starts, finishes

While watching videos that Benny and Tori and Kim took at MMR, I started thinking about how my two summers there have sort of blended together, and how if I go again it will be distinct because it will not be a consecutive year, and this summer I won’t be going.  Then I realized it’s only winter and not next summer yet (although I’ve already decided that I’m not going back to MMR in 2010) and I have this completely distorted sense of time from not being in school for 7 months (and one more to go!) I guess I’m nearing the end of my self-proclaimed 8 month adventure.

What I can appreciate now about school is the structure of time it provides my life.  Now, time has floated and sped and drifted and shuffled by, randomly at times, and here I am, in December, Christmas, not recovering from finals, for the first time in years.  Which is nice.  But there’s something to be said for school, as it does give me something to constantly look forwards to, like the end of the semester, or graduation– there’s always a goal, and then a chance to start again (never completely, but at least in some way).  And there really isn’t much of that in adult life.  At HSC time just progressed, and the end in sight was December 11, the last day of my internship there.  But for those staff who were really adults and there for an indefinite amount of time, there was no end in sight, no completion to most projects they worked on, no boundaries really.  Not that they had nothing to work towards, because they did (the next newsletter, study circle, Changemaker conference), but adult life just seems so damn CONTINUOUS.

What is there to work towards? Saving for a vacation, or buying a house, or having kids.  But there seems to be so little time for personal journeys towards more skills or knowledge or understanding.  It’s just life, not school, or summer, or classes, or an internship.  That scares me.  I like things to look forwards to, boundaries, knowing that there is an end, or something big is coming to change the way things are.  I like working towards final papers, or dance performances, or finishing a story.  And I can do these things later, if I do write, and continue to dance (which I hope I will!) but it will be just me, not me and 6,000 other people also working towards the end of the semester.  Which is why, I guess, it will be nice to be with other people whose stuff becomes my stuff too, so I can be there when they get promoted, or move to my city, or have a shitty day, or have their own performances and things published and accomplishments.  Basically, I like community– this, I knew already.  I guess I just kind of remembered it tonight.  But I’m also realizing that being in a community allows for much more individual satisfaction too.  The whole benefits the individual, completes her.

reflections, (re)solutions

I was reflecting on the year, thinking about resolutions and all, since it’s almost time for that.  Not that I ever make resolutions really.  I was in Miami and listening to Reba who was a guest on 99.9 Kiss Country, and she said that this year her resolution was to not make a resolution, since she never really kept hers anyway.  Except one time, when she decided to take a picture every day.  And she did it til March, and still has all the pictures, but has never looked at them or shared them so what was the point, she thought.  The radio host said he’s like to see them and put them up on the Kiss Country website.

I know it’s Christmas Eve and not New Years, but I was thinking about things that happened this year, and thought it was much better to count up new things that happened this year rather than make (re)solutions for next year.

For instance, every Christmas Eve, my dad, whether he liked it or not, read me Twas the Night Before Christmas before I went to bed.  That won’t happen this year.  This will be the first year my family didn’t get a tree (no matter how last minute it is) and decorate it with the same ornaments and candy canes, and put up our other weird little decorations like the tissue paper wreath I made in some daycare or preschool class, and the handprint wreath on a piece of potato sack that we sometimes hang on a door.  This year I also didn’t get the opportunity to sneakily hang bells on doors of my house until my mom noticed and took them down.  There will be no shopping trips with my dad to the Clinique counter at Nordstrom to buy my mom makeup, and no stockings full of maple santas and little notebooks and nice things.  I didn’t get to light Chanukah candles with my mom and exchange small presents each night, and have Carolyn and Sara over to make latkes.  I missed out on Carolyn’s Christmas cookies, and getting to drive around in the Volvo to deliver them all around.  And I didn’t get to walk down 28th avenue to see the lights by St. Greg’s.

That said, I did a bunch of new things this Christmas.  I just got back from a Christmas Eve party at Barbara and Jennie’s friends’ house, and I’ve been shopping with them a couple of times.  I tried some sort of British food… something with bread pudding and beef in a pastry, dunno what it was called.  And tomorrow we’re going to Step by Step to cook and eat with the residents there, which should be rowdy and fun.  I also got to go get a tree with Don and his family at a farm where there was a reindeer, pigs, some really ugly turkeys, and a really cute puppy that Jennie wanted to steal and take home.  And I’ve eaten some delicious Christmas biscuits and chocolates which is always good.  The UK really has us topped on good sweets.  And in Florida I lit candles with my Grandma (for the first time I can remember) and we made latkes which were delish.  These are probably not new lasting traditions for me, but it is nice to see how other people celebrate holidays.

I have done lots of new things this year.  I went to Canada the first time, when a bunch of us went to Montreal and Bonnie came along and we had a fun time President’s day weekend going to bars and seeing Ben Gold’s friend at McGill.  And of course, the Biodome was amazing.  And on the drive back, me, Pank, Isabel, and Bonnie all walked across frozen lake Champlain in Burlington, and Pank fell in the ice a bit and cut her hand.

I also started playing Ultimate this year, which meant learning a whole new sport when the last time I had played a sport was probably softball in 6th grade.  I had a great time roughin it on Jibba Jabba, playing savage and learning the game.  Then I got to play on STD at UM which was a ton of fun!

This year I got to spend more time with family than I have maybe since I lived in New York, what with seeing my Grandma and TomSharon&Nina in Florida, then being with Barbara and Jennie here.  And I saw Grandpa Frank and Grandma Ginger for Thanksgiving, and all my third cousins and mom and Grandma’s cousins at Gordon’s wedding in Ogunquit in early September.

I learned how to drive a boat at camp…I spent last New Year in San Francisco with my friends…I learned how to cook a lot of new things…I had my first internship/office job…I drove a big white van, which was my first care (not that I owned it, but I did drive it every day)…I stayed up for over 24 hours (when I flew to England)…I navigated the subway system in NY…I saw Common and The Wailers in Miami…I tried Cuban food, Haitian food, ceviche, roe, proscuitto, and became a non-vegetarian once more…I became a lifeguard…and a safewalker…and took a linguistics class…performed at the Black Rep in downtown Prov…drummed in a play…went to New Orleans twice…swam in the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Tahoe…made a pumpkin pie from scratch…learned Mande dance traditions and almost went to Mali…almost went to Israel…lead Primalfest (twice)…and a backpacking trip…developed an affinity for country and bluegrass…spent my spring break playing ultimate in Georgia and partaking in ridiculous traditions at a beach house in North Carolina…played a little guitar…started a blog.

That’s a whole lotta things, and those are mostly the tangible ones.  Maybe I’ll conquer the intangibles in another post, but it’s 11:24 and I have to go to bed before Santa gets here!

And to all a good night…

10/14/09

Wrote this in my journal on 10/14/09.  Thought it was worth sharing.

What if I woke up each morning knowing all the things that would happen that day?  I could properly prepare for the whole day, knowing who I’d meet, what connections I’d make, and how the day would unfold.

Sometimes I try to live my days this way, mostly when I’m at Brown.  I look at my planner and see a full schedule of events—meetings, classes, lectures, lunch dates, coffee, rehearsal, frisbee practice, phone calls.  Days like this go by so fast and yet so slow.  I’m constantly thinking of the next thing on my agenda, how much time I have to get there, when I’ll eat, or pee, or drink some water.  And then something goes wrong.  I meet a friend, he tells me he heard that lecture was going to be terrible, or sold out, or there was a better once starting in half an hour across campus.  So I change plans.  And the schedule has to be shifted, I’m late to class, I consider skipping practice at the end of the day because I’m so wiped from hopping from spot to spot all day.

Are these days better than those for which the calendar is blank?  I’m not so sure.  If I had known in the morning that I’d meet that friend and see such a bomb lecture, I suppose I could have been excited in the morning when I woke up, and all day long after that.  But with the way the day unfolded, it was a surprise.

I’ve decided that it’s the surprises that make my days.  For a while now, my friend Scott has been telling me to be happy each day.  I finally realized that I didn’t quite understand, so I asked him what he meant.  Did he mean that I had to be happy all day, every day?  Or just have at least one happy moment each day?  He told me that what he really meant was for me to wake up happy, or at least content with where I was and what I’d be doing.  So then I thought, what happens on days when I wake up having nothing to look forward to?  That’s where the surprises come in  Knowing each day that something unexpected will happen is reassuring to me; like change, it is the only constant.

I think this all ties back to present time, a concept I was first exposed to when I did improv with HIT my senior year of high school.  Andy stressed present time as a crucial tool not only for improv, but for life too.  Acknowledging the percentage of our lives that are accounted for by surprises only reaffirms my interest in present time.  Living in the moment is the only thing that makes sense when I think about how much of what is to come simply cannot be known or planned for.  That’s not to say that I’m ignoring my future at large, but on a day to day, or really a moment to moment basis, if I want to be happy, there is no way to do so other than by focusing on and engaging in right here and now.

How often am I excited for the next five months?  Almost always. (ex. right now the next five months include Christmas, New Years, more time in England, Scotland, going back to Brown and living in a real house with Mark Katie and Ben, maybe BOLT leading, hopefully dance, definitely frisbee, writing, spring break ’10, hopefully Bonnie visiting, etc…) But how often am I excited for the next five minutes?  Rarely. And how often do I know what these minutes will hold?  Also rarely. The numbers don’t match up.  Surprises are exciting.  I’m trying not to forget that the contents of so many minutes in my day are actually unknown, and it’s refreshing to know that.

average price: 62.5¢

Went to the Miami Public Library Book Sale.  Amazing.  Here’s a list of the books I got, with their original prices (if known):

PLAYS

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee $6.99

CLASSICS

• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne $3.99

NOVELS

• Native Son by Richard Wright (I feel like I remember Ms. Maniego, my HS junior year English teacher, mentioning this book.  We might have read Black Boy in her class) $12.95
• White Oleander by Janet Fitch (seen the movie… now I can read it) $7.99
• Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood (she came to Miami during the book fair but I forgot she was speaking and missed it!) $13.95
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (Lori’s favorite book, she’s been telling me to read it) $12.00
• The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (Lori also recommended this to me when we first met in the kitchen at HSC! I was so happy to find it) $14.00
• Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood $7.99
• The River by Gary Paulsen (going to give this to Nina, because she loved Hatchet and is looking for more books to read) $1.99
• The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien (one of my favorite books, also read in Ms. Maniego’s class.  We also read parts of it as a study of writing in Lawrence Stanley’s class, and probably Meredith Steinbach’s too.  I already have it but now I can give it to somebody else) $14.95

OTHER

• The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton (he also wrote How Proust Can Change Your Life, the Brown class of 2011 freshman summer reading book) $13.00
• Miami by Joan Didion (had borrowed this from Cal for basically the entire time I was in Miami, read about 40 pages, and then returned it to him.  The next day I found this book at the book sale and am so excited that I now have it and can read later, esp since I never got around to reading the chapter about Overtown, which is the whole reason he lent me the book in the first place) $17.95
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (it’s about writing… pretty sure I saw and maybe bought this book in Half Moon Bay a few years ago, but the cover called out to me again so I bought it.  Maybe I’ll pass it on if it turns out I already have it) $12.95
• Maggie: Girl of the Streets and other short fiction by Stephen Crane (last semester I shopped a class called Reading New York, and the class had already read this story and was discussing it when I sat in on the class.  I ended up taking “The Arrangement of Words”: Liberating Fiction(s) instead, but was intrigued by the story) $4.95

Total should have been: upwards of $145.65

Total was: $10

It’s kind of like I just got two books for each night of Chanukah.  Happy holidays!

day

I realized that I rarely just write about what I do throughout the day.  Maybe that’s because it’s not that interesting. Let’s find out.

I woke up at 6:45. Yes it is Sunday, and this is a ridiculous time to have to get up ANY day of the week, esp Sunday.  When I came into the kitchen, Rob and Daniella looked very concerned and were like, “what are you doing?” which is understandable seeing as I usually wake up past 11 on Sundays.   Rob joked “We saw the light on under your door and thought, if Lindsay’s up, then we have to get up to! Something must be going on.”  Well, something was going on.  I had to get to the IM fields parking lot at UM at 7:55 to catch a ride to Landshark Stadium in North Miami (it is literally on the border with Broward County).  11 of us were scheduled to volunteer to raise money for frisbee.  We would be “beverage hawking,” which means carrying big cardboard boxes of beer through the stands and selling them the rowdy fans, all while wearing a hideous yellow patterned polo and a visor that Landshark was supposedly providing.  We were told to wear black shoes (not converse!), black pants (not jeans!), white Tshirts (tucked in!), and deodorant. Ha.  I found some black pants in the closet, they were men’s and smelled musty but hey, they worked.

Anyway we drove there and parked and were taken on a bus with the other employees and then waited outside until 10… mind you I had already been up for over 3 hours already.  After hearing what we would be doing, what with the cardboard beer boxes slung around our necks, and learning that we would only be making $70 each instead of the $100 we had been promised, we decided to peace out and drove back to Coral Gables to enjoy some bagels at Einstein Bros.

After this I went home by 11:30, and lay in my bed reading for a while.  And facebooking of course. Also decided to cook later, so I went to defrost some ground turkey that I would need to make chili, and check around the kitchen for various other ingredients.  Then I napped from approx 1:30-5:30.  Then I got up and facebooked some more, and showered.  Then it was chili time!

And while I cooked I listened to Billy Joel. And while the chili simmered I called my mom and did more facebooking (I have recently become obsessed with tagging old photos from my albums as far back as senior year of high school.  I love old pictures) and checked out my bank account and checked email.  And posted the chili recipe on my cooking blog. And then I came here and wrote on this blog.

Later I’ll probably go watch this movie “Songcatcher” about the Irish roots of Appalachian folk music. Lynne from my office lent it to me.

So that’s my day… I’m pretty sure this will be an incredibly boring post to read and I think in the future I’ll refrain from detailing my daily activities.

MAGNETIC or NOT?

In middle school, possibly in Ms. Ganim’s 7th grade Bio class, the one where we watched a video of a woman giving birth and Ms. Ganim couldn’t pronounce some word that we all made fun of her for, we watched an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy that has stuck with me to this day.  Please view below (youtube to the rescue!)

Woah– okay, while searching for an appropriate vid I happened upon a fantastic  drinking game all about Bill Nye the Science Guy!

Here’s the vid– the relevant section is from about 3:05-3:31

Wasn’t that great?  I sure thought so.

Anyway, the reason I thought of MAGNETIC or NOT? (although I do happen to think of it often for various reasons; it has obviously had a great impact on my life for at least 7 years) was because I found myself doing this thing in my head where I think about what I’m doing, and ask myself: PRODUCTIVE or NOT?  Sometimes I have trouble deciding the correct answer.  Sometimes I also have trouble convincing myself not to do this, because really, is it necessary for me to always be considering whether what I do is productive?

Well, let’s play the game.  Are the following activities PRODUCTIVE or NOT?

• tagging old photos on facebook (like, photos from high school)
• copy pasting guitar tabs from the internet into word documents and then manually re-spacing them when the spacing from the website isn’t retained properly
• finishing my book
• downloading free christmas music
• making shopping lists
• spending at least half an hour watching Bill Nye the Science Guy on youtube until I found the MAGNETIC or NOT episode

So… PRODUCTIVE or NOT? Only you can decide.

guilt

I’m really just writing because I feel guilty that I haven’t in a while.  I feel as if I should set some sort of goal for myself– write once a week, once a day, more each month, something?  Writing every day would be great.  Not that I think people would really read it every day, but as a discipline thing to me.  I do have thoughts every day that would be interesting to document, if only for my own benefit of being able to go back and see my thinking/ideas evolve.  But then I also feel this pressure (pressure from who/where?) that each post needs to be a certain minimum length, which also is ridic because

1. Says who?

2. I am not a concise writer to begin with, so if I did just write something, then soon enough I would be writing more… my thoughts lead me places.  And some days maybe they wouldn’t, and that would be okay.

What if I stopped this post right here.  So what?  There is no problem with that.  But instead I’m about to fill it with thoughts that have been popping into my head recently.  I guess I really like lists.

• Being at my Grandma’s house for the past week, I keep seeing old pictures of myself in which I am wearing the same clothes I have now.  Time to get some new clothes.  This is also a guilt thing.  I don’t like a lot of my clothes (because they are old and don’t fit right any more or I’m bored of them) but I hate throwing things away and spending money so I don’t buy new ones.  But it would be okay if I did.
• People (like my Grandma) can fill their time up with things that other people might not spend as much time on.  Little details, like cleaning things and organizing and paying attention to things (which I guess is not always little) can take up a lot of time if you let them, or if you have the time.  Which I don’t always.  But sometimes I let them.  It’s like how when you get an assignment at school (or work) and there’s a quick way and a slow way to do it, and the slow way might be more thorough but it might not.  And I still usually do the slow way.
• Now I have nothing else to write, or at least nothing comes to mind at the moment, but I feel compelled to write at least one other bullet because things go well in threes.

I guess I need discipline with this blog. Self-imposed discipline.  Last night I skyped with Pat and told him I haven’t been writing as much as I want to (not in the blog– actual writing. like stories plays poems etc). So he gave me a deadline and I have to write something for him by Saturday morning.  This is good for me.  Even self-imposed deadlines can help.  Or peer-imposed ones.  Lots of times I have heard writers speak, they have talked about how they have a writing buddy who they sit with and monitor each other and almost force each other to write for a few hours or something.  And they can take breaks.  But having that sense of accountability is important, which I guess is why people need jobs and school and can’t just educate themselves and get things done in the world that need to be done.  Unless they are passionate enough, like some of the nonprofit people I work with who do their own nonprofits after work, unpaid, because they feel they have to.  Or like Abraham Lincoln, who educated himself by reading a lot.  But I barely have the discipline for that, except I just read The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin in five days because I had to return it to my cousin Nina.  And now I’m trying to finish The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami before I see Josh on December 14.  So here I go to read.

borrower of words

Sometimes when I speak I feel like I should be making citations.  I’ll be mid-sentence and realize that I am not speaking my own words.  Not that I’m quoting somebody famous, or speaking in a cliché, but that I’m using a friend’s words that have become so familiar to me that I’ve adopted them into my vocabulary like I would take in a friend’s old sweatshirt or too-small shoes.  For example– I keep finding myself saying I’m trying to figure out… which basically means that I’ve been thinking about something, or pondering, you might say.  This phrase comes from Cara.  I also say I’m not trying to which really means “I’m trying not to” or “I don’t want to,” ex. “I’m not trying to work extra hours.”  This also comes from Cara and maybe Jordan too.  Or at the end of lists I’ll say ...and such which is definitely a Ceci expression.  It’s so interesting to me the way manners of speech travel and are shared so unconsciously.  In my group of friends at school, the intonations Cara uses and phrases she says are spread through us and we all end up talking like her.  At OA, this was Hannah Friedman.  We all started using the phrase shmakalinkatinka, saying really? with an accent on the Ls, and speaking with her Zoolanderesque way of talking.  And still, when I’m with Bonnie, sometimes I talk like this.  But Bonnie and I also have our own way of talking.  We say oh, you a lot. My mom says she can always tell when it’s Bonnie that I’m talking to on the phone.

I’m trying to figure out (here it goes again!) what it is that makes these words and ways of speech so infectious, and why certain people’s speech is infectious and others’ isn’t.  Does it have anything to do with how important a person is to you; is it proportional in that the closer you are or the more meaningful your relationship with a person is, the more you talk like each other?  Or are certain people infectious?  I think both must be true.

There are aesthetics to speech just as there are physical aesthetics to everything tangible.  As Monica told me, since I am a Libra, I am more aware of (or affected by) aesthetics than other people may be, which might be why I tend to notice and think about these things.  And I think that if a person speaks in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, they are more likely to be imitated by those who hear them often, like friends and coworkers and family.  Other people just pass on their speech habits because they are together a lot, even if these patterns of speech are not aesthetically pleasing.  Sometimes, I hear myself saying words that I used to hate hearing my mom say (infuriating is the main one).  When I talk to my grandma, I hear myself using my mom’s speech patterns, as if I’m listening to her talk to my grandma (her mom) on the phone.  And sometimes when I am explaining something to people, or in work environments, I hear myself talking like my dad.

It even happens from reading or watching movies.  Recently I’ve been reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami, one of Josh’s favorite books that he lent to me in high school and I’m finally reading.  The main character, Toru Okada, addresses nearly every situation he comes across with the most calm attitude, and speaks to people with extreme politeness.  Since I’ve been reading this book for the past week, I have noticed myself speaking in this simple, calm, polite, accepting style.  It’s kind of nice.

When I find myself genuinely speaking with an excited/in love with the world/wide-eyed feeling, I feel like Aryn.  And when I find myself excitedly, sporadically explaining something, I feel like Monica.  When I say awesome, I get self-conscious and feel like a stupid American, because Benny pointed it out as an American phrase.

Other small examples of pieces of speech I have lent to & borrowed from others:

terrible (Jordan uses this word a lot)

oh gaaaawd (I apparently say this and unconsciously got Chelsea to start saying it too)

what the heeeeeeryl (Cara’s way of saying “what the hell??”)

seriously? (another thing I say a lot, and got Fabian saying it too)

crazy person, as in “She was acting like a crazy person!” (Jordan)

yee, as in “yeah” (Catherine)

more to come… I know there are more.  Let me think. Or comment and add your own!

sleepless night

Saturday night in Miami Beach was “Sleepless Night,” at arts festival that went from 6pm on Saturday to 7am on Sunday morning… oh shit.  It was a long night.  Here’s my sched (as far as I can remember… delirium started to set in eventually, especially as I had woken up at 6 something on Friday morning for the Imagine Miami Changemaker conference that HSC planned… and by HSC I mean Corinna, Caitlin, Cal, Gretchen, and Liz slaved for months. I did almost nothing.  I did take some day-of photos so that was my tiny contribution.)

 

6:00 pm: Wake up from my 1/2 hr nap.  Call Caitlin.  It’s a go.

6:30: Pick up Caitlin and drive to Miami Beach.  Sit in bumper-to-bumper for many  minutes on the MacArthur Causeway to the beach.  Find parking, only $10!  Other than dinner, this was the only thing I paid for all night.

7:45 Begin to peruse the streets.  We park somewhere near Washington and 16th street so we are spit out onto the pedestrian section of Lincoln Road where we head straight for Starbucks to pee and get some caffeine in anticipation of the night.  We grab a schedule of events from an information table and start to read.  Shortly after this we realize there’s nothing really going on here that we want to see, so we hop on the shuttle to a different zone to see what’s going on there.  FYI: The beach was split into four zones, three on South Beach and one on North Beach, and there was a free shuttle between them all.  And by “shuttle” I mean large luxury bus that had little TV screens inside which played extremely bizarre artistic films with slow shots of primates and weird horror-film-esque screeching noises.

8:30 The shuttle dropped us off at Zone 4 and we headed to Nikki Beach, where there was a swimsuit fashion show going on.  I had learned about this from Katriona, a Brown grad I had met that morning at the Ivy Plus/Arts brunch at 900 Biscayne.  I talked to Katriona and Tomas (an artist) for over an hour that morning about Sleepless Night, the Cundo Bermudez exhibit we were touring at the Freedom Tower, and art in general.  They were the ones who told me about Sleepless Night to begin with.  Just as Katriona and I were saying goodbye, we realized that we had both gone to Brown!  Then our conversation extended once again as we talked about academics and the Brown curriculum and her love for the Spanish program there.  As soon as she said it, I realized I should have known she went to Brown, because she was so great and open and interesting.  And as soon as we found out, she said the same thing: Oh! I should’ve known, no wonder you’re so great. I guess we attract each other, good ol’ Brown.  Anyway, Katriona told me about the Nikki Beach event because it was her friend’s swimsuit line.  So that was the only event I really knew of beforehand and I was glad to get to go.  Nikki Beach was ridiculous-  runways surrounded by large white beds and giant pillows and some raised beds with curtains around them, and then some teepees in the back which Caitlin and I took pictures in.  It seemed pretty obvious to me that the whole idea was to drink at the bar, get turned on by the hot models on the runway, and then settle down with somebody on one of those huge beds.  Though I have to say the models were kind of creepy looking.  I don’t think I’ve seen models up close before.  Before we left, we ate free mini cupcakes, which I suppose were provided to make ourselves feel great after seeing the disgustingly skinny models.  The red velvet one was delicious 🙂

9:15 Walked up Ocean Drive into Zone 3.  On the way we got free Cafe Butelo, saw the John Lennon bus (did not wait in line to go in), watched some crazy trapeze artists, and looked at a somewhat boring landscape architecture exihibit.  Then we turned in to walk down Lincoln Road in search of food, and saw an exhibit by an Australian photographer, Peter Lik.  His stuff is amazing– check it out.

10:30 Ended up at Books & Books to eat a delicous dinner– I had a turkey/pear sandwich, and Caitlin got some fake chicken which tasted too much like real chicken for her vegetarian palate.  This was when I started to get tired.  But eating dinner did help.

11:30  Ran into two girls I play frisbee with, Andrea and Anna.  Then promptly ran into three of the public allies, Lori Jane and Jessie.  We danced a bit with them in front of some stage, then Caitlin and I hurried off to perhaps our most anticipated event of the night– Spam All Stars!

12:30 Made it to Spam All Stars (we had to escape the dancing, walk, take the shuttle, walk, and weave through the crowd).  They are a band that (a) has played at many HSC functions, which Caitlin knows because she has read all the old newsletters and scrapbooks, and (b) my dad’s friend Bart recommended as a must-see while in Miami.  They play every Thursday night at a club in Coconut Grove, but I haven’t been out to see them yet.  We only caught about 1/2 hour of their set, but they were great!  They had an electric guitar, keyboard, drum set, bongos, sax, flute, and trombone.  Really cool sounds.

1:00 Headed back to Lincoln Road on foot to meet back up with the Allies.  This time there were more of them there; lots I didn’t know, plus Cal who works at HSC.  We hung out and listened to some terrible stand-up (racist jokes progressed to sexist jokes, none of which were even very funny… I tuned out).  Then we walked back to Ocean Drive in search of some acrobat who was supposedly going to be performing in mid-air, suspended by helium balloons.  Well– we didn’t find her, nor did we run into the scheduled Voodoo-God parade that was supposed to take place.  That kinda sucked.  We sat on the grass for a while and pondered what to do next.

3:00 Caitlin and I set off on our own again, mostly because we couldn’t be bothered to wait around for the slow-moving group of Public Allies & friends.  We went to the Catalina hotel to find supposed live music, art, and free drinks… the free drinks were gone, the art was kinda lame, and the music was nice, but I was so tired that sitting on cushions to listed to the DJ almost put me to sleep.  So after a brief rest we set out again to see some foreign short films, this time at Zone 1 in North Beach.

4:00 Watched three really weird French films.  So tired. But managed to stay awake.

4:30 Came out of the theater.  The streets were pretty empty in North Beach, and we took the shuttle back to Lincoln Road so we could go get the car out of the garage.  We got back at about 5, and were in the car by 5:15.  The goal this whole time had been to stick it out til 6am for the free Whole Foods breakfast, but by this time, we were basically asleep and there was really nothing to do to kill 45 minute, so we went back home.

5:45 Arrived at Caitlin’s house.  She invited me to sleep over so I wouldn’t have to drive home.  Even though it would have been a short drive, less than ten minutes, I stayed and slept in her sister’s bed because I was about to fall asleep.

6:00am SLEEP

what i’m learning

–it’s important to be surrounded by people you love

–getting to eat whatever you want is a privledge, and having the time/resources to make delicious food all the time definitely makes eating more enjoyable

–ultimate frisbee is something i can throw myself into and temporarily forget about whatever else is going on

–sitting in a desk chair all day is tiring

–it’s really important to be surounded by people you love

–eventually it becomes necessary to stop avoiding potentially awkward or uncomfortable situations, and when you do this, you open up a lot more possibilities to yourself

–i had forgotten what it was like to be reading a book that i couldnt put down

–guitar gets easier if you practice every day

–universities have SO MANY resources, even if you feel like you aren’t actively taking advantage of them, there are so many that you are benefitting from unbeknownst to you it’s amazing

–experiences are more meaningful when shared with people that are important to you

–making alone time each day is very important

–it’s so important to be surrounded by people you love

 

…my post-miami plans are to go spend time with the people i love 🙂