June? Already?

I started writing a different post, but it was getting rather melodramatic, so I tried again.

How is it that I could go an entire month without posting? I feel lame. I suppose it's because all I seem to do is work and sleep. And the few hours I have between those two activities are spent seeing my friends as much as possible. Also, I've just been lazy. And last weekend I was unable to do anything because I was laid up with strep throat. Not the best way to spend a weekend, let me tell you. And I was supposed to work that weekend, so I missed three days of getting paid for doing almost no real work.

I'd like to say that I love my job. My coworker Emily hates it, but that's because she was under the impression that it was a real job. It's totally not, and that's why I love it. There's never enough work to keep us busy all eight hours we're at the park, and in the downtime I get a lot of books read. Last summer I finished editing my book while at work. And when there is work to do, it's never that hard, and I tend to make a game out of every task. Even picking up litter is fun when you turn it into polo by using the grabber to pick up the trash without stopping the gator. So really, I get paid to play outside. How cool is that? I have a new boss this summer, though. Her name is Abby and she's very pregnant. She's due next month. It's crazy how many girls work in our park. Overall, there seem to be more guys working in the parks, just not in mine.

So on Monday I'll be missing another day of work. Dianna and I will be driving Jason down to Omaha to catch a flight to Afghanistan, where he will be flying humanitarian missions for the next six weeks. Crazy, huh? We're gonna make a day of it and do some shopping before we come back. Then, next weekend we'll be off to Gregory to visit Clay. Good times. This means my work week will be only three days long, but I think I can live with that.

Last night after work Sherwin and I went to The Incredible Hulk. It was pretty good. I'm still annoyed that they chose Liv Tyler to play the girlfriend (that's all she ever plays), but here character did redeem herself by the end and almost made up for her pathetic first few scenes. The part in South America was especially good, and I think it set the tone for the rest of the movie as a pretty straightforward action flick. Although, the best part may have been Tony Stark showing up at the end. Apparently they remade the Hulk movie so that they could have a viable character for some crossover plots, in the grand tradition of the superhero comic books. We'll see how long it takes for the crossover movie to be made, but it will be interesting to see what they do. It is the sort of prospect that has the potential to be either very good, or absolutely terrible. We pray they do it well.

The writing of this post has been cut off unexpectedly by an invitation to wander downtown with my roommate. More to follow later.

I'm a nerd

So yesterday was rather eventful. Sherwin and I have been dating for an entire month now, so we went out for Coldstone ice cream and ate it at the falls, which was where we ended up on our first date, so I suppose that's rather appropriate. I had honestly lost track of the exact date, which made it extra sweet that he didn't want the day to pass by without us doing something special. (Sorry if this is too cheesy for some of my readers. I'll try not to ramble on too much about how amazing my boyfriend is.) Then as we were leaving the park, he gave me another surprise, not quite so welcome. He decided that I should learn how to drive a stick shift, and that he was going to teach me right there and then. Probably not the best location, since there were stoplights and a few other cars around, and I definitly killed the car in an intersection more times than I would like to admit. So we gave up on that and drove out to the country so I could practice on empty roads. I actually got the hang of it pretty quickly out there, where there were no other cars to freak me out. I think I may have even forgiven him for asking me to drive in town. We'll see.

Yesterday afternoon I hung out with Dianna. We ended up at B&N, where I further embraced my nerdiness by drooling over books that I would love to read but probably shouldn't spend money on right now. So that you can understand just how nerdy I was being, here are some titles I wrote down as a "wish list":

The Library at Night - Alberto Manguel

The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus - Joshua Kendall

Writers [on Writing]: Collected Essays from the New York Times

Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales

Poetry Collections:
-John Donne
-T.S. Eliot
-Emily Dickinson

As you can see, most of this list was compiled at a single shelf in the back of the store located by the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section. I would have also included a Pratchett, but, alas, his most recent installment, Making Money, is not yet available in paperback.

Not that I have time to read at the moment anyway, but graduation is less than two weeks away. And considering how many books I got read at my park job last year, I should be able to make substantial progress on whatever reading list I manage to put together for myself.

Oh yeah, I finally got my graduation party invitations in the mail today. That was a weird feeling. Lately I've been either ignoring or living in outright denial of the passing of time. But I can't do that anymore, can I? The future is coming, and I had best get myself ready for it. Soon I will have to become--horror!--an independant adult.

-Kim

if it weren't for the snow, I'd probably still be skipping

So I gave my English colloquium on Wednesday. I was horribly nervous for the hour before hand, but once I actually began speaking, I was okay. It seemed to go really fast, too. And it helped that so many friendly faces showed up to support me. Thanks, guys! Even the question time didn't freak me out, and it was what I had been most worried about. I'm not always very good at expressing myself when put on the spot, but most of the questions people asked were things I have already thought a great deal about, such as the relation of Christianity and the fantasy literature that I read and write so much of. Dr. Bangsund is pretty much my hero for letting me explain that more, because I really wanted to. But more than anything, I was just glad to be done with it.

To celebrate being done, I spent the afternoon with Sherwin, climbing a tree. It was a gorgeous day, and I guess it's a good thing we took advantage of it, since now it's snowing again.

Anyway, yesterday I got my grade. You know I'm not one to brag, but I will say that when I read Cole's comments I was too excited not to share them with the next several people I saw. Ask me sometime if you'd like to read them for yourself. We'll just say that I'm feeling pretty darn edified right now.

And more good news. Simmons College has room for me in their on-campus housing! It certainly isn't the cheapest place in town to live, but it will be simple and make the transition to graduate school much smoother. I can move to a cheaper place in the spring if it seems like a good idea, but for now I'm thinking this is the best idea. It's much easier to think about going out there as really happening now that I know I'll have a place to live. I still need to find a way to pay for it, but, one step at a time, right?

Then it decided to snow today, which rather puts a damper on my happy dance. Seriously, we're almost done with April, and it's snowing. I can't help but think there is something very wrong about this. At least the snow has squashed my urge to play outside, which was rather getting in the way of my writing a paper that needs to get done.

And now I need to head to Fame rehearsal. We open in less than a week, and we just might be ready by then.

-Kim

frustrations

I'm getting a little creeped out/annoyed by facebook. The way they make money is by selling ad space on their pages, and they have some sort of a system that looks at what info you've put on your profile about interests and such so that they show you ads for things you might actually care about. Case in point, after my interim trip I added "sailing" to my interests, and now I get all sorts of ads about boat rentals. Fine. No big deal. Some of the others bother me, though, specifically the ones sent to you on the basis of your relationship status. If you've marked "single" or choose not to display it at all, you get ads for personals and the like. I got so sick of seeing ads for Woome.com. Now that Sherwin and I have been in a "facebook official" relationship for a week, I'm getting ads for wedding photographers. Something's wrong with this. Shouldn't you be showing those ads to people whose status is "engaged"? Seriously...

This weekend the choir went on tour to Iowa. It actually wasn't that bad of a trip. I had a great homestay family, and I really enjoyed the church we sang in on Sunday morning. The traditional service reminded me of First B in Brookings. It was rather refreshing to sing hymns again. Actually, I liked pretty much everything about that church. Until we left, that is. Stopping for lunch at a mall before getting on the road, several of us discovered that our cash had been stolen. It apparently happened during the church service, while all our bags were in a storage room. Personally, I only lost $7, but several other choir members lost a lot more, and the total among us all was at least $300. More than anything, it's the very idea that someone would steal from us inside a church that bothers me.

Aside from that, the stress level of my life is rising as I realize how little time I have left to complete everything. My English colloquium is in two days. I completed my portfolio last week and turned it in, which left me elated for about a day. My visual aids are finally about ready--I just need Cole to make copies for me and I'll be good to go. And I almost know what I'm going to say, so that's a plus. Now if I can just keep myself from freaking out about it on the day of...

Then there's my research paper for Senior Sem that needs to be done in just over a week. Let's just say that I need a lot of prayer on that front. I know I can still get this done, but it's going to be painful.

Oh, and tomorrow night the pit begins rehearsing with the cast for Fame! I got more music this afternoon so that I can play a couple random violin solos. It's gonna be a crazy lot of fun, emphasis on the crazy.

-Kim

some enchanted evening

So, a serenade from the Su Fu Du drumline was not the way I wanted to be woken up the morning after my final spring formal. Seriously, isn't there somewhere else they could practice at 9:00 on a Saturday morning? Dianna was to the point of yelling out our window at them, when someone came out of Stewie and told them to go somewhere else. I actually found it somewhat entertaining, except that it took me about an hour to get back to any actual sleeping afterward. Hey, I'm allowed to miss the entire morning after going to bed at...wait...I have no idea what time it actually was when I went to bed. But it sure wasn't early.

Anyway, even though this morning was less than ideal, last night was amazing. I got to wear my amazing green dress one more time, and Mandy spent about an hour doing my hair. Even she isn't entirely sure what she did, and could probably never do it again, but it looked pretty darn sweet. A whole group of us--Me, Dianna, Mandy, Brittany, Meriah, Sherwin, Clay, Liessman and Dustin--went out to dinner before hand at Spezia's. I don't know how to pronounce or even spell the dish I had, but it was good. And the best part was that they have paper and crayons on the tables. We decorated our end of the table pretty well with trees and rainbows and Oregon Trail. (Sherwin got dysentery and Clay died) Also, it seemed to be the USF restaurant of the night, because another group of students were there, as well as Dennis Thum and Karen Sumner. Oh, and Sherwin's parents were at the table right next to us. Seriously, how does that happen?

The dance totally rocked as well. For once, good songs outnumbered the bad, and I don't think I was ever completely bored. This is a marked improvement from previous dances, and I'm glad we got to go out with a good one. It's weird to think that last night was probably the last time I'll see Haley dance to "Thriller" or laugh at how many people I know actually like to dance to the song I refer to as the hip-hop square dance. I may not have any awkward/silly slow dances with my girlfriends. And I certainly hope I will never again hear a dance ended with "Happy Trails." That part was weird. But, minor oddities aside, it was a great night, and an amazing way to begin saying goodbye to USF and the traditions we've had here.

Yes, an amazing night.

-Kim