Get your own
 diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

15:14 - April 12, 2003
and..
A few things I forgot: when we got back to Andrew's, Brendan had gone to bed, and I went in, flapping my arms and going, 'Dude! Dude! Why didn't you come to your surprise party, maaaannn? Ahhh!' and stumbling around and falling on my face onto his bed. I don't think he got it.

Also a few pictures from yesterday:

on the way up the mountain

on the rockslides on the way down, lucky to be alive

12:03 - April 12, 2003
we're not praying over the bowl
On Thursday, to pick a day totally at random, Rachel (who's visiting this week) and I met Lara and Chell at the Euclid bus stop and we all went hiking. (by picking a day totally at random I don't mean I'm making this up, I mean it's a strange day to randomly go hiking, even when it's suddenly eighty degrees outside and I only have two classes.) I haven't gone hiking, real hiking at least, since first semester, and Rachel has never gone hiking at this altitude (it's hard. 5400 feet is a lot different from 30), so it took us awhile to get up to the place I like being at: the actual climbing part. There's a path all the way from the base of Chatauqua to the base of the first Flatiron, which was the one we went to, and the path continues all the way up around the Flatiron, but I've never taken it heading up. I like to climb the huge boulders that pile along the side. Chell was a daredevil (i.e. idiot) and climbed in bare feet straight up the flat front to the first resting ledge while Lara, Rachel and I scrambled up the side where there are actual holds. At one point, Chell was at the ledge, I was about halfway, Lara was under me, and Rachel was around a curve ahead of me when we heard her scream and then scraping noises heading down, down. I froze and almost fell off what I was standing on. Lara stared at me; I stared at the wall that Rachel was on the other side of. I don't know what Chell was staring at because I couldn't see him, but I heard him swinging around a corner. The scraping noises were still going, and it was an absolute toss-up what to do, but then they stopped, and there was silence. We couldn't see her, so we yelled if she was all right. After a second she said she was, and we came the rest of the way up and she had found a place to sit and examine the damage, which wasn't too bad but fuck, I've slid down a mountain before and it is not at all fun.

When we got to the top (the top for us, where there's a cave-like crevice right under a curve of the side) we smoked a little and then headed down the path, this time. It was 9 before we got back to the dorms, partly because we stopped at Half Fast Subs [say it quickly] and observed a group of sorority girls and a group of frat guys in a 'mating ritual', which it really, really was. The guys were established at their table and the girls walked in. A guy complimented a girl on her skirt. The girl invited him to her table. Like lemmings, after a shout from their fellow (about to score) lemming, they all toddled over to the girls table, complimenting skirts like mad all the way.

Yesterday was weirder. In terms of theory, I'm fucked (piano concertino by Monday, must be able to play it, analysis paper, etc.) so I did that all day, and then at 10:30 we (same group) went to the Pink Floyd Laser Light Show in the planetarium. They were playing Welcome To The Machine. We thought they were playing The Wall, but Chell hadn't read the sign correctly. I would have loved it if it weren't for the fact that we were lying on a hardwood stage and my head started throbbing from the one place it touched the wood and kept moving out out out even when I put my coat under my head for pillowage, out out to my neck and my forehead, where it pulsed warningly. The light show probably didn't help matters by being 3D and huge (two prerequisites for making me sick; I always ran out of the IMAX theatre on elementary school field trips) so eventually, luckily only two songs before the end, I just lay on my side and enjoyed being enveloped by the music. [A sidenote: I am almost never affected as much by visual stimuli as by any other sort. For example, right now my suitemates are blasting something terrible out from their room with a constant pulsing bass beat and those annoying fucking synthetic snares, and even though both their door and mine are closed, I can hear it as though it was coming from my own stereo, and it's making it very very difficult to write coherently. So sounds affect me. So do smells, and remembrance of touches, but visuals go away very quickly. For example I could write perfectly fine were there flashing lights going off directly above my computer, which there kind of are; the CD rainbows from the sunlight through my window.]

Anyway, after the show we were hungry and stopped by the Hardrive Cafe at Kittredge, which was five minutes from closing, but we ordered and sat down anyway. We hadn't really started our food when the guy who had been making the sandwiches came over to the microphone on the stage and said we had to leave or otherwise he would sing. Predictably, we started clapping and chanting, 'sing! sing! sing!' at which he became super bashful and blushed, and said, 'do you really want me to sing?'
Yes. We really do. We want to finish our food, and we will hear you sing if you want to sing. Plus, we want you to sing.
'Ok. I'll sing now,' he said, and immediately ran off into the pool table, wailing, 'I'm not embarrassed!'
He came back to the microphone, blew into it a few times, tapped it, said, 'one, two, three', and then told us he would be singing Sarah McLachlan's 'Angel'. Then he opened his mouth and tore off running over by the counter, saying, 'I can't sing in front of you! no. No. I will sing. I will sing!'

This went on for quite a while. When finally he sang, in his thick Indian accent, Sarah McLachlan and then Bryan Adams, we clapped wildly in between his laughter, our laughter, and his co-workers laughter. 'Do not eat those tortilla chips while I am singing!' he admonished Lara at several points. 'Do not eat your ice cream! It is Ben and Jerry's! It will never go bad!'

On the way home we were wondering if any of it had actually happened, and then we got into Andrew's where everyone, as Lara and I concluded, was being twice their normal personalities. Brendan was asleep. Chell said 'maaaan' at every third word and chain smoked cigarettes, Jeremy had 3-D glasses on and screeched periodically, Felix and Chris pounded each other on the back enthusiastically and drunkenly, Aaron had met a million new people as always and had sequestered himself in the fort with them....
It was almost a parody of itself. At one point Lara suggested what this room would look like were someone to take a picture of it with a camera. Felix and Chris in a double headlock with each other. Behind them, on the wall, a picture of a witch coloured green with a pot leaf silkscreened on its hat, a sorority poster that says 'Jane', the picture of a vagina that is for some reason still up on the wall, a piece of paper put up in October that says 'Don't Get Clamidia in the Eye'(sic), and a faded picture of Andrew, Chris and I in the fort, looking like we always do: Andrew stretched out lazily with a cigarette dangling from his fingertips, me looking at Andrew and laughing, and Chris with the Duck Hunt gun in his mouth and an insane expression on his face.

Quote of the night: 'We're not praying over the bowl, Felix.'

11:34 - April 09, 2003
sky behind the mountains
I must say, it is pretty rockin' to not be apathetic and still be happy.

Past the March madness, yearly, here is April and the end of school is within counting distance on your fingers if you use weeks, even more so here since we end insanely early (May 8). There were two people behind me on the bus discussing the pros and cons of being almost out. (their two points being mainly: 'sweet, no more school' and 'bummer, no more parties', but who's surprised?) I, on the other hand, like it here so much I would consider spending my summer here. I won't, of course, but let's say interstates were closed because of... I don't know, threat of terrorist attacks on our highways (you laugh now, but when Bush actually issues something like that...) I wouldn't be all that torn up about being stranded.

Snowstorm Monday, cold clear Tuesday, warm dry sunny Wednesday in Boulder. The sky behind the mountains holds its secrets well.

12:55 - April 07, 2003
rather
My birthday dinner was set for Friday night. Eight people. Six p.m. I got reservations and everything (or, as close to reservations as they had) and told everyone I would pick them up at 5. On my way over, I collected Nick and Lara, and by some amount of luck ran into Aaron in the commons. Then we all went to Andrew's, where we found.... nobody. Nobody as opposed to everyone who was supposed to be there ready to go; Richard, Brendan, Jeremy, and Felix.

Before I could get too angry, though, they all came in, pretty much all at once, cracking open beers. 'Are we leaving?' I asked.
'The bus doesn't go for another fifteen minutes,' someone said, probably Jeremy. 'We should just wait here.'

Now, I know in order to get these guys moving you have to tell them at least ten minutes in advance, so I waited five minutes, and then got up and said, 'I'm going, at least,' and left, with Lara, Aaron, and Nick behind me. I assumed the rest of them would either follow me or at least catch the bus when it got there, but they never did. We ended up with just the four of us, which was fun, of course (Aaron refusing to eat sushi but still trying to eat more wasabi than Nick, and Nick, as a result, trying to eat more wasabi than Aaron), but Lara and I got all righteous and angry and were like, 'we're not going over there tonight! not ALL night! nope. fuck them. fuck them! they missed my birthday dinner to DRINK. it's not like they had anything better to do,' etc., etc., and, true to our word, did not go over there all night. We stayed in my room, got insanely high, and drew gay monkeys on a pad of paper and talked about how my bed was an ocean. We went to bed early.

So at one a.m., I'm fast asleep in my bed when my door cracks open and I hear barely suppressed whispers. 'Is she in here? Is she... Hannah? is she....'
It's Brendan's voice, and when I say, 'what?' the door slams the rest of the way open and Brendan and Chris tumble in, shouting, tripping over things in the dark and waving their arms around like madmen... drunk madmen.
'oh my god! oh my god, we are so sorry we didn't go...' (Brendan)
'....dude...' (Chris)
'... we were having a surprise party, we had it all planned upstairs...'
'.. and you didn't show up! and we thought you would come back for sure...'
'...Aaron said you would probably come back, but then you didn't...'
'... we didn't want sushi but we wanted to have a party for you, man, and...'
'.. we drank all the booze we got you though.'
I'm not sure what's going on. I think they're just drunk and kidding. 'Yeah, I can tell,' I say to Brendan, who starts laughing, and they both sway visibly around my bed. Chris falls onto it and takes my hand and says, 'you're so hot.'
'Chris..' warns Brendan.
'Naw, I don't mean it like that, I mean she's warm blooded, she's been under the covers, her hand is hot. Feel,' he says.
Brendan doesn't. 'We had those little sandwiches, we had Jeremy's girlfriend making you those little sandwiches...'
'Bruschetta.' Chris gets up, walks out my door, pounds on my neighbours' door. I yell at him to stop. He just looks at me blankly and does it again. Brendan is kind of slurring: 'why didn't you show, maaaaaan...'

There is such a difference between them. Suddenly.

Chris is angry. His eyes are wild. I get scared of him when he gets drunk. He doesn't hear things, and he doesn't think anything, I don't think. He stands in the hallway, chest heaving, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. 'If you wanna get CRUNK,' he yells at Brendan, thumping him on the shoulder, 'then let's go get Crunk.'
'I don't know, I'm pretty crunk,' says Brendan, stumbling. 'I'm pretty crunk already.' But he does follow Chris. He isn't angry. He's laughing hard at himself as he says, 'Next time we have a surprise party for you.... you better... show up.'

The door shuts and I can hear them fighting in the hall, the thud of someone's head hitting the wood bathroom door. 'Don't touch my cigarette, thug,' Chris hollers, and Brendan's voice is only a faint mumble after the elevator door closes. I hear later that Chris gets his lip split by someone outside and wakes up in an ice puddle.

In some ways I still thought they were kidding about the surprise party, trying to cover their asses, but everyone I asked says it's true, and I don't know whether to feel bad or not. Andrew, who wasn't there for it either, being in another state, only said this: 'They got food for you, man. They never get food for anyone.' He always has a very simple way of putting things.

So this weekend has me very muddled up. not sure whether I have anything to be regretful about, or... what.

 

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!