Livin' a Life

...and it ain't half bad.

Let's see, I went to class this morning, which was alright, except that I definitely zoned out briefly. Damn. When I got home I immediately started working on my lab report that's due tomorrow... it's still not done. For some reason I didn't pay attention to it when they called this our Long Report. Granted, I took lots of breaks today, such as a long one for lunch and a long one for dinner (I got Taco Bell and sat there working on a sketch for ceramics; I needed to get out of the apartment desperatly), and then played tennis for an hour and a half with Don, but jeez, you'd think I'd be done by now :-P.

Speaking of tennis, I got completely skunked. Well, not completely- I did win one game. Out of 19. Yikes. I was tired, and it was bad. The good news is that you may not be able to tell, but my ground strokes have improved a hell of a lot. The last time I had a lesson with Eric, which was two and a half weeks ago, he said that my ground strokes were improving and I laughed at him, because I seriously don't know what he was talking about. If he were to say it now, though, it'd be true. Yayayayayayay! Of course, having good ground strokes is worthless against Don- the only thing that could save me there is having a faster reaction time and being as devious as he is about where I hit the ball. I suppose those will come in time... at least, they'd better, or I'm going to be screwed in my matches this fall!

And so far, Nick, I've resisted the meat. Mmm, meat.

You Are a New School Democrat

You like partying and politics - and are likely to be young and affluent. You're less religious, traditional, and uptight than most Democrats. Smoking pot, homosexuality, and gambling are all okay in your book. You prefer that the government help people take care of themselves.

What political persuasion are you?

If I had a million dollars...

...I'd travel around the world and buy myself some diamonds.

In other news...
There's not really any. Except, of course, for the fact that I made a kick-ass stir fry today. I'd never made a stir fry before (weird, huh?) but it was deelish! Also, I played tennis with myself for two hours tonight. It was insane. I sucked like a vacuum. A vacuum of eye-hand coordination, that is. Last Wednesday when I was playing with Alison and Don I was serving correctly part of the time, and on those serves about 30% would work. Today, none did. None. Oi. Then I was practicing against the wall, and that went pretty miserably too, though, to be honest, better than it did last time. Oh dear, I suck at this! Must... develop... tennis skills! Argh!

Ooh, and today I manufactured acetaminophen and looked longingly at the empty pizza box. (Those two things are unrelated.) Man, do I want more Hungry Howie's! But I mustn't! No! My jeans are wearing out and I need a new pair, but I refuse- REFUSE!- to ever buy pants in that large of a size again! Never! Unfortunately, that may just mean that I end up jeans-less for a while. I need to lose 15lbs stat! Unfortunately, that should take 7 weeks if I were to do it in a healthy fashion, and what I really need to do is lose more like forty. It wouldn't be so bad if food weren't so DAMN GOOD! Right now, for instance, I'm having a huge craving for my usual from Taco Bell or better yet, some MEAT. Oh god, do I want animal products! Chicken nuggets, chicken salads, and anything involving the combination of bacon and ranch. It's just sad that all my reminders of why I'm doing this don't seem to make any impression on my cravings.

Wow, this has been a stream-of-consciousness style post. Sorry.

Swingadelic

So, I haven't posted in a while...

Things are going well. Last week I lost a "set" of tennis (we were playing best 4/7) to Alison 3-4, which is a considerable improvement from my 1-4 game a couple of weeks ago. I'll get the hang of this yet. In other good news, I got an A on my first O-chem test, and am thus far getting an A in lab... sweet! My pool game, unfortunately, is not so hot; on Friday Eric and I got skunked 3-0 by Angie and Anthony, and then Eric beat me 2-1 after that. My one win was due to the fact that he scratched on the 8-ball, so it wasn't even a true win. Egad.

As for this weekend, Anika and I spent the entire thing dancing. A couple of swing teachers were in from out of town, so we took four hours of lindy hop on Saturday, followed by partner charleston and a musicality class (which was pretty much everyone goofing off and getting down to the music). Eric joined us for a couple of the lindy classes, plus the Charleston and the musicality, and Angie came for a lindy class. That night we went out to Kats Korner as usual, and Anthony, Angie, Eric, and Jason came too. A girl who I know from ceramics showed up, and it turns out she knows Jason; the whole mood was very festive. It was particularly so since the dance troupe that came with the teachers from out of town performed, and they had the intermediate dance contest. Anthony taught me back charleston and the basket drop, and I got to practice some lindy footwork with Eric.... It was all so much fun! yayayayayayayayay! After Kats Korner we went over to Anthony's to watch "Hitch," but the next morning, it was right back to...

Swing! That's right, four more hours of dancing on Sunday, with two of them being balboa, an evolution of lindy class (so how charleston turned into lindy), and of course, an absolute favorite, shag.

Now it's Monday, though, and I have to do all the O-Chem I didn't do over the weekend. Blech. (but momma, i don' WANNA learn about chirality!) What I really want to do of course is eat some lunch and take a nap. Nuts.

114 Degrees Farenheit

You know you're in Phoenix when HOURS after dark it's STILL well over a hundred (like, specifically, 109). I think it'll feel positively cool later this week when it cools down to 109 during the day and will get down to the low 80's at night- what a novel idea!

Anyway, today we dealt with the heat by going out into it while keeping our bottoms submerged in blessedly icy water. That's right, Salt River Tubing! Just five of us (Anika, Mapes, Russell, Ben and I), five inner tubes, two rafts, and two lovely coolers to keep us happy and hydrated as we let the current drift us on downstream. It was really tame this year, I must say- only one person dove from the hugh cliff, and the forest service guys were watching from their kayaks, so there was no nudity this time. Also, the current was really swift, so it only took us an hour and a half.

Dissapointed with how little time we'd spent in the water, we decided that an impromptu pool party was in order. Reinforcements were called in (Al, Eric, and Hensler), and we descended upon Mike's place to take advantage of his excessive hospitality. Oh, dearest Mike, and your lovely pool. Here's a pic, for your amusement:



And also amusing, here are the Great and Awesome El and Al, who actually unfortunately make a terrible team, alas. Whatcha gonna do?