My Piece of the Internet

first, happy slightly late birthday to amberdreams! fabulous artist and generally nifty person. (and i was lucky enough to get her as my bigbang artist twice. it was very exciting.)

dancing boys: *tango*

and yes, one of them does have a rose between his teeth. :D

in other news my laptop desperately needs to be cleaned. oy.

in other other news i should be packing.

anyway. i know it was a week ago but i hope the americans in the audience had a nice long memorial day weekend and that the non-americans in the audience had a very chill monday. my sister and i went to new york to see a show (the outsiders which i'm mixed about) and eat a lot and see cousins and go on a walking tour of surviving gilded age mansions and check out the metropolitan museum (superfine: tailoring black style which was educational and fascinating and had some really cool clothes) (zoot suits!). fun was had, pictures were taken, seeing cousins is always fun. we met cousin n and his girlfriend s for dinner sunday night and sat in the restaurant for three hours and yes we kind of kept ordering food but at no point did anyone try to rush us out. (cousin n is the brother of cousin j who had the birthday party the weekend before so we'd just seen him and s but because they live in north new jersey and they're fun to hang out with we saw them again.) and for breakfast on monday we met cousin m who's the daughter of cousin s who lives in arizona. (there will be a quiz later. :D ) cousin m is getting her master's at columbia where the academic situation is a little tense, let's say. cousin m is not down with the way columbia basically rolled over and showed its belly to mango mussolini - the only thing capitulation gets you is more demands from the maladministration and a school full of anxious, unhappy students and faculty - she's thinking about going for a phd but her mom would like her to go somewhere slightly less fraught. but she wants to stay in the city. so we'll see. she looks like her mom, talks like her mom, gestures like her mom - it's kind of adorable but mostly uncanny. we get to see her once a year so it's always nice when it happens.

the outsiders won a tony for best musical last year, and some of the actors were nominated for best actor/best supporting but none of them won and honestly my sister and i were not surprised. i loved the music and the sound effects and the lighting design, and the choreography was good, and the set design was inventive (in one scene the socs drive an actual car out from offstage), but i think i imprinted too hard on the movie - and i've seen it too many times - to really appreciate a stage adaptation. and i still think it was a weird choice to turn into a musical. they added some character stuff (which i'm also mixed about) and changed a thing about the ending and while i did like it and i'm glad we saw it i'm not 100% sure i'd unreservedly recommend it. maybe if you didn't know the source material. i wonder if se hinton has seen it and if she has what does she think.

and then we came home and my roommate was gone to visit a friend of hers in idaho so i had the place to myself all last week and it was soooo nice. i signed the lease to the new apartment and am currently collecting estimates for movers and i really should be packing but ugh. there's a tiny part of me that wants to wait for my roommate to move out at which point i'll have more space but she's moving the 19th and i'm moving the 28th and i'm going to need more than nine days. so i can't do that. i've filled four boxes so far, yay, altho to be fair one of those boxes was never actually unpacked when i moved in here. ahem.

this past saturday i went to my sister's to eat chinese food (better this time) and (re)watch mission: impossible - dead reckoning part one in preparation for mission: impossible - the final reckoning. i'm excited for the last one and am having a hard time believing it really is the last one. maybe i should watch some of the earlier ones.

and last week was commencement week at the u which meant a. no one was around because b. it was all graduations all the time and thus c. it was VERY QUIET. i may or may not have left early on friday. i like seeing all the kids in their gowns and mortarboards and graduate hoods and everything. i don't go to any of the graduations because there's no reason to but i like the glimpse of pageantry.

and tuesday a week ago i got a haircut and it's short and i'm pleased.

speaking of graduations, kermit the frog gave the commencement speech at the university of maryland. imagine having kermit speak at your graduation. no word on whether or not miss piggy was there to cheer him on.

and this is slightly old news, but enjoy some photos of the annual cheese rolling in gloucester (the uk gloucester, not the north-of-boston gloucester). whoever gets to the bottom of the hill first wins the rolling cheese (because of course) and the winner of the men's race was a german guy who said "i risked my life for this. it's my cheese." i'm not going to argue with him. that hill is steep.