That's a line from some song or other, but I can't place it. Anyway, I love summer so very much. So much time to spend with my friends and my boyfriend, reading or writing or drawing or just sitting around and putzing, but thinking mostly. And practicing, Carmen Fantasy and guitar. Listening to pretty music right now, a terribly funny song but it's such a lovely melody. A new shinyshiny cell phone, DC, Cedar Point, and now home. *happy sigh* Schuler's today. Met Ayano there, consequently got no reading done because we spent the whole time talking. Man, I've missed Ayano. I haven't gotten the chance to talk to her in forever, and she is so darn cool. I'm glad she's sticking around a bit longer.
Anyway, so I bought The Poisonwood Bible for AP English and volumes 1 and 2 of Megatokyo, which made me very happy. YAY MEGATOKYO. As Ayano commented, Fred "Piro" Gallagher is "such a fanboy," but whatever, that's just what his character is like, and it doesn't matter really because he is balanced by the wonderful insanity that is Largo. I printed off a picture of Pirogoeth or Piroko, one of my favorite characters, and I'm going to color it. Purty. I realized earlier that the relationship between the two main characters in a story I came up with in DC bears some resemblance to the one between Piroko and Largo. Actually, now that I think about it, they're not really all that similar. Meh, whatever.
Anyway, in DC, I was planning out the story as we were walking along the really long reflecting pool from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. (I was wearing my red shirt with the collar; Eema seemed to think this was important to the story somehow.) And, very randomly, some guy walking in the opposite direction just holds up a camera (disposable, so I know he wasn't some photographer taking street pictures for a class or something, and besides, if he had been, he'd know that he needed to ask my permission, if not give me money. I know, my sister's taken photography classes, and she always asks people's permission to take street pictures, and then pays them. She took a really lovely picture of these two homeless guys once. Er, tangent much?) and takes a picture of me. Says nothing. Just- *click,* walks on. Was a little bit unnerving.
He was cancelled out, though, by the Frisbee Guy that we met on the Metro. Some guy walked onto the train spinning a Nathan frisbee on the tip of his finger. I said "frisbee!" out of instinct. So what does he do? He throws it at me. We spend the rest of the train ride (and the wait at the station when changing trains) throwing the frisbee back and forth and talking. He was from Pennsylvania, and trying to get into Georgetown Law School (where Jocelyn is). He has a friend who goes to U of M, though.
What else interesting happened? Jason made an astute observation. "Mrs. Sherrill, it has not ceased raining all day." Thank you, we didn't notice. I was a bit annoyed that he kinda GOT US LOST IN DC, but he offered to carry me if I collapsed, so, er, I'm still bitter. I was appointed a Rat Overlord by Mark, since Greg and I invented Rat Music (Squeek chitter squeek mah homie!). We ate twice at a noodle store that I will someday kidnap. Good noodles there, really good noodles. The Museum of Natural History rocked as usual. I love that place. We also saw the space section of the Air and Space Museum, which really doesn't interest me at all, but Mark liked it, and anyway, we didn't spend too much time there. Saw all the monuments twice (and ended up with incredibly sore feet). We went to Union Station at one point, and I got to go to the Au Bon Pain there and remenisce to myself. Also checked out the bookstore across from it, and discovered that Gregory MacGuire has come out with a new book, based off of A Christmas Carol. That was nice. At one point we met up with the Sherrill's old neighbors and Mrs. Sherrill's good friend. Anyway, we were driving past the Japanese-American Memorial and she asked who knew about it. I, of course, could tell her the whole story, and she remarked how nice it was to find a young person who knows her history. I just looked over at the monument and thought "thank you, Blue Iris." Also, we all rode the carousel on the Mall twice. I *heart* that carousel so much. Mrs. Sherrill rode the Suehorse-Seahorse. I have a picture of that, but it came out all blurry. I also have a picture of the Washington Monument, Shuyu asleep on the Metro, the Ghetto Bear, and Ghetto Bear + Sara. At the hotel in Pennsylvania I went swimming. Paul was being a poopyhead (to steal Eyal's word) and wouldn't come along. Actually pretty much everyone was, the only people I managed to convince were Mark and Jason. In other news, Jason cannot swim.
Really though, I spent the majority of my time getting from point A to point B, by car, on foot, or riding the Metro.
I love the Metro so much, have I mentioned? Well, aside from getting abandoned on it last time, of course (so scary!). It's just cool and... yeah. Except for Jason just randomly telling his life's story to random strangers on it. Yeah. That was a fun night, in a way- we were all drunk on comradeship and sleep-deprivation and disorientation from wandering around the huge city with no idea of how to get home. We were just saying the craziest, often stupidest stuff, and laughing hysterically at everything. Doo- doo- doooo!*
*Er, not really drunk, you understand, just crazy enough that we seemed that way. Come on, it's US. We are... yeah. Not the type to get within six feet of alcohol, ever.
Yeah, there were lots of quotes, but they're all written down in Mrs. Sherrill's mapbook... I'll ask her if I can borrow it to transcribe them.
Then Paul took me to Cedar Point. That was lots of fun, and he rode the carousel three times. I rode it lots more, of course. Mark bought an alien hat with poseable antennae, so at one point I stole it and fixed them so that they spelled out "YO". Of course, once he put it on, I realized that it only said "YO" when viewed from the back; from the front it said "OY". Er, oops. I felt like Karen, with her K in the mirror. Dragster was down for repairs, but we went on pretty much everything else, including the Demon Drop. I discovered that that thing gets no less terrifying as you get older. Yaaah. Fun, though. There were these two guys who ended up standing behind us in line twice, which was kinda weird, but whatever. Paul and I discussed ideas for Beowulf Macbeth most of the day. We came up with some really nice stuff, too. Unfortunately, filming the next day kinda didn't happen.
The next day, I ended up biking all over creation, or at least Okemos. By which I mean, nobody was home to take me to my guitar lesson, so I biked to Melody's house, strapped her guitar to my back, and she biked with me to Mark's house in Tacoma Hills. My lesson went pretty well; I learned four chords, four chord progressions, and a scale. It might not seem like a lot, but please keep in mind that I'd never so much as touched a guitar before, so we had to start out with "this is a pick. This is a fret." I'm getting pretty good at it now, I think. I hope. Er. Right. Anyway. Then I biked home at breakneck speed, trying desperately to keep ahead of the rain, because I HAD A BORROWED GUITAR STILL STRAPPED TO MY BACK. I made it, in the end; there were a few drops as I pulled into my driveway, but the actual rain held off until I was inside, just like I'd been yelling at it to do the whole ride. My neighbors looked at me kinda funny. It was really exhausting though.
So basically, what with walking all over DC and Cedar Point and all that biking, my legs are really strong now. Of course, what with not doing anything at all today and yesterday and the day before, that's all negated, but whatever.
Well, I did have a lesson on Thursday. It went... er, I'm not going to say "well," because I'd only had two days to practice. But it wasn't too terrible. Er, actually, I'm going to die. CARMEN FANTASY. YAAAAAAAAA. So much fun, but so much impossibility... argh... *dies*
Then yesterday, Caitlin and I went to see Around the World in 80 Days. I'm not so sure how it got good reviews. It was entertaining, in a way, but left no impression on me. If you actually try to *think* about it, you just end up going "gee, that was incredibly stupid." So you just have to suspend disbelief REALLY WELL. But I liked that Phileas Fogg was a coward, and that even when he was being brave, he was still completely incompetent, and anything he did that was "heroic" was pretty much just accidental or sheer luck. It's nice to have protagonists like that every so often. Also... JOHN CLEESE! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, in conclusion, here is an animation that someone has as their avatar on the Megatokyo forums that I thought was just incredibly cute, because I'm an idiot like that and just go "moving thingy!" and am hypnotized for the next five minutes or so.
I guess this is a bad essay, because it didn't come full circle or anything. Whatever.
Goodbye.