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2002-06-26 - 12:08 a.m. I'm starting to think I need a notify list since my updates have become so infrequent. I'm making up for it by writing two entries today. Please click back to read my last entry because it is a really important one if you follow the saga of Ms. Boombastic's life. When I last left you, I was getting ready for my trip to Seattle. Because of parking issues in downtown Seattle, we all ended up driving in one car (mine, which is rather small). It was fine, but a little squished. I really did have a good time on the trip overall, and Jason didn't seem like a fifth wheel, although he was even more quiet than usual. We ended up eating at The Cheesecake Factory the first evening we were there, which was fun. Justin got the Too Much Fun Burger that I talked about on my old webpage (that I got when I was in Las Vegas). I ended up getting a personal size pizza and the best caesar salad I ever had. Mark got orange chicken, Jason got Cajun pasta and Elizabeth got some sort of chicken. It was all very good. The only mishap happened when Elizabeth decided to eat what looked like a sun dried tomato off of Jason's Cajun pasta. As it turned out, it was a chipotle red pepper. She had to order a glass of milk to ease the pain. We were all so full that we had to leave the restaurant and then come back later on to buy cheesecake. It was really good. We also spent a lot of time at Pike's Market, and got to see them throw the fish, which is the big attraction. It was pretty fun. We also went on this underground tour of Seattle. It was really interesting, actually. I guess the first settlers built the city at sea level and so the tide kept washing in on the town. Then there was a big fire, and the city decided they needed to build higher up, but the business owners didn't want to. So for awhile the streets were way higher than all the stores, so people had to go down ladders of 10-30 feet to get to the stores to do their shopping. It was briefly mentioned in this book I'm reading right now The Diary of Ellen Rimbaugher: My Life at Rose Red so that was extra interesting to me. Our tour guide was really cool, also, and cracked me up the whole time. We also ended up going to the Space Needle but were too cheap to pay twelve dollars each to go up. Maybe another time. I think the best part of the trip was when we all got dressed up to go out to dinner. We all looked really cute, and we went to this nice Italian restaurant. It was the perfect nice restaurant atmosphere. The waiter was really nice to us, and the food was good, and everything was just perfect. I felt like a grown up. HA HA. Afterwards we went to our hotel's bar, which was actually pretty fun. Justin wasn't feeling well so he went upstairs, and Jason was just tired, so I hung out with Mark and Elizabeth for awhile. It was cool talking to them. I actually felt like I got to know Elizabeth a lot better this trip and once again I wish that I lived closer to her so that I could actually be friends with her. On the third day we literally spent two hours finding Krispy Kreme donuts. These are pretty new to this coast, and they don't have them yet in our state. So we went and everyone (except me) bought big boxes of donuts to take home. I bought a total of three donuts to take home. On the drive back everyone felt very sorry for themselves because they all had huge boxes of donuts that they had to put on their laps because there was no room anywhere else in the entire car. I liked the donuts but did not think they were as good as the hype. I did have a very delicious chocolate one that was filled with kreme that tasted like hostess cupcake filling. Once we got home, I ended up coming home and my cousin came to visit for a few days. We had a pretty good time. We went to the beach, went to see the movie Windtalkers and went to the outlet malls. I am not usually into war movies, but this one was interesting and has a hot guy in it--Adam Beach (who was also in one of my favorite movies of all time that you must go rent right now Smoke Signals). I have such a crush on him. I think that the movie had some stereotypes, but it was okay for a war movie. I'm also not a huge Nicolas Cage fan, so there was that issue. We also had a very interesting adventure that involved deciding to go to two of the bars in this town. I have been to one bar/brewery in the "bigger" nextdoor town here, but not to any in my town. I knew they would be dive bars, but we decided it would be a fun time anyway. We walked over there since this is a one stoplight town. The first bar was exactly what I expected, about six people in their fifties sitting at the bar. The bartender was also a ditz. He did make us these really good strawberry daquerris, though. So after we went there, we went to the other bar I knew of in town. This one happened to be hosting a wedding reception! There were a large number of people, and they were all singing kareoke. Very badly, I might add. Well, we crashed the party. A couple of different people came up to talk to us, including this guy that said, "I was told that one of you works with my dad! Is that true?!?!" I said it might be true and asked him who his dad was. Instead, he just told me his first name. Believe it or not, I immediately knew who he was, even though I had only heard his name mentioned twice by his father. He is an English major, and his father had recently announced in the staff room that he was now talking about being a teacher. His father is this math teacher that I sit near in the staff room. So this guy kept coming over and talking to us periodically. It was really quite weird. I almost got the impression that he was hitting on me, but I couldn't be sure. What was cool about the conversation was that we were talking about books and other nerdy English major stuff. A major plus on his side was that he listed Their Eyes Were Watching God as one of his top five books. A minus was that he listed Robert Frost as his favorite poet and recited his favorite Frost poem to me. He said it was supposed to be magic with the ladies, but that it didn't really seem to work. HA HA. I'm not a big Robert Frost fan. He had read Native Son and we talked about that a little bit (for some reason that popped into my head when he asked me what my top book was). I think my cousin got a little bored so I tried not to talk to him too much. She loves books too, but the way we were sitting it was hard for him to talk to both of us at the same time. I think it's really kind of rude when a guy comes up and interrupts the conversation between two girls and then just talks to one girl the whole time, so I was glad that he didn't stay too long. I did enjoy talking to him, though, I have to admit. He mentioned that he was 26 and a loser because he's still in school. I also have worked a little bit at the curriculum thing. At first I had a really good time, but at the last one I had a really big brain freeze and couldn't get much done. I am probably going tomorrow after my dreaded doctor's apppointment. You should be proud of me because I signed up to get my "Well Women's Exam." I absolutely hate those, and haven't had one for quite some time. I am trying to be good about my health. I also signed up to have my teeth cleaned when I get back from visiting my mom. Hopefully then I can schedule my wisdom teeth. I'm scared so I keep putting that off. These past few days I have been with Justin. He's taking summer school, and I actually went to one of his classes with him. It was an anthropology class. I had to pretend I was a member of the class because we did some group work. Luckily I was able to be in Jason and Justin's group. I actually really enjoyed the class. It was about race as a social construct, something I love to think about. It made me sort of nostalgic for being in college. Sometimes I think I want to be a college professor. Not because I want to teach in that way, but because I like being at college. Basically, I just would be happy being a student for life. Probably not, but I felt that way at the time. I also had to take my summer class, which was definitely not fun. I felt she could have given me that information in about an hour, and it was a five hour class. She just talked about nonsense for a great deal of the time. I just want to know what I have to do to get my continuing license. Luckily we are only meeting a few times each term over the course of the year, but the process sounds crappy and hard. I have to do a portfolio and collect evidence and videotape myself teaching and all of this stuff. The good thing is that I can renew the initial license for three more years if need be, but I want to get started on this process anyway to get it out of the way. I have also been reading quite a few good books. I read two books of short stories that I got at the library. The first was called Crash Diet by Jill McCorkle. I feel I must have read something by her before. Her picture looked so familiar to me (she is really quite beautiful), and I know I read a few of the stories before. Some were very fluffy, but some were pretty good. The other one was a really exceptionally good group of short stories. It is called What's Come Over You by Marian Thurn. I was disappointed to see that most of her other work is out of print, but maybe the library will have some of her other books. She had very good description, plus rather nutty characters; nutty enough to be interesting, but not too nutty to seem unreal. Really, this is a book I would highly recommend. The Dive from Clausen's Pier is what I am currently reading. It is Ann Packer's first novel and it's really interesting because the main character is someone I can really relate to--she's 23 and has been with her high school boyfriend for about eight years. Then, he dives off a pier and breaks his neck. She was already drifting apart from him, even though they were engaged, but now that he's going to be a parapeligic she is sort of in this awful position. I just started it but it's really good so far. I also would like to mention that I read something in Epiphany's diary that I also noticed in the latest Entertainment Weekly magazine. Katherine Knapp (hopefully I spelled that right) died of cancer. I read her memoir Drinking: A Love Story last summer and found it was such an interesting portrait of what alcoholism is like. I especially liked her description of the tinkle of a glass of white wine being poured. I'm sad to hear that she died. I'm not sure if it had to do with her alcoholism or not, but how awful. I know I mentioned this before, but I just can't get enough of this new singer Mario. His video is on again and I just love it. I especially love how he doesn't feel the need to put hoochies in bikinis in his video to make himself feel like he is a hottie. I love you, Mario! Now my other song that goes, "Oh, boy!" is on. I love that song, too. My third favorite song right now is the song that is about Baltimore and has the Jefferson's theme song sampled; I think it's called "Whoa Now." I want that CD. Well, I think this is a long enough entry for one night. I am actually tired because I had to get up early today to go to that stupid class. I don't have my appointment until ten tomorrow so I get to sleep in a little bit, but still not as much as I would like. I am one lazy ass in the summer! :) Thank you to those people who were so supportive about my letter to my father thing--you really helped me and I appreciate it.
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