quidditchgrrl

*unfolds from fetal position*

Nothing makes you welcome the relative peace and quiet of your home more than spending a weekend at Grand Assembly.

Good things this year:
The girls placed for the third straight year in SuperTeams competition (for water balloon toss)
The girls placed FIRST for our door decorations (which are in the pictures) in GWA theme (for the first time in a loooong time, we had actually qualified by decorating the doors)
The GWA (from our Assembly) met all of her goals for the year, including more than $10K for Miracle Flights!
We raised more than $1500 for a Rainbow family whose home had been damaged in a flood, then by a fire
We met in the Kenyon Athletic Center, in the basketball arena, the way Grand Assembly ought to be! (And the tubular lights in the picture actually light up in rainbow colors!)

The not-so-good:
Two girls getting sick during Chubby Bunny (which is why you shouldn't CHEW in an attempt to cheat!) - good thing I brought chewable aspirin for post-Bunny tummyaches
Partnering with that, realizing that if you buy marshmallows, they need to be stale, or you need to buy them a couple months in advance, or they will be too sticky
Forgetting to bring cups for Saturday night :(
Not having an older Rainbow girl to help out in the dorms

Wanna see pictures of our gorgeous girls having fun, our door decorations, and life-sized Nerds? Go my album.

I've finally seen the Lost pilot...a couple of days before I receive season 1 from Amazon. :P

Also figured out how my del.icio.us account works - thanks authenticpoppy!

Rainbow annual report finished and signed off. Holy frijoles, if I had this much trouble getting information entered in the Supreme site, I can't imagine how the older MAs are managing. Thank goodness it's done, though! GOOD NEWS - Grand Assembly sessions will be held at the Kenyon Athletic Center. Yay!

Got roped into giving yet another series of presentations at work - this time an overview of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. *headdesk* However, trading a few hours of preparation for the agonizing hours of the disciplinary process seems a good thing. I wish we could get one of our other staff to jump into these things. It's not that hard!

OMG. Matthew Fox is on TDS. GUH. And he's wearing a gold medallion. Gold medallions + man dickey = teh sex. This is my desktop background at work. Hubba, hubba.

Now returning you to your Olympics/Colbert Report/regularly scheduled lives.

I love living in the Midwest. Columbus, despite the fact that it's in the Midwest, is a pretty happening kind of place. I can get bubble tea, pad thai, fresh cucumbers, and organic guava without putting up with some holier-than-thou hipster attitude.

ANYWAY. Recap:

1. Violent Femmes. Awesome. Dissonant. Crowd full of people Trying Too Hard. Got squirted with lotion/sunscreen (you can imagine what flashed through my mind when I ended up covered with thick, white goo). hastyent gets the Good Friend Award for coming along with me!

2. Lodge Bar. Worst.drinks.ever. Don't order from the bar there - just drink bottled beer. Gah.

3. Car wash. I remember why we don't do these things to make money - too much time, energy and sun. We do it for "donations" - a guy driving a Corvette gave us $3 to wash his car. Boo. My face and neck are burnt; I'm using the Honey Bee cream now, for sure! And we have another planned for September 10. *headdesk*

4. Naps. Naps are nice.

5. Ice cream. I have developed allergies to most preservatives, so my choices for ice cream are down to nearly nothing. Nothing but Jeni's Ice Cream, that is. I've been at the North Market at least twice a week all summer long. Today I had basil & pine nut, which was great. The sweet corn and blackberry rocks, too. They have regular flavors, too, but their specialty flavors are wonderful.

6. Cucumbers. 'Tis the season. *crunch, munch*

That is all. Hope most of you had great weekends, or that you can forget that this one ever happened!

ETA: The answers to my last lyric meme are here.

If you still consider yourself sane after spending four days with 200 teenaged girls, you need to be committed.

I am utterly and completely drained of all rational emotion, and have pretty much spent the last 24 hours crying.  This after doing so well with "emotional filtering".  Bah.

On the way home from Mount Vernon, I saw people gathered around a big chocolate lab that had been hit by a car.  I cried all the way back to Columbus, I just couldn't stand it.  :(

Okay, done with all the negative!

There is something about Bob Mould's voice that makes me happy and feel like I can master the world.  He's getting heavy play tonight, in all of his incarnations.

Now that I'm home, it's time for HBP!  Should I avoid spoilers, or not?  Hmmm...

I think I'm just going to head over to BN on Saturday morning to pick up a copy of the book.  My UK adult version should be here next week.

hastyent, what are you doing this weekend?  Busy?

The past weekend was one of the best of the year, so far.  Worked a flower sale, helped landscape, and took a nice long nap on Saturday.  Endured Mothers Day as best I could - I hate commerical holidays.  My sister and I did go down and replace the flowers on the graves (mom, grandparents, and nephew).  Had Indian for lunch (yum!) and dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse (sure people were wondering where mom was, since it was just us and Mal isn't showing yet).  Weird.

Oh!  And my dad finally got a new job!  He's working at a machine shop in Columbus with regular hours.  This certainly beats working the night shift at Tim Horton's; no matter what he said about liking the work, third shift is not worth $6/hour.  Very good news, indeed.

Add this and the GoF trailer, plus PP chat, and well...I'm feeling good.

Now, if I can only lure my muse back for a stretch, things would be perfect.

I think most of you are aware of this:

I don't know how many of you out there know this, but Supreme Assembly is compiling a cookbook to raise money to replace the central air at the Supreme Temple.

( Let's Get Cooking! )

I hope that each person in the community will take a couple of minutes to at least enter a recipe into the database. 

Thanks!  :)

X-posted to iorg

For those of you who've been posting political things in their LJs today, thanks (and yes, littletort, I threw up a little in my mouth at the idea of health being a privledge, not a right).  I've been catching up on speech-reading, which has taken longer than usual since I have to get up every page or so to pace around and pull my hair.

I am neither Republican nor Democrat (I'm mainly of the opinion that they're one in the same, religious posturing from the GOP aside).  I'm a strong Constitutionalist, registered Green Party member, not beholden to any one person or candidate.

(NOTE that I am NOT referring to the Constitution Party, who are truly scary to behold - just read their platform on  AIDS and "Family")

That said, and as I explained to 1anonymous1 earlier tonight, I will force myself to vote for the lesser of two evils.  That's what it comes down to most of the time, right?  You vote for the candidate who you feel will screw you over the least, the one who stands on the side of your biggest hot-button issue.  You do what you can for what you believe in, if you're not too well-fed and comfortable to care.

( Also (for Misha and Rainbow folks)... )

( That last line? Totally on the mark. The rest, eh. )

Went to see The Lion King last night, twas quite a nice show. <3 the costumes, Julie Taymor is a goddess. My sister and I were shocked to see how many people had showed up to the theatre in jeans and tee shirts. I was wearing a spaghetti strap floral dress and worried that I was under dressed. Um, nevermind.

The girls had their Founder's Day picnic this evening. Minor moments of panic when we realized that our planned group of 30 had swollen to 44, but sending the troops for reinforcements cleared things up right away. But 44 people! We had most of our Pledge group, all but one of our girls, and 3 prospects. Yay for progress!

Gearing up for Grand Assembly next week. Kenyon College is haunted, y0. We're taking the girls on a tour of the cemetary and the other haunted places on campus. Gonna be lots of fun, I can tell already.

I have surgery the week after that, and my recovery time. Have started my core training program. I was surprised that I passed 8 of 10 of the trouble spot exercises and found that my hips are my weak point, not my abs (they are in pretty damn good shape, actually).

Goals for post-op recovery:
Wake up
Remove all tubes and lines from body
Go home
See King Arthur - who cares about the legend? It's all about Clive Owen and Keira Knightley...I may spontaneously combust, or pop a couple of stitches.

Big hugs to tonksnymphadora, who really, really needs them right now.

And I miss hastyent even more after I talk to her. :-(

/another long post

*dusts off long-neglected LJ* I'm baaack! I've been doing much lurking in the past week, five or so minutes at a time.

( You know you're uncool when you look in your closet and you have no clothes to go clubbing in )

I'm thinking about doing the 20 LJ friends meme, if I get a chance. My internet to-do list is like 3291512906 items long.

And I missed nmalfoy's birthday. Hope you had a happy, relatively pain-free one, babe. >:D<

( I've been working on my health issues too )

Tomorrow (er, today) I have the day off. I plan to head over to The Happy Greek for lunch. And do my taxes. hastyent, are you in town tomorrow?

Oh! And hp_ohio's first meetup is Friday! *dances* Can't wait for that. Must remember camera.

Random thoughts:

Lay's Dill Pickle chips do not taste like dill pickles. Or dill pickle chips, even. Gip.

Only fuckwits send forwards, especially those with racist, inflammatory content, to a mailing list. Sorry, azurerose, I'd sent off a bottle rocket to her before I'd had any chance to calm down. That is my #1 internet pet peeve, sending on those damned messages. I was shaking, I was so angry, and nearly sent the message to the entire list by mistake. That would have been bad. Yes.

Music Choice rocks. I'm listening to Chilliwack's "My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone)" -She's gone, gone, gone she's been gone so long, she's been gone, gone, gone so long...