survival at it's finest

Last night was Journey. And I am in way more pain than I was last year. Oh, but it was so much fun.

Yasha and I ended up as staff chasers, the ones that get the game rolling. Jeremy, from BFTW, was the lead chaser, Sir Lancelot of Charm City. I ended up driving, which turned out to be way easier than I tend to think it is: 29 goes straight through Silver Spring and into DC. We parked in the same hotel garage we did last year. We were a couple minutes late for the chaser meeting, but it didn't really matter. We got our maps and the general instructions for us: no tagging between Dupont and 1, only about 10 between1 and 2, about as many between 2 and 3, and then we're shuffled as needed. Yasha and I were on a team with another guy, Jason, and we had between 2 and 3.

After the meeting, we went to Potbellies and got subs for dinner. When Yasha went to pay for his, though, he realized he managed to forget his wallet. Jason paid for Yasha's sub, which was nice. We went back to the circle after that and got our ribbons, then helped one of the organizers, Chris, grab all the stuff from someone's car, and bring it back to set up. As soon as the table is flipped over and set up, a line forms. We end up walking down the line to intimidate players, and make our way to our post.

We stop by Checkpoints 1 and 2, just to see. 1 is at a bus depot, and has a DMV theme. They made big 'licenses' with holes for faces and you can get your picture taken. Yasha and I had ours done, just because. It was manned by the Good Player Fairy from last year, one of the guys from the 50s training vid, and a woman. We talked for a while, tell them they're supposed to get all 1000+ registrants, then move towards 2. 2 is pirate themed, with inflatable palm tree, kiddie pool, and treasure chest. We report in as 'friendly neighborhood chasers', talk for a bit, and head to where we decide to camp out.

I forgot to mention, but the Marines were back. And there were more. More on that later.

We end up on opposite sides of K, between New Jersey and North Capitol, right near the Greyhound. Apparently, a couple players left early, and 1 was not allowed to stamp people until 8:30. The players were officially released at 7:50. I wish I could provide a more accurate play-by-play, but I was following so many Twitter feeds that I had to delete my inbox twice. We don't get any action until closer to 9, I think. The Marines were moving fast, and we were told to try to get them as fast as possible.

Our team got separated, but we had each other's numbers, so it wasn't a big deal. I quickly found a group and chased them apart, separated another group, and went after others. Unfortunately, because I'm so terribly out of shape I couldn't chase them for long, but it was still fun. We patrolled from 2 to K, and as more player-chasers were made, more people were caught. Yasha chased a couple Marines towards some player-chasers, and 2 got caught.

After that, my timing gets a little messed up. We decided to move to between 4 and 5, but then we got a message from Jeremy to ease off and just intimidate players for a while, to find the lead players instead. We went to 4 anyway, where we met Kevin and a couple other Bros. We walked to 6, doing some chasing along the way. We make it to 6 in time to see the first players finish, 2 guys from Dem Boyz at 10. Yasha goes back out while I rest, and we later decide to go find Jason, who's up near 5.

On our way to 5, we help catch a ridiculously fast guy. Actually, all along 16th where we were walking we were chasing after people. Into traffic, too. There was one guy that we ended up surrounding, there were about 7 of us. He was really fast. He ran up a hill in front of a temple, and as he was coming down, I saw him heading towards me so I planted myself, all ready for him. He banked sharply before he got to me, cut between some newspaper boxes into the street, where Yasha got him. It was pretty sweet.

Bruce from the pillow fight was manning 5, dressed as Waldo, and recording videos of people's stories. Jason was a little up from 5, so we met up with him and decided to ignore the messages about intimidating only and headed to 14th between 4 and 5. We chased some, though I was really tired by then and couldn't do much running anymore. They caught a couple players that were hiding pressed against a wall, who took a little issue with us because they saw the message about not catching.

By then I was exhausted and aching all over. Each step I took shot pain up my legs from the balls of my feet, and I wished I had brought my running shoes. We decided to just head back to the car and leave, partially because of how dead we were and partially because Yasha had to deal with something with Heather. Somehow we made it back to the car and back home. Yasha fell asleep in the car. I got in right around 2.

Over 1150 players made it to 1, 512 through 2, 100 through 3, about 30 through 5. 12 teams were represented at 6. I wish I knew how the Bros did. I'm pretty sure Gabriel made it all the way through again.

Today, almost every muscle in my legs aches so bad I have trouble walking. My neck/shoulders aches too, probably remnants from carrying my bags around on Friday.

blinded by science

last night was pretty sweet. even if i was up till 2:30 and felt wobbly in ceramics. totally worth it. i feel accomplished. one guy was totally bombed, sat there almost unconscious for, like, 3 hours. ces got pretty bombed too, didn't stop laughing for close to an hour. and i got cheerwine! and anna made a funfetti cookie penis.

silly potheads...

rawr

heyyyy

sooo i forged on saturday.

and i have a summer/rest of 2010 reading list that's 19 books long, plus the 2 i'm in the middle of right now.
- the complete Dresden Files,13 books. i'm almost halfway through the first one
- the complete Hitchhiker's Guide, 5 books. i'm partway into the third
- the complete Dexter series, 5 books. i mistakenly bought the second one instead of the first...

oh, and i'm sad and angry. the author of "Screeching Bitches" has decided to quit because of too much criticism or something. some of it was just wank, but i'm really unhappy that she just decided to give up on it. i think it was almost done too. fuckers...

gosh, today was a pretty good day. i finally got to keep 2 of the cylinders i threw this morning, even if they were too short. i made progress on my first origami scarf, got all the resist down, and stretched a second one. we got out of that class early because andrea had a meeting to get to about her show. and when i got home my leatherman and random shirt were in the mailbox. yayy! the random shirt is cute: it's an apple, a banana, and an orange on bikes and skateboards, and it says "unstill life". i like it.

420 is tomorrow. i'm almost certain i'm gonna be celebrating. it'll be my first time smoking it though. it suddenly occurred to me earlier today that 'lost' is on when the partying will be happening. i think i'm gonna pick 420 over lost, because there's no way i'm watching lost stoned, that will freak me the fuck out. as chelsea said, "i can barely get lost when i'm sober".

i walked away and lost my train of thought... i should probably detail more of the fun forging weekend, but i'm feeling lazy...

romano in a dress. idk...

JOURNEYYYYY

so, exciting news regarding journey. BFTW has been asked to be chasers because we're huge and awesome. wow, that sounds dirty...


THIS IS THE MOST EXCITING EMAIL I'VE GOTTEN IN, LIKE, MONTHS!! seriously, aside from all my ff.n alerts, the only emails i get are spam and order confirmations for all the shit i order online [still waiting for my tea from republic of tea and that random woot shirt. oh, and i ordered a leatherman multitool! god, i think i might have a problem...]

ANYWAY

wow, i think hoogily and his amusing blogs are rubbing off on me...

i did the first of that 30 days meme i found. favorite song = "lucid dreams" by franz ferdinand. so i drabbled, recorded myself air-drumming the whole song, and then posted both on dA.

also, i was up late last night working on my english paper, but i still only wrote 2 pages. because i'm terrible like that. and i meant to throw today too, but that didn't happen because i'm too lazy. i almost missed 'lost' because i was too caught up in being retarded with that meme thing. AND THAT WAS ALMOST A REALLY TERRIBLE THING BECAUSE I WOULD'VE MISSED HEARTWARMING HUGO/LIBBY AND DESMOND BEING SIMULTANEOUSLY AWESOME AND DOUCHEY. the dude was all zen, and then ran down wheelchair!locke in a school parking lot then drove off. but then he got thrown down a well by not-locke.

god, 'lost' makes absolutely no sense to someone who has either not watched it for any length of time. BUT OHMYGOD IT'S ALMOST OVER WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE WHEN IT ENDS!!

ok, i need to stop before i abuse my capslock key anymore than i already did...

yet more evidence of why i love candesceres. angel!portugal is grumpy.

i may have developed a dependancy...

for every due date in english this semester, i've gone out and got red bull to keep me up the night before so i can actually meet that due date. although, the last 2 times i've gotten a 4-pack and stayed up all night. this time i only got 2, and i already drank one last night, and i won't be staying up all night. i'm so incredibly glad i don't have to have the entire paper for tomorrow. i can just write as much as i can and then stop. and finish it later. like, the day before it's due. i really hope i don't actually do that though...

i've gotten part way through the intro so far. go funnels! it's gone from "From almost the moment we are born until we die, our brains are constantly changing and developing" to "Once the process becomes second-nature, the brain can be free to concentrate on what is being said, rather than how to transfer thought to paper." still haven't gotten to my thesis yet... all in good time, i suppose. since this needs to be 13+ pages, i can take my sweet time getting there.

i'm actually rather happy with how the point-sentence outline turned out. real sentences and everything!

in other news, tomorrow i need to do some wheel practice to make up for almost a week of nothing, and figure out a better reason behind doing silk paintings of maritime signal flags besides "hey, this is cool!"

also, instead of going home this weekend for carver celebration, i'm letting heather take my ticket and going to paw-paw's to learn to weld instead. i'm still kinda mixed about it, but i feel kinda bad because i haven't seen him in probably close to 2 years. and i really do want to learn to weld.

oh, also! i planned out my course load for the next 2 years. i have a feeling i'll be stuck with 17 credits again in the fall, but only 14 by spring 2012. which hopefully will be awesome. i need to pick an english class and a random elective for the fall though. registration is next week.

saturday was fun. went to belle isle - finally! - with emily and 2 of her roommates. fun times mostly... a kid slipped into the river and went down some of the rapids before a couple guys fished him out. emily helped pull him out. it was pretty scary.

and then when we went to the intercultural festival, she embellished the story with more daring exploits, including delivering a baby, fighting off a polar bear, shooting a nazi, and riding unicorns. i wish my life was that exciting...

i don't think i've talked about a hetalia fic in a while. really there's nothing new... though i occasionally feel the need to rant about canada and french. so i will. because he doesn't speak french-french, he speaks french-canadian. which is completely different. so it always bothers me when some author has him speaking french-french, especially swear words. because it's really easy to find quebecois swear words. they're on wikipedia, for fuck's sake! and that's one of the reasons i so enjoy reading everything orangepencils writes. she lives in quebec and speaks quebecois and all her canadians speak quebecois, not metropolitan french. especially quebec. he only speaks quebecois. [well, not only, he just doesn't like english.] the only reason i remembered this today was because folie a plusiers has been updated recently [finally!] and canada speaks french-french. and suddenly i realized how much it bothered me, the use of french swears, rather than quebecois ones. but i'm worried the author would take it the wrong way if i suggested using quebecois, especially swears, rather than french. i wish i could find a for-real online translator... oh well...

unrelated: it's not even 8, and i'm almost finished that red bull. not cool.

rant-related. and because it's sexy.

feed me, seymour!

except not really...

i've been sick today. as in, throwing-up sick, not sneezing sick. and it seems that i only throw up after i eat things that are not saltines. the first time was after half a pbj, a few cheez toast crackers, and a peach-mango fruit 2day drink. and the second time was oatmeal with maple syrup. i have no idea what's wrong.

yum. i'm in for a diet of saltines, ginger ale, and peptobismol.

but the good news about today: someone is coming to fix the leaky sink tomorrow, and 'lost' was full of win. lots of true love happenings in the flash-sideways, and desmond is all zen after a second run-in with mass amounts of electromagnetism. crazy.

BUT anyway. saturday. or, well, this past weekend.

friday i hung out with yasha and shelley. separately, but yeah. toured towson mall for the first time in probably a couple years. finally got me some orange eyeliner and some sweet gir slides for $10. hot topic can indeed be cool. got cheesecake from cheesecake factory. that was delicious.

but SATURDAY. OH MY GODDDDD! it was international pillow fight day, so yasha and i went down to dc for some festivities. we missed the first fight by the washington monument, but we played games at dupont circle. i got whacked pretty hard early on in the face and smashed my glasses into my eye. they got knocked off too many times to count. we ran into kevin and a bunch of other guys from BFTW. aside from the initial long brawl, which lasted for probably half an hour and included many charges, we played capture the pillowcase, zombie tag, and a championship elimination.

here's the flickr pool.

when i got back on sunday i threw with angela. i'm still having trouble with those cylinders. i can get the form right but not the height, or the height and not the form. maybe if i start with more clay i can get the height that i need while still keeping the form. i'll try that next time i go in. not sure if it'll be tomorrow or not, depends on my stomach.

not hetalia! me from the pillow fight. from the flickr pool.

home again, home again, etc...

took the greyhound home yesterday for break. exciting, as usual. mom picked me up because dad was working and yasha was on his way to new york with heather for the tim burton exhibit. and everyone who knows him is incredibly jealous. i know i am...

anyway, everything has been going well so far. i brought up the unfortunate housing situation over dinner at red lobster, and when we got home i walled nicole. so i am confident we'll be living together next year, which should be fun. seriously, no sarcasm there. hopefully it'll all work out, seeing as we're both rather prone to add... we should probably start looking for places soon.

matt didn't get into college park, but he did get into cua and pitt. we're still waiting for umbc, and i forget what's up with vt.

dad's going to cali [i think] for the week for work. which sucks for family time, but means there's less people fighting over cars. at least i got to see him some before he left. he's taking a red eye back next sunday. i'm not sure what this means for transport back. i do want to come back saturday because i've gotta work on my silk painting. i need to have all the resisting done by class on monday.

i've got work to do over break, which is unfortunate. i have to work on my review of research paper for english and figure out how my actual paper is going down. i need to come up with ideas for quilt patterns, though that should be pretty easy. i have to do my math final, which i'm pretty sure is going to be some sort of narwhal tessellation. just because. and i may be working-working, though dan hasn't gotten back to me.

and i've got some half-baked [heh] plans for st patty's day with yasha. we're hanging out during the day, because he's got plans with heather for the evening/night. over im we proposed plans, which led to a really weird conversation involving cross-dressing [that's saved as a draft here so i can remember it forever], but i'm realizing i'm not sure exactly how the pre-plan is going to work out. he needs to acquire things. i hope he does. because yeah. [slightly related: i'm hoping 420 pans out for me as well...]

recently i broke down and downloaded a shit-ton of owl city. stupid fsts getting me interested in stuff i normally wouldn't be... like german industrial rock. and french rap - wait, that was jenny. anyway... yeah, i have owl city, which led to me breaking down and getting mgmt, because dammit, it's catchy. which reminded me to download matt & kim, even though they're not related to mgmt at all. oh, my musical escapades...

oh god, i almost started talking about this incredible fic i finished reading, but then i remembered exactly how incredibly inappropriate it is. because it really is. it makes me feel terrible and giddy at the same time, and i love it. grr. stupid guilty pleasures putting me on trains to hell...

uhh... i want to keep talking, but i have no idea what else to say...

well, i just finished blood-winged amazing story, "at the end of all things." and i'm terribly sad that it's over. wahhhh, i don't want it to be over! also, i want her to write more prucan, but that's really beside the point... i'm so sad, i'm rereading the whole thing. or i'm just really bored and craving me some prucan...

idek... pixiv is cool.

hockeyyyy

i feel like every time i go to the blogger home page, i have to log in. annoying, but whatevs.

so, canada played russia in hockey. i couldn't watch, as i was attempting to do annotated bibliographies [more on that later...] but i had the 'live' olympic page on. i wanted to stream it live, but i would need to log in to comcast, which i can't do. i was sad. but we [lol, i so wish i was canadian...] beat russia 7-3. i'm hoping they'll make it to the bronze game, but i have no clue. i'm optimistically predicting canada will sweep in hockey and curling, getting at least some medal in all four. the women's hockey team will definitely get gold or silver, as that game is canada v us. I AM SO WATCHING THAT, I DON'T EVEN CARE WHAT I HAVE TO DO TO SEE IT. both curling teams are in the semifinals, so either way they'll be contending for some medal.

more on the russia game at the bottom...

anyway, annotated bibliographies! i decided to just do a google scholar search for some brain damage articles, since i was finding nothing in the databases. i found a really comprehensive one about how diseases and injuries leave traces in handwriting, like a stroke or parkinson's. it's pretty cool. i'm so glad i did that search! i just need to find a second article... i'm gonna be up late, i know it. if only i knew we would be doing nothing in class tomorrow except handing these in, i'd skip again. but we've got a reading due [which i won't do, as usual], and we're going over making claims and how to go about supporting them. so i kinda need to be there. so, little sleep for me tonight. i just took a caffeine pill anyway, as i was falling asleep.

last night pat, anna, tay, and their friend asim [?] came over to smoke with liz. i was feeling sorry for myself, wishing i could partake, as the first time was awesome. but alas, i don't like the feel of smoke in me. that and, by the time i figured out what they were doing, it was gone. so i hung out with them in the kitchen as they feasted. i embroidered. it was kinda nice. i'm really hoping 420 will end up panning out for me in that regard - and for that matter, st patrick's day will involve the associated consumption. 2010 is definitely a good year for me becoming "a real college student". stupid yasha...

yesterday was free pancake day at ihop. so i convinced nicole to drive us out to glen allen for dinner. it was me, her, angela, and nicole's friend anthony. unfortunately, nicole ended up leaving because she had class at 7. she came and got us after and got food to go. i got a purple lap desk as michael's while waiting for her to get back. i ended up missing lost - we spent almost 5 hours on this adventure - but that's okay cuz i watched it today. and claire has totally flipped her shit. jack also had a bout of anger, but that's not really surprising considering him. in the au, he has a son, which confuses me. i'm gonna have to comb my brain for how the island being blown up would result in him having a son, because i'm still at a loss...

anyway, i should get back to that bibliography. i need to come up with some sort of shorthand for that, because 'annotated bibliography' is forever long...

beautiful fanarts resulting from the canada-russia game today. apparently, it was violent. i'm sad i missed it...

ETA:
and i just refreshed the 'results' page to find canada got 3 more medals!

1st: america, 28
2nd: germany, 24
3rd: norway, 18
4th: canada, 15
5th: russia, 13

there's still one more medal event to go today, which is going on now.

EATA:
no new developments, really. i'm endlessly amused by the bronze and gold medal games for women's hockey: finland v sweden for bronze, america v canada for gold/silver.

anyway!

this is win. i just found the vancouver olympics tag on pixiv, and blue did this. i'm really sad i missed that game now!!

unrelated: i finished my bibs for tomorrow. the second one is fail because i stupidly picked a source that was a sort of overview of a study, and it was done by a student, so i can't use it. i'll have to do 3 sources for the next due date then...

i'm also slightly concerned about my mental state because i took that caffeine pill around 9, and i just finished a melatonin lozenge. and my chest feels weirdly tight. i need to go to bed...

hair dye!

so, i dyed my hair again today. i had the dye, and i was bored, and so i did it. and i think it looks pretty good.

also, i'm not sure why i decided to make this entire thing centered... oh well...

official "before" picture. before everything.

after the first shower, where i just washed my hair [since i hadn't since last thursday].

posing with the box...

with the dye in. i haven't used ammonia dye in a long time, so i forgot it burns and smells awful and is generally unpleasant... i don't like it...

after the second shower, when it's all nice and soft and happy.

uh...

mostly dry

stupid camera...

trying to get a good-ish pic of the color...

dino...

sigh...