lots of weekend stuffs
this weekend has been really awesome so far. yesterday i went to a concert: kutless, thousand foot krutch, falling up, and fm static. falling up played the best show i've seen in a long time. which is really funny, because kutless and tfk were the big-name bands there. after the show, pretty much the whole crowd went and packed in around the table where kutless was signing stuff, except for about ten of us, who all gathered around falling up. to give you an idea, jesse, the lead singer, graduated high school early to go on this tour. i had never heard of them until i saw them open for the supertones a few weeks ago. now they're among my favorite bands. i bought their cd and got all of them to sign it. 's really cool to talk to the guys who just played a show, and see an unmistakeable look in their eyes: "WE'VE GOT FANS!"
and, according to a couple of my friends up here, i'm now a eunuch, without a past, with a mystery job that occasionally brings in quite an amazing sum of money, and married to bjforester, an international spy -- um...*cough* i mean, a photo journalist (or something like that)-- who spontaneously concieved and gave birth to our daughter from guam. and i'm not the only eunuch in the family, in fact, all the males are eunuchs. yet somehow we seem to be quite good at having kids.
i talked to rigantona on the phone today. 'twas the first time i've talked to her verbally, which was interesting, understanding the welsh accent. i actually think the problem was more with the reception on my phone, though, because it cleared up once i moved to a better spot. her voice isn't exactly what i'd thought, but pretty close. also, i heard a really, really, really cool might-happen-soon-thing, too, but i can't say anything yet. hehe. and we talked about the connotations of the word "nice". interesting stuff. she'd tried to encourage me earlier this year, and mentioned that i was "a really nice guy". in her culture, it's a pretty significant compliment, but here it can be quite an insult. i knew how she meant it, so i wasn't offended at all, more amused, a bit frustrated with myself, but i knew her well enough by that point to understand her intention. any europeans out there make a note about talking to americans: "nice" is many times a bad thing. over here, it has the connotation that the person/thing being described is boring enough that you couldn't come up with a better descriptor, but you didn't want to insult them.
other thing we talked about: distance. right now, i live 2200 miles (3540km) from home. roughly a 30 hour drive. she didn't really have a concept of that kind of distance. britain is only about 200 miles across at the widest. that's probably about 3 1/2 hour drive. 's as hard for me to imagine that as it is for her to imagine driving for 30 hours on the same landmass (much less in the 3 or 3 1/2 days it took me to drive up here, and that was a lazy pace). i've made 4 1/2 hour drives at least once twice month for two years while i was at tams, cause it was that far from school to home. the drive from denver to boise was about 13 hours.
got to help luana_neko make a costume for an anime convention she's going to at the end of the semester. not quite finished, but it won't take long to finish from this point. i think the collar is going to be the hardest part. no biggie, though. however, i hate simplicity's patterns. they're positively horrendous. i cut out the main pieces, and then completely abandoned the pattern from there, because it's designed for a rather impractical body-type. at least i know how to modify it. it'll still work fine, but adding the darts would make it skin-tight, which isn't good, and sewing the second side, which the pattern said to do, would turn it into a nice wallhanging, since it wouldn't fit over anyone's shoulders. okay...enough pattern ranting.
i didn't get any of the reading done that i needed to, but at least i figured out which book to use for this paper. 12-20 pages over a topic of my choice. not exactly fun, but the topic could have been much worse. i'm reading on the effect of bolshevism on germany before WWII. neat stuff. i also started getting in the stuff i ordered for my thesis. the legend of gregorio cortez. really, really cool, especially since i'm related to one of the people involved: sheriff frank merriman fly. that'll be quite a lot of fun to write. i've already got some ideas on how to tackle it.
i want to live in europe, at least for a little while, maybe a long time. spain, germany, or scotland.
anyway, i'm really tired now. i'll talk more later. sleep well, all.
and, according to a couple of my friends up here, i'm now a eunuch, without a past, with a mystery job that occasionally brings in quite an amazing sum of money, and married to bjforester, an international spy -- um...*cough* i mean, a photo journalist (or something like that)-- who spontaneously concieved and gave birth to our daughter from guam. and i'm not the only eunuch in the family, in fact, all the males are eunuchs. yet somehow we seem to be quite good at having kids.
i talked to rigantona on the phone today. 'twas the first time i've talked to her verbally, which was interesting, understanding the welsh accent. i actually think the problem was more with the reception on my phone, though, because it cleared up once i moved to a better spot. her voice isn't exactly what i'd thought, but pretty close. also, i heard a really, really, really cool might-happen-soon-thing, too, but i can't say anything yet. hehe. and we talked about the connotations of the word "nice". interesting stuff. she'd tried to encourage me earlier this year, and mentioned that i was "a really nice guy". in her culture, it's a pretty significant compliment, but here it can be quite an insult. i knew how she meant it, so i wasn't offended at all, more amused, a bit frustrated with myself, but i knew her well enough by that point to understand her intention. any europeans out there make a note about talking to americans: "nice" is many times a bad thing. over here, it has the connotation that the person/thing being described is boring enough that you couldn't come up with a better descriptor, but you didn't want to insult them.
other thing we talked about: distance. right now, i live 2200 miles (3540km) from home. roughly a 30 hour drive. she didn't really have a concept of that kind of distance. britain is only about 200 miles across at the widest. that's probably about 3 1/2 hour drive. 's as hard for me to imagine that as it is for her to imagine driving for 30 hours on the same landmass (much less in the 3 or 3 1/2 days it took me to drive up here, and that was a lazy pace). i've made 4 1/2 hour drives at least once twice month for two years while i was at tams, cause it was that far from school to home. the drive from denver to boise was about 13 hours.
got to help luana_neko make a costume for an anime convention she's going to at the end of the semester. not quite finished, but it won't take long to finish from this point. i think the collar is going to be the hardest part. no biggie, though. however, i hate simplicity's patterns. they're positively horrendous. i cut out the main pieces, and then completely abandoned the pattern from there, because it's designed for a rather impractical body-type. at least i know how to modify it. it'll still work fine, but adding the darts would make it skin-tight, which isn't good, and sewing the second side, which the pattern said to do, would turn it into a nice wallhanging, since it wouldn't fit over anyone's shoulders. okay...enough pattern ranting.
i didn't get any of the reading done that i needed to, but at least i figured out which book to use for this paper. 12-20 pages over a topic of my choice. not exactly fun, but the topic could have been much worse. i'm reading on the effect of bolshevism on germany before WWII. neat stuff. i also started getting in the stuff i ordered for my thesis. the legend of gregorio cortez. really, really cool, especially since i'm related to one of the people involved: sheriff frank merriman fly. that'll be quite a lot of fun to write. i've already got some ideas on how to tackle it.
i want to live in europe, at least for a little while, maybe a long time. spain, germany, or scotland.
anyway, i'm really tired now. i'll talk more later. sleep well, all.