over the river and through the woods

i'm off to visit grandma tonight around 8 or 9. which means that i will be absolutely unreachable. no internet and no cell service at all in hurley, new york. but it will be nice and relaxing up in the mountains there. maybe i'll take some pictures or something. unfortunately i have no black and white film because it's all in pittsburgh but at least my digital camera can take b+w and sepia photos. so that's exciting. i'll be coming back sometime on sunday night to do laundry and pack.

and then it's back to pittsburgh on monday!! woohooo, i can't wait!

can i please marry norbert leo butz?

saw wicked today and it was amazing. except joel gray wasn't there to play the wizard. sad. still amazing though.

i've decided that the book and the show are both equally awesome because they are their own different and absolutely wonderful entities.

however, since i had read the book before knowing that the show existed at all, i think i would have been upset about the way the show ended if someone had not told me about the ending beforehand. i'm just one of those people who will always think the book is better i guess. but the show ending made sense in the context so it's all good.

and i am in love with norbert leo butz and i want to marry him. not only was he awesome as fiyero, but he was also in "the last five years" which is equally amazing and a billion times more impressive acting-wise.

anyway, count down to pittsburgh = 5 days. not too bad. almost there. can't wait.

wow

"the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return."

i just watched moulin rouge, which is one of my favorite movies ever. i love all the blatant imagery and symbolism. i love the color and the hugeness of it all. so big and beautiful. i love the cinematography and the costumes and the lighting and everything. and i love roxanne. what a great number. i think that's all i have to say about that.

connor and i think there should be another kennywood trip in june. so he can come meet certain people from joe's hs. not only that but it would be so much fun. i'll talk to theresa about organizing it when i get back to pittsburgh.

yay! only 7 more days of nj!! and in those 7 days i get to hang out with jeff, hang out with gabby, and go see WICKED!! hooray! lots of exclamation points!!!!!!!

because i am a sheepie

and i thought this was interesting:

Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

not too bad. i guess my hs english classes did a pretty good job.
now i can add all the others to my list of books that i should read before i die. yay!

i've also seen the reduced shakespeare ccompany do "all the great books." does that count as me having read them all? i think it should!

oh my god

Read this!

cmu 2003-2004 mix (if i can ever actually burn it to cd....)

1. billy joel- piano man
i was really surprised to learn that there are people in the world who don't know this song. it always brings back memories of generic parties and singing in a circle with drinks spilling on everyone. also of long road trips. a song that everyone needs to learn and love.

2. the ataris- san dimas high school football rules
ataris concert tradition: at the end of every show they have someone from the audience come up on stage and play the rhythm guitar part of this song. joe was supposed to play it when the ataris came to cmu but due to some unforeseen circumstances, he got to the concert late and wasn't standing front row center. and the girl who ended up playing the song sucked.

3. bare naked ladies- alcohol
self-explanitory i think. bare naked ladies are awesome. parties are awesome.

4. big bad voodoo daddies- you and me and the bottle makes three
for joe and his gin. by the way, i think gin and tonic is disgusting.

5. beach boys- california girls
for connor who likes girls too much. and because we sang this song awesomely at woodscotch fall 03. woohoo, four part harmonies!

6. outkast- hey ya
yeah. good song. christina accosta should always be singing. the first time i heard this song was at battle of the bands in the fall. christina singing in a funk band. awesome.

7. ben folds five- army
another song to sing while driving around in beth's car. the only song on that ben folds album that everyone actually knows.

8. collapsis- automatic
this album got me through a lot of road trips over the summer. i really like this song.

9. tenacious d- gently
because some girls just don't like the hard fucking....

10. beach boys- fun fun fun
another woodscotch fall 03 song. although it's a lot of fun to sing with joe and connor at random parties as well. we like to show off how we can still sing somewhat on key when drunk.

11. frank sinatra- i get a kick out of you
from anything goes. the third of those crazy proposals i was a part of. oh well. still a really good song. and frank is one cool cat.

12. kermit the frog- happy feet
tap dancing is awesome. ds sucks. what more can i say?

13. the pixies- wave of mutilation
the girls used this and other pixies songs as warmups for concerts so often. they played it on the cut for habitat and then cfa came out to yell at them for being too loud. how silly.

14. outkast- roses
roses really smell like poo poo poo. i swear that's what the lyrics should be.

15. mc chris- white kids love hip hop
because it's true. we drink box wine and we listen to weezer.

16. tears for fears- head over heels
for the 80's. woodscotch fall 03 and adam and whoever else acting out the sequence from donnie darko.

17. bon jovi- livin on a prayer
singing at the top of my lungs in beth's kitchen with the girls. so much fun. and this is the good version. not the crappy slow acustic version that sucks.

18. dashboard confessional- the good fight
joe played this song in my ear all year long while i was trying to do work in his room. i wish i could play it on guitar too.

19. something corporate- walking by
i just really like this song. it's so pretty. and to joe it has a lot of significance or something....

20. the eagles- desperado
for phil. the only song on the copy of the eagles cd he made for me that was messed up. and probably one of my favorite eagles songs.

21. rufus wainright- across the universe
i love this song and i love this cover of this song. finally got copies of both rufus wainright cds this past year.

22. simon and garfunkel- bridge over troubled water
thanks to all of those who have given me support over the past semesters. it's been tough, but i appreciate you being my bridges and helping me get through things.

23. radiohead- wolf at the door
creepy creepy creepy. had to go on at the end.


if you want a copy, let me know. also if you want a copy of last year's cd (02-03) let me know. that one is good also, at least in my opinion.

ps. i think everyone should make me a mix cd because it is fun and i like listening to other people's music. yay!

a new look

killing boredom by using a new template! woohoo!

i'm having issues with my links though. if anyone can tell me how to make the font and font size more consistent with the rest of my blog that would be awesome.

also, i really need to watch "the princess bride" now. i have it on vhs in pittsburgh. i really should get a copy on dvd. we shall see!

fluffies!!!

i really love billy joel

i was listening to volume 3 of billy joel's greatest hits today and was reminded of just how good the music is. one of my favorite songs, lullabye (goodnight, my angel) is on that cd. the first time i ever heard that song was when i sang it in freshman choir (all gilrs) in high school. one of my fondest memories of singing that song was singing it in puchheim, germany, which is a small city outside of munich. we were there with the other choirs and the band on a music tour of germany. our last day, we had a benefit concert to raise money for people who were ill. we sang in the local church, which was the ugliest building in the world-- a big cement tub-- but it had wonderful acustics. a 5 second sound decay. our sound when we were in germany was a lot better than normal because only the most hard core and dedicated people went on the trip. singing lullabye was so pretty in that space. i have the recording in pittsburgh, but it doesn't do it justice.

i also realized how much i miss singing. i haven't really had much of an opportunity to sing during the past three years. beth was telling me rumors about how people like kami and courtney were thinking of starting a show choir on campus. awesome idea if you ask me. i'd totally audition.

singing is good. maybe i'll take a road trip sometime soon and just sing at the top of my lungs in my car. we shall see.

today i decided to buy the billy joel greatest hits collection because i only own copies and they are getting messed up. i also bought a cd of billy joel playing the piano which is way hot.

anyway, i'll leave you with a little billy joel....

"Someday we'll all be gone
But lullabyes go on and on...
They never die
That's how you
And I
Will be"

awwwwww cute

i like cute things. especially cute things like fluffies and this picture:





awwww, isn't that cute??

another unexciting day in nj!

fluffies

here's a post about fluffies:

fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!! fluffies are awesome!!

that's enough of that. being at home in nj is not awesome because it is boring.

entertain me please!!

i just like this song

Your granddad left home for the circus
He was young just like me, with hope to explore
He married a girl in Virginia
She could swing the trapeze; they could sleep on the floor

Your mother was born in December
On the one sunny day
That winter gave up
With warm summer eyes
That flickered like fireflies
And she stared at the world

So why do you leave these stories unfinished?
My cheshire cat doorstop with tears in your eyes
And why do you look when you've already found it?
And what did you find that would leave you walking by?

She was raised in a New England village
Then she moved to LA with a firefly stare
And you loved sunset strip when it sparkled,
You grew up and you sparkled; but why don't you care?

And why do you leave these stories unfinished?
My cheshire cat doorstop with tears in your eyes?
And why do you look when you've already found me?
And what did you find that could leave you walking by?

And these nights I get high just from breathing
When I lie here with you, I'm sure that I'm real
Like that firework over the freeway
I could stay here all day but that's not how you feel

So why do you leave these questions unanswered?
The circus awaits and you're already gone
My cheshire cat doorstop with fear in your smile
What makes it so easy for you to be walking by?

And what did I do that you can't seem to want me?
And why do we lie here and whisper goodbyes?
And where can I go that your pictures won't haunt me?
What makes it so easy for you to be walking by?
Walking by
Walking by

"Walking By" ~ Something Corporate

here's a real post

the past few days have been interesting and fun.

kennywood on saturday was awesome (even though a little stressful at times for various reasons). i went on rollar coasters and ate delicious greasy food. wonderful.

sunday i decided i won't miss going to board meetings. i get to make scrapbooks over the summer which will be fun, and i'm going to be pl of little shop. also fun. didn't study for my final at all. instead i went to movie night at beth's and watched spellbound and the south park movie. by the time i got home it was 4am.

eventually i decided that long philosophical conversations at sunrise are sometimes better than sleep.

today was a good and interesting day. except for the part where i was really tired and had to study proks a lot. i decided that i should play outside in the park more this summer. that's something i hadn't really done since freshman year.

what have i been doing stuck inside for the past two years? i like outside so much better.

i think the summer will be good. weird but good. i'll be far away from the people i am used to spending a lot of time with (both friends and family included in that category). i want to join the photoclub over the summer again and get access to the darkroom to develop my own pictures. i want to watch lots and lots of good movies and catch up on all my reading. i want to go to bars and hang out with beth and miklos. i want to hang out with lots of other people that will be here over the summer too. i want to watch a sunrise from the roof of the mellon institute or somewhere equally as interesting.

i think the summer will be better than the past two semesters mostly because it will be so much stressful. there are less expectations over the summer and everything is more relaxed. that's really what i need right now, i think.

as usual my life is weird, and i'm not entirely sure how i feel about that. interesting and weird are good though and for that i am glad.

thanks to all the people who have given me support over the past few days, weeks, months, years, whatever. you know who you are.

comments

i'm trying to enable comments. let's see if this worked....

i hope you're happy

in the end.
i hope you're happy, my friend.


who can say if i've been changed for the better?
because i knew you,
i have been changed for good.

STOP

just stop already. let it go. i've had enough.

ps. i don't want to take a proks final on tuesday.

a year in review

failures:
complete history of america (abridegd)
city of angels
anything goes
board of directors 04-05
beckman scholars program
goldwater scholarship
dating joe the poo
stupid people

accomplishments:
4.0 two semesters in a row (i think)
lab TA next fall
painting for cabaret
atding earnest
sotr04
dancer's symposium
cool new camera
lots of fluffies
singing what you don't know about women with beth
surp??
dating joe the poo
good friends
pilates

does the good balance out the bad?
i'm not really sure yet.

at any rate, this has been probably the hardest year of my life thus far. i'm thankful to all the people who helped me get through it-- i know i don't say that enough. but thanks. you know who you are.

and FLUFFIES!!!!