All The Sweetest Winds, They Blow Across The South

I realized this evening that I uploaded a bunch of Charleston pictures so that I could post them up here, and never did. So. You get them now, not quite a month after they were taken. It's fortuitous, however, that this blog officially has almost no readership and thus no one to comment complaining about having to sift through so many goddamn pictures. So I can post as many as I choose to. Enjoy.


South Carolina welcomed us. How nice of it. We were the kids who stopped at the Welcome Center and took pictures of the map under glass at the counter and of the walls lined with brochures. I won't bore you with those though.


After we checked into the hotel we headed downtown to find us some seafood (because Charleston is by the sea-- get it?). A recommendation took us to Hyman's, which is allegedly famous, and it was de-lish. One half of the table, and...


...the other half.


Sonika, me, and my freakishly pointy tongue in Ye Olde Charlestone Sweete Shoppe or something of that nature.


Partly to show the cute little Sweete Shoppe and partly to prove that I wore a skirt, because people seem to find that shocking.


Our hotel! Ha, right. Our hotel probably would have broken the camera.


Day Two! Me, Myra, Melissa, and the SS Somethingorother.


The same kids at Coconut Joe's, a restaurant on Isle of Palms. We are gradually getting sweatier and disgustinger in the southern heat.


The Concert! It was in the backyard/pool area of the Charleston Harbor Hilton, and although that meant we were charmingly sweaty all evening, it was way cute to be able to play in the sand and see dolphins (!!!) in the bay while watching Jump.


The lovely Matt Bivins.


The lovely Jay Clifford.


One hot piece of Ash. Heh. The lovely Ash Hopkins, filling in for Jonny on bass. Pictures of Ward and Evan are missing because the Wardie pictures were only okay and Evan hides behind his drums all the time.


Day Three! Shopping in the open market. Me and the fattest little ceramic kitty ever, and currently my Facebook picture.


Bye Charleston. See you next time we are too tired of Georgia and South Caroline provides a welcome respite.

And there you have it. Thirty billion pictures documenting a weekend you were not present for, starring people you may or may not have ever seen before. How tedious for you. It's startling how much I don't care, though, and hey, at least I had fun, right? Anyway, a couple that I left off can be found on my Flickr photostream if you just can't get enough.

From The Front Of Every Book Ever

"NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as 'unsold and destroyed' to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this 'stripped book'. Also, you should know that you are a complete moron for happening upon some shifty character selling paperbacks with their covers ripped off out of the trunk of his '87 Volvo and thinking, Hey, what luck! Finally somebody is selling books without those unsightly covers. Now I can catch up on the latest adventures of the Babysitters' Club without anyone being the wiser!"

It really is a pleasure to know that there are people in the world who would buy a book with its cover torn off and not think that something was amiss. "You mean to tell me this book was stolen?!" That little disclaimer has struck me as odd for years.

So Not Punk Rock

Billy Joel fucking rocks.

All those who say otherwise will be prosecuted.

Elements Of The Past Few Days, Rated On An A-F Scale

Free Beer at Trivia Tuesday Night
After the second round of Trivia at Willie McGee's on Holcomb Bridge, Karen and I won a free pitcher of beer for scoring the most points for the round. Thanks to Karen's fake, we managed to collect and drink our prize during the remaining rounds. It was Bud Light, and it stayed cold for about half a second after we started in on the pitcher.
The Beer Itself: C-
The Fact That We Managed To Drink Free Beer In Public Despite Being Under 21: B+

Ikea
Karen had visited the new Ikea on 17th Street with a friend of hers she stayed with Monday night at Tech, and she insisted that David and I would love it. It was enormous, like it's own little city. The damn thing even has a restaurant in it! And all of the little rooms are set up, so you can walk through and pretend you're living there, or plan out your future apartment in your head, or wish you actually had money so that you could decorate nicely. Although for nice furniture and decor, Ikea's cheap. I walked away with a cute throw pillow and a set of knives, and possibly would have bought more had I known more about our apartment.
A-

Pouring Rain During An Afternoon Of Shopping In Little Five Points
We went straight from our two hour Ikea side trip to Little Five to shop. Junkman's, Clothing Warehouse, the usual. (On an infuriating side note, The Vortex, where we had planned to eat dinner, where I have eaten many times before, as of July 1st no longer admits anyone under 21, ever. God.) As we walked out of Clothing Warehouse, it started to sprinkle. We'd barely made it around the corner onto Euclid when the bottom fell out and we had to duck into some weird Indian mystical gypsy store I'd never been in. Definitely not an interesting place to wait out the rain, particularly when you are disinterested in giant golden Buddhas that cost over a thousand dollars. We gave up and went in a few more stores, getting fairly well drenched, and finally deciding we wanted pajamas and Steak & Shake, but not in that order. The rain stopped as soon as we left Little Five, by the way.
D-

Trivia Thursday Night
Karen came back, having found Athens to be unsatisfactory, and we decided to try Trivia at the Rafters on Jones Bridge. Pennington came in from Atlanta to join us. Our little team, however, came in something like 10th place out of 14 or so, despite our good showing at Willie McGee's (2nd place in the end). Plus I screwed up the final Bonus question (who knew The Age Of Innocence was written in the 1900's?!) and there was no free beer. But there was a team called Dumbledore's Army, so that was nice.
B

Working
It's even worse than usual because the end is in sight. It's such a struggle to make myself go and not totally explode all over everybody. Because that would be messy. Yuck.
F-

The Island
Saw it with Melissa earlier this evening. I'll come right out and say I liked it, for a movie that was basically an amalgam of a bunch of other science fiction movies. Ewan McGregor is nice to look at and can act to boot, and the plot (there was one; don't believe everything you read in reviews) managed to hold my interest. I tried to count the incidences of product placement and lost count at nine. It's good to know, however, that many years in the future, we will still be drinking Aquafina bottled water and Michelob Light beer (Buy a six-pack today!). In any case, it definitely didn't deserve the D+ rating the ridiculous AJC saddled it with.
B-

Historical Fiction

It's something I've thought about from time to time, probably because it's often a question asked on applications, as it is assumed that the person you would elect to have dinner with will reveal your character like an open book. If this is the case, then looking at the selections I could come up with off the top of my head, it looks like I aspire to be a criminal who almost got away with it.

People, Dead Or Alive, That I Would Like To Eat Dinner With (A Running List):

Stephen Glass

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb

Orson Welles

Frank Abagnale

John Cusack

And there you have it. Liars, perpetrators of hoaxes, murderers, con artists, and a really dreamy actor. Insight into my personality? Nahhh...it's not like I spend a fair amount of my time brainstorming ways to trick people or anything...

I swear, though, I’m not evil.

Not that evil.

A Brief Reminder

Tomorrow is America's birthday, yes? That's all good and well, but Wednesday is my birthday, on which I will be 20, and it would be imprudent of you to forget all about it. Just so you know.
That's it; you can go back to whatever you were doing. Oh, and I'll be posting some Charleston photos as soon as I get them from Sonika somehow, so look forward to (or dread) that.