Oh yeah...

I'm also going to go to class this afternoon. I'm SO good. And to clarify, when I said that a copy of your birth certificate doesn't count, I meant like a photocopy. You have to have the actual thing, with the embossed, colored-ink seal thing on it. So I'll be going back to the passport office tomorrow, and I'll hopefully have a passport within two months. Yay!

I feel so productive

I've mailed my credit card bill, obtained a transcript, found the passport office, learned that a copy of your birth certificate does NOT count when applying for a passport, talked to the cute guy at the passport office, gotten passport photos elsewhere on campus, and I'm about to get some forms signed and copied for my exchange. All in one morning! I even went to class and did a presentation where I went totally over the time I should have taken because I'm a horrible public speaker and tend to ramble without realizing it. Let's see... anything else I did today? Oh- I had lunch. Am I good, or what? I guess all this business makes up for like, every other day in the semester where I didn't do practically anything. Maybe not.

Fun aside: I went to Taco Bell the other day to guilt them into giving me food and drink. They want me back. My old manager came running up and said "So are you ready to come back yet? Just two days a week? One day? Name your day, and you got it." The other manager who was also there (whom I like better than the GM) was standing behind her and whispering "pick Tuesday nights! Tuesday!" because that's when she works. Such sad little lives. I'm thinking maybe I will go back, though. Some little money on a regular basis would be good; I seem to be depleting my savings account more than I thought I would. I guess that happens when you're not putting anything INTO it. Ever.

Hey, y'all

I'm just checking in from South Carolina, making sure everybody's okay here in the internet. Okay? Okay. We've been here for a couple of days, hanging out with my cousins, aunt and uncle. You can't tell, because I'm typing, but I'm thinking out the words in a southern accent (I thought it'd look like I was trying too hard if I left all the -ing's as -in's, so I typed them normal-ways). Southern accents are fun- all of their words are rounder and deeper than mine will ever be. The other thing I've noticed about the South? Plants. And water. These things are here in abundance. As in, "hey! there's a river!" and "gee, you almost can't see the sky while driving because there are so many trees, and they're so tall." I think if I were to move to a new part of the country, this would be on my list. Tomorrow, back to the desert, where there is no water, and the plants only are as tall as the people looking at them. Sigh.

Marimbas!

They are possibly the coolest percussion instruments ever. Listening to marimbas is like eating candy. Only with your ears. And you don't get sticky. So I went to this percussion ensemble concert tonight. They had a section where they did a bunch of pieces from Ghana, with authentic instruments. There's this one instrument called a Gyil- pronounced "Jill," and it's like... so cool! It's like, a marimba, only low down so you sit practically on the ground to play it, and instead of the metal pipes coming down from the keys for the reverb, it's got gourds tied underneath, and the whole thing is curved like unto a hammock. It's nifty- sometimes it sounds like just two sticks being hit together, but with a tone, and sometimes it sounds like a freaked-out marimba, and sometimes it sounds like a weird buzzing guitar thing. I'm pretty sure the buzzing guitar sound came from the gourds reverberating all next to each other. It sounded SO COOL! To repeat my previous assertion, marimbas are the coolest percussion instruments ever.

Plus Five

Is it just me, or is it totally unfair that my first month of working out has only served to make me even heavier? I guess it's that whole, "muscle is heavier than fat" thing, but still...

I seem to like posting on wednesdays

So I love EM Forster, right? And so I also love the movie they did of A Room With a View. I was looking on imdb.com a few days ago, when I saw that not only is there a movie of ARWAV, but there is one of my favorite of Forster's books, Where Angels Fear to Tread. Excuse me while I scream in glee. Needless to say, I went to our local video rental place that has everything, and got it. They only had it on VHS, though. Sigh. Our tv makes this horrible squealing noise when it plays VHS, but not when it plays DVDs. Oh well- if I really like it, I'll just buy it on DVD.