today was really good. man, though, my blog is totally dying. ughh i can't keep this up. oh well.
today was the cooper-young festival. i sat around the house, sort of trying to find someone to go with all day long. i knew that a lot of people had wanted to go, but couldn't for various reasons. (katherine d, sallis, laylee, brock were stuck at home with school bullshit. ew.) but i didn't want to go alone and then wonder around for my entire life trying to find them. but that's what i ended up doing. dad dropped me off near first congo, and very shortly after i ran into morgan (sister, not fox) with a couple of her friends (sara/foot and duncan). we walked around for a while. morgan had seen tarah a while earlier, who wrote her cell phone number (and "i love you!") on some little piece of paper for me. i called her, and eventually found her at java. we didn't really get to hang out, because foot was trying to find her mom and i was still walking around with them for god knows what reason. i saw zoë and miranda briefly, which was nice. we accumulated a larger group of 8th and 9th graders that i didn't know and stood around doing things that weren't very interesting for morgan and me, for a while. so morgan and i were like "okay let's go to bella sun" and i swear i thought everyone was following us... i guess not. so we ended up watching that all alone, but they were great of course. they played with a BAND, too. (well drums and bass. you know.) it was really interesting. jesus christ frank black is so sexy when he sings in spanish. or when he sings in english. or when he breathes. so at the very end of the set, elise, lauren d, and alice arrived. it was somewhat distracting. oh well. HANGWIRE! we stood around and talked for a bit. oh yeah, leah's dad recognized me from like. the one time we met, and he talked to me about film and dauchsands and black vs white rap. a funny little man. funny because i might not have recognized him if i didn't love this picture katherine d took of him. i love it because it's just like. some old guy grinning in front of tombs. aahaha. my humor needs a sound check. (that was a pretty good pun, if i do say so myself.) anyway. then mutant spacebats of doom played. i liked the hi-tone show better, because it was longer and much more rock n roll, and there were some tech issues as well as more obvious fumblings of the band today. (and by the way, those are SOOOO my mp3s on their website. hell yes! i wish they'd credited me. how much an i ask, though? you can hear me and co. screaming and sometimes speaking through the tracks.) but you know me, i still danced like a crazy fool ass this afternoon. it was fun. after that, i walked to java cabana with elise, alice, and lauren. suddenly foot appeared, who morgan had been looking for ever since we lost them before bella sun. she and morgan were leaving, and i thought they were going home, which apparently they weren't. but i think foot's mom was meant to be my ride-ish. so i was like well i don't want to go home, elise would you mind dropping me off when you guys leave? and she made the gaggy creep ass noise and said she couldn't because she didn't know what her plans for later were. this made no sense to me. i wasn't asking to come along, i was just asking if she could take me home after she left co-yo. but anyway i was like "fuck this, i don't want to beg to hang out with someone who (a) obviously didn't want me to stick around and (b) i wasn't having a marvelous time with in the first place." so fuck that shit. i went outside, because morgan and foot had already stepped out, but they had disappeared. so i was entirely without a ride. at that point it was obvious that i wasn't going to go back in and beg for a ride from elise. i decided instead to just hang out alone until dad could come get me. but amazingly enough, i happened to walk back towards the spacebats show, and i ran into elizabeth, jenny, and rocio. i started to hang out with them, before i decided to call my dad, but elizabeth said she'd take me home anyway. we walked around and listened to a little bit of another bad, outside first congo. we saw morgan (fox, this time). i love that man. he came over and gave me a very good hug, with his glitter and silly sunglasses. then we walked around some more, ran into christie and katherine warren for the second, brief time. we ended up going in a big circle, to find ice cream. there were a couple times when we saw elise walking around with other people. we once made a half-assed attempt to catch up to her, but that didn't really work out. and we didn't really want to hang out with some friends she'd made at theatre whatever or elementary school or bridgebuilders or whever these happened to be from. but it's weird, to think about it now, that it this "oh, there goes elise." thing, which, if i had seen her with ANYONE last year, i would've sprinted a block to catch up. well not that i would've been able to see her a block away, in the middle of cooper-young festival. but you know what i mean. oh well, things change. and i had a great time anywa. anyway, we asked this old guy where he got his damn ice cream. turned out to be just across the street from java. he offered us the rest of his, though HAHAHA. and just as i was buying my large $3 vanilla/chocolate swirl cone (with a damn $20 bill, too. what an ass am i.) my fucking phone rang. it's really hard to balance like four things at once in only some two hands. but anyway it was BROCK. we just sort of talked for a few minutes, because i assumed that he wasn't able to get out of the house yet. i guess i thought it was earlier in the day than it was, or something (like 5:30). but i randomly was like "you need to be here, to look at all the pretty people with us." (ben siler was walking by.) and so he did. and it was good. and god made cheese. yum yum yum. while we were sitting by that damn M restaurant at the cooper-young intersection, christie and katherine w again made an appearance, but this time they actually stuck around. so we were all sitting around waiting for the beautiful brock to arrive. it was exciting. at one point, i realized it was like 5:50 and he was supposed to be there, so i walked around to see if he'd sat down someplace on the other side of the gazebo. i was just walking along and this guy was randomly like "can i take your picture?" i said "sure" and accidentally assumed my picture pose thing, when i sort of put my weight on one foot and do an unintentional hip-jut. i'm afraid i looked assy, but i don't really care. he was just like "okay" and ran off after that, though. it was interesting, to say the least, because i was definitely not one of the strangest-looking people there. maybe i was the happy medium he was looking for? HAHA no too ugly for that. anyway, brock wasn't there. so i went back to the groupity, to find russell standing there among them. he was wearing double plaid and thrift, and he is funny. i like him. he danced crazy with me at battle of the bands. that is a meaningful experience. he gives me hugs too, which i adore, because hugs are my favorite thing. anyway, brock eventually showed up, fashionably late. i was excited to see him, of course, but instead of just doing my stupid little normal standing there and not showing any excitability at all thing, i jumped around and gave him a huge running hug, which turned into a moviesque spinning hug, in which (because of my smallness) i was lifted off the ground and spun and spun. it was something like a kevin bird-flight thingie, only not so flighty in the airness, and more huggity. i've never hugged brock around his neck, probably, because it's too far away. oh well.
advantages of smallness: being really easy to spin around, therefore getting spun around all the time mostly on accident
disadvantages of smallness: hard to see a damn thing. but concerning human contact, it's impossible to reach a tall person's upper body. so it would be ridiculous if one attempted to hug a tall person's neck, or hit their fucking head without it taking 20 minutes and depriving you the option of surprise attack, or spontaneously kiss them, unless you're aiming for their stomach.

soon after that, becca and william appeared. becca and i had a gloriously long hug and somewhere in the middle of it, we fell over?? i'm not really sure how that happened, but we ended up lying on the sidewalk for a while laughing. it was fun. she was wearing no shoes, which i thought was a very dumb idea. because i grew up in cooper-young. but oh well she is hardcore, what can i say? she told william that i have wife qualities and made him touch my hips. it was interesting. he had to bend over to hug me. it was really really funny. since he was bent, i was then able to hug his neck. exciting. i have never done such a funny hug. he also ended up picking me up, and it was very nice. i wish everyone would do that. william also said that i am papoose worthy. hell yes. so eventually, they skipped merrily away. we sat around and people watched. fucking TOSH walked by. i don't know if he still goes to white station. probably not. his persona is so anti-last year. then he was goth ski-boots motherfucker, now he's indie dreads kid. odd transformation, but it would be interesting to talk to him again. stranger still, a few seconds after he walked by, CLIFF (his sidekick from last year's first semester b-lunch) walked in the other direction. christie, katherine, and i were like "fucking cliff!!!" he sat on our table on like the second week of school, when we still sat inside, and broke that damn thing. no wonder we started sitting outside, we were trying to escpe the wrath of cliff+tosh. what a team. anyway, the three of us ran after that motherfucker. he was wearing this big purple hat, and i don't know how we managed to, but somehow we lost him. it was sad. but on our way down cooper, we saw a beautiful boy so we went and stood next to him for like 5 minutes. it was fun. he was really fucking pretty. the prettiest boy at the whole festival. and too bad we are the only 3 who got to see that pretty damn boy. so we mosied back over to the rest of the group, who were standing around with lauren, sophie, jeff, elise, and possibly some of elise's other friends? christie and katherine took off, elise and co. took off, and jenny and rocio went to walk around while elizabeth, brock, lauren, jeff, sophie, and i had dinner at young ave deli. it was not crowded, which i was surprised, but very pleased, to see. i had a cheeseburger because they weren't serving my favorite hot dog dish on the menu, because of the festival and the crowd and whatnot. wahhh. brock and i hung out by the jukebox, which felt very Rock. i reenacted the kill hannah jukebox moment, that was exciting. we picked "debaser," "a day in the life," and "jungle boogie." what a playlist. unfortunately, we had to leave before they played them. aww. it was an okay dinner, but really short compared to what i'm used to. lauren had to get picked up, though, or something. jeff and sophie didn't order anything, because they weren't hungry anyway. it was strange. sophie hugged me though, and said things like "i love you! i miss you! i need to see you more often!" which was really funny to me. i barely said but 3 words to her through the whole thing, i think, which wasn't really on purpose but i probably should've been nicer. jeff seems like a nice guy, but i always get the impression that he's just simply being a nice guy by being wherever he is, rather than "i'm having fun here." i just haven't seen him in the right situations, i guess. maybe that dinner just felt especially short because i was nowhere near done eating when we left. i had like 30 gazillion fries left, even though they were really damn good. i also had half a fucking hamburger and an entire coke (no refill, either). we started walking along cooper, towards union, when we spotted william and becca again. i think lauren had already disappeared, by then, and after a couple minutes of talking brock was like "alanna how are we getting home?" (and by home, he meant my house. i LOVE it that he invites himself over. i LOVE that. to me, that is pure closeness with someone. when you assume that you're going to be with them all day long, until someone makes you leave. i love it.) anyway. william VERY CHEERILY volunteered. i was really surprised, because lately i have heard some things about his stand-offishness towards becca's friends. and he did that big gushery smile, which is actually very cute. it was very happy. elizabeth, jenny, and rocio kind of disappeared, i don't remember any formal goodbye ceremonies. william and becca were leaving c-y at the same time, anyway, so it wouldn't REALLY have mattered who took us back home, except it did. it really made the rest of the night, if you know what i mean. it dealt that damn deck. it closed that damn deal. it was fucking good. william had parked in a REALLY WEIRD spot, that was blocks and blocks away from the north block-off on cooper. when we lived on felix, we just walked from home obviously. (felix is one street over from young.) we've normally just parked on felix in years since. parking on the west side of cooper just makes much more sense to me. but william had parked like. i don't know. it was insane. it was right next to east parkway, only blocks and blocks from the actual festival. and he got a ticket for parking there anyway. ANYWAY i'm not complaining about the walk, because it was quite exciting. brock threw this wad of my never-ending hamburger at william and he refused to believe that it wasn't me. he had a big ketchup on his back too. ahha oh funny. i had a lot of fun being silly with william tonight. it was nice, and i enjoyed his company lots. i pelted becca with little bits of hamburger. not ketchupy ones, though. she had on a very nice shirt, with a little strappy back thing. and at some point i think her feet were hurting (barefootness) so william piggy-backed her the rest of the way. for some reason, brock was carrying my coke (which got more spilled than sipped) and he started to flick it on becca's back. she was like "it's raining!!" all cute and happy. it was really funny. i died laughing. ohh i'm mean. oh well, it was too much fun. so william tried to take a detour to my house. he said it was "the long way" anyway, but he was trying to avoid the traffic for some huge game that was happening. we ended up in ghettoville. we got laughted at and dissed by more black people than you could count on all your limbs. it was great fun. to counter the rap attack of the surrounding windows-down vehicles, we blasted yeah yeah yeahs, dandy warhols, squirrel nut zippers, and an assortment of strange ethnic songs. though we were taking the detour, we were still stuck in AWFUL traffic for like 6 blocks of pain. it was so much fun. william played a cover of "mr. grieves" for me by this band called TV on the Radio. i've heard stories that he's very snobbish about music in his car and usually refuses to tell people the names of bands he's listening to. i don't know, but that was NOT the case tonight. i loved the cover, and he played at least one other song by the band. i really liked it, said so, and he told me he'd make me a copy of the cd. when he dropped us off at my house (finally) he actually handed me his cd though. it was really nice. also, as soon as brock and i got out of the car, it started to rain. so we ended up dancing in it for like 20 minutes. it was too much fun. we attempted to tango down my driveway, and brock mutilated his foot. i didn't think he was as hurt as implied by the bruise he sported later in the evening, however. poor brock's foot. i'm sending my good karma to that piece of shit. anyway we danced all around the driveway, ran down the street, jumped around in the beautiful light of a streetlamp, and splashed around in this great, massive, deep puddle that always forms across the street from my house in a dip in the road. it was great. not only did brock sing shakira and shake his ass, he dragged me down the driveway twice. we attempted a leg-lift thing. fwhaha. hijinx ensue. and they were great. rain is too much fun. we came inside absolutely soaking. somehow my family didn't even notice that we'd been at home for a while, and they didn't question our wetness at all. they just assumed that we got THAT wet coming from the car into the house i guess. ahahaha oh well. i didn't say anything about dancing around outside because it felt like something too special to just proclaim like that, i guess. it was really beautiful though. i want to swing dance. i love the feeling of being wet and i love how people look when they're wet, especially at night and wearing their normal clothes. to me, it's just so eerie and out of place-ish that it makes them resemble pixies or something, i don't know. it's just otherworldly. i don't know how to explain it. but i love the feeling of being wet, still, in the big comfiness of the dry house, in dry clothes, but still essentially very wet. the comfy feeling might have also come out of the fact that i put on my pajamas and everything. brock had to borrow my dad's shorts HAHAHAHAAHHAAHHAAHAHHAAHAHAH anyway i had wanted to have another windowsill kinda night, but that wasn't going to happen what with the rain. we ended up falling into the coziness of the couch, because that really did feel like the appropriate place to exist, with our wet. morgan and mom were about to watch "blow dry" which the family minus morgan had watched last night. i didn't mind seeing it again, it was a fun movie. featuring josh hartnett the fetus. we had popcorn, which is always very happy because i'm still not used to our genius new microwave. i was glad that brock's mom let him stay for the whole movie. at one point, dad was like "so, brock, are you spending the night?" and usually when he makes silly, off comments/questions they annoy me. but that one made me happy, just knowing that it wouldn't have been an issue for my parents, even if it is for his. and i wish it wasn't. the night would've been perfect times 10 if he could have. it had the comfy feeling that spending the night would've been just heavenly. oh well, we have a lot of homework to do tomorrow, so even if his parents weren't Issued, they might not have let him. before he left, we looked around for his lost wallet but had no luck. unfortunate. he needs to go get his new permit so that he can get his license before they run away and leave us for cordova's skank ass. oh yeah, good time speech auditions are tomorrow. PLEASE guys, come try out. this play is going to be fun and strange, and they need lots of people for it. ahaha i don't even know if i'm going to go yet. but pleeeease go. i guarantee a great time, whether or not you're really into theatre (which i am NOT). uhh. i can't think of anything nice to say to end this post.
today i appreciated my shortness and group-hopped lots and loved to dance. i've been drinking this root beer for fucking 4 hours or something. okay literally more like .... 4. ahahah shit.

listening to: squirrel nut zippers - ghost of stephen foster