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| Yup, I'm a college graduate. Go me. In celebration, I've started a new blog. Go figure. www.longpurplebike.blogspot.com I guess this thing will stay here as another webghost until one day when Xanga notices it's dead and cleans it up. Goodbye! | | |
| I got the photoblogger thing at my school! I haven't decided whether I'm giving you the link yet. It was so embarrassing, I gave them the link to this blog while applying, just as a kind of "see, I am familiar with the whole blogging thing," and they used the "i don't like the silence" post today up on the big projecter in their presentation as a sample! Of all pieces of text they could have used, that one was so.....personal. (well, all you could see was the first few paragraphs so it wasn't so bad) But I can't be mad or anything, I gave them the link. Besides, theoretically anyone in the world can do anything they want with the words I post on here. I guess I'd just never been confronted with it before. It's kind of freaky. Just a note to you, whoever's actually reading this. Please tell me if you plan to do something with my words before you do it! (I can't make you or anything, but please, for decency's sake!) Anyway, now I don't know how interconnected I want my blogs to be. I'm certainly not going to link to here from there, but I'll have to think about it..... Anyway, my mom's about to pick me up so I need to go. At some point I'll have to tell you about Greece and Italy. I've got some really beautiful pix. | | |
| man where has the break gone? time's almost up and i have to start reading for classes and packing and preparing for the trip. I'm leaving for Greece on January 7th. I will come back on the 21st. all i want to do is watch more Miyazaki films lol. I just saw Howl's Moving Castle. I saw Nausicaa last week and Princess Mononoke a few weeks before that. Mmm it seems I have become a Miyazaki fan. i don't even want to crochet while watching either. Amazing how lazy I can get, so quickly. | | |
| Exams are over. Time to start deciding how to occupy myself over Christmas Break. i've taken to watching the tv show "Heroes" online. It's really good. Occupied many an hour I could have been studying for Exams this week. But I feel good about how exams went, really, I do. Only 4 episodes left. 4 hours. I went swing dancing for the first time for real. I mean, I've swing danced a handful of times but this was an actual pure Swing event. It happens every Tuesday but God has been putting all kinds of physical obstacles to prevent me from going for ages. My parents didn't like it. But I went anyway. I had fun. I took my Converse little sister and another freshman friend. They wore cute little bitty swing dresses. I wore baggy trousers and a loose sweater. I don't know if that is the reason generally more younger men asked them to dance and more older men asked me, or whether it was because they were helpless beginners and the younger men (mostly beginners themselves) needed to feel like the stronger dancer. Not that I'm not a beginner, really I am, but the rhythm's in my blood so it turns out I can handle myself. (which came as a bit of a surprise) This one smoky older guy kept asking me to dance. By appearance (and smell) only, he was pretty sketch, but he was nice and a very good leader. He twirled me around all over the place all the time. In fact, twirls seemed to be the only thing he did. But it was fun, I felt graceful dancing with him. It was surprisingly difficult for me to swallow my prejudices and not try to avoid him just a teensy bit between songs. I learned alot about myself. I'm uglier (inside) than I thought. so many new thoughts and experiences. i attempted small talk with males. O.o I learned how it feels when someone steps past you to ask the girl next to you to dance. I learned a lot of new moves, and the awkwardness at the end of the song when one of us is thinking "one more song" and the other one's thinking "let's move on." There was a lot of awkwardness. I skirted it by twirling off the dancefloor, or letting the music carry me away off in the corner. Just the etiquette and protocol of swing dancing I'm going to have to learn. I imagine it will come with practice. I haven't decided whether I care to exploit my body a little more next time, just for the sake of experiment. I have often toyed with the thought of learning, just like Marilyn did, exactly what to do to get men to want me. (want to talk and dance with me that is) My way would not be overtly sexual though, it would be more romantic and coy like the belles of the 30's and 40's. It would all be an act of course. They say Marilyn could pick it up and drop it like a hat. I believe it is an acquired skill. Three reasons I have not pursued this occupation very far. Firstly, I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to do it. I like to pretend I'm a glamour girl though in reality I'm rather socially clueless. Being confronted with the hard truth that it's not in me would be somewhat heartbreaking. Secondly, I'm afraid I would like it too much or it would take over me. Attention has corrupted many a girl. I'm afraid I would not be able to let it go, and it would take me far past where I have (in the clearheaded present) set my limits. The third reason is that this entire train of thought rather sickens me. True attraction comes from God shining clear through a purified soul. i know somewhere deep down that it is safer to let all men see my sorry, sullied, unpretty self (they will stay at arms length) than put on some gilding and attract (what's the word) hmm leachers. When I get straight with God, He'll do the work and attract the kind of man I actually want. In the meantime, a girl craves attention. shudder. I will wear a skirt next time though. Twirling is a lot more fun in a skirt. It also hit me, that night, how much I am not like other girls. Although I can't factor out how new i was to the whole thing. While we were dancing, it was mostly unembarrassed footlooseness and self-confidence(or -absorbtion), both of which I seem to have in high supply. But also, my friends' agreement, upon our departure, that Swing = Boys. They kept talking about all the cute boys they danced with or wished they could have danced with, and they both seemed to know exactly which ones the other one was talking about. I was lost through most of that conversation. I was thinking, Swing = well, swing! and...well I can't say who else. And I was thinking about how unintentionally rude I probably was to the smoky man and maybe to some of the other guys. And pondering the older man/younger man thing. And grappling with the question of whether the attention of younger, more attractive males was worth modifying my behavior and dress. I think I could probably choose to become like those girls. Except, I don't think they ever consciously made the choice. Man, I would love to be able to draw the line between nature and nurture right about now. This event naturally reactivated my Swing passion.(after a brief respite into Indie and Celtic) I found Yehoodi radio, which is pure swing 24/7. It's a little intoxicating so I have consumed it sparingly. But there's another way to kill my meaningless hours. Tommorow I believe it will be what gets me through cleaning my room. heh, confessions is an apt title for this blog. sheesh. | | |
| My school is having three official photoblogger types in the spring! Here's the sample entry I sent. I hope they pick me! December 12, 2006 I think I'm still asleep today. This morning I rolled out of bed and into Aural Skills for the sight singing Final Exam. This is the class I've been breezing through all semester. Having sung alto in choir all through HS, I hardly ever even look at the sight singing beforehand, and usually get through it ok. But today, oh no. Firstly, I get in there late, so I'm flustered. Dr. Tyner says, "first, lets do a minor exercise in compound time." No problem, I think. So she picks an excercise in 6/8 and gives me my 'do.' I start conducting, in 3/4. And I start singing, in major. I get halfway through the excercise before I even notice something's funny. I'm such an idiot. She let me finish it out in minor, and conducting right, but I stumbled all the way through, I was so embarrassed. The worst sight singing I've done in the entire semester, and it was on the final exam. Go figure. I got to work late because I got out of Aural Skills early and lost track of time studying. I really need to buy a new watch. I spent the first hour at the Writing Center gazing off into the sky through that big window. The sky just looked so bright, the trees so green, the brick of Dexter so red...Plus I've only had 5 hours of sleep for the past few nights. Oh, that reminds me, last week I watched two kamikaze squirrels fly from the roof of Dexter to the tree next to it. Crazy squirrels. I love working at the Writing Center. I was snapped out of my daze when a very shy voice asked me if I was the one who would look at her paper. She was so unsure of herself, it made me want to be extra gentle with her. Her professor had told her that her last paper had been all over the place, so she was coming to the writing center to make sure this one was ok. That kind of student is what it's all about, for me. Contary to popular opinion, we're not a proofreading service. We talked about organization and haing a main idea for each paragraph. I told her that this paper was pretty well-organized, which was the truth, though we moved around a few sentences and broke up a few paragraphs. When we were done, she seemed so sincerely grateful. This is why I love my job. At the Day Student Association meeting, we all shared a Christmas family tradition, and some funny Christmas stories, and ate S'mores. I also showed them the DSA newsletter I'd put together for Professional Writing class. They seemed to like it. Now I'm sitting in "lab" for Computer Programming class staring blankly at the computer. We're supposed to be reviewing for the final, but this is my other "breeze" class of the semester. It's more fun to look at the insane gadgets at Think Geek.com with Heather Price and Martha the Converse II student. We're the three teacher's pets/class clowns. All Creative Writing majors, oddly enough. Heather gave Martha and me Christmas presents. They're so cute, little tiny stockings filled with Hersheys chocolate bells. And she wrote me the sweetest note about the poems I let her read last night(she asked to see my work, can you believe it?): "I have this to say: they exude nothing but the purest, unadulterated awsomeness." That's going on my Facebook. Heather, I love you. I want to catch Dr. Keefer to talk about our Directed Independant Study in the spring before his office hours are over. But I really should try studying a little bit first. I don't want another Aural Skills incident. Until next time! | | |
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