Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere

Technical Difficulties

This blog has been heinously neglected over the past few days due to my preparations for traveling back to Salem and consequently arriving at my apartment to find that I could not get an internet connection.  As of right now I only have access to campus internet and therefore have not gotten a chance to upload pictures from the past few days.  Obviously the plan to make this a daily blog has already failed several times, but I still intend to update it often, and hope that a goal of at least once a week is still attainable.  For now, the blog is on “hiatus” until I can hopefully get a reliable internet connection back at my apartment since I would prefer not to have to do it on campus (especially on weekends).

Communication Breakdown

I have failed myself with this blog the past few days, so I’m using this entry as a way to catch up on things since the weekend.  Sunday evening I went to Rob’s for dinner and to watch (500) Days of Summer with him, Chris, and Amanda.  Rob made a delicious pork tenderloin and Caesar salad (with dressing from scratch), Chris and Amanda supplied cheesecake for dessert, and I brought some draft cider.  The movie was wonderful and is now a new favorite of mine.  I had such a great time with them and wish we’d gotten together more over this break (although I will be seeing them one more time tomorrow).  Rob is currently searching for jobs (which could land him in Minnesota, New York, LA, or somewhere else), and Chris and Amanda are contemplating moving somewhere else where Chris can attend a different film program, so if and when all of that happens I’m going to be really sad to see them leave.  I’ve gotten used to being away for months at a time and then coming back to see people over a few weeks or months, but now that everyone else is starting to make plans to leave New Mexico it’s starting to hit home that things won’t always be this way.  The three of them (and Chris and Amanda’s son, Ethan) are incredibly important to me, so it will be tough to not be able to visit with each other so easily when we’re all scattered in different places.  After leaving Rob’s I met up with Kevin, Laura, Shane, Dominick, and Andrew, and we wound up playing Apples to Apples at Laura and Shane’s house.  Daniel showed up part of the way through the evening after returning from a weekend in Las Vegas, so he also told us all about that.  I’m unsure why Daniel looks nervous in this picture.  Also, Laura kept hiding her face whenever I wanted to take a picture.

Monday I wound up staying in since I hadn’t spent many evenings with my parents recently.  We watched about half of E.T. until the DVD stopped working, so then we watched National Treasure instead.  Unfortunately, I am a terrible blog slacker and didn’t take pictures that day.  Tuesday I had dinner and drinks with Erika, whom I hadn’t seen since my birthday last June.  It was great to catch up with her, especially since so much has gone on in the past seven months.  Afterward we stopped by Best Buy because I wanted to buy (500) Days of Summer.  I got the movie but, unfortunately, they didn’t have the soundtrack, so instead I got the most recent Mute Math CD, which I am currently enjoying.  I still need to decide what to delete off my iPod to make room for it, since sadly all 30 gigs are in use.  Hopefully Apple will be running a free iPod deal when I get a MacBook Pro this summer (assuming I am able to get said Mac…gotta use the educational discount while I still can!), because I need one with a much larger capacity.  After Erika went home I yet again wound up at Laura and Shane’s house along with Kevin, his French foreign exchange student Nathan, and Dom.  We watched District 9, which actually turned out to be a really great movie.  I liked how parts of it were shot in a documentary style; I felt like that made it more believable and added to the emotional quality of the film.  Personally, with all the recent hype and Oscar Buzz over Avatar, I think District 9 would deserve a Best Picture nomination far more in terms of the storyline and the acting.  I’m sure Avatar will get copious amounts of technical awards, though.  Anyway, Dom and Nathan both left partway through the movie since they were tired, and Laura went upstairs to try to get some sleep, but after the movie was over Kevin, Shane, and I watched a few episodes of Entourage, which I’m really starting to enjoy.

Today (Wednesday, though it has now passed into Thursday) I went with my mom to my grandparents’ house to have lunch and coffee with them and my great-Aunt Connie.  Then we went to David’s Bridal so I could order my bridesmaid’s dress for my sister’s wedding (the picture is of the right color, but not exactly the right fit…).

Afterward, I dropped Mom off at home and did some grocery shopping to make dinner for her and Dad.  I made chicken breasts stuffed with ricotta, mozzarella, garlic, and spinach, a garlic and olive oil couscous, and asparagus and grape tomatoes sautéed with garlic in olive oil.  It came out amazing, if I do say so myself.  I know my mom enjoyed it, but I think my dad was a bit iffy since it’s not his usual kind of meal.

Later on, I went to Laura’s and watched (500) Days of Summer with her, Alicia, Kevin, Shane, and Andrew.  Before we actually started the movie we looked through some photo albums that Laura has been working on of pictures from the past several years.  After the movie, Kevin, Shane, Alicia, and I played Apples to Apples while watching the Sex and the City movie (which I hadn’t seen, as I never really watched SATC at all, but liked a lot more than I thought I would).  So, that’s what I’ve been up to the past few days.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get pictures of the things I would have most liked to have gotten pictures of (dinner at Rob’s, dinner with Erika, lunch at my grandparents’ house).  I’m going to try to refocus on this thing and be better about both remembering to take more pictures and updating the blog, even if it’s already moved into the next day.

(Title: Led Zeppelin)

The Same Deep Water as You

Just a quick one tonight.  Once again, I had an incredibly late night and wound up sleeping in until late morning.  So, once again, I spent my afternoon and early evening at home, mostly just hanging out with my parents but not doing much of anything in particular.  I went out to Andrew’s house for awhile (tonight’s picture is of Dom playing with Sophie and Oscar, Andrew’s dachshunds) to hang out with the usual gang (plus a few others).  I wound up not staying very long because I was a bit worn out from the past few days of staying up until anywhere between 3:00 and 5:00 (and it looks like tonight won’t be any different).  Laura and I left at the same time and were talking on the phone on our ways home, and decided to just hang out at her place for a little bit to talk.  Both of us are going through a period where we’re trying to plan out our futures and decide what we really want out of our educations and future careers.  It’s both exciting and terrifying to think about.  I think this semester is going to be an interesting one for both of us, and I am definitely intrigued by what this upcoming year has in store for me.  Hopefully, one year from now, I will have a clear idea of where I’m headed in terms of grad school and/or work.  For now, all I want to think about is sleep!

(Title:  The Cure)

Be True to Your School

Today I had the marvelous pleasure of having dinner and (super-delicious) margaritas with Linda Davey, my former AP English teacher, and some friends that were also in her classes in high school.  Lionel was unable to attend, so I’ll just assume that he had some sort of top-secret government mission to attend to.  I will accept no other excuses.  We had a fabulous time at El Pinto catching up on each others’ lives and reminiscing about the good ol’ days (which seems to be a theme of this past week).  Unfortunately, Linda had to leave early, but the rest of us (myself, Laura, Rob, Gabby, Cosette, Christian, and Christine) stayed for a bit longer, then headed over to Satellite until close (another theme of the week) and finally to IHOP since it was one of the only places still open (yet another common destination of the past few days).  Amusingly enough, on our way out we ran into Andrew Turley, who was sitting with Kerian (another old classmate) in the same booth where I sat with him and Jackie last night.  It was an incredibly fun night catching up with friends that I don’t get to see very often (and just hanging out with those who I do get to see more often).  Hopefully we’ll finally be able to realize our goal of getting together with Linda, Lionel, and Peggy Syers (the “Holy Trinity” of AP classes, if you will) sometime during the summer.  If there is one thing I would love to see it would be the three of them reunited over drinks.  They had the most amazingly dynamic banter when they were all teaching at RRHS, so throw in a couple of margaritas and I am all over it.  In all seriousness, I have never known any other teachers more interested in and caring about their students, both while we were in their classes and in the years that have passed since.  All three of them were incredibly influential on my attitude about school in my junior and senior years of high school.  I respect them immensely for treating their students like equals and showing a true personal interest in each and every one of us.

(Title: the Beach Boys)