Monday, July 19, 2004

   I'm back from the dead! And it was far out, man.
Whoo, 's been a while. What's happened since my last post?

Very little.

It has been a weekend of X-Treme Familynessicity. On Saturday, we went on down to this amazing place in the county that belongs to a doctor friend of my uncle. I think. I wasn't quite sure where I was going, or why, or who was going to be there, so I just contented myself by reading Absolution Gap and playin' Ice Climber (Yay!!!) on the long drive up. Turned out the purpose of our journey was to see my Uncle and step-aunt as they had come down from the U.A.E. for my Grandmothers 80th birthday. Funky. The aunt in question always loves my shoes. This time they were transparent, acid-green, and plastic. Woo hoo. Anytheways, this house we visited them at? Gorgeous. Two koi ponds, one swimming pool, a gazebo overlooking a deep valley and some rolling hills, and an amazing interior filled with what looked like church furniture or something. Funny thing, on the way my there mother and I were discussing how it would be so cool to live in a church-turned-house. Stained glass windows, old stone walls...Bell tower! I thought it might be a little blasphemous, but a little sacrilege never hurt anybody. Prolly.

On Sunday, more family that I'd seen in a while congregated at another aunt’s house, to celebrate my grandmother’s birthday. I usually dislike these little get-togethers, because, as we all know, they are hideously boring. Yesterday wasn't so bad, though. I got talked at by my...relative...Bob, about music. He's a strings teacher, so it was pretty damn interesting. (You know what music teachers are like. Possibly some of the weirdest people in the world. I love them.) Anyways, a bunch of people were interested in the Band Camp I went to, as I'm part of a very musical family. (It comes from my father’s side, mostly.) Wow, you should have heard us sing Happy Birthday. 'Twas like some kind of Uber Choir Experience. I shut up though, I can't sing for beans. I can do other stuff for beans, though. But I digress. Back to Band Camp. Probably the best camp I'd ever been to. It was kind of unnerving, all these kids who could've ran the camp. I'm waiting for all their debut albums to go platinum, it's crazy! Open House Night Thing was on Thursday, and it was awesome. I won’t go through the entire programme, but some pretty popular tunes were played. The Intermediate strings did Vivaldi's Winter, but the solos kinda sucked, 'cause they basically slowed them down. It sounded like they took out all the sixteenth notes and what have you and replaced 'em with eighth notes. (I wouldn't know, I don't play the violin. Ask Godel when she gets her computer fixed.) The Junior/Beginner band played a familiar tune; Jurassic Park. My group, Int. Band played Invicta, Looney Toones (It sucked!) and the finale: St. Thomas. It involved the band, strings, percussion, and steel drum groups. (Steel drum class was so cool. I'd never played a pan before.) What else was cool...uh...Jazz Improv! Heh, I got chosen to solo, but it turned out I was to solo on Assembly Day, not Parent Night Thing. Ah well, I was pretty crappy, but I blame my beloved Bari Sax 'cause I think that I broke it 'cause the lower register stopped working and waaaah it's all my faullt!!!!

*slap* Thanks Navi. I lost control. Hey, let's go fishing!

Or not. I also took Composition class. Now I can compose! Not really. The next day, Assembly Day, was when the groups who weren't good enough to perform for their parents performed for their peers. These two amazing violinist guys played this Bach tune I adore...what was it..."Concerto for two violins and Orchestra" claims my Best of the Baroque CD. Ooh, ooh. That was cheer day, wasn't it? Int. Band was GOING to win the pizza, we really were. We were nine points in the lead. Then BLAM, a crappy cheer from us. Int. Strings took it, though, with their parody 'Baby got Bach'. It was hysterical. You know at the beginning of Baby got Back, those three girls; "Oh my god, her butt is so big!"? Well, they got three guys to do it, except along the lines of "Oh my God, her bass is so big" etc. Then they rapped out most of it, stylized to stringocity. They ended with a riverdance. It was the funniest thing I'd seen or heard in quite a while.

But back to this par-tay thang. I'd also been mercilessly bombarded with questions about my hockeyness from about a zillion people. All I could tell them was that a couple of weeks ago, our spring league had sponsored a tourney, and I was entered in it. Last year we had to play a Midget AA team. This year, holy crap. I was on a team of two. Freakin' Two. Then, we played on a team of 7 year olds from Michigan against another team from Michigan. Then we played the not-7-year-old team from Michigan with some people from their own team. Rinse and Repeat. Basically, both teams from Michigan went home with their money back. Damn, was that ever stupid. And kind of fun...ny. I also got to play with some Intermediate AAs against some others. They talked about their Universities. I was frightened.

After all these questions direct'd at me, (I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition, ha ha.) we watched videos my uncle and step-aunt took when they were cruisin' down the Serengeti. Lucky bastards. I mean, it was some great footage. They had to take pills to ward off the danger of malaria. Turns out that there are two kinds; the good kind, and the kind that turns you into a psychopathic mass-murderer. Or something like that. (My mom did a story on the latter.) Guess which one they took? ^^

I think I'm kind of like a lion. I sleep in the middle of the road all day, and when I get hungry, I get up and kill dikdiks.

After the lil' movie, we debated on who would eat my grandmother's face.

Those picture-cake things are weird.

And something else I had to endure at this soiree... My Aunt's belly-dancing. Okay, I give these women tons of credit and respect for going up there and doing this without fear of retribution, as long as they do it where I am not. Wow. It's gonna need a few hours of solid gaming to kill those images out of me head.

I'm sad that Paranoia Agent is finished. Now I need something else to follow. Any suggestions?

Oh, and I read Good Omens for, like, the sixty-billionth time. That is one damn fine piece of literature.

It's amazing how one can say so little with so many words. Sigh. Anyways, keep on Strikin' at the core.
SG

Now, a million eyeballs fall from the 'bove. The boy gets financial advice from the Rat King.

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