. Notice a pattern?

But the room was lovely! It was a great place to spend the weekend.

The actual Howl-O-Scream thankfully had shorter lines than it tends to at Universal Studios. Of course, one should know when there is NO line that the place is completely lame. We were given 3D glasses to go into a techno glow house, full of bartenders spitting water at us and making us wet, though not with fear.

My lack of depth perception tends to make me an easy mark in the scare-department, a fact that every single Scarer seemed to know too well that I'd give them a shriek. Adam tried his best to shield me -- at one point, I was just clutching him from behind while he warned me where the scarers were -- but it made no difference. They still got me!

And oh my it was fun. We did find it perplexing that apparently, ghoulish vampires who own clubs write in binary. Oooo! SPOOOKY! BINNNARY!

infd was convinced they'd spelled "Boo" or the like -- but alas, there were, suspiciously, too many zeroes.

We saw some funny signs, like KEEP HEAD ERECT and DON'T FORGET YOUR COWBOY HAT (in picture form). How about BearSS street! Not one bear! Or two! But multiple BearsS (with an extra S)! Or did you know that Oprah eats pizza?

...in Tampa? She does!

We also tried to ride Montu again, only to be stymied by a line that didn't move once we got to the almost-front. We saw them hold people up, and keep some people on the ride instead of letting them off. After we gave up, we discovered that people had gotten stuck, DANGLING, in the middle of the ride. I cannot imagine anything worse. By the time we left, they were only just being let down after having hung up there for 20 minutes. Eee!!

The whole photo album is here
I've got some exciting things coming up -- party on the 3rd, concert in Carnegie Hall on the 9th. Good parties coming up this weekend, along with Adam, which is always a Yay.

And with that, I've got room-cleaning to do and what-not. But I figured that really, these are the memories I'll want to have kept when I'm old and gray.

Sometimes you just want to escape from yourself, and obligations, or perceptions of expectation.

I'm actually writing this in a public entry, but things have been really difficult between Mason (booksymagnifico) and I these last couple days, and it's really difficult and straining on me, and I'm off my center. It's core-distressing. That's all I really want to say about it.

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Last night, infd and Evan and I basically went on an inadvertent walking tour of New York City. We met up outside of Central Park's 72nd street west entrance, planning to wander through the park and enjoy the warm weather and take photos. Of course, I ended up leaving the house in a hurry, worried that I wouldn't make it to 72nd and Central Park West by 6 pm on foot. Which, not knowing our plan, I'd intended to do. My rush caused me to forget my camera which was, indeed, unfortunate.
( A Long Entry With Photos )

I had absolutely the funnest night last night, first with Lana and Matt Z out at dinner, and then at the Thursday night bar.

I'm eating some lunch, and then heading to Maryland to see well, everyone I can, and I'll write more later, but why do so many boys on campus have scary emo Fall-Out Boy hairdos?

Also, check the photo blog for photos from last night, and for photos of stephantravels' cake :)

Okay, off to Greyhound!

Tuesday 1:20 pm

I love Chimpanzee lunchtime. We were all playing outside -- it's been really beautiful before noon every day for the past week, and the chimps were additionally excited because Balume, their caregiver who now only cares for Shege, was in the compound visiting them.

I remember when I first came to the Chateau Chimpanzee -- Balume was a full-time babies caregiver since Shege hadn't yet arrived. Balume was, by far, Etaito's favorite. One of my most severe bitings was, in fact, when Balume was doing his wash and Etaito couldn't find him, went into a panic, and took out the frustration on one of my knees, through my jeans.

Now that Balume isn't here anymore, it was just so clear how much things had changed as I watched him interact with Balume today. Of course he was happy to see him and jumped into his arms straightaway. The longer Balume was there, though, the more I realized how "important" I'd become as Etaito would rush Balume, biting him, playing rough, stealing his shoes, and then come back to me, hop into my lap and want snuggles and grooming.

It made me so proud, and also so honored to have won this tiny chimpanzee's trust, and, dare I say, "love"... And once you're being treated like a mother, it's hard not to act like one. Achilles came in with the food Mwacca had just purchased for the chimps, and I saw the bag come in and initiated the food-hoot. Okeysha ran down from the tree, and Etaito jumped onto my back.

Okeysha crawled up my front and I hooted, they hooted -- Etaito right into my ear (since he was behind me) as we headed over to the big plastic bag. Achilles grabbed a big banana and reached down to give it to Etaito.

"No," I scolded. "Etaito n'aime pas les grand bananes. Il mange seulment les petites bananes!"

Almost in sync, Etaito took the big banana from Achilles and threw it onto the ground. I reached into the bag, reassurance-hooting and took a handful of small bananas, as well as some passion fruit and hooted as I opened the passion fruits for the kids.

Kanabiro gets so excited when there's food that she jumps up and down, smacking her feet hard on every landing. Of course, when she's sitting on you, it's somehow less fun, but still funny.

Bonane was putting away the food into the fridge as the kids kept eating. I had both Kanabiro and Okeysha climbing on me, so I decided to sit down. I backed into the chair and plopped down. Etaito climbed up onto my lap and I helped him open a passion fruit. The gooey slimey seeds went all over my lap and after he got up, I tried to brush them off.

Bonane wanted to sweep up the fruit carnage from the cement floor, so I went to stand up, helping Etaito get onto my back. When Bonane started to laugh!

"Que passé?" I said in my awful, wrong French.

"Regardez!! Le Banane!" squealed Bonane.

... Yeaa... I guess there'd been banana in the chair when I sat down. Because I had smushed, slimy banana all over my butt.

My friends know how much I hate the "eating banana" noise. It colors my opinions of bananas in general, having to hear that gross slimy smacking whenever someone is eating banana. Amazingly, chimpanzees don't seem to make that noise with bananas, although they make it with every single other kind of food.

Had I known what the feeling of smushed wet banana in fabric was SO disgusting, I'd never have complained about the sound. Just trying to brush the banana off my butt was horrific. I couldn't help but laugh, because as I squealed, Achilles and Bonane laughed, and Etaito protested that I was moving more than 2 feet away from him.

The whole thing was sort of farcical -- since I already had passion fruit seeds all over the front of me, it was pointless to try to wipe the banana off the back of me. Every time I brushed somewhere new, there'd be more banana.

After everything, we went and flopped on the mattress in the "drop" between the two houses. The kids played and I nearly fell asleep.

I've got more video to upload but I'm honestly not sure when I'll be in the office next. I'm still not sure at all when Debby and Liz are coming, and I'll admit to being nervous about my five days with Liz. I'm also not sure if Debby will think I did a "good job" since I was never really sure to start with what it was I should be doing. hehe.

Either way, my dad and Ruth get to Uganda in 8 days and I get to the US in 14!! Time really is running up!