Perhaps I haven't been eating enough exemplary vegetables?

    If I were a super hero and I could choose my default power, I think I'd choose invisibility.  If I'm only allowed one, I can think of no better all-around champion than the ability to stand next to someone and listen to them talk about their next big dastardly plan to blow up Wayne Tower or something.

    

    But sadly, with my luck, if I were to become radioactively charged or what have you and sprout some fantastic ability out of nowhere, I probably wouldn't be able to choose it, and it probably wouldn't come out as invisibility.  No, I'd probably have very little control over any aspect of my new identity.  My name would probably be something unbelievably lame like "Oracle" or "ThirdEye" and I'd look something like the nerdiest thing this side of MIT*.

     And my power would barely be a power at all.  Something like the ability to dream in color.  I mean, if we're coming from the Stephanie Meyer perspective, that would make the most sense: I would be bringing with me one power I possessed in my normalcy to my super-cy and amplifying it.  

    Because let me tell you: I have the weirdest dreams.

    You know, there are countless people who have told me they never remember their dreams, if they even have any, and the ones they do remember are very mundane, as though they're just reliving their day minute by minute in their heads.  So what my subconscious does at night must be some sort of genetic mutation.

    Last night, for instance, I had a dream that somehow, I was still in high school, still in band, and still in Outdoor Adventure II and everything was the same as it was last year when all those things were true in real life, as well. (Which is to say, in my sleep-weakened state, I thought everything was the same, when really, nothing looked like anything I'd ever seen, and had I been trying harder, I wouldn't have recognized anyone I came into contact with)  There were some oddities in my schedule: Wind Symphony was only a Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday class at third period (a set up we endured in Junior High with some strange consequences) and the other two days, I was enrolled in Outdoor Adventure (an awesome P.E. class offered at my high school) with the main football coach for my teacher.  In fact, I was technically enrolled in that class all five days, but it was just accepted that I was to be absent Wednesdays through Fridays.  

    There were many facets to this dream, one being an activity done in the gym class involving the climbing rope doubling as a bungee cord and an unreliably springy gymnastics floor, which of course ended with me uncomfortably splayed on the floor, jaw throbbing, face reddening, and the whole class laughing at me.  (There is always some spark of truth to these things).  

    But the more interesting facet was the one involving Wednesday.  It was evidently protocol for me to check in with my gym teacher before skipping away to band, so I was doing just that, except said teacher was not letting me leave.  He insisted that, since I had arrived early (in order to arrive in the band room on time), I should help him set up the room for the activity they were planning on doing that day.  So, reluctantly, I did, and did not finish even after the bell rang to signal the start of class.  I asked Mr. D (his name was long and Italian) if I could leave, since I had another class to attend, and he said that I had to finish what I was doing first, that, if necessary, he would talk to my band director for me.  When I finally was allowed to leave, Mr. D didn't even give me a pass, so I was roaming the hall (lanyard-free, by the way, to those who care, if you happen to read this) unprotected.  

    I did finally get to the band room, which had morphed somehow into an actual classroom, complete with desks (circa third grade) and chalk boards and my band director sitting behind a computer while the rest of the students bent silently over their respective rhythm quizzes (only one who has gone through this particular band program can fully appreciate the ridiculosity of that image).  I made my way to my desk, which was nowhere near the desk of the one other person in my instrumental section, a fact that perplexed us both, judging by the shrug he gave me before returning to his quiz.  Mr. Banddirectorman called me out to his office, and I followed, with some difficulty, as everything was very cramped and no one felt it necessary to keep their belongings out of the walkways.

    When we got there, he sat down and pulled out his pad of hall passes, looking somewhat frightened for whatever reason, and asked me where I was coming from and I didn't have a pass with me.  I told him I had come from gym with Dr. Divertimento (o.O).  And without hesitation, or even waiting for me to finish my sentence, Mr. Banddirectorman forged the pass for me.  Why?  I don't know, because the only person who would need to see it was him.

    And then I woke up.

    So no superpower, just super-weird nights.

<3 spadeALLcross

* Both my father and one of my better friends has/is attended/attending MIT, so the term "nerd" is used here with due reverence and all the love in my heart.

"Call me up before you're dead: we can make some plans instead."

10:30

    After eighteen years of struggle, stooping over a hot blow dryer, flat iron, curling iron, and table filled with a myriad of hair products, after eighteen years of disappointment on picture day, of looks of resignation at the mirror, of avoiding photographs, video cameras, and really fast painters, my hair has finally bended to my will and does what I want it to do on cue.

    And I emptied three years worth of my life out of my car this morning, fitting it all into a time capsule marked "For my Someday Car."  

    What do they call it when everything intersects?

12:51

Nuff said.

13:39

    Just got done packing up all my...stuff into boxes and Tetris-ing it into the smallest possible corner of my basement.  Well dang, I hope it all fits. 

    Now to attack my bedroom and all my clothes and such together.  Guess I'm going to go the rest of the weekend naked?  Whatever, I'm a Saggitarius; nakedness is expected of us.

14:55

    Is it seriously still saturday?

14:59

    I wonder what kind of person I would be if I had been born elsewhen than when I was.  My current ponder is the Pre-Victorian Era (does that have its own name?).  I can't stand most [fictional] women I read about who are set in that time period because they're simply so fake and obnoxious, which isn't to say any of that is entirely their fault, so much as that time in general wasn't a woman-pleasing time anymore than the rest of history.  

    But I still wonder, what would I be like if I were a Bennet sister, for example?  Would I be proud?  Or would I be quieter, more easily shattered, like Jane?  Or, heaven forbid, would I be like one of those other insufferable girls or their mother?  

    It makes me want to write a book, just to have myself as the main character and get all the possibilities down on paper.  Of course, then I'd have to Become Jane, so to speak, which is a night terror I would rather not live out.

   Although the clothes are kind of cool, and I really do enjoy the sentence structure.  No one talks like that anymore, which is really a shame.  Maybe their sentiments are skin deep and all that, but phrases like "I desire you will stay where you are" and "I was hoping, if it would not trouble you, that I might solicit a private audience with you in the course of the morning," and certainly, having drawing rooms and parlors, and calling that space in front of your door a "fo-yay" and not a "foi-urr" or a "lobby" would be perfectly lovely.  And, I know it wasn't a rule or anything that everyone should end up in only the best of situations, but I would give anything to be "completely, and perfectly, and incandescently happy."

17:42

    Ladies and gentleman...my evening in a nutshell:

21:17

    I wonder what I'll be doing this time next week.  I mean, I'll be in Michigan, in the prime of my life, without any homework or--as far as I know--any set agenda to stick to for the evening.  I wonder if I'll have made any friends by then, or if I'll be about as alone as I am now.  Will I be listening to music in my room alone, wondering where Genevieve got off to, or not listening to music because Gen's in the room and I'm self-conscious that she won't like my tune-age?  Will I be in the room at all, or will I be wandering the campus, doing who knows what?  Will I have talked to my High School friends since my departure, or will they have been temporarily taken out of my head by the pooper-scooper of business?  9:17, September 6th, 2008.  Maybe I won't have blogged in a while.  It's crazy the way time works.  Absolutely insane.

    Hi ho, let's raise a glass.  To being an us for once instead of a them.  To starting something that I'm going to finish, one way or another.

22:59

    In case anyone should ask the following questions of me when I die, please direct them here, to this blog post, which shall serve as a sort of snap-shot of my life.  Note: This is not me being dramatic; everyone dies at some point.  Really, I just couldn't think of any better way to introduce this.

    Favorite Lord of the Rings Character(s): Aragorn (am I right or am I right?) and Samwise Gamgee.

    Twilight Team:  New Moon/Breaking Dawn Jacob.  Everything else, Edward.

    Most admirable trait as portrayed by Shawn Spencer: Randomness of wit.

    Middle Name: OrganizedClutter.  No hyphen.

    Future Husband: Henry DeTamble or Gino, if either of them are still around at that point.

    Desired country of Residence at the age of 25: Japan or Ireland.

    Song stuck in my head right now: "La vie Bohem"

    Song playing on Reggie right now:  "Lullaby" (Josh Groban)

    Who is Reggie: my iPod.

    Desktop picture: fake psychic. real detectives.

    What I want to be when I'm grown up: a sugarless gum connoisseur.  Or a High School English teacher.  It's a toss-up.

    Phrase I'm most trying to adopt into my daily vernacular: "dare say"

    Current mood: 

    So, to whomever is keeping the notorious record, let it show that this was how I spent my last Saturday before my first week of college.

<3 spadeALLcross

I dunno, Jeb. I just dunno.

    I have posted a few times in a row now, haven't I?  Either I'm feeling more inspired than usual of late, or I simply have less to do.  Give you one guess which one of those is right.  I'll give you a hint: I haven't felt inspired (by anything but Gino and Danny Concannon) since the summer after my junior year of high school.  (yes, that was last summer.  what of it?  I feel older now...that's all that counts.)

    Anyway.  

    I'm an issues voter, I believe, not that I've yet had much experience, but that's what I believe anyway.  And if there were going to be an issue that would sway my vote the most, I don't think it would be health care or capital punishment or social security or the economy or school vouchers or...yeah, anything that's out there right now.  No, they'd have to invent a whole new issue to get me to really turn my head one direction or the other.  Don't get me wrong, this particular issue is one that has existed as long as the sands on the shores of the seas, my friends.  However, it's never been given any serious attention.

    But now I have the ears of...well...not many, maybe, but...yeah, a few.  The Internet as my sword and my as-anonymous-as-possible identity as my shield, I will cast a mighty blow to this thing, this tempest, this plague upon both of our proverbial houses:

SEXUAL TENSION .

    You know it.  I know it.  The socially stunted junior high kids know it.  This monster is everywhere: it hides in our daily conversations with people who could be our best friends, it burrows itself into the dashboard when two people reach for the stereo switch at the same awkward moment, it laughs conspicuously and loudly in our blushing faces when we realize that our good-natured attempts at being good people have just been taken the wrong way.  The wrong way.  That's what this monster is called.  Because sex doesn't even have to have anything to do with it.  Just people thinking other people are thinking something that those other people aren't thinking, and rethinking all of this too late.

    I grew up in a family filled with testosterone: three older brothers, a father, and a decidedly male dog.  It was just me, my mom, and the two aloof cats (and for a time, the guinea pig) without that pesky Y chromosome that causes so much trouble.  So I relate nicely to guys.  Often more nicely than I do to girls, or at least it feels that way to me, so I have several good friends who are all of the man type.  Now, as I venture off into the wild blue that is college and the life here and after, I'm leaving several of those friendships with the man types by the regretful wayside, bidding them an indefinite farewell, hoping that it's not the end, but realizing that it probably will be anyway.  And all I want to do, as the inescapably emotional girl that I am, is tell these swell fellas that I'm probably going to miss them scads more than they realize, and that, at least for a little while, my life was a bit more frolic-and-gambol than oh-gosh-did-I-really-wake-up-this-morning-and-is-it-too-late-to-fix-that? and I have them to thank for that.

    But every time I strategize ways of doing that, the wrong way stares back at me, its red, slitty eyes smiling in a very Voldermort-esque manner, and I put my pen/phone/keyboard/car keys down and I return to my seclusion, figuring I'll just let our relationship fade and they'll just have to trust that I did care, even though, in the end, their gender was just too much for me to handle.

    In a better world, this wouldn't be this challenging.  But what can we do?  I swear, Rubik invented the symbol for every interaction people will ever have with each other.  

    And what's worse is we're getting rid of my car tomorrow.  I was wrong about the four days.  And thus it was a carless age of my life began and The Fellowship of the Camry, though enternally bound by friendship and love and a bonding experience of a fender bender, will be ended.

    So long, good buddy, it's been a nice run.  Thank you for the music.

<3 spadeALLcross

"You have to leave the ground to learn to fly."

    Well, gents.  I'm in love.  It's official.  That unnamed man I mentioned yesterday, the man with whom I'm going to settle down?  Well, I met him today.  We're going to get married, buy ourselves a farm in West Virginia, have six kids, go to church together every Sunday, and live happily ever after for the rest of eternity.

    His name is Gino.  He's in the CCC, building a national park for FDR.  Oh, right, and he's fictional.  I can't find an adequate picture of him from the show, so you'll just have to use your imagination, I guess.  

    But he stayed with the Waltons for a couple days after he sprained his ankle in their woods (while in a knife fight with John Boy, beeteedubs) and he was all defensive and aloof, but then when Elizabeth's raccoon, Pete died, he was very sensitive and understanding, trying to explain death to her in a way she could understand, even though, throughout the entire episode, he acted like he didn't care about her.  

    I don't know...he was inspiring.  A very cheesy, over-used character, fo shiz, but...I don't know.  Something about his hermit-like existence...it got to me.  Anyway, moving on.  Quickly.

    I've found my new favorite hobby.  Sadly, it's going to be short-lived under the circumstances, but I suppose that's a good thing, too.  See, I was driving my friend home tonight after he hung out at my house for a bit, playing the video games, you know, and as I turned the corner to return home, Lay it On Me came on my CD (a song that, if you're observant or friendly, you will have noticed is one of my favorites right now).  I had this long open, dark road in front of me, but as the song ripped away at my speakers, I felt the road was not long enough, so I continued past my street on into the night.

     I'm addicted.

    To this.  

    It's bad for the environment to use that much gas, I know, and my mom was waiting up for me, and we're giving Cameron (my car) away to a charity since his plates expire at the end of the month, and I love driving fast, which is desperately unsafe at night in the suburbs (all the ridiculous I'm-cool-because-I-haven't-fallen-asleep-yet youngsters running rampant and such, you know how it is) but I can't help it.  Long stretches of almost-empty road, the cool, humid air whistling past the just-open-enough windows, the disapproving looks from older drivers at stoplights when they feel my base pumping the cement around us...it's what I imagine to be intoxicating.

    You know that there are just some situations in which you find yourself where you feel like if you leave voluntarily, you'll miss something huge, life-changing, momentous, or in some way important.  Certain songs play, and you feel like they have a destiny, like they belong in a special place or time, like only on the road, or only when you're reading, or only when you're lonely and would rather burrow into the deepest, loneliest part of yourself than try to face the deeper places outside.  Feelings, both sensory and emotional, wash over you, and suddenly every nerve in your skin feels raw, like every brush of air stings wounds that have never really healed.  That's what the drive felt like to me tonight.  I drove for more miles than I dared, but fewer than I would have liked to.

    And it hurt to stop, but I did.  After several Paramore songs and All Over You, to name a few, I finally pulled into my driveway and begrudgingly turned the key in the ignition.  And a little part of me died.

    I've only got four days left with my car.  It makes me want to cry.  No joke.  

    But Gino will get me through it, I'm sure.

<3 spadeALLcross

Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind...

Horray for post number ten!  

    Now, if it were up to me, I wouldn't count that edit post down there, because hardly any thought went into it and it's only a sentence and a fragment long.

    On that same strain, I wouldn't even count the one before that, because again, little brain power and less substance are behind it.  

    But who's couting?  Blogspot.  Yet another thing in my life I am not in control of.  One thing I am in control of, though, is how many sentences I can end in prepositions.  Here's to you, John Dryden.

    I was thinking the other day about that timeless question: what separates us from the animals?  Many things have been suggested in the past: inquisitive minds, the stock market, opposable thumbs...but as I was thinking about it, I was eating lunch with my brother and I made a breakthrough realization.  

    Facial Hair.

    I could just say vanity in general, but I think that may be taking things a bit too far, as I cannot pretend that cats don't have a certain pompous expression on their face whenever they lick themselves, like, "watch me make myself irresistible."

   

    But think for a minute about how Ludacris it is.  For one thing, humans have hair in the weirdest and most sporadic places, whereas the rest of the animal kingdom goes the all-or-nothing route.  Not only that, but for all the care we take of our dead follicles, you'd think we have some species-wide necrophilia or something.  We shave, we gel, we wax, we pluck...did you know that the average person spends two years of their life primping their hair alone?  I would say that average women bring this number up from more reasonable heights, but then I look at the aforepictured people who not only spend time, but also money on making their beards look good.

    I assure you, if and when I do finally settle down, my choice of man will probably have little to do with the quality of the dead cells on his face.  I say probably only because I've seen some almost-normal people turned creeper by the state of the hair on their face.

    Forgive me.  College students don't do early morning.  I don't know what I was thinking waking up and doing a blog post first thing. 

<3 spadeALLcross

EDIT: I haven't taken German since I was in High School

I'm sorry.  I meant

Warum? Was habe ich gemacht, dass Gott dieses zu mich getan hat?  Ich weiss nicht.

Gracias por su paciencia.

<3 spadeALLcross

"If you need to leave it, leave it...."

    Now entering the Twilight Zone of summer: my old high school started classes this past week, and, officially, as of today, the majority of my friends, both in-college and in-high-school have moved on into fall, and yet...here I am.

    Done with work now, and still summering. Warum? Was habe ich gemacht, dass Gott es zu mich gemacht? Ich wiess nicht.

    Ha ha, not much of a post. I just wanted to write in German, I guess.


<3 spadeALLcross

Just because you won doesn't mean you didn't gamble.

    Beeteedubs, I stopped feeling sorry for myself approximately three hours after posting that last entry.  I hope you're proud/not disappointed by my ability to move on.

    So what to discuss today, eh?  Sugar-free oreos and their respective deliciousness?  The funny face Perdro Farias makes when he laughs at me for trying to speak what little Spanish I know?  How sad it makes me to look at my most recent bank statement?  Any one of these things are freshly baked morsels of my life, so should you want to learn more, please contact me and I'll get down to it.

    However, today, I've decided to dive into more pressing matters: I Am Legend.  

    Yes.  A movie that came out last year.

    Don't bug me.  It feels current and pertinent to me, as I haven't yet gotten the opportunity to fully express myself on the issue.  

    Because I Am Legend is just that, an issue.  An issue that must be resolved, right here, right now.  

    

    I am Legend is, for all intents and purposes, an action-packed horror flick. The main premise, that a vaccine that cured cancer killed off most of the human race and left almost all of those remaining as undead creatures, has so much promise, and yet was somehow butchered so thoroughly, it can almost be considered a feat of filmmaking.
    

    Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) is living alone in zombie-ridden New York City, struggling alongside his trusty sidekick Samantha the German shepherd to find the cure for this mutant disease. For the first hour of the movie, nothing remotely interesting happens, except for some flashbacks to just before all of New York tried to evacuate and a couple disturbing conversations with some manikins in a video rental store.

    The excitement really begins to build when Sam and Neville almost get eaten by mutant humans. Then it falls again as Neville whittles away at his work in his high-tech lab testing out possible cure strains.

    This is a hard movie to categorize. When I think “zombie,” I think Dawn of the Dead and horror films of that ilk, but Legend doesn’t really fit there, considering the danger of becoming lunch for a sub-human doesn’t even come into play until well into the movie. The next label I could give it would most likely be “thriller” or “action,” but again, until the very end, there’s very little that’s thrilling about it.

    Evidently, the writers and directors, who undoubtedly had a hard time remaking a remake of a book-based movie, were trying to be as enigmatic as possible, leaving the audience guessing as long as they could before presenting all the facts. I usually advocate such a tactic, but there is a line one can cross: when you’re more than halfway through the movie and you still don’t know what happened to the main character’s wife and kid, or when you’re watching the last scene play out and you’re wondering how a doctor learned to weld metal sheets together to pull over his windows, or when the end credits are rolling and you’re scowling, thinking, “Wait…but there was definitely enough room for him in the chimney!”

    The special effects that paint the picture of a lonely and desolate New York are well done, even if the rest aren’t anything special. The only redeeming quality of this movie was Will Smith and his superb acting. Playing a man who’s lived completely alone in a now dormant and barren city for three years has got to be challenging, and he pulled it off well, even if the sketchy circumstances surrounding that role were mediocre at best.

    However, with Global Warming threatening our gradual demise and an economy that’s going to send us all to burger-flipping posts at the nearest McDonald’s, it’s nice to know that we could all to turn into blood-thirsty versions of ourselves and never have to worry about dependence on foreign oil. And if that happens, I just pray that someone as hard working and as good looking as Will Smith will be there to cure us all.

<3 SpadeALLcross

P.S. Spare yourselves and just watch Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, circa 1972.  I haven't seen it, but it sounds much more promising than I Am Legend was able to deliver.

If you find yourself in an existential quandary filled with loathing and self-doubt...

    Less than three weeks, my friends.  It's getting close...

    Yeah right.  I wish.  Three frickin' weeks left.  I just want to go back now.  I mean, I love summer, and not having a specific schedule to follow (except for work) and I'm going to Six Flags next week, and maybe Chicago this Saturday, and summer's great...but I just want it to be over now.  It's dragging on, and I have to say goodbye to all my friends, watching them leave for school and leaving me behind...I'm getting pretty stir crazy and depressed.  The only thing keeping me afloat at the minute is my book that I'm rewriting.  I already bought most of my furnishings, I know which dorm is mine, I know my schedule...I just want to get it over with and get there already.  Seriously, this is getting ridiculous.

    One of my best friends left last night for Carnegie Mellon.  She told me last week that she was leaving soon, but I completely forgot, so it hit me kind of hard that I didn't say goodbye.  Her birthday is on Saturday, too, and I got her a present and everything (I'm not really good at that) but now I have to mail it to her, and it's just not the same.  

    My ex-boyfriend leaves at the end of next week, and as strained as that relationship is, I still can't help feeling that, because I am now hyper-aware of the departure dates of my friends, I should find someway to see him and say goodbye.  

    My best friend leaves next Saturday...and that just hurts the soul. 

    I feel like I'm being left behind.  I'm not leaving until two weeks after my high school starts classes.  That's just weird to me.  I have to say goodbye to all of my friends there, too.  If I had left earlier, it would have been easier: they would be saying good bye to me, getting it all over in one shot.  This way just sucks.

    Not only that, but my high school's Marching Band Camp started this week, and it reminded me of all the things I'm desperately going to miss about high school.  No, nothing involving a flute or a disgusting equivalent.  But, call me a nerd, band was probably the best part of my life for the past four years: all the friends I made, all the fun music we played, all the great bus rides to and from crazy competitions...I get slightly choked up just thinking about not having any of that anymore.  Calvin doesn't have a marching band (they don't even have a football team) so even if I wanted to do it again in college, I couldn't.  

    But not just Band.  Just watching all my old high school friends bashing around in the parking lot with their music and their crazy director made me think of all the teachers I'm going to miss, like my friend Mr. Hays who comes back this year after a year in China, and all the good times I had, like decorating my disgruntled-Santa-elf of a friend's locker every day before winter break.  All the memories are just that, memories.  I'll never really relive any of that ever again.  It's just kind of getting me down right now.  I know I'll have great times in college and beyond, and I'll eventually get over this sadness, but all the stupid reminders are kind of obnoxious.

    Plus I was just looking at my roommate's facebook: she's way prettier than me.  And now I'm starting to freak out about whether or not we'll get along.  I'm hard to live with, quite literally.  I'm something of a weirdo, in case you haven't noticed.

    Anyway, I'm having a minor anxiety attack...I'm sure it'll pass, but I didn't want to talk to anyone about it, because I am mostly still just excited about going, and I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea.

So thanks for being there...if you're there.

<3 spadeALLcross

48 x 7.75 = I love my job

    Man.  Crazy week.  Let me tell you.

    Of course I'm going to tell you.  What else would I do on a blog?

    Since I didn't work the last 1.5 pay periods, my boss scheduled me eight hours a day, six days this week.  Not that I don't desperately nee the funds, as I am soon going to be unemployed and sorely tempted, monetarily speaking.  However, it makes for excruciatingly long days.

    

    I was worried when I first took this job that, since every day is pretty much a cookie-cutter copy of the last, I would become easily bored and disgruntled, and dread going to work, which is one of my worst fears in life.  When I nannied last summer for these two kids, there was a month-long period where they were children of the corn and I would have sawed off my own leg to not have to go, even if I did get paid $8 an hour. 

    But soon into my employment as a sandwich artist, I discovered that, though there is a definite routine to the days, each day is still much different than the others.  I'll spare you the details (refilling the cambros, teriyaki-ing the chicken, and de-paper-ifying the cheeses, though exciting to any Subway employee, can dull even the sharpest minds of outsiders) except to say that it's really the people I work with that make the hours worthwhile.

    For instance, this week.  Six days in a row, same resources needing to be restocked every morning, 1000 songs on a "Subway Radio" playlist...not necessarily an endless supply of joy, laughter, and entertainment for all.  But I have thus far been pleasantly (and...er...sometimes not so pleasantly) surprised by how varied this week has felt--keeping me on my toes and giving me at least some little thing to look forward to everyday besides the tuna aromatherapy and my minimum wage.  

    Basically, what I'm saying is, I'm very happy with my job currently, and though I'll be excited to get new sneakers that don't smell like cucumbers and oven cleaner and be able to sleep in past six and eat my lunch without bread being involved, I am going to miss Subway while I'm at school this year.  

    Anyway, that's all I had to say.  I know it was extraordinarily interesting for you =D

<3 spadeALLcross

Engel!: Es waere ein Platz, den wir nicht wissen...

    I got home last night, after a fourteen-hour drive from Idalia, from a week of camping with my family in the Colorado Rockies.  Aside from last year's lake trip to Roosevelt Lake in Washington state, it has been the best family vacation I've ever been on.

    Sadly, it was plagued with the pain of mockery as all of my cousins spent most of their time poking fun at my recreational habits, which, on this trip, were comprised mostly with reading.  I will admit, I read more copiously than usual (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, The Other Boleyn Girl, and Barefoot were some of those that I at least started, and let me tell you, more than one of those is rather thick) and, at least for the first two days, when I was reading pretty much nonstop, I was being a bit "anti-social."  

    But this post is not about my cousins and their negativity.  This post is not about literacy and the role it plays in the lives of people around the world.  This post is not about the obviously Romance-Centered reading list I inadvertently made for myself, and it is certainly not about the perks of being a wallflower.  No, this post is about Henry DeTamble and how he brought me closer to God.

    For almost a year now, I have openly declared The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (coincidentally, the wife of Jonathan Safran Foer) as my favorite book.  Now, I am an incredibly loyal person, especially (and sadly) when it comes to inanimate objects--I used to keep pencils too short for the sharpener because I didn't want to hurt their feelings--so for me to say here what I am about to say is a big deal:

    The History of Love is now only my second favorite book in the world.

    I cannot express in words how much I love that book, how much it is everything I aspire to as a writer, and how proud I am to have recommended it to a dear, old friend of mine, (who, to my delight, left a receipt for a CitySights NY bus fare between pages 80 and 81; I'm still trying to decipher the special meaning those pages have, because I'm sure there is one, whether he knew it or not).  I still love that book and I will still tell all my close literary friends about it in hopes that they, too, can love it.  But it has finally been overshadowed by another book.

    The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is now my favorite book in the world.

    I won't tell you any of the details about the plot or anything, except that Henry DeTamble, the main character (and looks more like this than like this, by the way.  What were they thinking?) is a "chrono-displaced person" who cannot control whether or not he stays in the present moment, and instead often finds himself elsewhen, naked, and alone.  

    I can't really explain why this book suddenly means so much to me.  I didn't even buy it with a purpose; I was second-hand shopping with my mother and aunt a couple weeks ago and, while they were perusing skirts and blouses, I found this on the racks, forced uncomfortably between the likes of The Dragon Prince and Dare to Love like some poor, emotionally scarred book wedged in the jaws of life of an overly erotic thigh-master.  I rescued it from its hot and heavy Hell, just out of my general respect for fiction and hardcovers, planning only to relocate it on the shelf after reading the prologue, which I assumed would be disappointing, only because the title was much too promising to actually lead to anything.  But I was pleasantly surprised, and it was only five dollars (quite a steal for the condition in which I found it) so I indulged myself and bought the book before checking it out at the library, something I rarely do.

     Books I like best are the books that change my life or perspective in some positive and daring way.  The aforementioned Twilight Saga (of which I just bought the fourth book) I like, but only for entertainment, not really for deep, intellectual introspection or anything like that.  Books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Hamlet, Metamorphosis, No Exit, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Welcome to the Monkey House, Catcher in the Rye, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, To Kill a Mockingbird, 10 Things to do Before I Die and The History of Love all did that for me, and I probably can't properly try to describe the ways in which they did, mostly because I read them a long time ago, and whatever change they wrought is now so much a part of me I can't remember what bought it.  Sometimes, it's not that the book is exceptionally written or that the plot is invariably unique; it's just that they were in the right place at the right time.

    With TTTW, I'm sure it was a little bit of both.  Throughout the past seven or so days of me reading and immersing myself in the world of fiction, I've realized that (SAP ALERT) the main gift God has given me is my imagination.  Once I start reading a book, if it is good, I can ignore everything around me and just read.  And then, once I've finished reading a book, I spend the next several days thinking about it, reveling in it, reliving it, engraving its essence into my brain.  I used to think this made me crazy, made me kind of a freak (because at times, like after I saw National Treasure for the first time, for instance, I was actually a veritable oddball) but now I realize it's just how I am and that God made me this way for a reason.  I'm glad that I'm not a freak, but I'm even more glad that there is a way for me to put this quality of mine to use.  

    I just have to figure out what that use is now.  Shouldn't be too hard, right?

    Anyway, read TTTW post haste.  Don't let me get your hopes up too high, though; I hate it when people do that to me.  It may not mean to you what it means to me, and you may not like it.  It could just be something that speaks to me because I'm me and not you.

    Forgive my strange verbage today: it's been a long 48 hours.

<3 spadeALLcross