What if I don't want this any more?

I am very dissatisfied with my classes this semester. There are a number of things I am required to take to finish my general education requirements, my dance major, or my graduate school prerequisites that I had been putting off until this year. At the time, it seemed like a good plan to avoid these chore-like classes until I was past the chemistry hump. So much of my brain and time was taken up by really difficult science and math that I had no space left for kinesiology or humanities. But this year, everything must be finished at once. I have no excuse to get out of biomechanics, or exercise physiology, or my senior seminar. I can't avoid folk dance class or dance therapy or sociology. As much as I don't want to take these things, someone has told me I must. But every day it gets harder to push through them. I feel like I shouldn't be struggling with them so much, I pushed myself through 3 years of chemistry that was un-interesting to me, way over my head, and thoroughly out of my league. But now I can't seem to focus on elementary physics concepts applied to baseball bats or knee joints. I can't comprehend basic cardiovascular function because I don't really care. I have very few burning questions about medical ethics seen from a conservative Christian perspective, as I have already taken time in my life to answer many of those questions for myself.
Any distraction, I dive into like holy water. I finished all my tasks for the next three weeks for the dance honors society I'm a part of, just to avoid reading about non-maliciousness in health care. I mapped out every possible room arrangement for the house for next semester so I didn't have to answer questions about third class lever systems in the body. I studied vocab for the GRE so I wouldn't have to read about lactate thresholds.
I know senioritis is infamous, but I didn't think it would be so annoying.

The last train to Clarksville

Clarksville, Arkansas is not especially exciting. It's a tiny town with one Wal-Mart, 2 pizza places, a couple of greasy spoon diners, and a used tire store. It's located smack in the middle of a dry county. The 700 students at the University of the Ozarks in town make up about 1/3 of the town's population. The 10 members of Aerial Dance Theater who visited there last week caused quite a stir.
We drove 13 hours to get there, stopping only 3 times. We all crammed into one 15-passenger van, fitting not only the 10 of us, but also all of our luggage, an entire dance floor, 3 chairs, 2 big metal benches, a huge birdcage, and a full set of stage lights. We ate at the same restaraunt 3 times while we were in town, twice keeping them open about an hour and a half later than their usual closing time. We met all kinds of amusing people from Texas (the tuition is cheaper in AR than TX), a guy who called himself John the Jew (who had a good number of company members drooling over him), a bunch of middle schoolers with no dance experience who made us all look like novices, and a couple of high school waiters and waitresses who thought we were the coolest thing to ever roll into town.
The show went well, the stage was huge and the lighting looked very nice considering it was all thrown together out of the back of the van. After a couple weeks of break from doing the pieces in full costume, we got to enjoy again the completely un-flattering many layers of 80's clothing for one piece, and the pants that fit no one in the company that I happened to be saddled with for another piece. The huge screws sticking out of the stage only gave us a little trouble. The biggest injury came when I ran into the pulley system for the back scrim and ended up with a huge bruise on my shin. And no, it wasn't that dark backstage at the time, I'm just no good with unfamiliar theaters.
Overall, it was an enjoyable adventure. I'm still a little stiff from the 16 hour drive back (why did it take so much longer on the way home?), and I'm a little lost in my classes, but it was still fun. I feel accomplished in bringing something new to an area that gets little artistic exposure. John the Jew got a couple more friends on Facebook, and we all have funny stories to tell about the director yelling at us to "move the skank pillows out of [his] way, shut up, and go to sleep" in the van.

Stupid 10/31

I hate Halloween. I can't watch tv cause I'm afraid of every commercial, and I can't stand the plot lines of Halloween-themed sitcoms. I'm not a big fan of that font that's all wavy at the bottom that is supposed to look scary. I don't especially like things made from pumpkins, except pie and you don't get that until Thanksgiving. I have nothing to dress up in, other than Alyssa's athletic training outfit, so I'm out of the costume loop. I like candy, but the annoying middle schoolers who want nothing but to mooch off of your sugar ruin trick-or-treating. And why must everything edible be made in the shape of a ghost? Boo to Halloween.

Signage

I was hungry the other day. As I usually do when I get hungry, I went to the dining hall for some dinner. I got some food and sat down at a table. There, before me, was this horrifying sight:





















FREIGHT weekend?!?! Who the heck wrote this? Did the train go by and distract them from spelling right? Did they not look at their sign before they posted one on every table in both dining halls and on boards across campus? Did they mean to give me a fright by spelling fright wrong?
O Hope College, beloved Alma Mater, where did you go wrong?

Big things

Two things that are "big" in my life:

There was a peeping tom on campus this week. He was caught peeping in my housemate's window, and lurking around between the houses on our block. Um...creepy. So we are all now going around with cell-phones in hand, Campus Safety is wandering around our block at various times to check that we're okay, we don't let anyone in the back door (even housemates). We don't really feel un-safe, just a little freaked that this event actually occured at our house. Emily is still pretty wired, she's been sleeping on our couch upstairs, but since the authorities have been seen more recently around here we don't feel as bad.

I was unpacking my winter clothes today, and found that I really have no space for more clothing in my room. So I got rid of....(you'll never guess).... HOODIES! Yes, it's true, I got rid of hoodies. Four of them. And 2 pairs of jeans. I still have more comfy cotton than anyone could ever need, but that's a huge purge of my normal wardrobe. I'm hoping this will force me to wear more of my nice clothes, which I suppose I should get some use out of since I paid money to buy them all. I believe this is really a big step in my maturity, that I could let go of some things that were a part of who I am but really just un-neccessary baggage. Sounds weird, but getting rid of them made me feel like more of an adult.

Two completely unrelated things, but big none the less.

Break

Fall break has come at last. After two weeks of absolute craziness, I have a couple of days to breathe. The Aerial show went well, but it took over my life for a week. The company rented a U-Haul and brought our lives from the Dow to the Knick (just kidding, but it does seem like we live in the Dow most of the time). Then last week I had to do TONS of work to both make up for the week of the show and it was just crunch time. So I wrote about 2 papers a day, about everything from the Horton modern technique to aerobic fitness tests. Fun times. But after all this junk, I got to go home and spend a day holding my new niece. She is CUTE!!! Not to mention her still-adorable older brother. Anna doesn't do very much yet, just kinda lies there and poops, but she's still darn loveable. She's so small and lump-like, it's awesome. Sam is great, he knows some colors and letters (impressive) and actually remembers who I am now. He was also exceedingly excited about my laundry. He said goodbye to it more than to me when I was leaving.
Some shots of the day of baby fun:















So cute.

Just Because

Fun in the dressing room. We had about an hour between pieces, so we entertained ourselves by taking bad pictures. This started out as an attempt to capture my nicely curled hair. So much for that, I guess. Ah, the Aerial girls, how I love them :-)