The Daily Adventures of Mercat

Ugh, today pretty much sucked hard core. Too much to do... just lots of little things. Some stupid homework frustration, stuff for Hopewalk, had to go to the craft store. Missed a meeting I didn't even know I needed to be at and then realized I pretty much won't see Pat for a year because when he gets back I plan to be marching.

I did sort of have fun writing the Hopewalk Newsletter ("Questions? Comments? Concerns? Ideas? Killer dance moves? Plans for world domination?") possibly because I have been in a very crack mood lately. Thanks to party posts mostly, I think, but also a driving need to be me again and not get ground down by mechanics (uuuuuugggghhhh, the ABSOLUTE WORST part of engineering).

So. A few more hours until I'm 20... I at least feel justified in that I had some very deep and reflective thought processes in art history that I wrote down so I can go back and think (and blog) them out more substantially.




Tomorrow (yeah, because I didn't go to bed yet) I will be 20. I am intelligent and mature and still completely a kid at heart. I'm a dreamer but a thinker when I need to be and I know how to lay down the law when it needs to be done. My favorite song has always been the 1812 Overture regardless of age and regardless of your music-snobbery attitude towards Tchaikovsky. I've never dated and I don't give a flying fuck because I'm busy and happy living my own life. I'm rolling into my second decade with lots of bright and happy new clothes and the closest you can get to an authentic Indiana Jones (Raiders) hat without owning the ones used in the movie itself. I live Aloha even if it makes me naiive, but I see the pessimistic side as an engineer. I love cats and Winnie the Pooh and my friends and traveling and reading and acting like a goofball and nature and being weird and yelling and singing and polkaing. You hear me coming because I'm always whistling, because I'm happy, because it's who I am. I sing, I dance the Charleston, I march drum corps. I play trumpet, ukulele, vibraphone, french horn, steel drums, piano, and native american flute. I don't believe in god but I have faith in people and I find culture fascinating. My mind is caught in a dream world while my body is inexorably attached to this one, and no, that's not as stupid as it sounds, you just might need a better explanation. Raiders is my favorite movie, Hitchhiker's Guide and American Gods are my two favorite books. Life is good even when it sucks. I'm not ready to move but I'm really excited for my attic room. I don't play many video games anymore (besides Goldeneye? haha) but I spend a lot of time online. I still haven't bought a lighter or an actual weapon even if those were the things I was really looking forward to about turning 18. I may not know exactly where I'm going but whichever route I take in professional life I will find some sort of passion, and I will take one of them, imagineer or architect or somewhere in between. I love Mountain Dew and Taco Bell and music and cats. I haven't done much with my hair in the past five years but Laura and I are planning to dye some purple and green. I'm not interested in makeup or glamorous hair or even moderately-popular clothing. I grew up on classics and added some Parrot-headed cat-loving crazy-thinking flair. I curse like a sailor but like all forms of immaturity I know when to reign it in (also, drum corps gave me a filthy mouth). I miss marching, I miss my friends from Hawaii, I miss all my friends from Carroll, especially the band kids. I love all my friends from UD and sometimes I wish I weren't such an introvert. I don't have any favorite colors, but I love mixed brights in retro or tropical ways, and I love adventurous earthy tones. I'm a red-white-and-blue girl; American, Patriot, Flyer, Silversword. I'm a yellow-and-black girl, too; Southwind, Batman, Hufflepuff. I love hats. I love costuming. I hate giving speeches of any sort. I love that I picked Lucy for my confirmation name, for my mom who is an eternal fan of Peanuts and for our family in Wisconsin who is now healthily growing and learning to talk. (The agnostic-atheist part of me still wishes I'd picked Ursula because it's awesome and my initials could have spelled "dumb" though.) I love my Parrothead-mobile (which doesn't have a name, despite Chester the squeaky mouse living in the back) because it was Nana's and because my first drive as a liscensced driver, Jimmy Buffett was playing on the radio. (Cheeseburger in Paradise or Margaritaville, can't remember which but I'm 90% sure it's back in the logs, mid-to-late September 2004 or so). Sports are not my thing but I am all about drum corps. I like to think. I like to daydream. I wonder about death and growing old and religion and infinity and 88, which, by the way, is still my lucky number.

Tomorrow I will wake up and try not to cry that officially my childhood is over, that time marches on, that I miss Nana and Fuzzy and Tippy and even George or all the family members I never met.

Thank you to everyone who's made me who I am, to mom, to grandma, to grandpa, to Nana, to Papa, to Jack and Spats and Tippy and Fuzzy and Sunshine and my ill-fated betta Cappy; to Laura, to Savannah, to Anna, to Aunt Dawn, to Uncle Steve, to maxandkyle; to Zack Grooms and Phillip Kreutzfeld and Ryan Hines; to my dad the troop leader, and Mrs. Fleisher for reading us Polar Express, and Miss Shoup; to Lara and Pat and Kevin and Mark and Danny and Rachel and Angie and Fu and Christina and Liz and Katy and Weebl and Kondwani and Rachel; to Mrs. Minge and Ms. Downie and Ms. Wourms and Mr. Hemmert and Mrs. Fisher and Mr. Rakel; to Johnny and KVon and Alicia and MattE and Domer and Fischer and Becca and Jacob; to the friends I am making at UD and the friends I have; to the people who don't even know how much they've affected me [to Tchaikovsky, to John Williams, to Iz, to the classic rock stars, to the fifties stars, to Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, to Harrison Ford, to Carrie Fisher and the red truck game she won't ever know about, to the people who set up TOSRV, to Gaudi, to the designers of COSI's Adventure, to Walt Disney, to Frank Lloyd Wright, to Mad Anthony Wayne, to Buckminster Fuller, to the green enthusiasts of the world, to Mother Nature]; to my Patriots family, to my POD family, to my Southwind family; to anyone who's ever dreamed about change, or even dreamed at all; to everyone who feels and thinks and hopes and cries when they hit an animal in their car; to everyone who loves art and music, and to those who perform; to those who give up a comfortable life for a life of passion; to everyone and anyone and even to all my stuffed animals and Winnie the Poohs at home; thank you for what you are, thank you for what you were, and thank you for allowing me to be a part of your life.

Happy birthday, Dad-Dad-Daddio!

I think Catnarok the apocalypse is nigh.

This has to be a sin or something. I can barely admit to it. BUT. I just got a myspace. =( I feel dirty. Anyway, it had to be done. I need to friend all my Samoan friends here, and also sign up for that Indy contest. (GOD YES I am that obsessed, geez, did you really have to ask? Rub it in my face, please ;) )

Anyway. It's probably best to not try to friend me, I'd like to keep business there as small as possible. I am available for friending on Facebook (and hopefully you're not annoyed by lots of offers for Pirates vs Ninjas and similar apps).

So... yes. Let's let that be and never talk about it again.

Or pretend it never happened.

Also: REALITY CHECK. In the process of signing up I had to scroll down to see "1988" and I went, "DAMN, I've never seen so many years on a sign-up before. Oh my god... it's 2008... that's 20 years from 1988... I'M GOING TO BE 20."

I hate reality checks.

I do not, by any means, feel old. I am just a firm believer in not growing up.

Or, the UD band alumni's motto: "You're only young once, but you can be immature forever." TRUTH.

Man, it already feels like Spring Break. That is awesome. The only thing I really, really need to do right now is figure out registration stuff and write up one assignment and I will be good. a lot of people have said they feel like it's a Friday today, plus like half of the people don't show up for classes and a lot of the teachers have cancelled because they have some convention or something to go to this week. The library is closed, so there's no one but staff hanging out there.

Ceramics is coming along pretty good, my "plate" made it through with only one small crack, easily fixed with glaze, and even if it breaks in the kiln it will be fixable. I kind of wish I could finish the bird bath right now, though. Grr. Anyway, one effect I was going for didn't really work so I think I'll have to play with it a little, and I'm hoping it will turn out good. And then the raku piece won't be fired until after break, so all in all I have a grand total of zero pieces finished for this grading, haha.

Oh, I almost completely forgot about that petal cup... I wonder if it made it through?

Today I think I am just going to roll up in a ball and die. I am crampy despite attempts to up my iron and potassium levels, exhausted and muscle-sore from surfing (I would like to not use my shoulders all day thankyouverymuch), and the back of my legs hurts a lot from the sunburn from Saturday still. Also my face is kind of red and I think I may have burnt my lips? They don't hurt at all but they look kind of swollen and red at the edges, as if I had been licking them and they got chapped. It's weird. Plus I had a headache since last night (a very heavy and squinty one), so I drank some caffiene (which is supposed to aggravate cramps), but hey, I am a little more awake and my headache is gone. Unfortunately they didn't have plain tea so diet coke with lime is okay but lots of empty calories and I'm not really a coke person so boo. (Run-on much?)

Otherwise, I wrote up a list of the books I got from the free section of the library:
--The Madonna in Art, 1897; really neat cover with stamped lilies and gilt, neat illustrations.
--Legends of the Madonna, 1872; the most amazing cover with gilt stamping and gilt edges on the paper, unfortunately falling apart in my hands. =(
--Christ in the Ancient World, 1933; very small and cute, notes on the inside from 1935.
--Representative Short Stories, 1924; stamped cover w/ floral pattern, notes from 1927, illustrated.
--Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, 1923; stamped and printed cover illustration, illustrated, original copyright 1878.
--The Serpent and the Satellite, 1953; interesting book about symbols in religious history.
--Levitation, 1928; stamped gilt cover, sounds like it would be a somewhat historically funny read.
--The Syrian Christ, 1924; stamped gilt cover, orig. copyright 1916
--St. Augustine, 1933
--Journal of Tyerman and Bennet, Vols. 1 & 2, 1832; illustrated publication of original journals from 1821 to 1829 (that's three years difference... wow)
--Gilbert and Sullivan Songbook, not terribly old, my guess 60's-80's? Two-tone ink. Just picked it up for kicks.
--Fairy Tales, Brothers Grimm, 1966
--Magic House of Numbers, 1957; math tricks for learning/teaching/fun
--Digging for History: Archeology discoveries throughout the world, 1945 to 1959, 1960
--Bermudiana, 1936

Oh hells yes. I dunno, I really appreciate being able to hold something and just sort of feel the gaping history or importance of it, especially if it's something small. And I know, these books are probably not worth much to collectors or anything, but I don't care, it's all about the history for me. Being able to hold something in my hands, in the case of the oldest books, that is one hundred and seventy-five years old. And back then it was three-years-old information, so "brand new". Utterly...wow.

Other fun things I've been meaning to post about! Yesterday surfing, we had trouble starting a fire because it was so windy, and out of all of us I was the only scout there and I got to show off my skills (sort of--I just gave some advice because they guys were having too much fun "being guys" and being in charge of the fire/coals/grilling). BUT, I did regret leaving my purse in the car (because of my wallet and phone); my pocket knife was in there, too. Could have shown off my engineering skills... A guy came down the beach asking if anyone had paper or anything to burn with. I was only half paying attention but I did finally listen enough to catch on that he was asking if anyone had a bong or anything, which was hilarious since a lot of the people there actually do smoke fairly regularly, but didn't have anything with them. He decided we would all try to MacGuyver something (esp. involving an aluminum can if he could find one). I think it goes to show...something... that my first thoughts were: "I wish I knew how a bong worked" and "Damn, I left my pocketknife up in the car." So, yeah. Then he came back and asked the four of us sleeping on the beach if "we burned" and I said no, so he had me give him a handshake-sort-of-thing and was all "good for you, good for you". (I dunno, what do you call it when you grab their hand but your hand is facing upward rather than down... like... a bro-handshake or something?) Anyway it was hilarious and I can honestly say that's the first tome I've ever had someone ask me if I did drugs slash wanted to. Hehe. (You think it would have happened previously in Yellow Springs somehow...lol)

I've been seeing more mongoose (mongeese? mongoosen?) on campus. They are hilariously adorable when they run.

I read a sad article the other day that bats are disappearing, and it could relate to bees disappearance; it could be all the cell signals and stuff are messing them up. That makes me soooo sad. I freaking love bats. I am especially sad that it's Little Brown Bats disappearing in New York, and possibly spreading, because that's the main bats you see at Mammoth Cave. POOR BATTIES

Bailey made an interesting point in Pacific Hist today about air raid sirens, but this is kind of anecdotal in relation to what we actually talked about. When you hear an air raid siren, he pointed out, the first thing you think is "it must be the first Monday" or whatever, not "we're having a Tsunami/natural disaster" or "we're getting nuked". My first thought is always: "TORNADO SIREN?", demonstrating, once again, that Xenia is a panicked little town of failure in that regard. (Carroll made me hate all the Xenians paranoid of tornadoes--THEY ARE NOT THAT COMMON, PEOPLE! A thunderstorm does not 100% a tornado make, so please STFU thankyouverymuch. I always want to say, "stop crying, it's just some FREAKING RAIN". Argh. I really can't express my frustration with Xenians in this regard.)

So, I'm learning that technical classes are uninteresting because they are boring. I really enjoy reading articles in science magazines and stuff because they actually relate the science to application to make it interesting. Case in point? Ceramics today. We were talking about all the chemicals that go into ceramics and glazes and firing (silica, alumina, feldspar, copper, iron, magnesium, calcium [a lot of which are oxides]) and he was trying to explain how iron, which is common in most stoneware, can have so many colors. It's all different ratios, but for example, copper red-green will give you green if you use it alone, but if you base white under it, the reaction will give you red; if you need an explanation: Statue of Liberty is copper, was red, is now green. Yes? Moving on. He was trying to express how iron is so varied, because you can have reds, yellows, and browns. The example he used is blood, and that it is red, but will turn brown, and if you repeatedly wash out a stain will leave yellow behind. We also discussed how it is blue when unoxidized, and he didn't have an example, but we told him about how blood is blue if it is not carrying oxygen (aka has already passed to your lungs and is carrying out CO₂, which I think I learned in like third grade... yay "health class" rather than "science class"). And the coolest thing? Why shrimp, lobsters, mussels, and other related things have blue blood: their blood uses copper to oxidize rather than iron. HOW COOL IS THAT. (It also made me wonder if this accounts for pink flamingos' color, since they get it from eating shrimps, and whether the same sort of thing applies to "scarlet" ibises [versus regular old white ibises].) See? This kind of thing makes me go yaaaaay chemistry! whereas last semester it was definitely I cannot fucking wait to be done with this class.

( Oh, damn, this got kind of long, lol )

Yes, that was rather long winded, but it's a lot of thoughts flying through my brain, and pretty consistently, too.

Bailey mentioned there's a movie or something coming out about... Queen Liliuokalani? that people are getting upset about because the title is "The Barbarian Princess". The creators are saying, hey, we know it's one of her nicknames, and we like her, hence the movie showing in her in good light, but the critics are saying, yes, but it's an ironic nickname to point out that though she was Hawaiian she wasn't barbaric. Which, to be fair, I think they have a point; there are a lot of idiots/ignorants in the world (hey, I used to be one of them, no thanks to you St. Brigid), but at the same time, there has to be something said for the use of irony and poeticism and things in art. (Otherwise, what's left? Surprisingly, this is coming out of the mouth of such a literalist. I hate analyzing stories for symbolism and all that shit it's "supposed" to mean; I'll draw my own conclusions. And yes, I used to be a rather literal reader. [Thanks again, St. Brigid!]) Plus, I now have such a ridiculously sarcastic/cynical tone (thanks to Mr. Soucek and Laura, interestingly enogh), that since a blog is my preferred manner of keeping track of everything, it's going to be difficult in the future to tell my tone. (Hence why I am an advocate of emoticons on the internet--we have no face or voice, so it's like a little face to express a little hint of the intended emotion. And then the only problem is something else I like to think about--learned context. I sometimes think that certain word patterns have certain effects on what I'm reading/writing because of the context I learned them in or the way I heard them, and I doubt these apply for other people. Which makes communication all the more difficult, now, doesn't it?)

In History of Furniture the other day, Walter (oh, Takeda... he's such a grumpy old character, like a sort of rude version of Mr. Hemmert who likes to talk a bit more) decided he would teach us the most necessary French phrase: "Talk to my arse, I have a headache." Which because I didn't take French I didn't quite catch all the words, spellings, but as far as I got down was "Parle a mon cule, ma tete (which has an accent grave on the first "e", right?) --somethingImissed--". Haha. If one of you Francophiles would kindly correct me, I am always up for linguistics...

Honestly I'm sort of jealous of my cousin. He's doing an yearlong exchange program in Argentina, so we found out he not only gets to be fluent in Argentinian Spanish, but he's learning French, too. And here I am in Hawaii, deprived of being allowed to learn Hawaiian, when classes here are such a joke I could have soooo easily caught up... *tears* (Note to self, you need to email/chat with the professor to see if there are courses online or something!)

By the way, are any of you out there lingust...i...philes? (Linguists? Er... how do you say "lover of languages"?) I have been thinking I should start trying to write a paragraph a day in Spanish to practice (ack, I am so out of it! Haven't studied for over a year) and throwing in other stuff every once in a while, maybe Polish or Hawaiian or whatever. And does anyone know if there are places online where you can learn a language and actually learn it, not memorize phrases? Danke...

See? I picked up lots of little turns of phrase in other languages from my parents. Like "c'est la gruyiere" from my dad, who speaks Franglais with my uncle [they both took French at Carroll], and so I know lots of butchered French like that. But I mean, I throw "bitte" and "danke" around all the time, which I picked up from my mom, and there's always "gesundheit" and "nastrovia" [sp?] and "garagekey!" [butchered intentionally by my family, but then I do not know the real spelling, either] and many many other things. Plus lots of little linguistic jokes from high school, like the elephant poem the French kids have to learn Freshman year. So probably the most French I can put together is not terribly impressive: "L'elefante se douche, douche, douche, l'elefante se mouche, mouche, mouche" and I don't even know the spelling, that's my best gues. (And "merde!" [thank you Franzie]) Although it was fun to learn about trompe l'oeil (pretend that o/e is mushed together, I'm lazy yanno?) in history of furniture when it was the name of the CD by Malajube (French Canadian band so I can only guess at like 40% of their lyrics... Oh! "Autobus!" That must mean bus! nurr nurr) that I got for Christmas.

Um, yeah. I am soooo just rambling. I need to grab dinner before the cafe (pretend there's an accent, I always spell it with one, just like I write facade with that curly under the c, I just don't know the keystrokes) so I'm posting this and I'll be back to edit it in like... um... a half an hour.

bee ar bee, el oh el

(By the by, when I'm reading things like that I hear "brb" and "lol" phonetically by letter, but "rofl" is phonetically by word and "wtf" and "omg" come out as the phrases "whatthefuck" and "oh my god", respectively. Anyone else want to throw in their two cents on literary quirks?)

( [EDIT] kk back--oh shit, I wrote a lot, so I'm cutting the rest )

[EDIT2] Just kidding, wanted to throw this out there, too. I think the island on the banner of this blog is an east-facing view of Chinaman's hat. If not, it's really fucking close to being it.

Uh, so, no word back on the lappy yet, so I'll make this quick.

I am 19. I am not sure I really like it. Not in the sense that I've been 19 for two hours and anything bad has happened, quite to the contrary. But rather, I'm not a "kid" anymore, I'm legally an adult, and I'm not freshly a legal adult, either. I've had a year to work on it. I mean... it's not that I have a problem with being mature. If you know me, you know it's almost the other end of the spectrum.

I just don't want to grow up, you know? In the mind, I mean. I tend to really over-think things, and for some reason this summer I really missed Nana a lot and I've been thinking just about mortality more. We all have to die, and I mean, I don't think I'm going to any time soon, but you never know, it could be tomorrow, right? And there are so very many things I want to do with my life, and it just makes me think of how insignificant my life seems compared to what everything there is to do (not that it's insignificant--everyone has a significance, and together we just make up a very large significance), and how could all these people be bored?

I don't want to go off on this tangent right now, but I do think it might be interesting to live forever.

Anyhoo... my point is... I'm always going to be young at heart, and you're only as young as your heart is. =) I'm going to continue wearing wacky colors and being a dork, and no one can stop me. In fact, just the other day I bought an XL skirt from the kid's section of WalMart because it fit and the colors were awesome.

So, I guess I just wanted to say, it's not that I am choosing to be ignorant of life's questions and answers, nor am I unaware. I am making the educated decision to be a nerdy, fun soul. Age is pretty meaningless, depending on how you act. You are always growing, but you are always dying, and you might be the most mature six year old or the most childish forty year old. But for all those people who don't get the time to know me, because we only meet in passing, I have one year left as a quote-unquote "teen," though I'm an adult, I will insist that as I am nineteen I am still a teen.

So I hope that makes for a substantial enough post until I get my lovely lappy back, and then I will post some more cud for your mental diet. =P

Love y'alls, and I hope your birthdays bring as much awareness and sadness and joy (yin and yang, and so it is) as mine bring. <3

=^n.n^=