Now even though I am not the most enthusiastic football fan in the world, I did appreciate this clip of some Trinity team for the play itself and also for how the professional ESPN reporter devolves into a screaming maniac by the end.
The other night I was about to go home to my nice apartment when I saw a poster that advertised "WHIRLING DERVISHES OF RUMI" that was going on that evening and it was free! Free! Multiple whirling dervishes! Erin and I met up for dinner beforehand and then found seats amongst a very ethnically diverse crowd. Oh, how exciting!
I learned that night that not only are whirling dervishes not crazy Tasmanian Devils that flail their arms and shriek like banshees, but that you have to sit through a ton of other stuff to get to any whirling whatsoever. Unfortunately, photography was verboten so I wasn't able to get any pictures, but it didn't really matter since not a lot happened. First, some guy gave awards to community leaders. Then, the program said that there was to be "a short speech about Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi". Short, my butt. This thing went on for a half hour. Then all of these musicians came on stage and I was like, oh yes! It's spin time! Oh, no. They just played some music, which wasn't bad, just kind of dull. This went on for a goodly while. Then, intermission.
What happened during intermission? I saw Travis's doppelganger! Oh yes! It's this guy that looks exactly like Travis would if someone grabbed him and stretched him out another couple of inches. He bought some artwork at the vending table and I not-so-stealthily stared at him.
Anyway, after intermission we still didn't get to see a dervish but instead watched a dialogue about the background of the dance. This was actually funny, so no problem there. Afterwards, the same musicians got on stage followed by seven robed guys that knelt down on a carpet and then got back up and stood in a line. This all happened really slowly. The musicians started playing, and still nothing happened. The robe guys just stayed where they were. After awhile, there was a pause in the music and at that exact moment when the music stopped and nothing else was happening is when my stomach went "wheeeeeeeeeeeee!" with a horrible digestive noise and I believe that other people had to have heard it as well and I was embarrassed.
Eventually, the guys started whirling, but it wasn't crazy ecstatic whirling but instead a carefully calculated and slow spin. More of a rotation than anything else. You could see their bloomers, though, which made me happy. They all had these flesh-colored fezzes on that made them look like Coneheads.
There was one really exciting part though - one of the Dervishes accidentally hit a microphone and sent it crashing to the floor. Loud!
I started writing on my program what I heard this guy singing in the background. It went: "jaaaaayeeeeemaanuuuuuhhheeeeeeuhhhhdeehhhhhehhheeeee". That was about a minute of song.
So the show finally ended and we hung around in the lobby for a while to catch a glimpse of not-Travis, because I like to stalk. I was considering going up to him and saying "Hi, you don't know me, but you look just like my friend Travis. Would you get a picture with me so I can show him later?" and then I played it in my head and realized how incredibly weird that would be.
Now, I know that the last train post was pretty exciting, but hold on to your hats because there's more. Remember when we left, the hobo saw us and didn't like us. So what happened?
The hobo boarded the train! Lucky for us, he decided to mosey on back to the staff car, leaving one with the crazy idea that he worked for these people or something. Wild.
Here's a view from between the train cars which I was only able to get because we were stopped at Pleasant Gap. I would have tried to get a moving shot but as the Announcement Voice told us several times, their insurance doesn't cover passengers going from car to car.
Speaking of the Announcement Voice, the fact that he kept bringing up tragic tales did not make me feel safer on the train. The first story was about some guy that murdered Voice's great-great grandfather's family or something, and then later as we were rounding a bend the Voice cheerfully added that a train derailed there once and killed a bunch of people.
I want to go to the Swank Cafe.
This sign made me laugh not just because it says "No, No Kitty!" but because of how pitiful the cat looks. PS: the rest of the sign was an ad for some cat food.
In keeping with signage, I noticed a ton of quotation marks that seemed a bit superfluous. This both irritates and amuses me. "Susquehanna" - just kidding!
"Pepsi and Pete" - fooled you! That's not their real name!
"Signed by the author" - punked!
Hah, this kid wasn't the only one lulled by the gentle rocking of the Bellefonte train. Travis was asleep for the last fifteen minutes of the ride.
I asked one of the staff to take this picture of us just to get him to stop talking about his daughter and how she went to college for nine years and had a 3.9 GPA. Good lord, he was chatty.
And here's Travis and me in ten years. I will have aged horribly.
We added some whimsy by stopping in a toy store looking for sparkly things to bring Erin. Although nothing with glitter, I did find this neat world-warping clear disk.
Oh, Bellefonte is just as nerdy as the next town. I have no idea what these people were doing, as Halloween was still at least three weeks away and they were in front of a coffee shop.
Thank god Darth Vader finally arrived! You can't have a geeky street festival without him, you know.
I've been terribly remiss in updating, but at least things are coming to fruition since I just got back a midterm essay that I thought I did very badly on but ended up being an A. I think the professor's standards are too low, but whatever. Great job, me. So what's been going on?
I made great muffins! Who doesn't get excited about that? I think I ate them all in two days because I get gluttonous when I have things to do in a short amount of time.
I cat-man-don't understand this bumper sticker that I found on a Dumpster downtown.
But of course everyone is waiting with bated breath to hear about ... the fall foliage train ride from Bellefonte to Pleasant Gap and back! Woo! Toot toot!
We had to get there an hour early to pick up the on-call tickets that the man on the phone ominously threated to sell at 11:15. What does one do with an hour to spare in Bellefonte? Hit the thrift stores, of course. I found two black coats, one of which is wool and goes down to my knees and is just lovely.
Ou has been bessed.
We did not, unfortunately, ride the Really Old Timey train.
However, we were really late getting on the train and thus all of the cars were filled. Rather than tell us 'too bad', the conductor led us into the employee car with a couch. Swank! Here's Travis looking suave.
Two cool kids on a train ride.
No one else got the couch, hah. The only other people in there were these two families and some guy hanging out by the kitchen area that gave the children 'licorice' rather than Twizzlers. It is authentically old-timey!
Trash can.
Ooh, foliage.
Ooh, a trout hatchery! And they even give tours! I know where we're going next Saturday.
I managed to take the picture as we were flying by the stop lights. It was pretty amazing.
Uh-oh, hobo on the line!
He sees ya! He doesn't like ya!
Moving on... for now.
I was walking past these two girls in the Willard building today and I heard one of them say to the other, "so my professor was talking about his birthday last year and how his wife wouldn't let him have any of his own cake because he was on a diet." That was probably the best one-sentence story I've ever heard in transit.
Tonight I am super-excited since it's the Halloween Drag Show and oh, how I've waited to attend! The first year I was working as a security guard, the second I had to work at Carmike, last year I was not around, but nothing shall stop me this year!
I went to the Schlow Library today and picked up about a dozen children's books as comfort reading, mainly ones from The Great Brain series. Also Tuck Everlasting.
Ooh, and after I'm done here I get to go to Meyer's Dairy to see the cows and then to the pet store. Hopefully the cats will be in season, otherwise I will be a sad panda.
I'm at the University Learning Center, supposedly tutoring right now but it's really the easiest three hours pay in the world since the writing assignments for Spanish are due on Wednesdays and no one wants to write theirs a week before it's due. That's why my standard Tuesday shift is always so trafficky. I had two guys come up to me wanting to watch my mad tutor skillz in action for some class they're taking. I giggled because of how not competent I am. I have found that the two most helpful things in faking knowledge is first to always appear as if you know sooo much and secondly to ask them a lot of questions, in a concerned manner.
I am thinking about being wild and crazy tonight and actually going out to the bars for Tim's friend's birthday. Happy birthday, random friend! I'm just using you as an excuse to go out! My speech class was cancelled tomorrow so maybe that would make a good nap time.
I've been playing freerice.com for quite some time now but cannot raise my vocab score above a 42. In positive news, I have given over 460 grains of rice. I need to stop.
Because I want to build suspense and also because our wireless is crappy, I'll only be posting several pictures today. But they are exciting wildlife fun pictures, so that's good. Let's go!
Up the vertigo-inducing escalator. What if someone fainted? We'd all be knocked over like bowling pins.
Rowr! Exciting cats! Since the weather was so nice, all of the animals were out and about. What's this tiger looking at so intently?
Dinner! The flamingos were entertaining. One was sleeping and doing the whole perchy one-leg thing.
This peahen couldn't measure up to her male counterpart.
The zebras were looking good.
Fish in the pond.
More pond.
I would love to post some lovely zoo pictures, but a combination of spotty, slow internet and a midterm paper due Wednesday makes that impossible. In fun news, I visited Tattoo Mark's Studio Two for a couple hours today and watched someone get a ship tattoo and someone else get their tragus pierced. Consensus: I want neither a tattoo nor a tragus piercing.
I'm at home right now, which is great news since yesterday I did pretty much everything I enjoy in life. I woke up late, had a grilled cheese sandwich, Mom and I went to the zoo (!), I got some great pictures which I am unable to share right now but will do this evening, went to the thrift store, bought a jacket that got rung up as a blazer, ate at Pizza Hut (!), went to the airport, saw Dad, hung out with Rob, and got a vanilla Frosty (!). How could that day have possibly improved?
I think that's all a cosmic reward for the ordeal I suffered through on Friday night. I was supposed to take the bus home at 5:05, for a five and a half hour trip. I think it's really lame that the express bus got cancelled last year, but whatever. Five and a half hours. That's bad. But not as bad as seven hours, which is how long the trip ultimately ended up taking. So what happened???
1. The bus was late to begin with. Those leaving for Philadelphia and Harrisburg were just idly lounging in the parking lot forever and finally the Fullington bus for Pittsburgh showed up at 5:30.
2. Our bus driver was a cigarette fiend who just stood outside the bus and smoked for another forty-five minutes while we waited for another late bus that had passengers destined for Pittsburgh.
3. So it's 6:10. We start moving. People cheer. I take a Benedryl and begin a nap.
4. My nap is rudely interrupted when the guy next to me says "hey, we're pulling off the road". We were indeed off the road. Why? Because the engine stopped working. Now we're stuck in Phillipsburg, on the side of the road, no light to read by, and no cell phone reception.
5. Smokey finally gets reception and calls Greyhound. They say to sit tight and they'll send another bus out. Estimated time: thirty minutes. We just sit on the bus and do nothing.
6. Eventually, the bus driver gets the brilliant idea to try turning the ignition one last time, and like magic it starts. We drive.
7. I have to pee like mad, so I go to the horrible, stinky bathroom. It's about a hundred degrees, no joke, and I begin to become concerned about the state of our engine and whether it's either going to just fall off of the bus or explode.
8. By the way, this entire time I sat next to this really loud, stinky guy who would play rap on his cell phone through the speaker. Ugh.
9. We stop in Clearfield to wait for the replacement bus to fix our engine. So we're just sitting there. Wait time: thirty minutes.
10. We stop again near Punxatawny. We're supposed to switch buses, the driver says, but there aren't any spares so we can't. However, that does mean that we have to find a diesel gas station and fill 'er up since there isn't any more fuel left.
11. Pacific Pride, here we come. The driver gets off and begins smoking until one of the attendants berates him back onto the bus. Wait time: twenty minutes.
12. Eventually, stinky seat partner and his friend get off at Indiana and I'm able to lounge.
13. Arrival time in Pittsburgh: 12:00. How lame.
Huzzah for completing all of my degree requirements! I ran the audit through elion and everything finally went through. I still have to organize the minors, but I'm fairly confident that I shouldn't have a problem there, either.
Um, it's really hot in this lab and I'm starting to sweat.
I'm starting to realize how dull my life is. My week pretty much goes class, Deadwood, class, tutoring lots of Spanish, class, Deadwood, class, tutoring Korean lady, class, nap. Then on the weekends I bring entertainment to the masses.
I want to post the extremely funny (to me) email that I sent to the parents about the PAWS website and how they have pictures of the pets to be adopted as well as a short informative biography that is often quite funny. However, I fear that I'll get some angry shelter employee emailing me and saying something like "even though our animals can't use a keyboard or access the internet, they can be extremely hurt when people make fun of them". Hmm. Now I kind of want that email. We'll see what I can put together.
At long last, the Insect Fair. Fun for the whole family.
Thank god it was a nice day because if it had been raining and all of the kids and the band and the bees were inside at the same time, I would have turned around and left right here.
There was a folksy band that played exciting bug songs. Here's a very short clip.
This was the beginning of the many Harry Potter references that the Insect Fair used shamelessly to appear 'hip'. You're not hip. You're entomologists.
Ah! West Nile Virus! Run! They bred mosquitoes in a jar to show us what they looked like. I asked what was going to happen to them after the Fair, and the guy sitting at the booth said that they were just going to be dumped on the ground outside. Murder.
They are long dead by now.
But ooh, did you know that butterflies can live up to nine months? It's true! I learned this fun fact while the attendant was trying to push an Insect Museum membership on me, being very not sly about it.
Metamorphosis in action.
Can you spot the caterpillar?
I want to be a Bug Lady for Halloween. Get it? Bug Lady? And she's a ladybug? Clever.
Now this was an interesting little activity. "Painting with Maggots". I call it "Extortion and Agony with Maggots." You take a maggot out of a container, roll it around in maggot-unfriendly paint, and prod it on a piece of paper until its death throes produce a work of art that you'll promptly throw away once you get home.
"I generally allow at least one maggot per student, with plenty of 'spares' in the event of the untimely death of one of the maggot artists. Occasionally, you will encounter a maggot that does not want to paint for you, no matter how much poking or-"
I passed by this grate a week or so ago and it made me stop and ponder what happened. Obviously this bird is dead. Very dead. But what is going on with that separated part up on the right?
Is it the head?A different part? It's definitely feathery.
Here's a close-up of the rest of him, even though I'm sure no one really wants to see it. What could have happened? The bird looks almost like he was placed there. There's a mystery afoot, no doubt.
In happier news, Travis went to Tuesday Morning while his car was being inspected the other day. I always thought that Tuesday Morning was an overpriced antiquey store that sold stuff like wind chimes and stuffed bears, but not so! According to Travis, there's all these game rejects, like an electronic rock-paper-scissors. Also, a fun LED strobe light that flashes in rhythm to whatever song you're playing. Oh, it's so cool. I have video that I'll post later.
Way cool!
It's not so awesome with flash on. However, a ghost appears to be flying out of my laptop.
When I was at Wal-Mart the other day, browsing through the cheese section, I came across this frosted dog cake on sale. It was like a magical gift waiting for me to find it.
I ate the head last.
