At Easter time, I got a bunny candle. It was cute and white and looked very life-like despite it's small size. The picture above gives you kindof an idea, though mine was whiter and was sitting in a little tea candle holder thing. I thought it would be amusing to burn (in a perverse way), so I did one day while I was supposed to be doing homework. Jenn and I sat and watched the poor little guy melt into himself. His ears slowly bent backwards and eventually fell off. His head hollowed out and bent forward onto his little outstretched paw. It was a very sad sight. Who makes such horrible things? And why was it so fascinating to burn it? Terrible, just terrible. The little bunny was mangled and almost unrecognizeable by the time I blew out the wick (I couldn't take any more). Following is the picture of what the cute little white bunny rabbit became.

After 

Random Events

Lots of little things seem to be happening lately, mostly little because I have no time for big things :)
~I found a place to live in NY this summer. YWCA Brooklyn, right off the subway line, a single room, a kitchen and laundry, not to mention access to all the facilities the Y offers. Sweet. And also more affordable than some of the 10-bed hostle places I was looking at.
~Jennica has found a boy. This is big news. She had resigned to herself that there were simply no boys at Hope that were right for her, and the next week this wonderful kid lands right in her lap. He's smart, and funny, and even puts up with the housemates. He came to family dinner last week, and only looked slightly shell-shocked. He was over last night, and participated in a grand game of 90's Trivial Pursuit (3 couple teams and 1 team of 3 "singles"). Though he and Jenn lost misterably (to me and Mike's sweep) he seemed to really enjoy hanging with us (can you tell that it's a big deal if the boys like the housemates?). Overall, a very good thing. Now, only Alyssa is left, anybody know any single guys who would like a date with a hot blonde athletic trainer?
~3 student dance concerts all went very well. People really seemed to like my piece, possibly because it was surrounded by either disturbing, boring, or incomprehensible pieces. The non-dance faculty adjudicators said that the music reminded them of 9/11, which scewed their view of the piece as a whole, but since Steven (a dance prof) and I both agree the music wasn't quite what I wanted, that's not such a bad critique. Sarah danced beautifully and I was very much pleased with the outcome, which is really all that matters, right? The senior showcase was also this week, and it went great. Chelsea's piece (in which I was a 3-year-old) went off without a hitch, and we got a lot of laughs.
~The spring recital for my baby ballet girls was today, and it went wonderfully. I somehow ended up being in charge of about 100 girls under the age of 8 backstage, with a couple of high school girls to back me up. It was so hard to keep them quiet, and the other girls only helped a little. I ended up having to lead a "warm up," to get them all to pay attention to me. The coloring was out of control, and they were only quiet when I was standing right next to them, but thankfully it went smoothly and they all got out of there pretty quick. My girls danced wonderfully, they didn't forget anything and they smiled really big. Very cute. Hopefully this is the end of my career with the tiny girls, I think I convinced my boss to give me older girls next year, I am just bad at teaching beginners.
~We got our last biochem test back, and I didnt' get a C!!! That's huge news for me. But sadly there's another one on Monday, and the final a week after that, so I've got to keep working my backside off to continue with this passing trend. Good luck digging me out of my textbook for a while.
~A bunch of us went to see The Phantom of the Opera last night. Everyone thought it was great, but I hated it. The lips were off the music for so much of the movie that I was endlessly distracted. The singers were really pop-y and the phantom couldn't hit his notes. The scenery was nice, the costumes were gorgeous, but there were so many flaws in my book that I couldn't bring myself to like it. I really think they butchered a great show. I'm back to watching Chicago, which was done much better.
~I can't think of anything else, so I suppose I'm forced to do some homework or something. Love you all, only a couple more weeks of school!!

Sad

A sad event has recently occured at my beloved school. One of my favorite professors was asked to resign. He is not the run-of-the-mill Hope teacher, he is very liberal and outspoken about his views. I took a class from him called "Liberation Theology" and it pushed me to think about all aspects of my faith, strengthening it and stretching it to its limits. I grew so much in his class, and his perspective - being so different from so many people at Hope - truly changed my college experience. I would not be who I am or know what I know without his help. He is very outspoken about his beliefs, and though this challenged me positively, it proved to be his downfall here. He wrote an article in the local paper (he has a bi-weekly column) about a statement made by James Dobson of Focus on the Family about Spongebob Squarepants. In it, he pointed out the intolerance and power imbalance he felt was evident in Dobson's statement. Dobson soon after wrote a follow-up article to the paper, calling the professor mean-spirited, closed-minded, and rude. He closed the article with a statement about his fear for the students at Hope college, saying he was happy his children did not attend the school because they would run into men like this professor. Hope was obviously unhappy about the bad press time, and suggested to the professor that he retire. In some ways, this is understandable. Yet, it also silenced one of the few voices for human rights, the poor, and the oppressed on campus. Many other teachers agree with this man's ideas, yet none are nearly as vocal and hard-driven about it. I feel that the loss of this professor will have a large impact on the school. There is such a feeling of isolation and insulation here, with students coming and going out without learning much more about the world except where to find the best party and how to avoid the most work. This professor's abscence will be felt, by me and many others, and his voice will be sincerely missed in the community as well as on campus.

Beware Poetry Haters: Poem Post

The Knickerbocker Theater

I've walked this path 1,000 times
Day in and day out, 10,000 times
Cut around corners, loop around trees
It makes no real difference
Through the lawn, over the sidewalk,
Across the street, up the stairs
In rain, wind, snow, and blinding sun
Purple flowers, orange leaves, naked boughs
Lining the way
Yet something is different each time that I go
1,000
10,000
Other places for my mind to be

Poor

I'm taking this May term class that is actually an internship at the rehab department of Holland Hospital. It's great: 150 hours of volunteer clinical experience, no books to buy, no homework to do. Yet, I have to look like an intern, which doesn't fit in my normal style of jeans with old sneakers and a t-shirt that I got from some dance show. So instead of buying books, I had to buy clothes. And dang are clothes expensive. Usually, I buy like one pair of jeans, maybe a pair of socks. That's expensive enough. But going out and buying khakis, black pants, black capris, grey pants, a skirt, 3 button-up shirt, comfortable dress shoes, 3 tank tops and a pretty purple shirt nearly broke my bank. It's good I'm gonna wear all this stuff a lot, cause making myself shop that much was a real chore. I hate shopping.
My housemate is in the athletic training department, and had to do this nutritional analysis project. So for 3 days I wrote down everything I ate or drank, and she evaluated me. I'm not doing too bad, my calorie intake and excersizing just about even out, which is good. But eating at the caffeteria makes a big difference to my nutrition. I eat a lot of salt, just because of the options I am given. I eat a ton of bread, mostly because that's what my body is always craving. My cholesterol is almost right, but then some days I give in to the dessert trays and it's just shot. I need to pay more attention to what I eat, instead of just eating until I'm full. I hoped this day would never come.
I had a hot date with my good friend Jessica Maynard last night. We got pizza and played Scrabble. It was hilarious. Apparently she had never played with the real rules. She thought you could stack the tiles (which is actually a different game called UpWords), and she also thought you could add words in more than one direction, and use specials more than once. Plus, she kept showing me her letters so I could help her think of words ("no Jess, snore isn't spelled s-n-o-a-r"). It was really fun, though, I miss having time to hang out with her. Maybe she'll be in town for student teaching next semester and we can chill more often.
Lots of fun stuff in store this week: stats test, biochem quiz, 3 student dance concerts, a jazz show I need to attend, and the spring recital for my beginner ballet students. Maybe I should have done my homework ahead of time....

Headache Free is the Place to Be!

I had these wierd headaches on and off for about a week. They started off really bad, I threw up what felt like 3 days worth of what I had eaten. Then for the next 6 days I would feel fine for a couple of hours, feel like I wanted to kick anyone who made any repetitive noises for a couple of hours, then I would get all mad and force myself to just keep on living my life regardless of the nagging nausea. Every day I would say "I'll go to the health clinic tomorrow," but then the only time I had to go was the only time of day I felt alright. But eventually, miraculously, it all got better. I've been able to eat 3 good meals (plus some snacks even) for about 3 days now, and I haven't been bothered by neck tension in 2 days. Awesome. Kathleen and I are pretty sure I was getting the tension heachaches in response to her stress, cause the first night in a week that she actually got some sleep and didn't have something huge to hand in my headaches went away. I hope she doesn't stress that much again any time in the near future.
Apart from the odd headaches (no, I didn't have a concussion, unless Jennica beat me with a baseball bat in the night), it's been a pretty good couple of days. I haven't had anything major due, my biochem test went alright (we'll see how the grade is, but there was no suicide wish during or after), I've been getting an acceptable amount of sleep.
The student dance concert is next week, in which I am choreographing my first major piece. Actually, it's not that major, since it's a solo, but it is about 6 minutes long. I had to show it to the faculty, and Steven declared "I hate the music, I hate everything about the music, I'd rather see it in silence." So I cut the music, have been listening to every instrumental piece I can find for the last week or so, and now there are a couple silent chunks and kind of faded in and out Barber's Adagio for Strings. It's....interesting....at least. Hopefully she doesnt' fall off the stage, which is the only way I'll be upset about it. Just having this piece up on the stage is good enough for me at this point. Next time, happy music and counted movement. And lots of jazz squares.
We're sequencing lysozyme in lab tomorrow, which should be exciting (HPLC, oh yeah). Sorry, just a little geekiness for the Little One :-P
Later, gator.

First Sunset

Well, spring has officially sprung. I had my first beach sunset trip on Friday night, and it was absolutely gorgeous. There were people flying kites down by the water, little kids digging in the softer sand up on the dune. There was a group of dancers from Sacred dance having a rehearsal on the beach (see pictures below). It was just wonderful. The sand was freezing, Michael nearly lost a couple toes, but it was worth it. I would go watch this every night if I could, it's my favorite part of warm weather around here. The ice cream store on the way to the beach helps too :)

Some Sacred dancers 

Dancing on the beach

Attention: Mommy

So Kathleen and I came up with this great idea. Now that all the kids and spouses in my family have a blog or site of some sort, Mom and Dad should get one. Mama could put all of her essays on it, Dad could update us all on the unmentionable countries he is in. It would be awesome. So, food for thought, parents. Apparently you're not cool unless you blog :)

In other news, I got accepted into the Paul Taylor Summer Intensive, which means I'll be spending a month in NYC this summer dancing my little backside off and staying in a dorm bed in a hostel. Quite an adventure. Maybe I'll scrape my pennies together and see a baseball game (I can't have Rich see more Yankee games this year than I do, that's just wrong). My professor Ray is so excited to have me in NY, he's got this extensive list of people I should go and meet and take class from. So not only am I going to be dancing 8 hours a day and enjoying the city, apparently I'm going to be networking as well. I suppose I've gotta start sometime.
I registered for next semester's classes today, and it felt so good to not have any chemistry in my schedule. No long labs, no 8:30 chem lectures. Amazing. My advisor is convinced I'm just sitting around all next year because I have 1 gen ed class left and my primary major is finished. It's close to that, but mostly located at the Dow. 5 of my 6 classes are in the Dow (houses the gym and stuff and also the dance studios and a couple of classrooms the kinesiology department uses). I might just take my pillow over there and set up camp.
Biochem test Wednesday, everybody pray.

We burnt the buns on Easter. This picture is kinda random, but also rather artsy. I was amused, and thought I'd post it to spread the amusement. The buns were fine once the bottoms were pulled off.