Fourth of July and Naked Women

Happy fourth of July everyone. Two days late. Our fourth was fantastic. We had draft conferences during the day. My piece for this week is very experimental and I had so much work to do when I left the conference. I eventually rewrote the second half and added three pages, bringing it up to fifteen. I'm pretty pleased with the end product, but on Wednesday I was still freaking out.

The fireworks almost didn't happen because there were supposed to be thunderstorms and there was a tornado watch. But we went anyways. For some reason. Because we're insane, probably. I have honestly lost my sanity. After spending fifteen minutes, in the pouring rain, talking with two of our program advisers (our PAs are so great, I love them all) about crucifying people, I turned to them and assured them I'm not usually this crazy, or this talkative.

What was I originally talking about? Right, we got on the bus and drove to this other town I don't remember the name of. It was pouring rain. We went to this baseball field with the rest of the town. Now as someone who usually just goes to a friend's house and blows shit up for fourth of July, the idea of having a community event was sort of a novelty. We hung out on beach towels and huddled under umbrellas and I vaguely remember kissing someone's snow cone. Because orange is the bastard child of red and blue. After a while people got so miserable a bus load went home. I stayed. Because I'm insane. At that point trying to stay not soaked was pointless. I got completely drenched, when I got home all three layers I was wearing were soaked. But it was grand fun. I had a ball. Maeve and D showed up, we played the ninja game* with the science people, I found out the science PA is actually nice and not the spawn of satan, I swing danced with Mary Kate in the rain, I tried to learn some bizarre country line dance thing and totally failed, I got really hyper and did planks in the mud. The fireworks, when they finally did happen, were spectacular and so loud they made my ribs rattle. And we swam through the rain all the way home.

Yesterday we had class and in the afternoon went the Barnes Foundation. Basically a homage to Renoir. Specifically Renoir paintings of naked women. Sexist, but I did okay. There was a lot of other incredible paintings. Some great Picassos, a Gaugain I really liked, some of the Degas charcoal sketches that were beautiful and a giant Matisse mural. It was fun. Not nearly enough time. I rushed through the first floor and didn't have time to get to the second.

I love this environment. You can hang out in the common room and people will come up to you and say "read this" and then you talk about what they're doing and word choice and mood and style. The atmosphere of creativity is intoxicating. And the depth of discussion in class is great, yesterday we spent an hour and a half talking about four poems.

I have now seen three toads but have not seen a toad threesome.

* - unless you were at the Federal Way debate tournament a year and a half ago, you should not know what this is.

Post Coital Toads

I saw a groundhog today. It was awesome. I dropped my pen and said "What the fuck it's a groundhog." And then it scampered behind a bush.

It's been a while hasn't it, what have I been up to...

Friday we went into Philly. Crazy town, I had a very good time. It's sort of like Seattle, but bigger. And older. We hung out at Logan Circle and walked on King Tut's face. For lunch we went to Redding Terminal Market and I had surprisingly good phad thai. And Marion (she's French and I love her) and I stalked a guy who looked like a turtle for twenty minutes.

Friday night we had movie night and watched Robin Hood: Men in Tights in one of the lecture halls. It was grand fun. We had popcorn and massive amounts of candy. We've been watching a lot of movies lately. Philadelphia Story and Rocky Horror and Robin Hood and The Breakfast Club. The library here has a better selection of movies than Hollywood video does at home. I've sort of become the movie pimp of the group because I'm there pretty much every night renting a movie. I think the librarian hates me.

Saturday we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Absolutely amazing. It's humongous, in two hours I only got through one wing.

Sunday I hung out and did basically nothing. No, we stenciled t-shirts. That was very fun.

So many other crazy stories that I wish I had time to tell. I'm having so much fun, it's sort of unreal, how much fun this is.

I got giggly yesterday. I don't remember the last time I was giggly. It was crazy. The things that came out of my mouth. At dinner we had a long discussion of how sweet potatoes are actually carrots in disguise. And jerk chicken. We ingested the jerk. And how disliking sweet potatoes doesn't make you racist.

Tonight it was decided that because I haven't found my prince charming (gee I wonder why) I imagine amphibians having sex.

I can't decided if I'm hearing thunder outside or very large trains.