Okay, okay, so I'm actually just typing and can't pull the "headed into a tunnel, gotta go!" trick. Unfortunately. Still, even though I keep stumbling into discussions about the future, there has to be something else we can talk about! Like the fact that Spring Fling is tomorrow! Or today, actually, since as I type this it is now officially Thursday. Kendrick Lamar is performing! It’ll be in the hockey rink instead of on Foss Hill for reasons of rain and misery! I find this very depressing but will probably try and go nonetheless as long as it doesn’t fill to capacity!
Or we could talk about how it was pouring rain today for precisely the four minutes it took me to get from the library to my house, but not immediately before or after! Or we could talk about how I went to the Star&Crescent this week for the first and the last time ever! Or we could talk about all the performances I went to this weekend! Or we could talk about how I just spent like forty-five minutes trying to remember a random CD-ROM game from the 90s that I used to play! Or we could talk about how I keep injuring myself in really inconvenient ways! Or we could debate about whether any injuries are really ever convenient! (For the record, the answer is yes!) Or we could talk about whether it would be possible to build a tiny castle out of pecan brownies!
…You know, as one does.
[Under the cut: Except I actually already had that particular conversation. Yes, for real. Also, pictures of food!]
Look, sometimes it’s late at night and you’re just really invested in the possibilities of brownie castles. It happens. (For the record, the brownie castle has not happened. Yet. I can never resist a challenge.)
But, aside from that truly scintillating example of what we get up to in my house when it’s late at night and we should be sleeping, what else have I done this week? It might be easier to sort that into categories, I guess. Like:
Scholastic Things That I Was Forced To Do!
1. Write a presentation about my thesis!
2. Present that presentation about my thesis!
3. Answer questions about my thesis! Seriously, ducklings, this might seem like griping overkill but all of this stuff not only required me to talk in front of an audience for fifteen minutes while attempting to sound intelligent — something that, quite honestly, scares the bejeesus out of me — but also actually remember what I wrote in my thesis. I very firmly repressed that stuff for a reason, okay. Also oh my god, the typos.
(For the record, this was for the Anthropology Department thesis presentation/dinner. I also was called upon to go first, possibly because Douglas Charles — the head of the department as well as my former advisor and Forensic Anthropology/The Human Skeleton professor — knew that the longer before I went, the more chance there was that I would bolt out of there without uttering a word. But at least there was Thai food afterwards.)
4. …Well, I also had to write a coordinator’s report and an essay for dance class (talking about the two performances I went to), but compared to the above, those were a walk in the park.
Performances That I Went to, Technically For Scholastic Reasons But That Were Nonetheless Fantastic!
1. The Javanese dance performance in honor of the Artist in Residence Urip Sri Maeny, who's leaving Wesleyan after forty years (although I think her husband, who teaches the Gamelan class, is staying). Javanese dance is actually really cool! It’s pretty different from contemporary Western dance types, which I know kind of threw some of my classmates, but it required some really small and precise movements that I thought looked really neat. Plus, the advanced class performed selections from a dance version of the Ramayana, and it involved a six-foot-tall dude dancing as a monkey. It was GREAT.
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| Wesleyan Artist in Residence and Javanese dance professor Urip Sri Maeny, in costume |
(Also, this is the reason I spent forty-five minutes earlier trying to remember a random game from the 90s — the dance costumes seemed really familiar for some reason, and I eventually realized it was because there were a tiny story, probably only a minute long, about a Javanese dancer in this one game I used to play , and that sent me on a whole tailspin of nostalgia that thus far has ended in me really wanting to play Zoombinis again. Because Zoombinis was great.
)
2. Spring Dance!! Spring Dance is the end product of the Dance Composition class — a series of short dances choreographed by mostly sophomores, with one or two juniors and seniors. It was really fun, actually, I went with Housemate Katie, who with ten years of dance experience under her belt is definitely the seasoned pro to my utter and complete amateur, and we sat in the back and tried to decide which dances were our favorites. In the end, the choice was pretty easy: “Empathy,” which was choreographed by our friend Emily (it’s really nice when your friends are talented!*), and “face forward,” choreographed by Tess Jonas. Interestingly, I was reading a review of the show by… not the Argus, but one of Wesleyan’s culture blogs or something? And we just had very different interpretations of “face forward,” which was funny, since as far as the various dances went it was actually one of the least abstruse.
* I always try to have talented friends. It means I don’t have to deal with the awkward moments of trying to figure out how to compliment them without blatantly lying.
3. Well, technically I only got to watch the Bharata Natyam performance during the dress rehearsal for the Worlds of Dance concert on Sunday, which I was in, but it was still great! And I’m not just saying that because I had three friends in the class, either. As ever, nobody’s put the video online yet, but dere's a video from 2009, if you're curious.
(Fun fact: apparently their teacher told them that they had to make sure to smile or some of the movements would make them look like they’d just escaped from an aasylum. The more you know!)
Ways I Have Inconveniently Injured Myself
1. A persistent bruise on my right knee from dance class, exacerbated by the fact that one of our taiko positions requires me to drop onto, you guessed it, my right knee. (Thus why it’s inconvenient; if it were the left knee, it would be barely any trouble at all.)
2. Taiko blisters!!!
3. Somehow on Thursday I abruptly got tendonitis in the middle finger of my right hand!
4. And then on Friday right before the concert I smacked myself in the thumb with one of my bachi (taiko drumsticks) and it promptly proceeded to bleed and turn blue! That was possibly the most intelligent moment of my night.
5. …I have other inconvenient injuries, but they’re older so I’m not sure they count.
Things I Have Done This Week That Make Me Very Distressed Because I Will Never Do Them Again!
1. I’M NEVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO TAKE TAIKO AT WESLEYAN AGAIN AND THIS IS SO DISTRESSING TO ME THAT I HAVE TO STOP TALKING ABOUT IT
(but my mom and Lovely Sister came out to see me, which was quite nice. Love you guys!)
2. It’s not quite as distressing as taiko, but I somehow managed to avoid eating at the Star & Crescent (the dining establishment that lives in Alpha Delt) for all four years of college, so I went there with Natalia and Katie on Monday and it was delicious. I tried to go again on Tuesday, but it was sold out by the time we got there, more’s the pity. If only I had wised up sooner, I could have been enjoying their tasty food for ages!
Ways In Which I Rocked the Worlds of Dance Showcase!
1. Cheering really loudly during the dress rehearsal for my friends in Bharata Natyam and the other section of Intro Dance!
2. Remembering all the transitions during our performance! The whole class had to do various transitions that would lead from one group’s individual dance to another’s, and there were a lot of them and I believe we started learning them approximately two classes before the concert, so. Pretty good on our part, I think.
3. …At one point we had to go down to the floor and crawl like monkeys. It happened. It’s been caught on video. WHATEVER.
4. My section of Intro Dance went last, and of the individual dances, my group went first. On our shoulders, therefore, was obviously a clear responsibility not only to carry on the standard of all the spectacular dances that had preceded us, but also to set the tone for the rest of our class.
So, of course, my group started off as robots and danced to "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by Daft Punk. (And then segued into "Show You How to Love" by Pentatonix, but let’s be real, we know what the crowdpleaser there was.)
5. Apparently I looked like an evil puppetmaster at one point. I am taking this as the compliment I believe it was meant to be, because that sounds AWESOME.
6. I had fun, didn’t stress, and got to do ¾ of a handstand! Honestly, that’s a win in my book.
Things I Baked This Week!
1. Mango-lime-raspberry muffins! Actual snippet of conversation between me and Delightful Housemate David:
Me: Should I use raspberry or mango?
DHD: You know you’re probably just going to end up doing half and half anyway. [insert conversation about flavor profiles]
Me: I’m going to do raspberry. [five minutes later]
Me: …Well, there’s no reason NOT to add mango as well…
2. Flatbread with pesto, tomato and mozzarella!
3. Flatbread with leeks, corn, chard, and goat cheese!
4. Brown bread! This was inspired by the wonderful O’Rourkes in Middletown, where I went with my mom and Lovely Sister on Saturday. They have the best baked goods there, I swear. The brown bread came as a side with the omelets, and it was so good that I had to make my own, although I ended up adapting it from three different recipes because there were some discrepancies. Also, the brown bread at O’Rourkes came in palm-sized loaves (can you call it a loaf if it’s that small? They were bigger than rolls and not quite scones), so I thought I’d try making some the same size.
Spoiler: They’re DELICIOUS. Be jealous.
5. Granola bars! Except they’re not really granola bars, because every time I try to make granola bars they just end up being granola. Which is fine, since granola is delicious and they taste quite good, but just once I would like to be able to make a bar that holds up when I cut it into squares.
No picture of the finished product, but I do have a picture of the oats, coconut, nuts, and wheat germ right before I toasted them.
A Picture of A Cute Animals Cuddling, Just To Wrap Things Up
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[Original tags for this post: baking, bharata natyam, cute fluffy things, Food,javanese dance,LOOK I DID THINGS,pictures of food, so many dances, spring dance, spring fling,taiko, true story: I wrote 1200 words of this post and then decided I didn’t like it so I rewrote it. Because I want to give you guys a quality blog experience., when I say I never want to look at my thesis again I am not actually joking]
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