Friday, August 21, 2009

8/21/09

So the Homecoming 2010 theme is....CEREALS!!

I know, I know, you must be thinking, "oh gee. creative NOT. how lame is that??" Actually, it is not lame! The more you think about it, the more you realize that a simple thing such as cereal is so much more than a bowl, milk, a spoon, and loads of carbs. It's like the completion of putting on your outer self before you go out into the world. Don't get it? Let me explain.

This summer, I took a sociology class where we talked about this thing called dramaturgy. Dramaturgy, according to Mr. Webster, is this: the art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation.
oh dear. not exactly what I was looking for.

okay according to my sociology textbook, it is "an approach, pioneered by Erving Goffman, in which social life is analyzed in terms of drama or the stage; also called dramaturgical analysis"

so basically, we are all a part of a play, and according to this, you can argue that going through the motions in the morning ( i.e, shower, brushing your teeth, getting dressed) is like getting ready for your play. You go through your dress rehearsal when you imagine what you will be wearing/doing the next day, and feeling good for the rest of your day is basically like instilling confidence before you step out onto the stage. So in a sense, eating cereal is like the last part of the prelude to the play. Is this interesting? I was stuck at school from like 11 in the morning to 10 at night. shoot, not interesting.

ANYWAYS. the point of this post was not to talk about the deep meanings of cereal! it was about the themes for homecoming! anyways here they are:

freshmen: honey-nut cheerios (class color: teal)
sophs: cap'n crunch (class color: pink)
juniors: fruit loops (class color: lime green)
SENIORS: LUCKY CHARMS! (class color: PURPLE)

Before deciding on the theme, I wasn't actually excited for homecoming. I was actually dreading it-who wants to spend 6 weeks working on something that looks like glitter puked on after it had food poisoning? But I guess now, i'm excited to see what we, as a class, are all imagining in our brains on this topic and seeing it being displayed on a fatty truck bed.

I'm not very good at crafts.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

8/20/09

I think it sucks sometimes when I come up with really good ideas but then I lack a fatty part of the thing to make it idea work. Okay that seems like a really weird sentence so let me explain:

I just came back from breakfast at the whitest place around cupertino with the whitest food in my stomach-country inn's biscuits and gravy (its funny cause the biscuits and gravy were white. hah.) and instead of getting started on my college app stuff like I told myself I was supposed to do, I ended up playing guitar. In fact, as I am typing this, the pick is in between my teeth because I am too lazy to put it down on the table. Oh Ashley, why are you so weird?

Anyways, I was just messing around with the chords when BING BANG BOOM Ashley's secret musical genius exploded! actually not really. it was more like oh hey this actually sounds decent i wish i could write a song that fit with these chords. But, when I started to think of things to write about, my musical genius DISAPPEARED. noooooo

So now, I am halfway to writing my first song. I have music! but no melody or lyrics. okay just kidding. I am a third of the way done. the end.

I heard that some people don't poop in public and they only poop at home. but what if they go to college? they wont get home until like 3 months later. ewwwwwww

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

8/18/09

Okay so I was at first going to write about the specific people that I didn't get to speak for at Grad Night but I TOTALLY wanted to, but as I was writing, it seemed really hard to put it in words, because, honestly all you 09ers, words cannot describe how much I love you all and how much I will miss you guys. When I was with you peeps, it felt like I knew you all like we were family friends when I only met you guys in like 7th grade at the earliest.

oh gee. this is quite hard. i don't think I have ever tried this hard to think about what to write here. I mean this requires me to think of the trillions of inside jokes and memories that I have had with you all, and my memory sucks. I barely remembered what happened last year (welllll except that we beat you guys at the homecoming rally. OKAY OKAY sorry this is supposed to be a serious post about honoring you guys instead of talking about the prowess of 2010). okay.

Anyways I don't want to name names or whatever cause it will seem unfair but I really will miss you guys. You have all been great to me, and now it feels like a part of me is leaving too. I wish you all the best, and when you get famous don't forget me!! i'll keep your signatures with me so that I can sell them on ebay for millions.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

8/10-8/12 part 3

Day 3:

So it was freaking hot in the sleeping bag. I decided that the mosquitos can go die in a hole and that I need to have my skin come in contact with cold air. So, of course, I wake up with like a gajillion mosquito bites. Well, not that many. More like 30.

So I woke up with bug bites, a sore body, blue toe, and fatty blisters the size of my pinky. What a great day!

I think Victor wanted me to go faster, so he was like, here let me just take your stuff. Although I don't think I would have gone any slower with that pack, I definitely got the message. But, even though my mind said go, my feet felt like, like, I don't even know how to describe it. It's like eating a habanero pepper, but transfer the feeling to your toe. Like, for guys I guess, being hit in the nuts every time you walked downhill (but I wouldn't know what it feels like because I'm not a guy! Actually one time someone hit me in the groin area, like my ovaries or something, and it hurt like a MOTHER.).

The first part of the hike was uphill, so I got to go faster because my two friends (NOT my boobs. my feet you perv.) weren't crying out in pain. However, when the downhill terrain started, I was in for a HARD time (WOW. I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE THINKING. go wash your mind out with soap.) It was nice, though, that Victor always walked behind me even though I was really slow. I remember this one time Victor and I passed by Andy, and Victor told Andy to step it up because Ashley has blisters and the moleskin didn't work. I think his words helped both Andy and me-Andy ended up being first to the beach, and I walked faster. yay for manning up!

We finally reached the big creek/stream thing, marking the halfway point. The rest of the trip would be on flat road. I was in so much pain that I decided I would go barefoot. At first, there was a part of me that said, "Ashley that is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Just because you read it in a book does NOT mean that you can apply it to life. For example, you read Harry Potter, but you can't go to Hogwarts dummy!" But I did it anyways, and, for a small part of the hike, it worked! Well, until there were sharp rocks and horse poop. Then I switched to John's flip flops.

We were pretty close to finishing when we realized that Sam and Larry had fallen behind-not like 5 minutes behind, but like someone got eaten by a bear behind. I'm not too sure what happened, but it turns out that Larry almost fell off a cliff or something. I don't even know how to wrap up this paragraph with that because it's so O_O.

When we reached the beach, nobody had service, so we were stranded there for about 2 hours. I guess I wouldn't really call it being stranded, because it was actually really nice. I got to really reflect on our trip, and it really seemed like we could write/film a story/movie about this. It was so sentimental too! Victor, Timmy, John, Clare, and I were all sitting in a row on the sand watching the sunset, and you could totally see the movie screen fade to black and everything.

Anyways, I definitely think that this trip was awesome. If we ever had to do it again, though, I am buying a mule to carry me there.

Friday, August 14, 2009

8/10-8/12 part 2

Day 2:

Clare and I woke the group up with massive telling of secrets, like-HAH. you thought I would actually tell you what the secrets are. no way jose. they are embarassing!! anyways. we set off on our second day. by now i had already developed blisters on my feet and the big toenail on my left foot had turned blue. like someone took blue nail polish and painted it blue. I dont really remember much of the second day, mainly because my feet were in so much pain. I remember how my brain was operating, though, on each mile-

miles 1 and 2: alright! i can do this! i dont even have any bug bites yet, and larry has a gajillion on the back of his neck. ew. hahah clare's secrets. etc etc etc

miles 3-4: oh eff. this kind of hurts. crapp. ouch. shoot.

miles 5-8: **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** (yep. it was pretty nasty. oh ashley. you need to wash your brain out with some SOAP!)

*oh by the way somewhere in here we stopped for lunch and almost caused a forest fire with the stoves that we had, but i think if we actually did cause a forest fire, i wouldnt have been able to move*

miles 9-10: AWWWW HECKKKK YES the CAMP!! SHOWERS! ACTUAL FOOD.


So we camped at the big basin headquarters, where the mosquitos roamed and showers cost 25 cents for 2 minutes of heaven. that night, i finally got to use a mirror, and i must admit, 2 days without a shower is pretty disgusting. That night, we slept under the stars again, except this time, Victor and I switched sleeping bags. but the problem was, it was HOT. like, so hot that i wore a tshirt and sweatpants only because i didnt have any shorts to sleep in. Although I didn't wake up as many times as the night before, i distinctly remember my face in clare's shoulder and john's face REALLY close to me. haha and all because of ONE person!! ;)

Thursday, August 13, 2009

8/10-8/12 part 1

This blog post will come in 3 parts because i'm afraid my butt will flatten out if i keep sitting on my chair typing for this long of a post. if you put all 3 back to back it is prettyyy long.


I embarked on a journey that many dream of, but few accomplish: backpacking. I, along with 7 other people (Clare, John, Victor, Timmy, Sam, Larry, Andy-Larry's cousin) would go on a 3 day trip and hike 30 miles across the Santa Cruz mountains and through Big Basin to a beach whose pronounciation is still unclear (WAD-dell? wad-DELL? WA-d-D-el-L?) I would be showerless for approximately 2 days, and the only shower that i would be able to have would be where capitalism reigned supreme (the shampoo cost $3.50 and it was a travel size bottle). I would not have internet service. Hence, as I am writing this, my muscles are spazzing out and my toe is crying out in pain (more on that later). SO, here are my distinct memories of the things that we did.

Day 1:
So, in a fit of wanting to be fashionably late, I ended up arriving last (not the definition of fashionably late) to Victor's house. oops! embarassing. anyways I brought along my pack and everyone was like WTF ASHLEY WHY IS YOUR PACK SO SMALL AND SO LIGHT yadda yadda. We left for Saratoga gap, where we would begin hiking. We all arrived at a parking lot and set off on our trip. We took our first break after hiking a quarter of a mile. After hiking for about 4 hours, we realized that we were running incredibly short on water. Well, I guess it wasn't THAT big of a deal cause the highway was like, right next to our trail. AND there were houses. So anyways we decided to send Sam, Larry, Timmy, and i think John? to find us some water by knocking on people's door. I think Larry paid 3 bucks for a gallon of tap water. oh dear. So now we start to carefully ration our water because Victor didn't know if our campsite had running water, and the creek that ran through the trail was on private property. All of a sudden, we reached the end of our trail (and the end of the park). it turned out that we were going the WRONG WAY and in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION of our actual trail. we ended up walking along the highway (which was not highway 9 but something like 35) and knocked on this random house. This dude who looked like santa claus came out and basically said SURE use the hose for water and if you all can fit in my acura sedan i'll take you guys back to where you were supposed to start. haha i dont think i have ever felt that lucky. so with some hard thinking , we ended up fitting everyone in this TINY car and started over. we reached the actual camp (which had clean running tap) at like 7.

That night, half of the people were cold and the other half were hot. I was effin FREEZING. I remember i woke up multiple times to put on different articles of clothing (sweatshirt, hat, hood of the sweatshirt) and, in a fit of desperation, said to Victor (who actually, for the record, was like ashley are you awake first), "dude. i need you to put your legs on my feet. i am so cold." haha victor was so nice-he did. So nobody really got any sleep except maybe Andy, and we all just stared at the trees and wondered how some of the leaves bunched up to look like ninjas.