greensboro.june2k9

I'm tired and way behind on life, but my weekend trip was totally worth it. I drove to ATL on Thursday afternoon to hang with Faithie, Kateness, Brooke, and La. Even though I was recovering from an illness and felt pretty flu-ish, I had fun with those girls. Also, I learned about fainting goats. Why didn't someone tell me sooner?! Anyway, I want to get back to Atlanta soon. It was the most.

Kate, Faith, and I drove to Gboro on Friday, but not before eating waffles and figs and mango and gummy bears, and making one stop at H&M. Saturday morning was farmers' market, and giant blackberries, and purging Faith's car, and mustaches, and Nancy (complete with real live babies!!!), and Anthony, and grilling, and enforced showers, and celebrating Kate's birthday, and staying up all night, and nerd-room slumber party.

Saturday was a blast, but it was a lot to take in, too, so Sunday we had a necessary viewing of Step Up 2 The Streets and nerd-room chillzone for pretty much the entire day while Faith studied and Kate hung with some peeps. Mostly just chatting and music and youtube. I went to bed just as Faith was leaving for school in the morning. Kate said goodbye while I was still in bed, but I eventually got up and got things together enough to spend twenty minutes with Adam before Devender took me to the airport.

Now it's back to real life and responsibility. But at least the photos are good.

Indian Cinema & Nail-biting

I'm watching a buttload of great movies for my Indian cinema class and only one so far has been mainstream Bollywood. I think I mentioned Khabi Khushi Khabie Gham already. Pretty hilarious and definitely worth putting on while you're doing something else, since it's unnecessarily long. My least favorite so far has been Charulata, which relies heavily on mood, camera work, etc. The director, Satyajit Ray, is a big name in indie cinema. It's still good, but it's slow. We watched a clip from another one of his movies called Devi, and that looks rad. The other two we've seen were movies about village life that dealt with class and gender issues. I dig both of them: Ankur and Mother India. Ankur is probably a better movie (directed by Shyam Benegal, who's considered to be Satyajit Ray's successor), as Mother India is kind of over the top, storywise. But one of the kids in the latter film really makes it worth watching–he's a badass. Mother India the only one besides Khabi Khushi that has singing in it, but there are no big dance numbers and the songs are kept to a minimum. I haven't checked about the others, but Ankur is available on Netflix. I'm deciding pretty soon what to focus on for my final paper, so I'll be watching a lot more movies either on a specific topic or by a single director. I'll drop some more knowledge soon.

I'm headed to Greensboro tomorrow afternoon via Atlanta. I can't wait to see folks, some of whom I didn't get a chance to catch up with on the last trip. Tim and co. are letting me help out with his cause by organizing the web stuff. I'm so glad to be able to do something, though I wish I was closer and could be more helpful day to day.

July is going to be busy as hell for me anyway, though. I have to turn more serious attention to my class, find a place to move and possibly do the actual moving, and prepare for my trip to Sri Lanka. It takes place during my only break from school, making the move and the vacay a little more complicated. I'm so incredibly excited, though. Nervousnervousnervous about getting it all done, but excited.

Listening to: Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinnead O'Conner; Reason to Believe - Rod Stewart

One Crazy Summer

The Cigar Box art, etc. show was last night and despite it being incredibly hot and stuffy upstairs, it was a lot of fun. Anthony and Laura read, and the Hank Lazard crew did a live recording of the podcast. Unfortunately it became a leave or die situation due to the heat, so I missed Rev. Jack Ladybird and Hightower's performance.

John and I headed out to my new fave bar and other folks followed after the CBHL show was over. I hafta say, the place pretty much rules. I'm glad I'm having some fun this summer before I say goodbye to Birmingham for a while. My art history MA is a joint program with Tuscaloosa, so I've decided to move and take the rest of my classes there. It's not too far from Bham and I have a few friends there already. I'll miss my peeps here, but I won't miss worrying about who I might run into or being regularly reminded of recent unpleasantness. I'm hoping it will be somewhat of a fresh start without having to wipe the slate completely clean. I suppose you could say that I'm running away, but in this case I think that's just fine. Maybe I'll find my way back to Birmingham one day, or maybe I won't. We'll just have to see.

current music: Alone with His Guitar - Hank Williams

The All Night Date

I spent all of Saturday at home, cleaning up from the party, making food, hanging out, etc. When eleven p.m. rolled around I realized that I was really antsy to get out and go somewhere, so I asked John to take me for a drive. We cruised around Mountain Brook and he took me to Birmingham's Inspiration Point or whatever it's called here. A make-out spot with a view, but no parking, so you have to get out of the car and sit on the grass. Not being that down with noshing in front of others, we stuck to admiring the city lights.

We were talking and joking and having so much fun that I didn't want to go home yet, so we got some gas station coffee and went wandering around Wal-mart. I'm not sure how long we were there, but it was quite a while. John's allergies had him sneezing non-stop, adding to the meth head look we'd acquired by staying up too late and drinking coffee after midnight. In desperate need of food, we headed to Al's and chilled there with french fries and omelets. Finally we headed home to drink a beer on the porch. The sky got lighter and we decided to walk to find a place to watch the sun rise. I thought of it too late, though, so we modified our course and headed to Five Points for coffee. We arrived half an hour too early, but we figured that by the time we walked to 22nd and 2nd Ave N, Urban Standard would be open. Turns out they're not open at all on Sundays, but the walk was really fun and relaxed, so I didn't mind a bit.

Everything after we got back home is a bit of a sleep-deprived blur. I just know there was more laughing and carrying on and that I went to sleep exhausted and happy.

Date score: 10 out of 10

Now My House Is Full

Excellent party on Friday, though a couple of key players, like Rodney, were absent. Much fun and an interesting group of people now that all the borders have mostly independent social circles. Not independent enough to be completely drama-free, but as close as I can imagine getting for a while. We picked up a temporary roommate, Dustin, as the party as well. He's crashing on our couch and doing some work for John's dad before resuming his travels, either here in Bham, or elsewhere.

I had to make some tough, sad decisions last week. I did my best and I think everything's ok, but it wasn't much fun. I've had a lot of amazing awesomeness going on, too, though. I'm dead tired and overstimulated, but happy and confident. I'm going back up to Greensboro at the end of the month to see Tim. I'll be driving up from ATL with Faith, and then flying back after a few days. Also, I just realized that I'm supposed to have some pieces in a CBHL art show this weekend, so I'm going to go work on that.

Game on.

The Perfect Storm

I'm sometimes amazed at what pops up as autofill options when I start to type things into various fields. People have clearly been doing very weird thing with this laptop while I'm asleep. Anyway, I know it's been a while. I dropped out of life for a few weeks. I don't feel too bad, since it appears that everyone else is taking a beginning-of-the-summer break as well. There's been an absolute drought of blog and lj posts.

This week I went to the grocery store for the first time in two months. The break was the result of travel combined with an unwillingness/inability to provide myself with the necessities of life. It felt pretty amazing to finally step into a Publix and buy produce. There are beautiful fresh flowers all over the house and everyone is getting their stuff settled and arranged. The combo of exams, shifting roommates, and multiple vacations left the School looking like a bit of a wreck for a while. I think it created a negative feedback loop with my life. We're finally ready to let people back into the house, though, so we're having a house re-warming party on Friday. It'll be nice to have a house full of half-drunk, happy friends again.

The weather is nice and hot now, and my little garden is growing fast. My trips to Maine, North Carolina, and Florida were all super rad, if exhausting. My only really complaint is that my heart is like gasoline and I've encountered too many matches in my travels. Portland is definitely my favorite of the places I visited, in terms of the actual city. It was so awesome and super important to see Maggie after such a stressful few weeks at the end of April. West Palm Beach was lovely and lazy. North Carolina was emotional and amazing. I've seen so many people that I care about...Maggie, Keith, Chris, Tim, Kaylan, Faith, Lis, Devender, Sarah, Kenny, Adam, Ty, Greg. It's overwhelming in the most wikkid of ways. I'm back in town for at least a little while, though, and glad to be slightly more settled.

Summer school has started and my Indian cinema class is rad so far. The first movie we watched, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham was totally epic, fascinating, hilarious, etc. A serious, all-out Bollywood blockbuster. It seems like the summer term will be chill and fun. I need to kick things into gear with Napoleon, though. I've been distracted of late and spend most of my time putting off the things on my to do list rather than getting things done as usual. Things are turning around, though, and I'm sure I'll settle into something more calm soon. In the meantime, though, I'm having fun feeling like at an extended slumber party.