une folle farandole
thursday night: Mixed Taste at belmar with dad. two enthralling lectures: dada and monster movies. we now both very much want to see Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.
friday: LJ was temporarily blocked by my work firewall. this means I'm going to be more careful from now until I leave (which is only, what, two more weeks, anyway. yeah, I'm ready to get back to school.) then clay and I had dinner at Chama, where the best part was the margarita and the rest was middling at best.
I've been experiencing a self-esteeem dip in the past couple of days.
this doesn't make sense. last night at contra my compliment basket was overflowing! i was booked up to three dances in advance! by the end of the night, as the bald guy with the earring (the really good dancer and total safe flirt) finally asked me, I had to push him back to "the one after next," and it turned out there wasn't one, so I asked if he'd be there in two weeks. He said he will. Hope he is. on the plus side, they played a heck of a bunch of tunes I knew from Dublin, TOTALLY including the ballydesmond polkas. combine that with listening to Edith Piaf tonight and you have one nostalgic chickie.
anyway, my popularity meant I only got in two dances with Tim, who spent the rest of the time sitting out or dancing with Lauren from HS, who Emma convinced to come along. after dancing, we went to my hot tub, where I just got grumpy and talked with Clay the whole time.
then Tim and I spent a while outside my front door talking about sean nos and opera crickets and the session at Scruffy's (which he says he'll come to tomorrow. woot). I got to sleep around 3.
Woke up at 6ish to go rafting. Tired, groggy, cranky, but rafting was pretty awesome. Today we did the rapids at Royal Gorge. Our guide was from Iowa and had the sweetest little-bit-of-a-twang that I loved. New career path alert! What if I come back here next summer to be a rafting guide? Training is two weeks and then you rack up another two weeks of experience before taking out chartered trips. nice way to spend a summer, eh?
but then things got ungood, because after the trip I assumed we were going straight home just like last time, and that was not the case. we drove over Razor Ridge, which was about ten feet wide and accommodated a one-way road. that was cool. then I fell asleep, expecting to wake up on the way home. Instead I woke up halfway through Paradise? Canyon. I awoke to hear my family playing alphabet games because my mom doesn't like listening to music in the car. After a while of scenery (it's stark, but I didn't like it as much as other places. the granite cave walls didn't do much for me. not enough green?) I went back to sleep, and awoke in Colorado Springs, where mom convinced me to get a retina-burning bright-bright medium-blue-shaded crinkly skirt. as it was on sale for $20, and realizing that I'd probably like it if I weren't so incurably cranky, I let her buy it for me. With a dying battery i took a phone call from Emily, a once-upon-a-time babysat, confirming our ice cream date to happen a few hours later, and texts with Clay about seeing Little Miss Sunshine after that. all worked out well. Cold Stone took the Cadbury Crunchie I happened to have in my purse and put it into ice cream for me. Little Miss Sunshine was very enjoyable, and definitely laugh-out-loud funny in a few spots.
At Clay's, I was reminded how much I love edamame and how much I would love for there to be a consistent supply in our kitchen. then I came home.
tomorrow: Kevin "Ernie" from high school's graduation-from-Durham-England-with-a-BA party, and the session.
I've realized recently that Dublin (don't know whether it was being there or some latent personality-development gene that surfaced) has made me... less afraid to say whatever I think. Generally, this is a bad thing, because it can be intimidating to people who don't expect it.
I've lost the word-final t and d aspiration. I've lost the downwards question intonation. But the two things I cannot re-Americanize back from Dublin are: 1) slagging [parenthetical note: OMG! people here are WAY too sensitive to slagging. I'll go and barely touch 'em and they'll fall apart. for one thing, they're being too sensitive and thinking I mean things more seriously than I ever do, and for another, I'll lose any sort of zing I might have acquired in Dublin if I have to tone down for these softies!] and 2) never being able to say "excuse me," because the Irish don't. They use "sorry" for everything, and now so do I. the first time I was hailed with a "sorry," it took several seconds to register that the lady was calling for me, but then I acclimatized and started to use only "sorry." Now, several months later, I still can't get back into saying "excuse me."
friday: LJ was temporarily blocked by my work firewall. this means I'm going to be more careful from now until I leave (which is only, what, two more weeks, anyway. yeah, I'm ready to get back to school.) then clay and I had dinner at Chama, where the best part was the margarita and the rest was middling at best.
I've been experiencing a self-esteeem dip in the past couple of days.
this doesn't make sense. last night at contra my compliment basket was overflowing! i was booked up to three dances in advance! by the end of the night, as the bald guy with the earring (the really good dancer and total safe flirt) finally asked me, I had to push him back to "the one after next," and it turned out there wasn't one, so I asked if he'd be there in two weeks. He said he will. Hope he is. on the plus side, they played a heck of a bunch of tunes I knew from Dublin, TOTALLY including the ballydesmond polkas. combine that with listening to Edith Piaf tonight and you have one nostalgic chickie.
anyway, my popularity meant I only got in two dances with Tim, who spent the rest of the time sitting out or dancing with Lauren from HS, who Emma convinced to come along. after dancing, we went to my hot tub, where I just got grumpy and talked with Clay the whole time.
then Tim and I spent a while outside my front door talking about sean nos and opera crickets and the session at Scruffy's (which he says he'll come to tomorrow. woot). I got to sleep around 3.
Woke up at 6ish to go rafting. Tired, groggy, cranky, but rafting was pretty awesome. Today we did the rapids at Royal Gorge. Our guide was from Iowa and had the sweetest little-bit-of-a-twang that I loved. New career path alert! What if I come back here next summer to be a rafting guide? Training is two weeks and then you rack up another two weeks of experience before taking out chartered trips. nice way to spend a summer, eh?
but then things got ungood, because after the trip I assumed we were going straight home just like last time, and that was not the case. we drove over Razor Ridge, which was about ten feet wide and accommodated a one-way road. that was cool. then I fell asleep, expecting to wake up on the way home. Instead I woke up halfway through Paradise? Canyon. I awoke to hear my family playing alphabet games because my mom doesn't like listening to music in the car. After a while of scenery (it's stark, but I didn't like it as much as other places. the granite cave walls didn't do much for me. not enough green?) I went back to sleep, and awoke in Colorado Springs, where mom convinced me to get a retina-burning bright-bright medium-blue-shaded crinkly skirt. as it was on sale for $20, and realizing that I'd probably like it if I weren't so incurably cranky, I let her buy it for me. With a dying battery i took a phone call from Emily, a once-upon-a-time babysat, confirming our ice cream date to happen a few hours later, and texts with Clay about seeing Little Miss Sunshine after that. all worked out well. Cold Stone took the Cadbury Crunchie I happened to have in my purse and put it into ice cream for me. Little Miss Sunshine was very enjoyable, and definitely laugh-out-loud funny in a few spots.
At Clay's, I was reminded how much I love edamame and how much I would love for there to be a consistent supply in our kitchen. then I came home.
tomorrow: Kevin "Ernie" from high school's graduation-from-Durham-England-with-a-BA party, and the session.
I've realized recently that Dublin (don't know whether it was being there or some latent personality-development gene that surfaced) has made me... less afraid to say whatever I think. Generally, this is a bad thing, because it can be intimidating to people who don't expect it.
I've lost the word-final t and d aspiration. I've lost the downwards question intonation. But the two things I cannot re-Americanize back from Dublin are: 1) slagging [parenthetical note: OMG! people here are WAY too sensitive to slagging. I'll go and barely touch 'em and they'll fall apart. for one thing, they're being too sensitive and thinking I mean things more seriously than I ever do, and for another, I'll lose any sort of zing I might have acquired in Dublin if I have to tone down for these softies!] and 2) never being able to say "excuse me," because the Irish don't. They use "sorry" for everything, and now so do I. the first time I was hailed with a "sorry," it took several seconds to register that the lady was calling for me, but then I acclimatized and started to use only "sorry." Now, several months later, I still can't get back into saying "excuse me."