you can't choose what stays and what fades away
What's that, a fairly large recap is called for? Why, so it is. I've been busy like mad lately, wrapping up grades for my students and my own semesters-end assignments, and there have also been Things Going On.
Thursday, I kinda went to JazzFest. I parked at Whitney's house and walked with her and Kat down the block to the Fairgrounds, where we camped out under a large shady tree and watched Florence+the Machine for free on the other side of the fence. The stage they were on faces out toward the road, so we could see the stage and the big screen and the crowd and it was awesome. She's an amazing performer, all fired up and engaging the crowd. "Shake It Out" live was breathtaking. They "closed the show" with "Dog Days Are Over," but I put that in quotes because they came back out and played "Never Let Me Go" and "No Light, No Light" as an encore. And closing on that song, with her all bouncing and dramatic ... it was glorious. The note she holds out on "to say to you out loud~" was intensely loud and compelling. If anyone wants to see a poorly recorded video (it jumps around and the audio is strangely quiet) of it, check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jn7oFuCleY "Tell me what you want me to say" all emphatic as her last line of the show? Fucking yes, please. Also I want the dress she wore. Like, a lot.
Friday I drove to Shreveport to see my family. Teresa and Cris, her boyfriend, came in from Houston, too. We went to see The Avengers Friday night with Rachel, my friend Daniel, and one of Teresa's friends who lives in Shreveport. Teresa wore her Loki costume, which has SO MANY zippers - we totaled it up and it was something like 38 feet of zippers. And she looked like a total badass. I wish Cris had brought his Hawkeye costume too (the quiver looks amazing), but he didn't. The movie was fantastic in a serious way, although I spent the first couple of minutes going "THAT IS NOT A FUCKING TESSERACT. THAT WORD MEANS SOMETHING AND IT IS NOT A GODDAMN GLOWING BLUE PLOT DEVICE, YOU ASSHATS." But then Loki showed up being all badass and sexeh and I got over it ^^;
What was the predominant impression I took away from this movie? How much Joss Whedon's dialogue is immediately recognizable and also how much incredible gayness is implied in this movie. Captain America and Iron Man take UST to new levels; it's like watching Castle and Beckett except with more muscles and prettier eyes. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner? Come on. For that matter, having seen this franchise and the Sherlock Holmes movies, I'm starting to think that it's just Robert Downey, Jr. - he appears in a movie and other male characters kind of swoon. Jude Law practically admits in interviews that he has a man crush on Downey. I find this adorable.
But it's not just Iron Man - the foe yay between Loki and Hawkeye is dialed all the way up to 11. What foe yay, you say? Well, in their first meeting, Loki touches Hawkeye with his staff and changes his heart, and Hawkeye spends most of the movie doing whatever Loki says. Then, near the end, Loki grabs Hawkeye's arrow and it explodes all over his face. Shoulda used protection. I'M JUST SAYIN. Hilariously, Teresa and Cris's favorite characters are Loki and Hawkeye respectively, so many debates of who is whose bitch ensued.
Saturday we went to the Norton Art Gallery and had pictures taken, because that's what Mom wanted for Mother's Day. Then there was visiting of various family people, including Pappaw, then going to a used book store for Teresa to replace some of her Tamora Pierce paperbacks that she's literally read to pieces (and for me to buy ... everything that looked interesting). And THEN I went to Meg and Robert's apartment, met their two black cats (Eli and Samedi). We had a good time just hanging out and catching up, talking about what we've been doing since school, how working in the firm is going (for Meg), how the semester is winding down (for Robert and me), and what I plan to do when I graduate. Then they gave me a graduation present @.@ Meg and Robert converted to Judaism a year or so (I think) ago. I asked them both possibly a lot of questions because, you know, I'm nosy. So Meg got me The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism, to feed my curiosity. They also gave me a notebook that's green and black and covered in Celtic designs, and Meg found her old copy of An Acceptable Time and gave that to me, as well. It was ... this is how things were in high school, or at LSU before everything went wrong. We're friends. They like me, so they do nice things for me. I've got my eye on a bottle of Streetman's favorite rum for the next time I'm in town as a thank-you, for the gift and for having me over. When I left there, I met up with Daniel and we went to a park by the river to watch the "super moon", and I got all eaten up by bugs, and then I went back to Mom's and went to sleep and got woken up three times in six hours before I gave up and got up.
The last four nights combined I've gotten not quite 20 hours of sleep.
My dad rescued a tiny newborn squirrel in our backyard about three months ago. She's adorable and I got to play with her a lot this weekend. Last time I saw her, she was so tiny she could curl up and sleep in my palm. This time, she's actually squirrel-sized, and she's all frolicsome and scampers everywhere. And she seems to think I'm a tree. Dad says he's never seen her take to anyone like she did me; I had my hair pulled back in a bun and she ran up my arm to sit on my hair. She rode on my shoulder and she ran all up and down me, dangling from my clothes and leaving tiny scratches all over my shoulders, arms, stomach, and back. I don't even care; she's freaking adorable. And if you feed her pistachios and she's not hungry, she runs off and hides them in places such as 'under Dad's collar', 'in Mary's ear', 'in Mary's hair', and 'in Mary's cleavage'. Yes, really. She pats the area down like she's burying them and everything. Dad's reintroducing her to the wild and letting her go this weekend, which is good for her but sad for me, because she's so cute.
Tomorrow, my students take their exit exam. Wednesday, I turn in my poetry portfolio, recite a poem, and read three others - in public, at a public reading downtown. Yikes. Thursday I go to Delgado and grade exit exams. Thursday night, everything will be done and I will be sleeping for ... until I wake up. It will be glorious. After that, I just have to pick out the poems I want to read at my graduation banquet, in front of Mom, Dad, Rachel, and a lot of my classmates.
Thursday, I kinda went to JazzFest. I parked at Whitney's house and walked with her and Kat down the block to the Fairgrounds, where we camped out under a large shady tree and watched Florence+the Machine for free on the other side of the fence. The stage they were on faces out toward the road, so we could see the stage and the big screen and the crowd and it was awesome. She's an amazing performer, all fired up and engaging the crowd. "Shake It Out" live was breathtaking. They "closed the show" with "Dog Days Are Over," but I put that in quotes because they came back out and played "Never Let Me Go" and "No Light, No Light" as an encore. And closing on that song, with her all bouncing and dramatic ... it was glorious. The note she holds out on "to say to you out loud~" was intensely loud and compelling. If anyone wants to see a poorly recorded video (it jumps around and the audio is strangely quiet) of it, check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jn7oFuCleY "Tell me what you want me to say" all emphatic as her last line of the show? Fucking yes, please. Also I want the dress she wore. Like, a lot.
Friday I drove to Shreveport to see my family. Teresa and Cris, her boyfriend, came in from Houston, too. We went to see The Avengers Friday night with Rachel, my friend Daniel, and one of Teresa's friends who lives in Shreveport. Teresa wore her Loki costume, which has SO MANY zippers - we totaled it up and it was something like 38 feet of zippers. And she looked like a total badass. I wish Cris had brought his Hawkeye costume too (the quiver looks amazing), but he didn't. The movie was fantastic in a serious way, although I spent the first couple of minutes going "THAT IS NOT A FUCKING TESSERACT. THAT WORD MEANS SOMETHING AND IT IS NOT A GODDAMN GLOWING BLUE PLOT DEVICE, YOU ASSHATS." But then Loki showed up being all badass and sexeh and I got over it ^^;
What was the predominant impression I took away from this movie? How much Joss Whedon's dialogue is immediately recognizable and also how much incredible gayness is implied in this movie. Captain America and Iron Man take UST to new levels; it's like watching Castle and Beckett except with more muscles and prettier eyes. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner? Come on. For that matter, having seen this franchise and the Sherlock Holmes movies, I'm starting to think that it's just Robert Downey, Jr. - he appears in a movie and other male characters kind of swoon. Jude Law practically admits in interviews that he has a man crush on Downey. I find this adorable.
But it's not just Iron Man - the foe yay between Loki and Hawkeye is dialed all the way up to 11. What foe yay, you say? Well, in their first meeting, Loki touches Hawkeye with his staff and changes his heart, and Hawkeye spends most of the movie doing whatever Loki says. Then, near the end, Loki grabs Hawkeye's arrow and it explodes all over his face. Shoulda used protection. I'M JUST SAYIN. Hilariously, Teresa and Cris's favorite characters are Loki and Hawkeye respectively, so many debates of who is whose bitch ensued.
Saturday we went to the Norton Art Gallery and had pictures taken, because that's what Mom wanted for Mother's Day. Then there was visiting of various family people, including Pappaw, then going to a used book store for Teresa to replace some of her Tamora Pierce paperbacks that she's literally read to pieces (and for me to buy ... everything that looked interesting). And THEN I went to Meg and Robert's apartment, met their two black cats (Eli and Samedi). We had a good time just hanging out and catching up, talking about what we've been doing since school, how working in the firm is going (for Meg), how the semester is winding down (for Robert and me), and what I plan to do when I graduate. Then they gave me a graduation present @.@ Meg and Robert converted to Judaism a year or so (I think) ago. I asked them both possibly a lot of questions because, you know, I'm nosy. So Meg got me The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism, to feed my curiosity. They also gave me a notebook that's green and black and covered in Celtic designs, and Meg found her old copy of An Acceptable Time and gave that to me, as well. It was ... this is how things were in high school, or at LSU before everything went wrong. We're friends. They like me, so they do nice things for me. I've got my eye on a bottle of Streetman's favorite rum for the next time I'm in town as a thank-you, for the gift and for having me over. When I left there, I met up with Daniel and we went to a park by the river to watch the "super moon", and I got all eaten up by bugs, and then I went back to Mom's and went to sleep and got woken up three times in six hours before I gave up and got up.
The last four nights combined I've gotten not quite 20 hours of sleep.
My dad rescued a tiny newborn squirrel in our backyard about three months ago. She's adorable and I got to play with her a lot this weekend. Last time I saw her, she was so tiny she could curl up and sleep in my palm. This time, she's actually squirrel-sized, and she's all frolicsome and scampers everywhere. And she seems to think I'm a tree. Dad says he's never seen her take to anyone like she did me; I had my hair pulled back in a bun and she ran up my arm to sit on my hair. She rode on my shoulder and she ran all up and down me, dangling from my clothes and leaving tiny scratches all over my shoulders, arms, stomach, and back. I don't even care; she's freaking adorable. And if you feed her pistachios and she's not hungry, she runs off and hides them in places such as 'under Dad's collar', 'in Mary's ear', 'in Mary's hair', and 'in Mary's cleavage'. Yes, really. She pats the area down like she's burying them and everything. Dad's reintroducing her to the wild and letting her go this weekend, which is good for her but sad for me, because she's so cute.
Tomorrow, my students take their exit exam. Wednesday, I turn in my poetry portfolio, recite a poem, and read three others - in public, at a public reading downtown. Yikes. Thursday I go to Delgado and grade exit exams. Thursday night, everything will be done and I will be sleeping for ... until I wake up. It will be glorious. After that, I just have to pick out the poems I want to read at my graduation banquet, in front of Mom, Dad, Rachel, and a lot of my classmates.