yeah, I can't count.

This post comes to you in four parts. 

Part one: hay-fever, or getting sick

This is what I have/am. I've been exhibiting hay-fever-like symptoms for the past two weeks. Blergh. They make me irritable. And now I think I may be getting sick. Not fun at all. 

Part two: pleasure boats

When we were in Hangzhou last weekend (did I mention that I went to hangzhou with my mom and one of her friends?), we took a 'pleasure boat' to the island in the middle of West Lake. The name made me giggle incessantly, especially after my mom brought up The Love Boat. So then we all started making bad puns about being on the 'Pleasure Luuuuuurve Boat' to some mysterious island. It was fun. 

Part three: durian roti

We went to the Banana Leaf restaurant one night, and I finally tried something with durian in it. Not going to again. Ever again. Everyone (including my mom) said that it didn't taste at all the way it smells. I'm sorry, but for me it tasted exactly the way it smelled. But at least I can now say that I don't like durian on good authority. Though I don't want to get close enough to stinky tofu to even find out. 

Part four: 'Roadsinger'

I think that for once, I'm going to go all fangirly on you. Cat Stevens has a new album coming out in May. *squee*

Part five (bonus): new template

What thinks you of it? The old one's code was a mess, and changing anything was a huge hassle. Hopefully this one will be better, even though it's quite different. This one's sort of temporary until I find one that I like better. 

Pop!

Have had this stuck in my head all day. Not that I mind, it's just slightly distracting. 

And you should go check out some of Dan's other stuff. [/shameless plug]

3.14159265...

Pi Song #1

Pi Song #2

Pi Song #3

They make me happy. :)

I climb the walls of my mind just like climbing on a jungle gym

Crazy thought: The goblins in harry Potter could, to a certain degree, represent Jews. 

And how exactly did I come to have this interesting thought while reading Elizabeth Peters? 

hair

Gaah! Now I'm wondering what on earth possessed me to post that poem last night. I must not have been thinking straight. And to top off my sense of embarrassment, I spent most of today softly singing 'Another Postcard' by BNL. This caused a couple of people to give me funny looks, and one to ask outright if I was singing about monkeys. 

Moral of the story: don't go out when you have a silly song stuck in your head. 

And I figured out how to do a french braid on myself. I know, it's not that big of a deal, but it means that I have some way of putting my hair up and a) having it look presentable and b) keeping my bangs out of my face. My usual messy up-do thingy only satisfies one of those requirements, which means that whenever I go anywhere fancy, I have to be careful not to dip my hair in anything, because it's at the perfect dipping-length right now. 

And yes, the only reason I'm writing about my hair is because absolutely nothing happened today, including the (so far) un-arrival of my furniture. 

Grey

It's been decidedly grey outside, matching my mood. But not grey as in depressed. Grey as in dark and cold and calculating. Perhaps slightly unemotional. I've never understood people who are all sunshine, who don't like rainy days and who don't understand 'grey', who are constantly emotional and illogical. While I have my silly days... 

There's something about this kind of mood that always makes me want to listen to my 'Cold and Raw' playlist, which includes: 

Blame it on Me-Barenaked Ladies

Demons-Guster

The Rainbow Never Came-Artisan

Trivia-Artisan

Hook-Blues Traveler

One By One-Enya

My Immortal-Evanescence

How to Save a Life-The Fray

Demasduit Dream-Great Big Sea

Take You Back-Jeremy Camp

High Hearts-John McCutcheon

A Million Ways-OK Go

Till Then-Red Grammer

Advance Guard-Seals & Crofts

Anyhow. You get the idea. For some reason, the word that pops into my head is 'raw'. As in,lots of raw emotion. And I guess that sort of fits my mood. My motto today would be something like 'Be honest and straightforward about it, deal with it, and get over it as quickly as possible. And don't let it interfere with your brain while you're at it.' 

Yeah. 

we tried to hold it back

So. I'm leaving on Thursday. In everything I do, I keep coming back to the startling realization that I'm only going to be with Brynne and Carew for TWO MORE DAYS. And I'm going to miss them horribly. I'm going to miss having them around pretty much all the time. And I'm going to miss seeing my friends in real life. Skype just isn't the same, not by any stretch of the imagination. 

Not that I'm griping or anything, I can't imagine having to live across the world from my friends and family and not have skype, it's just that recently I've realized how pale online communication is in comparison with face to face. Maybe it's the fact that online communication can only, at best, engage three of your senses. Or maybe it's just the distance. 

Speaking of Distance, HERE is a song that Brynne and I listen to when we miss each other, suitably enough called 'Distance'. Check out Reina Del Cid's other stuff too. She's really good. 

Have I mentioned that it's fall here? I have not. So I'm telling you now. It's fall in Pendleton, Oregon. I'm drinking in my share of cold, wind and blue skies, because supposedly it's still blazingly hot and humid in Ningbo. I'll find out for sure soon. 

Stradivarius and perfection (and annoying mics)

The microphone was broken. After all the fuss of updating drivers, nearly having a heart attack due to error messages stating that our sound card was corrupted (anybody notice a pattern here?) and fiddling around with a million different settings, we bought a new mic, and it worked beautifully (we needed a new one anyway; the old one was held together by duct tape and faith. Plus, the new thing only cost twenty-five RMB).

Yesterday, as I was scanning the headlines on Yahoo, I noticed an article about Stradivarius violins and why they were "perfect". How can a violin be perfect? Wood isn't perfect, nor was Stradivari. How can two imperfect things make something perfect? Anyhow. Supposedly, cool weather caused the wood then to be denser, which is why the violins are superior (not perfect!). Then I got to thinking about violins. If one was perfect, and if the player's technique was also perfect, would the violin really sound that much better than a Stradivarius? Probably not. So what is perfection? And was it there?

I've been toying with the idea of starting another blog just for book reviews. We'll see, but not until I actually have books to read, which will be a while. *anguished cry*

plot plot plot

Argh. Listening to John McCutcheon and plotting. It's not going well. I'm too fond of my protagonists, so I'm having to force myself to be mean to them and make something happen. I do hate conflict, but it's fun to write once I get going. I suspect that's when Juliana (one of the three girls that inhabit my brain) takes over. She loves a fight or a nice, juicy argument.

Maybe The Fray will help. At least the name is suitable. Music always plays with my emotions utterly shamelessly. Maybe it'll work to my advantage today, if I'm careful about what I listen to...?

***

Plotting not going well. I've decided to work with what I've got so far (seven chapters worth) and see how it goes from there. Have switched from drinking cranberry juice to eating tortilla chips. YUM!

news...almost

Layli is procrastinating. Layli has a history assignment due in 5 days and Layli hasn't started even looking at it. Layli believes that referring to herself in the third person is very fun, even though it probably annoys other people...

I'm listening to Wonderwall right now, and thinking about the junior youth (and youth-- you guys are awesome too)... Mom got two job offers, one here in Ningbo and one in Suzhou. We need to make a decision soon. I'll know what's going on probably by next week. It's nice to know at least which continent we're going to end up in. I had nightmares about moving to the Netherlands (Mom applied for two jobs there). I don't have anything against the Netherlands, I just don't personally want to live there.

So that's the news. Or the promise of news soon. Thank goodness.

verano!!!!

Well. 23 days. AIAN is slowly vanishing from my life, though I will remember it forever...in my nightmares. Is it normal to have dreams where you ace a test and then get beaten up because of it? It shouldn't be, if it is.

I miss ginger snaps. Yesterday, Brynne talked about making ginger bread, and I got this yen for ginger snaps. I must get me some when I'm in the States, along with rice dream (original and vanilla), horchata, books and some fiddle music. That's my shopping list so far. But then there's the list of places I want to go and things I want to see, which is far more extensive and far less practical. It includes:

1. Blanchard Springs and Caverns
2. The Ozark Folk Center
3. Monona Terrace
4. The Glass Nickel (pizza place in Madison, WI)
5. Taliesin East
6. University of Wisconsin Madison campus
7. Rockport, MA
8. East Gate Mall (in Madison, I want to go eat at Cinnabon)
   

And a bunch of other stuff. Hopefully I'll get to see people too!!! YAY for summer! Again!

So yeah.

doggone skeeters

Does anybody know what "cycoris" means? I woke up with that word stuck in my head. I don't remember dreaming about anything like that, but it sounds like the sort of thing my mind would come up with.

There's no school tomorrow, since the torch is coming through Ningbo and they're closing all the roads.

It's so humid here that the tuning pegs on my violin won't fit into the pegbox. So now my all strings have dropped an octave and a half, and the strings are really loose. I would turn on the AC, but I'd freeze to death. So I guess I'll just have to wait until it gets a bit drier. Also, my canvas bag from the Stratford Shakespeare Summer Seminars, which sat in a drawer for three days, now has mold growing all over it.Ugh...

Dangit I just saw a 'skeeter.

I'm back. Layli one, mosquito zero. And it didn't bite anyone either. The first night Mom and I were in Ningbo, we killed something like 63 mosquitoes in one night. Hopefully I'll never have to do that again.

Thankfully, it's not hot here yet. The high has, so far, been 27 degrees Celsius, about 80 Fahrenheit. With a little luck, it won't hit 45 Celsius this summer like it did last summer. But I won't be here anyhow, so...

um...

Today I did something that was completely out of character for me: I voluntarily went out to shop. This is a major event, marking the beginning of a new age: the age of giggly girl-dom. Next thing you know, I'll be sitting with the the people who blow dry their hair every single morning without fail. Then, I'll start shrieking like them, and after a certain period of time, I'll be going to the mall every weekend, and that will be the end of the sane Layli.

I'm eating dried, sweetened coconut slices and listening to Ingram Hill. Can life really get much better? Well, yes it can. When I turn 18, Jessa promised that she'll take me to a concert. I can't wait.

I have no idea what to prattle on about next, so good night.

if wishes were horses...

Why, oh why are there so many different versions of lyrics to "Tumbalaika" and none of them are the version my Yiddish great-grandmother taught me. NONE of them! I was trying to translate the English lyrics into Yiddish then back again to see if they would yield amusing results when I found this out. I like my lyrics much better than anything on the 'net:

Maiden, maiden, can you explain
What can grow without any rain?
What can live and never die?
What can weep and never cry?

Laddy, laddy, foolish and vain
Love can grow without any rain
Love can live and never die
A heart can weep and never cry

I remember the first time I could actually understand what was being sung to me (I think I was 4 at the time) I thought the answer to the third question should be a weeping willow, and I didn't know what Mom meant about it "not fitting".

Anyhow... I'm going to Kunming tomorrow, then to Beijing on Wednesday. The weather in Beijing on Wednesday says low 18 degrees Celsius and high--wait, drum roll please-- 34 degrees. Yes, 34 degrees Celsius. That's um... 93.2 degrees Fahrenheit. On the last day of APRIL for crying out loud! What the heck is wrong with the world? It's cheated me! Spring has vanished before my very eyes.

Ah well, Beijing should be fun, I'll get to see people! Maybe for the last time in a while if I end up leaving China. Much as I want a change, that thought is unbearably sad. I've grown up here! Which is one of the main reasons I want to leave, but it also makes leaving everybody and everything incredibly difficult. Why can't life be easy?

yet another Saturday night...and I didn't even get to sleep late!

Today was, once again, a very busy Saturday. I woke up at six and couldn't go back to sleep (poor me). Then I went to a friends house and listened to a tape Amatu'l-Bahá Rúhíyyih Khanum gave on "The Dawn Breakers" in Haifa. Her voice and mannerism remind me of my grandma, Na...

Then Mom and I went to the dental clinic, and I sat there for about 2 hours finshing The Belgariad. It was good. I thought the ending would be super predictable, but it wasn't at all, so that was a pleasent surprise. However, the cushions in their waiting room are somewhat less than comfortable. I don't think they were meant to be sat on for a very long time.

When I got home I curled up and watched four episodes of The West Wing straight. I was going to watch two, but they left me hanging at the end of the second one I watched, so I decided to go on. That's the only TV show I find even mildly addictive. I wonder why...