Entries this day: AM_disc_at_park AM_gimp Breakfast_smoothies Gift Happy_New_Year

AM disc at park

1:09pm CST Tuesday 31 December 2002

Once all the kittens started waking up, starting with Meg or maybe Hillary and finishing with Amelia, we all went down to the park to play disc and chill (leaving Colleen behind; she didn't want to get up yet). At the park, Tanner, Paul, Amelia and I tossed discs around for a while, and the others sat and chilled in the sun talking or swinging on the swings.

The wind blew the discs everywhere; really funny when Tanner and then Amelia each tried to throw into the wind and the disc was blown rolling right back to them.

Played follow the leader with Tanner as leader and Paul behind me on the playground equipment, and ended up with Tanner swinging and me on his lap to win the game.

Later I was able to stand on the swing and pull myself up onto the top of the swingset.

Tanner and Paul threw some discs to me, some of which I was able to catch while standing up there. I lost my balance while walking across and had to jump down. That's the first time that's happened in a while...

Later I was able to switch from swing to swing basically while seated and then (after one missed attempt) climb up the swingset pole to the top of the swingset.

Janette and Colleen joined us after a while; I swang beside Colleen and played bumper swings with her a bit.

But the coolest thing of all: Paul swinging and Tanner jumping onto his back grabbing the chains and was able to hang on for a couple of oscillations. Quite amazing! I don't know if anyone got a picture of it, but there were a few cameras there (Celeste, Joan, Meg, me)

When Tanner, Paul and I started playing hackey sack, everyone else left.

Paul did some pretty phat tricks, and was all modest about his skillz. He was all "I wonder if you can hit it with the sole of your foot..." and withing 2 minutes he did it, getting 4 hits in a row on the sole of his shoe.

We considered making a hackey sack movie, including elements from The Matrix and West Side Story-esque street fighting but with hackey sacks. One scene would show the top of some cat walking all weird, and then the camera pans down to see he's walking and hacking at the same time. Another scene has a guy juggling three sacks with his feet. Another includes a slow motion of someone really eating it to dive for the sack. Another has the sack like 90 feet in the air, coming down and one cat goes to kick for it and just kicks the dirt hard and knocks dirt into the eyes of all 30 people in the circle. Then we cut to a scene of Bryn at SWUUSI, "and you can't kick dirt!" Oh, and another scene shows a guy in a chicken outfit, pimping his restaurant, wearing a signboard thing, seeing us, then coming over to play and showing us all up by kicking all the phat moves while wearing the chicken outfit. Beak stalls, toe stalls on each successive toe (big chicken feet), tailfeather stalls.. everything.

A mom and two kids came to the swings and the littler kid somehow fell off the swing and started crying. The some kids came with an equally little kid and somehow one of the kids ended up falling on top of the little kid, causing him to cry.

"Is it time for us to go?"

"Yeah."

AM gimp

12:58pm CST Tuesday 31 December 2002

This morning I worked on installing gimp on my system. I had already downloaded gimp-1.2.3, and it says I need gtk. So I downloaded gtk+-1.2.10 and it says I need glib. So I downloaded glib-1.2.10 and it says I need to specify a host type when I tried to install it. I'm getting closer!

Breakfast smoothies

1:21pm CST Tuesday 31 December 2002

What a welcome sight to have Mikey pour smoothies for us when we arrived back at the ranch. Thanks to Hillary, Josepine, Mikey for getting the smoothie fixin's!

Now everyone (except Paul, Jack (talking in Josephine's room), Janette and I) else is at the store called Ole Moon, looking at stuff including glass blown items, Hillary's current favorite.

Gift

4:46pm CST Tuesday 31 December 2002

Colleen got me a great and cute little housewarming gift for my place in Japan! So sweet! It's the first that I've gotten for this next portion of my life. Thanks Colleenie Beanie!

Happy New Year

new year's preparations

3:21am CST Wednesday 1 January 2003

Happy Happy Joy Joy.

Tons of fun; tons of people.

Got to get to know Natalie from Little Cypress (near Orange) better.

Got to help Asha burn a CD.

Got to run back from the lake with Jackie, and get to know her better.

Got to chat with Laura Caddell who came by after the magic hour. So honored that she said, "it was a very pleasant surprise to see you here."

Didn't call Wende, Sally, Dude, Veronica around their midnight on the west side. Still love them.

Read some of my old journal entries from February 2001. Amazing.

Got to go to bed now. So tired.

11:41am CST Wednesday 1 January 2003

About last night:

~) So awesome to have such a tight community, resulting from years of YRUU events together. Such awesome random funniness, with everyone being respectful and friendly and funny and silly, without anyone having to suggest "rules" for the event.

!) Similar to my style at rallies, I tried to seek out those who didn't seem really involved in the conversations. Like Natalie. After a while, Jack came by, and I was all, "Jack, how do I get her talking?" and he said, "she'll talk about how much she hates The Academy," to which Natalie was all, "I don't want to talk about school during break." I actually already knew she didn't want to talk about it; I had tried querying her on it.

@) Lots of chilling and dancing before midnight, but I'm not remembering specifics.

#) Asha went through my mp3 and chose some to burn on CD. She was quite excited to have the CD finished right now!

$) After midnight a group of us went to the lake. Asha was piggyback on me for a bit cause her foot was cramping or breaking through blisters. (she ended up breaking through the back of her foot) At the lake, I was freezing, but stood in Tadasana to relax my blood into warming through me.

%) Meg & Paul walked over to the mysterious covered pool things by the lake and I followed them cause I've wanted to know what the pools were for. I'm all, "what are these pools for?" and they were all, "boats" which was obvious for they were perfectly obviously for boats. "but over here, there are little wall things blocking the entrance.." We examined the situation there and could never decide why they had been blocked. Someone guessed maybe these boat dock things were unusable, but then why would both sides be blocked (the lake side and the land side)?

^) Paul had the great idea or desire to leap across the water, which was actually a bad idea because the water was freezing and if we fell in, we'd be soaked for a mile+ walk back to the house in cold wind situation. I used the window ledge to step a huge step across the water, and made it okay to the 10 inch wide section of concrete, then leaped the four or five feet to the wide section of concrete with no problem. On the way back to the small section, using the window as support, I lost my balance and my toe slid through the water, so I tossed myself through the window to the land side, walked smiling back through the door, "almost fell in!"

&) Jackie had asked if I would run back with her, which would help us stay warm and get out of the cold air more quickly, which I was all "awesome, but I reserve the right to wuss out before we get there." We ran about 3/4 mile I'm guessing before we had to stop. Great conversation with her, talking about her future plans and intentions and queries about what she'll really end up doing. Me offering anecdotes to prove that basically she can switch later if she chooses, and that I have a lot of the same questions.

*) Back at the house we discovered Laura Caddell had arrived and I chatted with her basically until I was falling asleep in the chair (which wasn't very long).