Loss of a Friend and CallMyMom.org

I haven’t been posting a lot in the last months; it’s been busy and I haven’t had a lot to say. Monday, however, I lost a very good friend in a tragic accident, a car wreck that should never have happened. She was a wonderful woman, twenty-five, and was finally getting where she wanted to be in life.

I can’t stress enough how much it hurts to lose someone like this; you see them the day before in the very bloom of health and then they’re gone. I can also not stress enough how important it is to be careful on the roads. Yes, accidents do occur beyond our control, but a lot of times accidents can be prevented or reduced in the case of driving a little more safely.

Although it would not have helped my friend, I do want to push her mother’s organization. The Call My Mom project is a program that allows parents to have their teen’s driving monitored. The friend I lost was in the program, as is her younger sister. Their mother started it to save the lives of teen drivers and to help parents enforce their rules.

I hope you all will take a moment to go visit the website:
http://callmymom.org/

Like I said, it is highly unlikely that this would have helped my friend, however, I do urge any parent with a teenaged driver under their roof to participate. The program simply gives you a sticker with a coded ID number and a 1-800 number to call if you see the driver acting irresponsibly or in trouble. All the caller has to do is enter the code for the car and then can leave a message for the driver’s parent at the number of their choosing. Since the call goes through a database, the user’s information is never revealed. The system then forwards the message to the parent’s phone and also can supply an email notification. The driver is also issued an identification card in case there is an accident.

I miss my friend more than I can imagine; she was a good person and participated in her mother’s cause. I hope that my sharing this with readers will help spread the word and save a life. This is not just a tattle-tale organization, but instead a way for parents to help their learning drivers and to keep them safe.

Thank you for reading.

The Girls Next Door and Daffodils

My friend Katy is a rather intelligent girl; we’re much alike. Whether it’s reciting the marriage lines from “The Princess Bride” or making Les Mis-based jokes, we’re often geeking out when we hang out.

She has, as of late, referred me to watch “The Girls Next Door”, a show based around the antics of Hugh Hefner and his bevy of beautiful women. I wrote it off as a piece of reality trash (which it is) and forgot about it.

Then I watched it.

It’s strangely addicting. Holly, who seems to take care of The Hef, is an amazingly intelligent person compared to what one might think. Although she has her blond moments, she’s obviously a hard worker and quite capable- and she has good taste in cars! Listening to Hef and Holly discuss the last three choices for the 55th Anniversary Playmate (even the joking regarding Hef’s taking the photos away to choose) was more amusing than just about anything I’ve seen in a while (with the exception of THIS).

OF MORE NOTE is the fact that as of today (at least for me) the Pellissippi Parkway Daffodils are in bloom! Riots of shades of yellow ranging from palest near-white to a deep, buttery yellow have exploded into being all along the half of the Parkway closer to Oak Ridge. I am never any less amazed at how they pop out, like a massive carpet of swaying yellow and cheer up the drivers along the way (or at least this one).

Drive out that way and enjoy them before they’re gone!

Things I Found Out Today

Been busy, haven’t posted in a while, but today I found out a lot of things that make me smile, think, or just amused.

1. One of my friends is about seven years older than I thought he was.
2. This same friend’s baby brother is in a well-known metal band.
3. Just because a restaurant has been around 20 years, doesn’t mean it’s better than the newer ones.
4. Making your teacher/life advisor/friend smile over something horribly intellectual can make your day.
5. Playing a fun, intellectual prank once in a while can reap very good rewards.
6. Dinner with a person of your same quirks and preferences is the best cathartic release there is.
7. Beautiful days like today should be cherished.
8. Old men will say what they want, and the rest of us be damned.
9. Just because a poet is published, and hired to speak, does not mean that this poet is good.
10. Children in restaurants should be TIED to chairs and fed through straws.

When Does It All Fit Together

I’m 21 as of 7 January, and as an American, have reached the last great age milestone one can achieve. I suppose around 65 or so, retirement will seem important, but there’s a long ways to go between now and then. I’m now legally allowed to smoke, drink, file lawsuits, get married, drive a car, and do all those wonderful things adults do.

I don’t feel any different, though. I’m 21, but I feel no different from 19, but a world of different from 17. If you asked me if I were a fully-fledged adult, I would say not by any means. If you asked me if I were a child, I would say in a lot of ways, yes. I’m very hesitant to let go of “girl” and accept “woman”. There is comfort in girl that woman’s independence requires to abandon.

Some things are very much the same; college is just high school, with more rich kids and less requirement to socialize with the ones you find annoying. Just as with high school, there are cliques and caste systems, they’re just not as strongly enforced by the populace. While there is more tolerance and diversity than at least I experienced in high school, there is still a mentality, hard to describe, that permeates the place. It is the common struggle, I guess. The hard-working students who are laboring to get their degrees and move out into the world (where the four-year-plan is ever more a precarious one) to achieve an independence and adulthood they’re not sure they want. No college student will ever admit they want anything other than total independence, but in this economy, that’s a frightening thought. The already-adult students who are coming back for whatever reason, are of a different situation, but of the same drive: a push towards uncertain hope that these 1.3 hour classes two days a week will improve their situation.
Work is *exactly* like high school. Most days it even resembles middle school more.

More on the identity crisis later, I suppose.

Hector MacNeill Knows Me

Oh, my love’s in Germany, send him home, send him home,
Oh, my love’s in Germany, send him home.
Oh, my love’s in Germany,
Lang leagues 0′ land and sea
Frae Westrey and frae me, Send him home, send him home.
Oh, my love’s in Germany, Send him home.

Oh, weary fa’ the war, Send him home, send him home,
That tysed my love sae rar, Send him home.
Oh, were he home again,
How blythe we’d be and rain,
But he’s rar ayont the main, Send him home, send him home.
Oh, my love’s in Germany, Send him home.

Oh, wad some birdie say, Send him home, send him home,
To my sodger far away, Send him home.
How lonely sighs his May,
Conntin’ year and month and day,
For oh! her heart is wae, Send him home, send him home.
Oh, my love’s in Germany, Send him home.

written by Hector MacNeill in 1794. The tune was adopted by Robert Burns for his song “Ye Jacobites by Name (Lend an Ear)”.

I’m Going… Home?

I fly out, back to the States tomorrow morning. I’m not entirely sure I want to go. I’m sitting here on the couch, cleaning my watercolor brushes and giving passing glances at the sleeping German I came here for. His hair’s mussy, and his bare feet, as always, are sticking out below the covers. He’s not especially tall, but it happens often.
I got a little upset last night, thinking about having to leave. I am not especially eager to go home, back to the hustle and bustle of Uni, work, and life, but I can’t stay in this forever. Sometime I would have to begin work again regardless, and it will be done infinitely better when I have a better-than-basic grasp of the language and my English degree to boot. I’m arriving home late Tuesday, buying books Wednesday, and plunging back into school on Thursday. Work starts sometime in there, too, but I’m pretending that’s not real for the next 48 hours.
I did get a little upset, as I said, crying a bit and saying I didn’t want to go home. It left me feeling very childish, but it’s true. I feel so happy here, in the dirty snow and graffiti of old Dortmund. There’s something about this city that got to me fast.

I’m going to end up living here, some day. Maybe only a few years, but I will, I think.

Sick, German Birthday

So. I have been in Germany for a little under a month (yes, I know, bad blogmommy, ignoring the poor thing) but, between school semester end and getting here… I’ve been trying to keep my head on more than anything. Right now I’m procrastinating on a paper I should have done three weeks ago to avoid such a fiasco as I have found myself in, but I work better under pressure.
I turned 21 on Wednesday, and attempted to make steak fajitas, rice, and queso for my German host family. This failed miserably, as the fajitas were dry *and* cold by the time they made it to the dinner table. The rice was the only thing that made it out decently (and my mock-margaritas), likely due to the fact that Markus, and not I made it. I have always been horrible at making rice. I’m much more a mushrooms-and-onions person.
I’ve developed the Jacket Cold, as I shall call it. First the Mother had it (that is, the Host Mother, not my real mom), then the Son, who we call Markus. He had it quite badly, resulting in a nearly 24-hour-straight sleep period and a fever peaking at 38.9*C. Then, the Father got it, and took it hard, also having similarly long naptimes. I did not venture to find out his temperature; one does not rouse a sleeping bear. Now, the Elizabeth has it, although I’ve blessedly seemed to miss the misery in the tummy and have been only subjected to runny nose, sore sinuses, and dry coughing. Really, compared to what the Father and Son suffered, the Mother and the Elizabeth got off lucky. I’m drinking quite a lot of flat water (I make the distinction because it is unheard of to drink water out of the tap here, it seems).
I fly back to the States on Tuesday, and I’m full-force back into school and work three days later. Hopefully I won’t suffer too much in the dry air of the airplane. Hopefully, I’ll sleep!

My Gut Instinct is Usually Right

And it was. Was it ever.

Twilight the Movie was just as insipid and brainless as its book. The actors overdid it, the scenery was too rich…

The movie was about Robert Pattison’s beauty, which is a good thing, since it was the only reason to see it. Well, the guy playing Eric was pretty hot, too.

Bella was twice over annoying and although I admit there were times she almost redeemed herself, she inevitably ruined it. The sparkling thing was just as bad as I imagined it to be.

Worst of all, Stephenie Meyer took an opportunity to be the utter egoist I knew she was. At once scene, in the diner, the waitress hands a plate saying “Here you go, Stephenie” to Meyers.

That was really what put it over the top. Going that far, naming yourself in it- can you be more of an emotionally needy person? You’ve proven how desperate your marriage seems to be since you wrote such a terribly self-inserting novel, but that… No.

It’s two hours I’ll be screaming for as I lie dying on my deathbed. HSM3 was more worthy of time than that. I’m just glad I didn’t pay for the ticket.

Vocal Acrobatics Do Not Necessarily A Great Songstress Make.

Today I saw a girl with a wonderful voice sing the national anthem before the Titans game. Michelle Williams, one third of the successful act Destiny’s Child, performed a rendition of it that was pretty good all things considered. She doesn’t have the natural range to sing it perfectly, but she did a darn good job.

However, for the Cowboys-Seahawks game, some brilliant mind got teen sensation Demi Lovato to sing it.
Lovato has a nice voice, but also lacks the natural range. So do I, frankly, that’s a hard song to sing. It’s about three notes past what I can sing and it drives me batty that I can’t hit that one, teensy, damned little note. However, like Williams there is a beautiful method of achieving that and still sounding good. Williams had a beautiful vibrato and an amazing tone. Lovato used the “look what I can do to make it sound as if I can truly sing” play. Her vocal acrobatics were more annoying than anything, and although she used the key-switch trick, her insistence upon performing a quasi-coloratura run during every time there should have been a simple vibrato made her seem unprepared and just barely capable of singing the anthem. So many singers do that, and it’s really not that impressive. With a decent singing trainer, performing such minor stunts (not true coloratura, mind you) isn’t much of a challenge or something that shall impress. It’s kind of annoying, actually. It makes you look as if you are trying too hard to mask an inability, which in her case may be true since her voice is probably not matured yet, but trying so hard seems very desperate, and makes me think more badly of her than she probably deserves.

Long story short? Sing it well, sing it richly, but do not show that you can hit twenty mediocre notes in five seconds, because all it does is highlight that you didn’t hit the one most spectacular.

My Favorite Radio Station

…is going from all 1980s awesomeness to all-modern-country-crappiness. I like country, but nothing generally made after 1998 and even at that time it was getting terrible. Now they’re taking away my 1980s music fix and replacing it with the insipid likes of Carrie Underwood and Tim McGraw. I’m understandably cranky.

I want my Tommy Tutone fix.