best idea ever!!!!

last night jen and i were watching Some Retarded Movie that was completely boring, but tried so hard to be scary (you know, with the intense soundtrack and the creepy "supernatural" images of normal stuff with the colors all distorted, which i think is all kind of cheap, really, why not just hire some little kids that stare soullessly into space and never smile? those always freak me out), which got us started on stuff that's happened to us that's actually scary (i used to work in a haunted restaurant, for example), which led us to the best idea ever.

okay... spring break is coming up and both of us are graduating, and we don't want to spend too much cash before we hit "the real world," but at the same time we don't want to waste our last spring break ever on like, working overtime. plus, i'm moving to seattle and she's moving to hawaii, so we're both kind of worried about leaving the southwest. we're really going to miss the desert.

so we thought... get this... that we'll take a road trip to as many haunted places as we can find in new mexico.

that would be SO much FUN! both of us are completely stoked. so, even though it was two in the morning and a school night, we started researching haunted new mexico places. of course there's the st. james hotel in cimmeron, the val verde restaurant in socorro (where I used to work), the double eagle in mesilla, mansions in los lunas and albuquerque, and not to mention the ghost towns and "condemned insane assylums" that are all over the place. there's even some old civil ware forts that claim general grant often appears on the grounds. sweet. every place we wrote down made us more and more ready to go on this trip.

of course, we might have to pretend to be ghost hunters or something, and take video and pictures. and we'll also need some big strong boys who don't admit when they're scared to go with us so we don't freak out. my brother, being the video/documentary enthusiast that he is, would be perfect. he's also something of a boy scout, so if we decide to camp at a ghost town (awesome), he'd be very handy. AND he doesn't startle easily. hopefully NMSU's srping break is the same as tech's.

on the other hand, there are some ghost stories that you couldn't pay me enough to investigate. i'm going to stay as far away from any indian reservations as possible. i'm not sure that the creepy stuff that goes on there can be classified as "ghost stories." ask anyone from farmington. i'm not making this up.

the other thing that scares the pants off of me is la lyarona. i've heard this ghost story since i was a little, little kid. the story goes that this lady found out that her husband was married to another woman in another village and had another family, and that he liked the other one better. so to punish him, she drowned her children in the rio grande. when she realized what she was doing, she tried to save them, and also drowned. now she walks up and down the rio grande crying for her children. the version i heard (when i was like six, good grief), said that she'd try to drown children that walked by the river by themselves, and that if you heard her crying, no matter how far away you ran, she'd come and kill you when you fell asleep.

CREEPY, right?

anyway, i didn't mean to turn this into spooky story night (although i could tell you some really good ones from the restaurant where i worked). the point is that i'm completely excited about this spring break. it's going to rock. ROCK.

catching up -- part two

i got a call from kat last night. she saw my name on a list of people that's going to start working at the naval base next year, and she called me to tell me about it. YAY! i'm excited. but... remember that girl from my interview that i told you about? the really negative one? not only is she taking the job, but kat tells me that she's starting the same DAY as i am, and there are only like five of us starting that day and we'll sort of be in a club for like a year, going to all the same classes and everything. that's lame. :(

so i guess i should keep up with my catching up. i'm still in las cruces, being nice and lazy all day. i'm not really looking forward to going back to school next week, even though this semester is going to be even easier than last semester. i'm pretty sure i'll be right at twelve hours, which has never ever happened before. should i take oil painting or glass bead making? right now i'm leaning toward whichever has the cheaper lab fees.

christmas-- it was fun. i was most excited about the gifts i got my sister... three t-shirts, one that says "i heart jake ryan" with a picture of the hottie from sixteen candles, another that says "i heart badboys" with a picture of the bad boy from the breakfast club, and a third that says, "i heart ducky" with, you guessed it, ducky from pretty in pink. she's one step closer to becoming molly ringwald. i also got one for my dad with john cleese that says "minister of silly walks." i got carmen some really beautiful sushi dishes with fish and flowers and stuff on them, which i still haven't actually given her yet. hmmm, i hope she doesn't read this. i love giving people presents.

as for me (look, i'm not that materialistic, okay, i'm not just going to talk about the STUFF i got, but you guys know how i AM about presents, okay?), what probably surprised me the most was what my aunt and uncle gave me-- a coin hip scarf and zils for bellydancing! dude, i'm stoked. i completely didn't expect it but totally wanted it. i'm so going to be the coolest kid at bellydancing from now on. it's gonna rock, man.

in the way of beatles loot, my grandma got me four pencil drawings of the early boy wonders, and apparently my grandad is going to make me some frames. they are beautiful. ringo is especially adorable. my dad gave me the complete beatles recording sessions, released by abbey road, which are going to make me the best beatles geek ever. and... speaking of "i heart" t-shirts...

alicia got me the dvd of paul mccartney's last tour "the space within US." woo hoo! i watched it the other night... and i'm on it. I'M ON PAUL MCCARTNEY'S CONCERT DVD!!!!! that's so huge. the camera zooms in on my homemade "i heart paul" t-shirt, which was on my back, so you can't tell that it's me at all, but i know. and i still have the shirt, so i suppose that proves a thing or two. YAY! i'm so excited about this.

after chrsitmas my dad took me shopping for kitchen stuff, since i don't have any and i'm moving this year. we bought a ton of red kitchen gadgets. i'm really excited about them, and kind of bummed that i won't be unpacking them until august.

new years was fun also, even if my sister DID fly all the way to kentucky and leave me alone to dress up in weird clothes by myself. my mom said i looked like the wicked witch of the west, but what does she even know about the wicked witch of the west, except what she's learned from me? honestly, she's crazy.

anyway, i went to lance and liz's house and watched part of the original saw and ate all their spring peas. then i beat my brother at guitar hero 2. uh. then i went home and started to watch a movie with scott and calm down my poor dog, who was freaking out because of the fireworks. poor thing. then we went to my aunt and uncle's house and played the longest game of arkham horror. ever. well, maybe there was a longer one, but it was like six hours, including our intermission to watch the ball drop and talk about resolutions.

i don't really like resolutions at all, but i am going to try to do one thing this year: finish a novel in november for nanowrimo. and, maybe not this year, but i totally want to see tom petty live before i die, so that too. :)

catching up, part one

you guys know how it is when you have a lot to write about.... no time to write. that's my excuse for being such a slacker lately. oh, but trust me, this christmas break, when i'm home all the time and the most exciting part of my life will be finding secret presents for other people that i will not discuss in detail, i will right all the time. about being at home. and finding secret presents for other people.

anyway... despite my lack of posts, this has been an incredibly eventful few weeks, or perhaps even months. it is now my lofty goal to quit slacking and catch up.

several weeks ago: the tau beta pi initiation
for those who don't know, tau beta pi is an engineering fraternity that is very old and exclusive and secretive. you join by invitation only, and only the top fifth or eighth of each engineering class is invited. you need an extremely good GPA and something they call a "character of integrity," which they decide for themselve and actually vote on. snobby, right?

well, congratulate me, because apparently i have a very high GPA and integrity to spare, because they finally wanted me this semester. i was pretty excited that i qualified, but a little bit hesitant. did i really want to be such a snob? i figured, what the heck, and found myself at a very cerimonial, um.... cerimony to like swear me in or whatever.

it was weird. it really felt like i was selling my soul to my alma mater or joining an academics cult. i thought that tau beta pi was about good grades and service projects, but really there's a lot more to it. they basically want you to promise that you're going to work your absolute hardest for the rest of your life-- which apparently includes looking attractive and being great friends with everyone else in tau beta pi-- not for the advancement of your own career, but to bring honor to your school and the fraternity. call me crazy, but i do a lot of things for the sole purpose of advancing my career.

there was so much emphasis on being selfless, they sort of beat you over the head with that point, when really the only reason i wanted to join was because it would make an extra-impressive line on my resume and i might get a higher-paying job because of it one day. and also, to be perfectly candid, because they give you these wicked awesome ribbons to wear over your gown at graduation that just proclaim to everyone that you're better because you're smarter, and i really, really wanted those ribbons, even if only to make a certain stupid ex-boyfriend feel inferior because of his lack of exclusive honor badges.

see? hardly selfless.

well, anyway, i take promises very seriously. i didn't want to make a promise that i didn't intend to keep. i didn't want to make a promise that i hadn't thought through very carefully. I didn't want to make a promise when there was even a shadow of a doubt in my mind that it was really what I want to do.

i fully intend on working hard and being an honest engineer for the rest of my life, and i already take part in service projects and i'm all for making friends and dressing nice, okay, but i'm not sure it's something i want to bind to myself with a promise, and i really didn't have time to think about it while they were reading off the attributes of a good TBPer. plus the whole thing was so bizarre and other-worldy that i was a little freaked out, and my thinking was not at top clarity, and i was not about to make a promise under those conditions. so, when the time came, and i was supposed to step forward and say, "i do," like i was supposed to, like everybody wanted and expected me to, i said instead, "i'm sorry, i don't," and was like, dishonorably discharged and escorted from the room.

i was completely distraught while i was walking back to my car, hours earlier than i'd planned, with the fat salary and awesome ribbons permanently out of reach, but i kept telling myself, however unconvincingly, "good girl! way to say no to weird peer pressure! you did the right thing!" i knew i was right, but i could still feel the disdain, real or imagined, from the people in the room i had just left. i'm sure someone in there thought the initiation was a failure because of me.

i called my dad and cried for a while, and he told me he was glad I didn't just give in and do something i didn't want to do. i love my dad. i know i made the right decision... i'm just sorry i had to back out at the VERY LAST SECOND and make a spectacle of myself. from what i can tell, i'm the only person that's done that in this chapter.

the worst part is when people don't understand. they say, "but everyone joins because of their resume, " "but they all know you don't really have to be great friends," "but they all just do it for the ribbons." (i made that last one up. i don't actually tell many people about the ribbons part. you have no idea how much i wanted those stupid ribbons!) then when i told my grandad what happened, he said he was dissappionted in me. that sucked.

but my mind is made up-- i'm glad i did what i did.

two weeks ago: seaaaaaaaaaaaattle, baby!
puget sound flew me to seattle for a site visit, put me up in this swanky hotel, gave me "food money" every day (like fifty bucks a day, which is like a week of food for a college student, which they may or may not know), and rented me a fancy car. it totally rocked. i keep hearing about how traffic in washington in general and seattle in specific is supposed to be horrible, worst traffic ever, but driving from the airport around part of the bay and over the tacoma-narrows bridge to bremerton was such a nice drive! i mean sure, it's busier than las cruces, or albuquerque, but it's no worse than virginia beach, and i think it's way better than new orleans and san antonio (worst highway design ever). maybe i got lucky and missed the bad traffic. or maybe i just love driving.

i met up with my friends josh and kat, who just got engaged (HOORAY!) and hung out. on sunday, josh and i took the ferry to seattle to go apartment hunting.

dude, guys, i LOVE seattle. i love it there. the weather was horrible and we were outside almost the whole day and it was miserable, but i was still all smiley because i was in seattle and i love it there and i really want to live there even if everyone who works in bremerton and half my family thinks i'm crazy. and they do. poor josh went with me because, as he says, he was "being supportive" and on the way back to bremerton he told me that he thinks it's a bad idea. i think he really expected me to get off the ferry and look around and say, "oh... so this is seattle. maybe i don't want to live here after all." well, that didn't happen. i was stoked.

and he also thought i was going to get lost without him, which is so not true. i actually know my way around much better than he does, except he has this mutant power that tells him which direction the sound is. this was usful when we got disoriented inside buildings.

"which direction are we facing?"

"north."

"okay, how do you know that?"

"because the sound is over there." i look "over there" and see absolutly nothing that tells me the sound is that direction.

"josh... how do you know the sound is over there?"

"it's like the mountains in albuquerque... you always know where you are because of the mountains."

"yeah, but in albuquerque you can see the mountains. how do you know where the sound is?"

"because... that's where it is. just trust me."

see what i mean? weird. anyway, we used josh's homing beacon for large bodies of water to find our way around belltown, where we looked at apartment buildings. i was expecting them to be sort of ghetto, like all the places i've ever lived, but they were so nice! all the rooms we saw looked brand new. of course i couldn't actually choose a place so far in advance (i won't be moving out there until august), but i felt better knowing that i will be able to find an apartment when i need to.

the next day was the site visit. i went on an aircraft carrier. they are huge. i never felt like i was not on solid ground. the weather was even worse than the day before, it was so freezing and so windy and occasionally raining. even the people that lived there thought the weather was unusually crappy.

i was in the "nuc" group with one other girl. she was so negative and selfish about everything! i hope she doesn't take the job, because i don't want to work with her. every question she asked had a theme of, "how much money can i get out of you people?" meh.

aside from her, the base seems like a great place to work. it's true, i probably wouldn't have even considered it unless it was both a) close to seattle and b) already employing two of my close friends, but being a shift test engineer for the navy seems to be an enviable first job. and the people there were very honest. they understand that happy people work better than frustrated people, so they don't only show you the cool stuff to trick you into accepting the job. if you're not going to like it, they don't want you to come. in fact, it's so much trouble to hire someone and get a security clearence that, if you do become unhappy where you're working, they encourage you to move within the base to another job. and (this sounds VERY cool to me) a lot of the shift test engineers get to spend months at a time in san diego, hawaii, and japan, and you get paid even more for that. sweet.

in fact, josh and kat are going to san diego for about three months early next year. and speaking of them... josh asked me to be his best man at the wedding! WOO HOO! i'm so jazzed. of course, he's all weird about calling me the best man and he says that i'm the "best person" and that i still have to wear a dress, but whatever. i'm the best man, and i am extremely honored.

i'm not a good man, i'm the best man. uh.

quickly...

okay, i've got two more tracks left on my new cd, the beatles love, and after that i officially have to get up and do something productive. says andy. the kid with the perpetually messy room. but whatever, i need motivation and i'll take it from anyone, so i'll have to be quick. that means it's time for a list! i'll try to come back later and fill in the holes.

in honor of the... ahem, holiday, a list of things for which i am thankful, in no particular order:

1. this cd totally rocks. my dad gave it to me for my birthday, and i love it. andy gave me rubber soul, which is my favorite beatles album ever, and i bought best of bowie and best of aretha at best buy (how appropriate) yesterday for like seven dollars each, so it's a good week, musically speaking.

2. green chile. do i really need to explain this one?

3. my dog jack is the cutest. i totally love him. i love him even more now that i've been spending a lot of time with slightly, my sister's cocker-retriever, who is a snotty little poop machine with a chewing problem.

4. my family totally rocks. i think thanksgiving is pretty lame, for personal reasons, but hanging out with the family is SO fun. we had an iron chef competition for my birthday last night that was the most fun thing i have done in a very, very long time, and for thanksgiving we ate enchiladas and played guitar hero and tried some funny games on the wii and had fffunn!

5. i am thankful for hockey. even though i have this gigantic bruise, hockey is still the bomb.

6. two more weeks till school is over! then it's time for christmas! time to buy presents for everybody! yay! :)

7. i only have one final this semester!

8. I GOT A JOB IN SEATTLE and I'M MOVING THERE!

9. i'm drinking cola tea, which doesn't really taste like pepsi (or coke, or sprite, for that matter), but that's good because i think it's yummier (more yummy?) than pepsi, and i like it a lot more than pepsi, and it makes me happy. thanks cc and barb!

10. and, finally, one year and two days ago, i was in phoenix and sir paul mccartney blew me a birthday kiss. what more can a girl ask for? i'm happy.

okay, that last track might have been my favorite, but lady madonna was really good too... anyway, andy says it's time to go. i'll come back.

jen and the pope

just now, for about the millionth time in my life, i was suddenly overwhelmed with a familiar happy emotion, and i ran into my roommate jen's room and yelled, "JEN! i love paul!"

jen has lived with me for about two months and is used to this by now. "oh really? i hadn't noticed."

"i do. i love him."

"what is it now?"

"this song! how can you not love a man who writes a song like this?" ("every night" is playing in the background. i tell jen how the crowd screamed at the concert when paul sang, "...and be-eee with you-hoo-ooo." i love him.)

"oh," says jen. "i thought maybe it was another picture of him with a cow." she's totally laughing at me.

"no, but last night i found another picture of him with martha." (martha, of "martha, my dear," was paul's sheepdog. how can you not love a man who writes a song about his sheepdog?)

"you know what i thought of the other day?" she says. "there could totally be a pope john paul george."

i'm laughing my head off.

"no, really. there was a st. john and a st. paul and a st. george, and a pope john paul... when he died, I was like, 'come on! pope john paul george!' and then it was pope benedict... what's up with that, benedict?"

it's nice to know that i'm not the only one who thinks about these things.

woo!

(holly is such a slacker. why does she even have a blog? it's not like she ever writes in it or anything, unless something ginormous happens, like she gets an email from her dream job in seattle saying congratulations, we'd like to fly you out to the navel base and give you a sweet job offer, and honestly, who wouldn't blog in that kind of situation? how predictable.)

hi everybody! guess what?

I GOT THE JOB!!!

so i'm flying out to seattle next month for four days and three nights to check out the navel base to "see if it's a good fit for me," like i'm going to turn it down or something, ha. i'll get to hang out in seattle and bremerton for the weekend with kat and josh and check out the base on monday and i'm SO STOKED! hurray!

more updates later... it's friday the 13th and i'm GOING to watch creepy movies tonight with andy, so i need to plan!

yay!

the story of the stick

well, the good news is that my hockey stick fits in my trunk now.



the game yesterday was really fun for the most part. we played well. i actually scored the first goal off of my own rebound. in the ten years i've been playing, i've hardly ever picked up my own rebound. anyway, things were going okay until i broke my stick. it was the worst possible time to ever break a stick. and i did it!

we'd been leading almost the whole game, and the other team was slowly catching up to us. very close to the end, it was tied and hugo got some kind of weird penalty. rick and i played defense. the ball went into the boards, and i chased it down. brian, from the other team, chased me down. i was so in the zone. i knew i couldn't let him get possession, and i didn't back off, even when it looked like he was going to run right over me!

well, he didn't run right over me. my stick got pressed between me and the boards, and brian skated right through it, snapping it almost in the exact middle. i saw all these slow-motion splinters flying around, and the bottom half of my stick spinning in the air. that was a really BAD feeling. the worst part was that i was about as far away from the gate as possible.

i dropped what used to be my stick and skated as fast as i think i ever have toward the gate, yelling, "SUB!!! SUB!!!" and leaving rick to play defense, 3 0n 1. about one second after david's skate touched the rink, the other team scored. at that point there were about ten seconds left in the game.

can you believe that?!? the time i have to break my stick was in the last twenty seconds, when we're tied, killing a penalty, and when i'm all the way across the rink from the gate. the only way it could have been worse is if it had been a championship or something. it's weird being mad when there's really no one to blame... it wasn't my fault or brian's fault or rick's fault or hugo's fault... it was just bad bloody stinkin luck. when they scored right after i made it to the bench, i actually lost my temper and threw my gloves as hard as i could into the back of the boards. i don't do that very often, either. about as often as i pick up my own rebound.

we didn't recover in those last ten seconds and lost by one.

grrrrrrrrrrrr.

everybody's doing it

seriously, these "first ten songs" posts are getting out of hand. i first saw that adam had done this, and i thought, wow, list the next ten songs that your ipod plays, what a neat and original idea, but now everyone has one. what's that? you don't have one? oh my god, you're a total loser and you should either a) go to your blog and write down your ten songs immediately before anyone notices how out-of-the-loop your are, or b) stop reading my blog, because i don't think we can be friends if you haven't jumped on this bandwagon. for real.

so anyway, you guys know by now that i'm a bit sarcastic. and maybe a little hypocritical. so while i usually dislike the "everybody's doing it" mentality.... okay, this ipod thing was a really good idea, and it's fun, and it's easy, and i think you can tell a lot about a person by her music, so here i go. this may be cheating a little bit, because i only have an ishuffle, so my selection is much more narrow and i'm therefore much more likely to get the awesome songs that will make everyone jealous, but i promise you, somewhere on this little baby is a very sappy michael jackson song that was quite popular ten years ago among middle-school girls, and even then it wasn't cool. if if comes up, it comes up. here goes:

1. The Beatles - "Hey Bulldog" (yeeeesssssssss, my first song rocks!)

2. Pete Yorn - "Ever Fallen in Love"

3. Paul Young - "Everytime you go Away" (stop laughing, this song is fun.)

4. Frou Frou - "Holding Out for a Hero"

5. Yes - "I Would have Waited Forever" (suh-weet!)

6. Billy Idol - "Hot in the City"

7. Michael Jackson - "Billie Jean" (that was close)

8. Thompson Twins - "Hold Me Now"

9. Queen - "Somebody to Love"

10. The Beatles - "Why Don't We Do It in the Road"

dude, i'm so cool, my songs rock! especially that last one. i really think that if the lyrics were different (as in, something other than "why don't we do it in the road, why don't we do it in the road, why don't we do it in the road, why don't we do it in the road, no one will be watching us, why don't we do it in the road?"), it could be the greatest rock song EVER. the beat at the beggining... just... brilliant. oh, and by the way, did you know that the only two beatles who actually worked on that song were ringo and paul? but doesn't it seem like a john song?!? well it's not!!! see, you learn things every day. bandwagons rule!

looking over the rest of my songs... hmm, i'm holding out for a hero, looking for somebody to love, waiting forever... man, this is sort of depressing. but then again, there is billy idol. and hey bulldog.

oh my gosh! my #11 song is the strongbad techno. too bad i can't write that on my list. that would be cheating.

(get it? CHEATing?!? ha! i'm funny.)

i'm totally jazzed

i went to my interview for puget sound yesterday. i wasn't too nervous, because i was wearing a beatles shirt.

rus the recruiter first had me fill out a paper with my address and email and stuff, even though i'd given him my resume and transcript the day before and i'm pretty sure i put all that information right at the top, all nice and neat. but anyway... then he said to me, "i want to bring you out to bremerton for a site visit and i want to get you a job offer, because a person with your background and your grades and enthusiasm is exactly what we're looking for."

and all my insides did this elaborate happy dance and kicked up their heels (my stomach has heels, doesn't yours?) and sang for joy, and my outsides smiled and said, "oh, hooray!"

then rus told me about the things that engineers do on the base, like some work with cranes and some are in planning and development, and then he told me that he thought i'd probably work on the nuclear reactor, because the powers that be want students like me (!) working on the nuc side. i told him that i didn't really know anything about nuclear reactors, but he said that they'd still want me, and that the nuc side usually "picks from the top" at the hiring meetings, and that i was at the top.

i cannot tell you how pumped i am about this. i've been walking on air ever since. i'm so excited! rus said that he'd get back to me within three weeks to set up a time for me to go up there. yay! i called kat and josh last night, and they were excited too! kat said that rus said the same thing to her last year. both of them were trying to figure out if i'm going to be working on the nuc side (with kat) or the non-nuc side (with josh). apparently there's a bit of a rivalry between the two sides, and both of them were trying to convince me that their side is better.

i can't believe this! i'm so excited! i just imed scott about four hundred happy faces. could it be that i'm actually going to move to seattle, like i've dreamed about for the last two years?

in case you wondered...

1. i love paul.
2. i really really really really really love george.
3. i really really really really really love paul.
4. paul wouldn't really love me, cause i'm not a vegetarian.
5. i love george's kid, too. i think i should marry him.
6. pattie boyd was totally cute. oh, and did you know that
7. george, paul, and ringo all played at pattie boyd and eric clapton's wedding, even though pattie was george's ex-wife and eric clapton was one of his best friends?
8. i love george even more because of that.
9. i found this picture of paul with these two baby cows... he's adorable.
10. i totally love paul.

here does nothin...

i went to the career fair today. i got a t-shirt, some magnets, a tube of phelps-dodge chapstick (it's pina-colada flavored,okay?), and two of those pens with the post-it notes inside. those are so fabulous. they're my favorite career-fair loot, ever.

also... i got an interview with puget sound naval shipyard. that's where kat and josh went to work. that's where i want to work. that's in seattle. well, it's in bremmerton, but yeah. seattle.

i really want to move. it's not that i don't like the desert, i do (even now, when it's sort of turning into a swamp), but i want to get away for a few years at least....... or do i?

i get depressed when i spend too long away from my family. "too long" for me is about two weeks. i don't know what i'd do if i couldn't see my brothers for months at a time. and who would i play hockey with? and who would i dance with? and who would i eat green chile with? and where the heck would i buy green chile?

on the other hand, what am i going to do if i stay here? move to las cruces? work at NMSU? white sands? the nursery?!? i don't really want to do that. i mean, come on, you guys know i love las cruces and NMSU and... well, i (sometimes) really like the nursery, but...

exactly what good is it to take a million horribly difficult, soul-sucking, mind-numbing classes unless you can use them to move across the country, right? i haven't pulled that many all-nighters for nothing. i haven't been slowly killing myself to keep a high GPA just to not use it and move back home, right?

so, okay. wish me luck. i'm going to get dressed all nice and go to this interview tomorrow (err... today) and try and get this job and move away to the pacific northwest. i guess i should just not worry about it, right? if it happens, great. if not, something else. right?

okay. right.

*
*
*

insert some awesome, psyching-me-up montage here. why is it that i can only think of "eye of the tiger" and "material girl"?!?!? someone please get me a good montage song, please.

i love hockey

hockey. is so fun.

yes, hockey has started again. ahhhh... you know how i know? because several parts of my body are actually in quite a but of pain right now. i have four very big bruises right now, three of which are... ahem... unphotographable, but...


image freakout


actually the picture doesn't do it justice. it looks all pastel. but the one thing i do like is that you can see the reflection in the mirror, and you can tell that it's got a severe 3D thing going on...

i'm very excited. i don't bruise easily, so when i finally get something this gnarly-looking, i feel like i have to show it off. this was from dan, in the first game i played today. it started turning purple right away. after the game my whole arm was shaking.

but anyway, hugo jr, david, ryan and i are all on a team... yay... along with jared, who is a good skater but seems kind of unsure about being in the adult league. oh, and rick. you guys remember rick, right? the one that said i didn't know how to position because i've been playing less than a year? yeah.

well, we are currently 1-2. so far we've won by one, lost by one, and been brutally humiliated once. i'll keep you posted as to how we do this year... hugo and i already decided that it's been far too long since we won a championship.

:)

classical mystery tour

okay.... i must, i must, i must use what little spare time i have right now and catch you up on the beatles tribute concert that alicia and i went to last weekend. I KNOW, right? how can i do that when i haven't even told you about the honest-to-god RINGO STAR, who i went to see TWO MONTHS AGO?!?

i think the answer to that is that i'm either a bad fan or a bad blogger, and i hope to heaven that it's the latter, because i really really really love the beatles and i want to be a good fan... i want to be the best fan. i'd like to be a good blogger, too, but... sigh... they're so dreamy.

alicia picked me up last sunday wearing a green shirt with yellow silhouettes of the beatles, and she had a matching one for me! yay! that makes nine beatles shirts if you count the paul and ringo ones, which i do. we went to the university for the concert, which was a collaboration on the las cruces symphony orchestra and the classical mystery tour.



it was bloody brilliant. unlike the last tribute band, all the members actually looked like their respective beatles. the music was awesome, they probably played about thirty songs. they also played some wings songs, and a john song, but they sort of stiffed george by leaving out "my sweet lord." oh well.

again, paul wasn't left-handed. and his accent wasn't quite as good as the last guy. but really, it was a much better show. george freakin rocked. "while my guitar gently weeps" was so incredible. hearing it live is rather profound. john rocked, too. as you guys know, i'm not much of a fan of the real john lennon, but i have to admit, his music was genius. paul was totally awesome. during "hey jude," i grabbed alicia and said, "this is when paul blew me a kiss!" it was great. ringo was sort of quiet, but he did very well. it was so much fun.

now it's time for some bad pictures... here's george...



paul...



and john and ringo.



you can see the mistro in that picture, too. half of the fun was watching him conducting the symphony. he stood high above the orchestra and the stage, so he was visible anyway, but then they put a huge spotlight on him and threw his gigantic shadow up on the wall. he was a riot. he sang along with most of the songs, and he had so much energy and he was super excited. Especially when the crowd made noise, he'd turn around and look at the guys on the stage and you could just tell he was thinking, "ohmygod, i'm a BEATLE! this is SOOOOOOOO COOL!" he was great.

their last number was "twist and shout," and the mistro grabbed one of the female violin players and pulled her out onto the stage and was dancing with her and singing into the microphone with george... he was funny. what a sweet guy.

did i tell you how much i love the beatles? a large portion of the stress in my life is due to the fact that i'm not sure who i love more, paul or george. no kidding. they are both so wonderful. i mean, paul is, and george was... you'd think that that would have something to do with the whole decision process, but it doesn't. is it creepy that i have two enormous crushes, one on an old guy and one on a dead guy? don't answer that.

okay, i'm tired and starting to admit things that people should never put on the internet. that's all for now, kiddos. i swear on everything that is holy that I WILL write about the ringo concert, one of these days. until then... oh my goodness, george was so handsome. and paul is so romantic.

i need to go.

twenty minutes of free time!

life is incredibly busy. i'm exhausted.

yesterday i called kevin at about 5:30. i told him, completely truthfully, that it was the first time all day that i hadn't been doing something, and by all day i meant since 6:30 in the morning. i got up, packed, drove, went to work, went to class, went to work, played hockey with the professors, showered, ate a burrito in about five minutes, class, meeting, work... and it went on like that after the phone call, too. homework, bellydancing, iv, library, home, more homework. it was nuts. and unlike typical work days, yesterday was packed. i was scrambling all day trying to get quotes and send faxes and make phone calls. by the end of the day i was misspelling my last name and transposing fax numbers and every date was set in 2005.

just imagine... your mind is tired, your body is tired, your bed is SO comfortable... ahh. and it starts raining. nice, you think. time to fall asleep listening to the rain.

except the rain keeps getting louder, and louder, and there's thunder and lightning and soon the walls are shaking and there's no WAY you're going to sleep.

last night socorro got the most extreme thunderstorm i have ever experienced. i was ticked off. i was so tired and i couldn't sleep! it sucked. carmen was sleeping on the couch last night, and she actually came into my room at about 3 am and said, "can i sleep in your room?" i thought she was being funny, so i said no and tried to go back to bed. this morning it turns out that she was actually scared. hmm.

jen said something along the lines of, "tired? that's okay. nobody in socorro actually slept last night, so everyone else will be tired, too!" carmen said that at one point she thought maybe we were being attacked. that's some loud thunder, people.

good lord, i hope that was a once-in-a-lifetime thunderstorm, because if we get another one tonight i swear i'm over-dosing on sleeping pills. this is ridiculous.

fall 2006 semester outlook

why oh why oh WHY didn't i start out in technical communications in the first place?

this semester is going to be SO easy. i'm taking statistics (which is a freakin walk in the park compared to finite element analysis and vibration dynamics), technical editing (been there), article writing (hooray!), and web design (which will maybe be a little challenging, but it's dr. mott, so i'm not worried). that's twelve hours. that's like nothing. i'm used to eighteen. this rocks.

oh course i'm also taking a two-hour digital photography course which will be enormously easy, and... jen talked me into taking bellydancing. don't laugh!

no kidding, bellydancing is the hardest class i'm taking this semester. it's twice a week. the bellydance lady stands at the front of the room and makes us move our hips like one inch, and it's torture. i was exhausted. i was totally the worst one there. i'd watch the instructor and try to move along, and then i'd look at myself in the mirror and i wasn't even close. all the other girls were looking at me like, "i'm so much better than you, little moron girl. you suck at this. and at life."

i wanted to yell in the middle of the first class, "i can skate faster than all of you losers!" but i didn't. it's really hard, and makes me hurt, but it's a lot of fun so i'm not going to quit. i even go to the first part of the advanced class with jen to practice more.

it's weird to actually have homework to do again, after such a boring summer. every time i think i'm done, i still have things to do. another thing that's weird? it was really nice not having to see mike this summer. between statistics, math lab, and photography, it turns out i have class with him about five or six hours a week. it's lame. he still ignores me.

worse than that, i think, is that he and kc have started going to swing again. i'm really bummed about that, because swing used to be so fun and relaxing and FUN, and now them being there makes everything so uncomfortable, for me as well as other people, and it's hard not to think of it as a competition. i wish they would just move away and have their dream life somewhere else.... or that i could.

despite all that, i think this semester is going to be okay.

my so-called desert

by an sudden and odd turn of events, i actually flew in a small aircraft from socorro to hobbs and back again on wednesday with ryan, elliot (my co-workers), dr. ghosh (my boss), and dr. romero (my boss's boss) to check out the site where we're actually going to use this machine that we're building. we played cards in the plane. i won. i beat my boss's boss at cards. bwah hah hah.

but much more interesting than that was how green, really green, the desert was below us. i mentioned before how much it's been raining. i don't think i said that it was all over the state. albuquerque, socorro, escondita, magdalena, elephant butte, deming, hatch, alamogordo, las cruces and el paso have all had problems with flooding this month. albuquerque and el paso are roughly 300 miles apart... that's a lot of flooding.

and from the looks of it, the places that haven't been flooding are getting plenty of rain, too. the ENTIRE desert is green. i saw quite a bit of it during the plane ride. well, i think white sands is still white, but this doesn't happen very often. it's usually brown, i promise. i can't remember when new mexico has ever had this much rain... and it's all over. hobbs was all green with little square patches of brown where the oil wells are. the contrast made it really obvious.

i didn't get pictures from the plane, but here's a couple i took driving from socorro to las cruces later that day:







i mean look at that! it's green! really green! okay, this might not seem like much for people in other parts of the country, but it's really unusual for us.



this is the lake (and before you make fun of me, non desert-dwellers, it's really long and thin, okay?). it actually looks sort of full. and the hills are all green. it's so strange.

i drove back to socorro this morning, and it was raining almost the entire way. i think most new mexicans can tell you that rain on the highway usually lasts about ten minutes or so before you're through it, but this was almost two hours... and there was fog and low clouds and actual standing water in the desert. no kidding. i really wanted to stop and take some more pictures, but i was afraid i'd be late to my first class... yay first impressions.

here's one of socorro's own "m" mountain, for your viewing pleasure.

concert in the park

i have so many exciting things to write about! but first... is this beatlemaniac blasphemy? that i am writing about a free beatles tribute band concert before i write about the ringo starr concert? that i enjoyed the fake beatles... can i say it?... more than i enjoyed the real beatle?

okay, i take it back, i didn't like them more than the real, honest-to-god ringo starr himself, but i gotta tell you, it was close. very close.



my grandma and i went to see imagine tonight at young park. they are a beatles tribute band (don't ask me why they named themselves after a john lennon solo career song). of course any band that plays two hours of nothing but beatles songs is going to be a hit in my book, but these guys were so much fun. it was very exciting. you could tell (well, i could tell, and i constantly kept pointing out to my grandma) that they're diehard fans who had really, really done their homework. i was extremely impressed when "john" actually delivered a line that the real john actually said at a concert once. he asked the people in the cheap seats to clap their hands, "and the rest of you just rattle your jewelry." of course fake john, at a park concert where all the seats were free, paraphrased a little, but afterwards they played "twist and shout," which is what the real beatles played in the real concert when real john really said that line.

confused? sorry. i'm so hyper. they were so awesome. i'll try to be cool.

"paul" was the most impressive. he looked and sounded just like paul. his accent was perfect, and please trust me when i say i know my paul accent. his hoffner looked just like paul's. he had quite a bit of trouble hitting all his notes, but wow, he was uncanny. the only thing missing was that paul is left-handed, and "paul" is right-handed. but i suppose that can't be helped. sigh.

"ringo" did a great job sounding just like ringo, but he didn't look much like the real thing. "george" looked nothing like george, and didn't sound too much like him either, but he played guitar like george, and that's no small task. i thought he was the best musician in the group, except for maybe "john," who sounded somewhat like his counterpart but actually looked very much like george and played the piano like paul.

by the way, in case you were wondering which one is which, check out the sgt. pepper's suits. ringo wore red, paul wore blue, george wore orange and john wore green. of course that's only necessary if you can't recognize them by their guitars... which i totally can. ;)



so since i've seen paul, and i've seen ringo, and i've seen john lennon's rolls, and i don't really like john that much anyway, and because "paul" was totally getting most of the crowd's attention, i spent a lot of time cheering for "george." really, he was very good. after "here comes the sun," i yelled, "i love you george!" and he looked right at me and yelled back, "i love you too, love!"

i guess that's as close as i'm getting to the real thing, huh? hooray! george loves me!



okay. here's the really exciting part. after the show i went and talked to the band and took pictures. i mostly talked to "paul." i congratulated him on sounding just like paul. i told him that i saw paul in november. i saw in his eyes instant recognition of what i was talking about. the US tour.

he said, "in las vegas?"

i said, "no, the show right before las vegas. in phoenix."

grandma said, very excited, "he blew her a kiss!"

paul's eyes widened a bit and i told him about my banner that said "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! BLOW A KISS!"

and get this.... paul says, "OH, i HEARD about that! that's great! wow!"

turns out he heard about that because we were both reading the same website with the tour reviews, the one that listed all the banners that were at each show. when i saw that they mentioned my banner, i sent in the story behind it and they posted that as well. and this paul mccartney man READ about the REAL sir paul mccartney blowing ME a kiss for my birthday.

okay, how cool is that? i'm known among mccartney fans. that's just about the best thing ever. i really can't put into words how badly i'm geeking out about this.

after the pictures i shook his hand and said, "nice to meet you!" and he said, "NO, nice to meet YOU!"

i could die. right now.

socorro for dummies

in the two and a half weeks between the summer session and the fall semester, socorro becomes a desolate ghost town. everyone leaves. the swing dances are cancelled. nothing. happens.

and for some reason i'm here by myself while all this is going on.... or NOT going on, to put a finer point on it. carmen and steve are in utah. scott went to alamo. even my job has slowed down, which i didn't really think was possible. with my co-workers either gone or down with strange illnesses (i swear jason is the most unlucky person in the entire world), i'm down to pretty much sitting on my hands until we get the funding to start ordering parts. it's very lame.

so watching movies by yourself isn't much fun. computer games will only get you so far. my usual internet stuff has been really slow, and i've already cleaned the entire house from top to bottom and read the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. and to top it all off, for some reason my stereo and my computer are not communicating, so most of my music is inaccessible. seriously, i think i'm ready to learn kung fu and create a training montage or maybe write the history of my life in french or something.

the cure, for now, seems to be solidworks for dummies, which i borrowed from dr. ghosh the other day. yeah, go ahead and say it, i'm desperate. that's okay. laugh.

sigh.

planet zombie

i guess when you're really bored, every idea that comes along seems inspired. but how can you know whether it's brilliant or just plain okay unless you get an outsider's opinion?

when we were little, my grandparents used to take my brother and sister and me to this place called planet fun. it was this extremely elaborate indoor playground that was probably overpriced and definitely had a hokey name, but we loved it. there was this gigantic three-story jungle gym, a lazer tag room, and a couple other things that weren't as appealing as the jungle gym and the lazer tag room. for some reason i was thinking about the jungle gym this afternoon. it really was enormous. there were several slides inside it, at different levels, and nets you had to climb up and soft things that you fell onto and even a few ziplines. it rocked. i was also thinking about how little kids have all the luck and get these awesome things that aren't allowed for people that are over five feet tall... those light-up shoes are another issue i have with folks getting special treatment just because they're under seven. no fair.

it's not that i don't understand the concept... you obviously can't have big people and little people playing in the same pit of balls because the little people would get squished and legal ramifications would ensue. the only way for adults to have a jungle gym is if little kids aren't allowed.

hmm... but "adult jungle gym?" sounds like a video you'd see at an adult bookstore. what self-respecting adult would pay (and you'd have to pay, you know, to defray expenses) to climb around in some nets for a couple hours just for the heck of it? i mean, i would, but is there even a market for this sort of thing?

undaunted, i began to think of the possibilities. and then it hit me.... halloween. of course the old jungle gym would have made a killer (oh, i crack myself up) haunted house. just make it less bright and all oozey and have some people hide inside to scare people. that sounds like fun, but once you've seen the haunted house, why go back? it would be a one-time thing.

unless it's a game. okay, picture this: there are zombies in the haunted house. zombies that you have to avoid. of course the zombies could have some kind of marker (a paintball-type thing seems too permanent, but what about like a hand stamp?) that you have to stay away from, and if they get it on your hands or face you're "infected" and your team loses points. people could go inside in groups with the goal of everyone "surviving" the jungle gym. it could be a game, something that you play again and again in order to get better at it. and the zombies wouldn't be able to climb or move very fast, but if you, say, fell off the zipline into a pit of balls (that look like little skulls) and there was a zombie in there, you'd have to move quickly in order to survive.

that would be awesome!

of course constructing a haunted house would cost a lot more than a jungle gym of the same size. and there'd have to be some way of keeping the "zombies" safe from over-zealous players. but there could be tournaments, or different levels of difficulty, or maybe the people who have been through several times, who have gotten really good, could be in charge of escorting a whole bunch of newbies through the course. or maybe (and this is a huge stretch) paintball guns? occasionally? i don't know about that, i don't know very much about paintball. probably really expensive, too.

wouldn't that be fun? i don't know, i really like this sort of thing, but i realize that my interests are strange compared to those of other people. would it be popular enough to actually do well? could it be open year-round, or just at halloween? if i could find enough people that like zombies to fill up the zombie roles, would there be any undead-enthusiasts left to actually go through the course? where could it possibly be built? planet fun was in a gigantic building that was like a warehouse. oh, and we'd have to come up with a good name. "planet fun" is lame, but "planet zombie?" horrible.

this would be so awesome. i really really really want to do it. maybe someday, when i'm somewhat rich and i can afford to potentially blow several thousand dollars on building something like this, i'll try it out. until then... planning!

flood video

here's a link to a video of the flash flood out by highway sixty, if you're intrested. apparently the road was closed for quite some time this weekend, so people got out of their cars and took pictures of what was going on.

keep in mind that what is usually out there is dry ground. it's not actually a river.

EDIT: actually, i made a mistake. this video is not from this series of storms, it's from a lesser storm that hit about a month ago. SO... if this is what a lesser storm did, just imagine.

it's still a cool video.