SOGO Sunday

Remember the shot of EXtrEmity? Today's the day; at 7, details are on my sidebar, though there's one extra trumpet piece that I know nothing about (and the Brass Choir bit). The concert'll kick ass; out of the pieces, I really like the Clarinet duet. Besides my bias towards the bamboo sound of clarinets, they sound kinda swingy, even though Krommer is classical. I don't mean dance-to-this swingy, I mean Buddy Rich swingy; just jazzy.

I'm a bit pissed that the concert's on the same night as the Oscars; not because I'm a fan of the Oscars, but for the exact opposite reason. I don't like all that celebrity bunk, and it can be read in the newspaper / on the internet later anyway; I don't like TV, either, besides a little anime & The Next Generation. I'm sad that there will probably be a few people who choose the Oscars over the concert; I can't understand staying at home to watch something on TV rather than going out and seeing local production. Oh well. [/rant]

I hope you [Oly-people] can make it.

Madge

David wrote a heart-felt entry to him and Madge...it was really touching. I suppose Matt was inspired to do the same. So many people have such nice things to say about Madge. ...'cept for me. I like her too and all; I just don't feel like talkin' nice at the moment. So I'll just leave it at saying nothing at all.

...And posting a few pictures of evil Madge in a catfight. I like evil. Tee hee.

________

Note that the first picture's index is 5, but the last one's 16...thus I managed to snap 11 photos of the French class goin' nucking futs while Nuvo and Madge struggled over that piece of paper. And in the end, after I got a picture of those two hunched over the paper [and caught Yarrow, perfectly identifiable by her shoe], the paper was ripped in 'twain. The end.

Suckological Exposition

More like an example...well, here are some things that suck in life at the moment:

° At SOGO rehearsal tonight, when Brian got arrived he went right to me and told me I had to speak about the Coin Drive. Considering I had forgotten a few of the details of the drive completely, I felt a little panicky. I asked Brian for those details, and he shrugged and said, "...Well, just talk about it," and walked off. Then I felt more panicky. I really prefer having some prep time to think of what to say. After the first hour of rehearsal, when most everyone was slightly pooped from the Carnival Overture, I finally got those details from Brian and announced the drive to the orchestra. Most everyone was happy to hear that if we donated enough money, Welsh would wear a banana suit. (Aside: Does anybody know where to get a banana costume, besides ordering a Fruit of the Loom costume online? Like, is anybody involved in a theatre department, preferrably in Oly, and willing to donate a suit for a weekend? Do let me know, please.)

° Topology reading kinda sucks at the moment. The exam is going to be somewhat definition-based, and figure-drawing...the only calculations we'll be doing are probably Euler characteristics (counting vertices, edges and faces on a plane, torus, Klein bottle, etc). Most of the homework, though, has been lengthy proofs--how lengthy? Don only assigned one homework exercise for the last week. One. And this is how he ended lecture: "Well, next week's going to be a lot of reading, so look at the exercise, work on it for a few hours, but do the reading, most importantly." Yeah, these are some semi-fugly proofs for homework, and none will be on the exam, because that would take way too long for an in-class thing; even four hours' worth. And my preferred method of studying is reviewing exercises...curses...this is gonna be an intense three weeks of reading.

° The ^&*% VAIO won't start. At the screen where I select which XP account to logon with, the computer ceases running any non-mouse-moving function, most notably the mouseover() function that changes the mouse to a hand instead of an arrow. *&@^ing OS without keyboard substitution...
(I'm writing this from a laptop.)

Not much else sucks at the moment. So, onto the antitheses of suckology...

* I GOT A GIG! W00t! I'm playing Fauré's Requiem for St. Mark's church, thanks to a referral from Mr. Allison to Paul Brassey. The pay's $50, but that's not as important to me as actually getting to play outside of an orchestra organization. I get a month to work with the music; two rehearsals; then the performance, on Good Friday. The only possible downside is that the performance may be combined with a service...oh well. Ten years performing with orchestras has at least given me a stage face, that can hold up even through boredom; I should be fine.

(Aaron, what's the name of that guy who you played the orchestra/choral piece for last year, at that church on the West Side...he's another conductor at Capital Playhouse, and you really wouldn't want to see him mad, but he's not Jeff...I can't remember the guy's name.)

* I just read Matt's 200, and decided I'm Agnostic. Yes, I acknowledge I missed the point of his blog and labelling entirely, but I think it's easier to consider Agnotism than Aetheism, with my proof habits & all.

* Right before I wrote this entry, I had 222 blog entries (obviously some unpublished), and 888 comments. Exactly. That's a sexy piece of data.

Death in a Family

Wednesday, I had my viola lesson as normal...for about forty minutes, Anne and I discussed playing in near-nose-picking positions. I've been trying to work on those, since my scales just recently (like, 2 months ago) went into the 3rd octave and I've discovered my thumb locks while playing in, oh, 7th position. (I'm sure you all loved to hear that slew of technicalities; I guess that was for Ali, David & Cortni, then.)

When we started my piece, Anne noted quite quickly that I was out of tune. I don't know how I would know I was out without a piano playing at the same time; actually, that's how I found out my intonation sucked, when the piano played with me the previous Saturday. I got three notes in, when Anne told me the F# was out. A few tries later, I managed to make it to five notes before she told me my E was out (both of these on the D string), but by hairline fractures.

Perfect pitch is a curse that I'm glad I don't have.

She got a call before I could start again; she answered it. By her voice, I could tell she was expecting the grimmest of news; when she said "...Thanks for letting me know," with a degree of resignation in her voice, I knew someone she knew just experienced mortality. It was a woman related somehow to someone in the Symphony.

When she sat down again, I asked if she was OK. She had a slight shake of the head, quite slight, and said yes, composedly gesturing to the music. "Let's hear you play it again."

She let me go for pretty much the whole first section of the Sonata...even I could tell a few of my A's were flat. Distraction, distraction, I read on her face once or thrice. She came around when I hit a C-flarp, not entirely on accident. The lesson continued on like normal, then, and she returned to "The word of the day is Intonation," teaching. We ended a few minutes early; she had to make a few phone calls.

I feel a bit odd saying this, but my phrasing for the Sonata had been...well, kinda crummy before Wednesday. I never felt like I was getting a good enough sound for such a simple melody (the challenge of the piece is the Baroque improvisation on the 2nd run-through). However, after we both learned about the death, I probably gave my best sound for the Sonata, hairline intonation issues aside...

I feel a bit morbid, to have performed so well for the occasion. I think I at least lifted her spirits a bit, so I'm satisfied with what I've done. I feel more morbid wishing to recreate that sound, though; art predicated by death should really be done once per death event, if at all, else it's brooding--and I have nothing to brood about.

Without Bounds

If I had no friends left in places I could find them; if my family moved to the moon, with Sherry flying in tow; if I was bestowed with about $200,000 and free time to operate on inertia; if I was still at an age where learning wouldn't deteriorate; I'd have a backup plan.

I would apply for the Arts; I would study Music for as many years as would feel necessary. I would leave performance alone, as my stress impulses leave me unsatisfied with the prospect of majoring in performance, besides the possible point that it would be an exercise in mediocrity. I would study history, the composers, scores of films before voices running with Gershwin; swing, jazz, the classics and mainly the Romantics.

I would subscribe to any classical music magazine that sends CDs composed of various composers, and build a database to keep my mathematics from deteriorating.

And then I would work as a trucker. My job would be to drive to all four corners of the US, and many points in between--just drive. I would see where the Four Winds dropped my friends, visit their lives, drift on and be remembered...and I would enjoy the best job my education could prepare me for. Where else could I be paid to listen to the greatest musics of the West? I would carry in my cab the best that souls could transcribe.

______

Negative prognosis of the dream: The caffeine would kill me by week 1. Well, hell, if my heart exploded listening to good Dmitri Shostakovich, I would go happy.

--La Vie d'une Rêve

The Second Hundred

Forest-Shaded Howls: Published Entry #200

I just finished Bruce Almighty, and am feeling quite relaxed and happy. It satisfied me to think about praying to a God; while I'm not actually religious in any organized manner, and am more Aetheist than Mono- or Polytheistic, the idea of praying to Morgan Freeman seems much more approachable.

After I see a good movie, the world tends to slow down a bit...it'll speed up a bit again tonight when I stop procrastinating on the Philosophy and Abstract Algebra, but for right now, things are just pretty. The last time I felt like this was the Saturday that Thurston County had 200+ traffic accidents...hmm. That's a really morbid way to remember the date, but there's the description most could probably remember. That day was heavily snow-laden, so Cassie, Katie, Aaron and I played outdoors most of the day, and did some evening trotting--absolutely gorgeous. The snow was cast almost in a purple hue from cloud cover and moon light, washed with orange from street lights, and everything was quiet. Walking through snow's a loud ordeal through the bones, so the world just seems to be peacefully silent outside of the promenade.

That night, the four of us watched Forrest Gump, kinda for my sake--I have quite the spotty history in film viewing. That movie is a masterpiece...I still cry thinking about how well it was done. The world was slower after seeing Forrest...though, most actions were intrinsically slow that night, particularly driving back on a road with snow on top of ice.

So, while things still seem prettier than normal, I feel I must write things that I'll want to remember now, in good lights. I've read almost every entry on FallenEarth since about a month after I started leaving my mark here; with apparently 4800 entries here (by blogentryid), I feel safe saying I forgot a few. But there are some that I absolutely adore...I don't believe I've commented on them, though, as I didn't feel like I had anything I could add to any of the entries...

Sarah DeStasio thus far has two entries that I admire.

Some of my greatest respect is for when Emily wrote about Tyler; I gave silent applause. My views on education aren't nearly as developed as Emily's--or Cortni's, or David's, or...I can't recall who else wrote on the subject at the moment--so I didn't comment, but I did so enjoy reading what was said well on the subject.

An aside--I recal that some of us started a discussion on the subject of Unschooling, somewhat related to the education debate through the blogs, but...oh fooey. We need that "Legendary Password" Knutaf mentioned. End aside.

I would love it if more people would make graphical entries about their days. Anything that could hold a candle to Humper's Punkers would be terrific, though the Punkers is still my favorite graphics collection. (Not to say, "Bandwidth Be Damned," though, heh...) I may have to ask Hërr Tomato if I can borrow his php scripting that he used on his California vacation; I feel like publishing De Strongest Destronger in a non-print format.

Speaking of graphical entries: The best. Trombone story. Ever.

The "Oddly Universal Truths" are also great entries to read...most prominently, I can think of The Restaurant-Goers, and The Bathroom-Scrawlers. There's a lotta wisdom there. Good comedy includes a healthy dose of wisdom and/or logic, and there be yon comedic wisdom.

Other good humor is purely contextual. One of my favorite quips from Zach was in Leah's blog on the chill factor in Oly. But I've given my two cents there.

I could probably plug a bajillion other things that I liked reading, half a bajillion which would come from Knutaf's blog alone...oh, I can't help it, here's one of my favs...and another...and this last one.

I've tried to imitate various styles from the FallenEarth folk...I tried borrowing the style of some Incredible Head (ok, that last one), with some of the Collegiate Shag, out of great respect for, uh...great taste? Nah.

I've adored Leah's writing style, and have tried to steal it a couple times. For her people on the bus, I blatantly style-yoinked and wrote about caricature-like people. I also published my favorite personal entry from a viewpoint like hers: The Smoke at the Century was probably the most artistic thing I've done here. Continuing on the 300, I'd be happy if the entries I scribe could carry the same humor as my first car accident. More likely than not, I'm gonna write a bunch of math stuff soon...maybe I'll try to have a little more fun with the Philosophy topics, since Philosophy has definitely been my weakest area of study this year.

But, 'til then, I'll end this with a little more math fun. Last Thursday, the Analysis lecture turned to Series-Convergence tests, which I covered in my Calculus C class. So, I got kinda bored...Katherine, sitting next to me, didn't look too engaged either. So, we started passing notes after I noticed the table smelled extremely bland. I absolutely love the limerick she wrote, and I'll end this Tribute to Most Everyone Else with her:

On the board he's chalking
and back and forth he's walking
around the room
but we'll go soon
when he's tired of talking.

--Loup-Vert, Plugmonger, hopes he didn't alienate/offend the near-80% of people he didn't Plugmong.

Finally Tacoma

Well, homework wasn't done, but I made it out to Tacoma damnit! Sure took me long enough. Ironically, this is the first night I've been in Tacoma since Thanksgiving week, and Alia (pen pal) nixed dancing for an orchestra rehearsal. Amanda (Hitherto known as Man-Die) called some 2nd-removed roomy and later on, hey! Alia popped in. It was nice to see her again vis à vis.

I'm not sure who else I missed that night...I've been out of the dance-loop for too long. I finally realized tonight that Nick Sheppard's really gone off to Iraq. Sure, I heard someone (I think Jim) mention it a week ago, but not seeing Nick at the dance that night was when it sunk in.

I did see Rick, though--the guy who used to be bald. He's growin' some fuzz, and looks pretty sexy, I must say.

Eeeaaany ways, my Hall of Shame (yet unpublished) has no new additions, thank you. Still goin' at 7.5. Heather for some reason decided to take away the blame of her tripping over her own feet, and say that was my fault, too...sigh. 7.5.

I probably won't make it out next week...there's plenty of Analysis homework, but also plenty of reason to procrastinate this weekend. I do hope there's gonna be something after Fool's Play tomorrow--as for before, hey, it's Valentine's Day.

*Snicker*

Sorry to tell this, but a girl at the UPS dorm--who shall remain nameless, thanks to my amazing ability to forget stuff--had a talk with her Jewish mother over the phone tonight (Friday). She was talking about doing her laundry, and her mother said, "Oh, good, you'll need clean underwear for tomorrow."

To quote Leah, *Rockets On Fire Launching*.

Ah, that has gotta be the worst possible thing you could hear from your own mother...anywhoo. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody, coupled or not.

Quaker, with Bihawk, and My Collegiate Shag

The camcorder my dad got last summer serves as a much better camera than The Mysterious Sock Object. The Sock Object just didn't seem to get up-close depth perception that would be on par with, say...this. It captures excellent
facial details too.

I wish I could say as much for its camcording abilities--or rather, its video-to-comp transfer abilities. Thus far, I've only had success with video transfer once, and I think that that was actually with Aaron's camera (the "Bring Out Your Dead in Dr. Oli's Class," or the "Dr. Newsome Forcibly Meets M. Python" prank). More recent attempts have resulted in sorta crap after video transfer...however, when I do figure it out, I promise a video clip of Damian, a snowman, and some between-the-leg unpleasantries. (That's not a threat, really.)

Until then, there is the option of transferring images from the tape (instead of memory stick) to the comp. That doesn't bide quite so well, though...there's about 1/4 the potential resolution, and somewhat odd colors. Oh well; the camera still serves well for taking bird pictures. Yes, bird pictures. Though I do wish I could get a few candid shots of some tits at some point.

Until then, I'll have to settle for observing odd head patterns with my bird, like head spikes. Sherry seems to have a knack for lookin' badass comin' outta the shower. She even managed to master the Bihawk that eluded me senior year.

I wanted a bihawk before I got some haircut mid-2nd semester...I had a nice, lengthy (for a guy) amount of hair and needed to remove it for the sake of my left field of vision. Well, needed is too strong a word; I actually just got kinda tired of all that extra hair-mass settling itself in odd ways unless I slept on it. (I think my hair looked best on days that I didn't shower, for the record that nobody keeps.) I still kinda wanted a bihawk, just for a li'l while during summer...but then I saw a video clip my dad took during my choral solo. Then I decided:

I didn't much like my Collegiate Shag.

So that's cut away now. I'll miss the wing-ding...if I ever take up art (like, uh, when I'm retired maybe? Maybe I'll finally have time then), I'm gonna draw my head with a wing growing out of the left side. Or, if I'm impatient, I'll see if I can mesh a Power Wing from Mario 3 into my hair...or maybe if Cassie gets bored again I'll ask her nicely. Yeah..."Can't some else do it?" When has THAT philosophy ever gone wrong before?

OS; Bassos Voci; OS

Former -- Baroque

Handel and Haydn; they were the first half of the Olympia Symphony concert. No complaints about them; Handel's Royal Fireworks were ok. I never developed a taste for him. Haydn's London symphony was much more enjoyable to me than it would've been before this year; Olympia Chamber Orchestra plays Haydn at least every other concert, so I've figured out his Symphony form well enough to be able to listen to any of his other 103 symphonies. His finale movements always seem so youthful...

Olympia Symphony has six contrabasses; this would be quite neat if their sound would project up to the Mezzanine, to the semi-cheap seat I got with a semi-cheap Student Rush (it would've been Fully Cheap if the ticket would've been less than $10; alas). I wasn't getting much of the lower voices during the Baroque Period of the concert.

Intermission.

A SOGO Brass ensemble was setting up in the lobby when intermission started; I'd heard about them from...probably the Segue. A tuba, two euphoniums, four trumpets, and I believe one French Horn otherwise constituted their group. A tuba and two baby tubas! I got a bit excited--yet still remained calm.

Looking around, I eyed a prime listening spot next to the Orchestra-Level seating entrance, with enough open wall for maybe four people. I (probably not) non-chalantly made my way to that wall spot. After probably flaunting of chalantliness, I settled into my spot.

I lay my back against the wall--shoulderblades and butt, but little in between thanks to spinal curvature. I rested my fingerips on the wall. The entire ensemble had tuned, and started into a piece with a chord, then playing on.

The tuba and two euphoniums ("Cellos of the Band," quoth Aaron) were the instruments I heard the best. What's this? Four trumpets, and I hear the bassos voci better? Why? My fingers.

My favorite way to listen to music is with more than my ears; when in rehearsal, and a trombone doubles my part, and my viola vibrates in sympathy, my shoulder does a fine job of feeling the music (none of that transcendental hoo-hah). When a tuba plays, the walls carry its sound.

While the trumpets danced way above wall-resonance, the tuba and his euphonium sidekicks (one on either side) played through the air, where everyone could listen. But on the wall, I could hear him without my eardrum.

I very much enjoy hearing bass in any music; the low voices provide a harmonic base--bass base, if you will--and hearing what goes on on top of the base (or bass even) seems...well-founded. Maybe that's just the math-person's point of view. Topology has grounded the infinitesimall ball into me recently, so having a good foundation is now an aesthetic pleasure.

Latter -- Ballets of the 20th Century

Huw Edwards, the Olympia Symphony's conductor, is truly a marvelous lecturer. He spoke of Benjamin Britten--noting he was the first composer of the concert to have actually been born near London, instead of just being adopted by England--and gave a pleasant recount of his history, while avoiding stealing from the history Anne Edge wrote in the program notes. He pleasantly passed chuckles into the audience meanwhile, like mixing up Britten and Britain talking about Britten visiting Britain, and how Britain championed Britten--and that's about where he had to stop. Well-spoken chap, really.

He also recounted a few of Britten's other works, from the light comedy of Matinées Musicales to the dark side of humanity in the Anti-Hero opera Peter Grimes. I'm quite intrigued to listen to Grimes now.

Before he turned around to conduct Copland's Buckaroo Holiday, he gave the parting words of his lecture: And now, a tune made famous...by Beef. It's for dinner.

March 21st is OS's next concert day...I'll probably skip SOGO rehearsal again that night. I believe the Symphony's a worthy reason to pass up a rehearsal of Babar the Elephant. And not just for Huw's Welsh.

[/Vacation]

I really like spending time outside of the house. And outside of Evergreen. This break's been a whole lotta outside-time; I've even managed to catch up with a lot of people.

Monday night: Visited Cassie at 9 at night; helped her with Logic. Became extremely intrigued with Doug DeStasio's lecture style, and decided to come. Had a chat with Aaron; got that "I just got an idea and now I'm trying to contain myself" look on my face, but not through my body (my knees hadn't been too happy since Dodgeball Saturday morning, and I was kneeling when the idea struck [but not hit] me). That's three things I hadn't done/seen in weeks.

Tuesday morning: Cass & I went to her classes; Women's History wasn't bad at all, though Cassie accidentally brought me on quiz day. I had paper and doodled homology groups and icosahedrons (the twenty-triangle figure is intuitively obvious to anybody if one just draws the top half, I discovered).

I sat in on Doug Destasio's lecture for the day, on absolute value & other stuff. Cassie peaked at the paper I doodled on during her history quiz, and I saw her brain fart.

Brain Fart--an exersion of gas from the brain that exits through the eyelids, causing a sudden bug-eye expression and then much rolling of the balls.

I took DeStasio's fake quiz with the rest of the class; the girl next to me asked me to explain one of my answers, where I tried to make it intuitively obvious that 3 + 4 = 5. (Y'think that's bad, a guy in Advanced Calculus one day couldn't understand a proof he was reading until he asked me for help; I pointed out that 1+2=3. Advanced Calculus. (In his defense, he didn't sleep well.)) I asserted that I was a mathematics major, not a computation major. Just to prove it, while Doug was going through the answers to the fake quiz, I derived the formula for an n-dimensional Euclidean metric, capital Sigma and all.

Math was fun, all in all. On the way out, I saw a printout of Doug's favorite example of the intersection of the Set of Vampires and the Set of Dogs. He's an awesome guy; maybe a bit kooky, but still cool.

After lunch, Laura's pictures, and much Harry Potter on Tape, Cassie and I saw Leah, just to make sure she was still alive. She lives; she loaned me The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which will be the first non-math book I'll have read since I believe Summer (thanks again, Leah!); and she has an odd piece of patio adornment, c/o some car that probably didn't need it anymore.

And finally, Cassie and I visited El Jimbo. He's alive, too, though there ain't much kicking going on. He told me about Jitterbug Weekend, but I may not be able to go...oh, wait, my rehearsal on the 21st is cancelled! Hot damn, I may go to my first-ever 1 o'clock dance! And next Wednesday he's hopin' for a Tacoma excursion. I will get my work done before Wednesday, so help me...

This was all done in the time that I usually spend in Abstract Algebra (except for Cassie's classes). I thought I would have Chamber Orchestra rehearsal to go to, sorta diminishing the "Vacation" idea, but when I got out to Evergreen to set up for the orchestra, the door read, "Arun's out sick." No conductor, no orchestra.

I love vacations.

WISH: The Weekend's End

Dodgeball was a massacre; WISH's first round, we were all out in about 10 seconds. Jock teams are scary. The rest of the rounds we still lost, but a few times we had some really dramatic moments where one member of our team was left against two or three of the other team; those bouts last a surprisingly long time. Of course, once WISH's RA was the last one standing, and the entire other team stopped throwing balls because she's such a sweety [I guess]. Well, stopped, only to coordinate one massive blast at her. Amusing, in a slightly twisted, "I probably shouldn't laugh out loud," kinda way. [Sorry, Paige.]

I saw the second-greatest incentive to never have a baby: Eraserhead. It's a definite cult film. Squishy sperm, 4 feet long; really screwed up chicken scene; and the ugliest. baby. Ever.
Not like I'm letting it play against my life plans; Katie compared that method of "Birth Control -- Abstinence Enforcers Greater than Martha Thatcher" with videos that follow the pregnancy cycle, through childbirth (emphasis on "through childbirth), and I agreed.

Like last time when I came, dinner was home-made tortilla chips, method c/o David but cooking c/o Katie. They made ex-cellent nachos. While Katie was cooking the nachos, Kira played piano (she's -really- good, I was quite happy to listen to her) and Elena prepared some strawberry pie...mmm, strawberry goodness and music. I liked the kitchen Saturday.

Saturday night went late; no, there wasn't any strip poker (to Kira's and Elena's disappointment), but movies instead. Super Troopers kicked ass once again, and Harvey Birdman -- the Apache Chief Growth episode afterwards only rode the wave of immature boy humor. Ah, penile growth, where would our chuckles come from without ye...

However, after Harvey, Kevin showed Katie, Marcus & I "Happy Friend Tree." That cartoon was made by one (and I hope only one) sick puppy. I won't link it here, but if you want to expend the effort yourself and search for it, it won't be too hard to find...just, uh, mind the blood splatters. Eeyeah. Then Kevin showed us "Tokyo Breakfast" or something; it was essentially a Japanese, business-class, business-clad family, acting as much as possible as American Blacks. Every sentence ended with the word "Niggah," except for the one-liner "shee-it"'s. (Let me just say that I'm not too culturally respective of this kind of American Africam-American. I don't like the term "Niggah," "Bitch," or most any term pertaining to rap/hip-hop. Sorry if that's racist, but it's really a poor way to spend one's vocabulary.)

So, as I watched a Japanese man in a suit, a sweet Asian lady (no husk anywhere) in a housewife dress with apron, and a baggy-dressed teen act as Black as anti-archetypically possible, I felt suddenly inclinded to ask Kira & Elena if they wanted to get naked. Maybe my IQ was dropping with every sentence from that show; I dunno. Sounded like a good idea at the time.

Again, there was no nakey-time. It would've been just the four of us (Katie followed me into the lounge), and we all agreed that would've been infinitely more intimate than any of us would've wanted. Again, the point of strip poker isn't boobies--if I wanted boobies, I could just dig into my Hotmail account's junkmail--it's to watch people squirm. Oh well; no squirming occured.

The next morning (an hour past morning, actually), I got Kevin back for the Happy Friend Tree thing. Kira (emphasis on KIRA) suggested that I wake him up; I took some artistic/wussic license and just knocked on his closed dorm door, and walked back to the lounge. Twenty minutes later, Keven was standing in the doorframe to the front lounge; Sean, Kira, Katie and I were chatting. Quoth Kevin:

"Ok, who thinks they're cute?"

Quoth [the ratting-bastard] Sean: "*Cough* *Cough* It was ALEX*cough*."

Kevin, the taller-than-me-and-buff mass of Man walked by me calmly, shower goods in hand. We heard him step into the men's room. Quoth Sean again: "I wonder how long this'll take." I set my watch.

Two minutes, twenty seconds later, Kevin pounced into the lounge, grabbed both of the heavy-duty pillows, and proceeded to wallomp me in two swift blows. Back to the shower.

On an extremely related note, Tammy said I could be an honorary member of WISH Saturday night; that was touching, really. I adore the dorm, for its small and extremely friendly population; I'd be quite happy to spend a year of college with them. (If only I'd have enough classes to take...and, uh, sufficient scholarships & all that good stuff...) Heck, I'm already enough of a part of the family that Kevin will happily beat me. I'm so loved. Really, I felt a lot of love in those two pillow thwacks. I'd hug the guy, if he wouldn't throw me out the lounge window after attempting such an act.

I hope I get another break in Spring quarter to visit WISH again. I love those guys.