Parrothead Paradise!

We finally got to see Jimmy. At last minute, Cait, Em and I decided to try and find tickets. I found a Penn State alum from Philly, ironically, that was selling four tickets. We bought them and the three of us and Tiffany went to waste away in Margaritaville.

No words can describe how nuts the experience was. As I've been telling everyone, never have I seen so many middle-aged white men dressed in full shark, parrot, and pirate costumes.... it was insane and wonderful.

Rocky Statue dressed by the fans...

Em, Tiff, and some guy we don't know... gotta love those.

Weekend Craziness

This is why I love my girls and why I love life. It's the little things.

Two weekends ago I took the train to Atlantic City. I spent a day in Brigantine with Tiffany and a day in Avalon with Caitlin. Emily came down for part of the day on Sunday and joined us, too. It was great to spend time with three of my favorite people and to have Cait and Tiff finally meet! What a great group of gals.

After going insane taste-testing ice cream in Cait's mom's shop, we decided to do a group float trip down the bayside canal in Avalon.

Caitlin's house sits on the water and has a wonderful little back porch/ dock that allowed us to start our trip from home. We lashed several floatation devices together and grabbed 3 bottles of wine (thanks Cait & Buckinham Valley Vineyards!) and a corkscrew and pushed off. The plan was to float out to sea as the tide was going out, and float back to the dock as the tide was coming in. We timed our pushing-off to be about 45 minutes before the tide changed.

It was a lovely float. We sang pirate songs and talked about life and love and friendship all lashed together in our little floating island. We passed wine around the circle and enjoyed the beautiful sunshine.

But the tide took longer to change than we thought... so we ended up having to facilitate the trip home (i.e. swim / doggy-paddle for 1 - 2 miles against the current towing a floatation village, three lashed on wine bottles and a corkscrew). Still, it was pretty hilarious. A near-perfect day, in my mind.

A Not-So-21-Humor Week - An old entry from a few weeks back that I haven't gotten around to posting

I haven't posted anything this week becuase I've had a pretty crappy week. Not much worth posting if you don't want to hear about my swamped workload at work, necessary final dealings with the dreaded ex, and jumping on the scale to realize that summer has indeed made me fat and happy... (too much eating - not enough skating)

It seems like all my friends are miserable in their own ways lately. What is it with the 20-somethings?

So I'm going to tell you a story of the happy past, instead. I have so many quirky memories that I want to get up here, eventually. Today's story is about my dear college roommate, Caitlin.

We graduated and had the apartment for another few months until the lease ran out. This means that we had a State College party pad for the summertime. Well, the time came last July to empty the remainder of our junk out and scrub the year's dirt away as our lease came to a close.

The girls and I made a ceremonial voyage back to State College (all three roomies- me, Caitlin, and Emily) for one last weekend of drinking/ partying with a crash pad a few blocks from the bars. And to do some cleaning, of course, being that the fate of our security deposit rested solely on our motivation.

We sat for a while in our bare living room, reminiscing about all the wonderful memories we made in this place, a place where the walls were constructed of 5 or 6 variations of wooden paneling (kind of like the different rings on a tree, the paneling certainly dated the different eras of the old mansion). It was a dingy, old, run-down place, but to us, it was a little slice of heaven.

Emily fell asleep and never made it out to the bars. So Caitlin and I rallyed and went to the Phyrst Family singalong (gotta love Penn State!) alone. We got very drunk, happy to have one last night in our town. The family stopped singing, the bar closed, and we headed home. Thoughts of the next day's cleaning marathon came into our heads.

Then, out of nowhere along Allen Street, God gave us a sign - in the form of a vacuum cleaner! We would, indeed get our security deposit back! Hurray! We grabbed the lone vacuum (missing a significant chunk of the handle but still roll-able) and started pushing it down the middle of Allen Street. We turned onto College Avenue and proceeded home, as the bar traffic shouted jovial chants such as, "Thank YOU for keeping the streets of State College clean!" and the like.

Here's where the evening got interesting... Caitlin really had to pee. But where to go when you're pushing a vacuum? Not like it's the easiest thing to duck behind a dumpster with your Bissell and "pop a squat" as we so affectionately started calling it.

I encouraged her the entire drunken walk home as we pushed the vacuum. We got back to our front porch and were at the front door of the building when I did the unthinkable - I made her laugh. She laughed so hard that she fell over on the porch.... and couldn't hold it any more. Yes, my college roomie peed on the front porch of our apartment.

This resulted in a full-clothing shower once entering the apartment to wash up. But she was happy. :-)

And we knew we were leaving State College in style. Or at least leaving our mark.... :-)

The Hershey Open

Yesterday evening I had to choose between two activities- attending a Harrisburg Young Professionals social (aka- fun outdoors drink-fest with my new friends) or volunteering at the Hershey Open. One of my friends is the organizer of the event and I promised her a few weeks back to lend her a hand if I was free during the event. Thus, I guilted myself into attending the Open instead of the social.

I know what you're all thinking... 'Interesting... a golfing event. How did she get involved with that one?' No my friends, not golf. This was in fact Hershey's annual Figure Skating competition.

As many of you know, I've picked up skating as a hobby in the last 2 years. It's been a wonderful experience, both athletically and socially. The people have been wonderful and I've really learned a lot about both the sport and myself (I know, it sounds so tacky and cliche, but it's true). I figured this event would fall into the same schema. My first competition, in fact! It could be exciting! Not exactly.

I got there and was immediately informed that we were short-staffed. This means that instead of putting me in charge of some harmless task like cooking hotdogs or selling t-shirts, I was recruited to be an "Ice Monitor." Apparently this is the most difficult job in the whole process. And it was going to be all mine.

Yes. Imagine little old me standing next to the ice entrance wearing some headset/phone get-up and being completely wired. This headset allowed me to communicate with the "Ice Refs" and the judges if there were changes to the program. I wish I had a picture of me to show you all. You'd die.

My main job responsibility was keeping track of the skaters (there were about 100 all over the place), both their skating groups and their skating order. This wasn't too bad. The main problem (as in many competitive situations) was the parents. Talk about crazy "stage" mothers and fathers!

Here are my favorite questions/comments from the evening:

• Woman grabs me by the arm, shoves the program in my face, and nastily says, "Make sure Katie's last name is pronounced 'Hor-en-JICK.' Think you guys can get it right this time?"
• Some coach was consoling his skater about how great she looked out there, and how she she shouldn't feel bad about her competition, Rachel (he basically trashed the competitor). Rachel apparently one-upped his skater because of having her makeup done at an Estee Lauder makeup counter earlier in the day!
• One of the refs bitched me out because I screwed up the frequency of the two-ray radio apparatus. Nice, considering I gave them my time and had never been at let along worked at a skating competition before an hour before... Holy power trip, batman. I wanted to be like, "Bitch, it's a freakin' junior skating competition! Chill!"

My absolutely favorite:

• Some guy comes up to me and starts complaining about the warm-up group his 10-year-old daughter was placed in (as if it's my fault or I had anything to do with it). He starts ranting about how horrible it is that his 10-year-old was out on the ice with all those "butts and boobs! Those girls all have to be about 20! Look at them!" He kept going on and on about how it was totally inappropriate considering the differences in their "LCGs" (low center of gravity?). Get a life, man!

Conclusion of the night: I love skating. I enjoy volunteering. The evening wasn't half bad - but sometimes it's just better to choose the activity that includes some alcohol...

The smell of love

I was thinking today about how memory can be triggered by so many different outside sources. We remember things based on how emotionally attached we are/were to them. If you remember something from a long long time ago, it is very likely that this event/person/thing had a large impact on your life. Most people associate memory with visual triggers, it seems, but in actuality, smell is the strongest sense in regards to memory (or so I heard on some Discovery Channel documentary this week).

This said, isn't it funny how memories can just hit you out of nowhere? I always think about how I am so emotionally connected to songs in particular. Maybe it's becauses I am always listening to the "background music" with whatever I am doing, wherever I may be. I think a lot of us are that way-- we hear a certain song and we're suddenly thrown backward into another time and place.

I think I'm different than a lot of people in the fact that I associate songs/cds with seasons, too. For instance, David Gray's White Ladder is a November CD. Tom Petty is a summer artist. Guster is a spring artist that should be listened to when the leaves start to break from their tree buds.

I would definitely consider myself to be a "sound-memory" person, above all else. But I was surprised this past week in a rather strange way. I walked into a bar and grill in New Jersey (still doing trainings there a few times a week) and was bombarded with the smell of my grandparents' house. Not a bad smell, not a good smell, just a house smell. The smell of wood and age and good food that has been eaten there. The smell of laughter and holidays and family. Perhaps, even, the smell of love.

It was emotionally overwhelming, actually. My grandma and grandpa, with whom I was very very close, both passed on three years ago and we sold the house a few months later. I was in college at the time and wasn't really involved in the settling of the estate with my extended family. I never got to visit the house before it was sold. Part of me is bothered by this, but in actuality, I don't think I could have handled it at the time. Too painful... too filled with grandparent happiness that was ending.

So I filed all the good thoughts of them and their house into my memory to visit by myself when I needed to. And I did. I visited at night when I was falling asleep and desperately sad. I walked the floors and picked up their belongings and sat on their couch and came to terms with things in my own time in my own way.

I re-visited Grandma and Grandpa in a very real way at the restaurant. Just like their house, the building was "wood-inspired." All of the wood finishing was the same age/ style/ finish as the wood that trimmed their doorways and moldings. If I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of air, I was truly sitting in their living room with the lingering scent of food layered on top of the house smell. And I could finally smile. No more tears.

I was meant to dine there this week. I was meant to experience something I didn't have the strength to a few years back. It's just so odd that it happened in this most random of circumstances.

I predict a riot!

Last night I made my semi-annual trek to Camden, NJ to see a concert at the Tweeter Center. I was accompanied by Doug and my cousin, Ben.

The band: Coldplay. This is a band that grew on me. Those that know me well know that I am famous for initially hating a new band (namely, its first single), and then slowly growing to tolerate it, kind of like it, like it a lot, and eventually love it. My Tom Petty (You Don't known How It Feels) & Train (Meet Virginia) obsessions started this way. Coldplay was the same... I HATED "Yellow" when it came out. Then it grew on me. Now I can't get enough of the band.

It was a spectacular show, complete with cool gimmicky props, lighting and video effects. The mix was very good, and the sound was perfect from the lawn where we sat. The view of the Philadelphia skyline across the Delaware River was a nice touch to the experience. The band is certainly on top of their game.

The most interesting part of the night, however, was after the show. For any of you who haven't seen a show in Camden, you have no idea what this location is like... This venue is literally right smack in the middle of the ghetto of the most dangerous city in the United States of America. I am not exaggerating (it has ranked as #1 most dangerous for the past 2 years). The waterfront area is very nice and supposedly safe, being that there are a lot of cops patrolling the concert grounds, aquarium site, and sports complex. Walk two blocks off the main entertainment area, however, and you are in the projects.

Parking is a problem at the Tweeter Center because the amphitheatre seats many more people than the parking lot holds vehicles. So most people end up parking in fenced-in privately owned lots a few blocks from the venue - aka. - the Hood. We lucked out and found a lot relatively close to the Center that only charged $10 (still a rip-off in my opinion) for parking (others were charging $15). After the show, we got back to the car and got in line to exit the lot.

Then, an accident happened a block over from us which completely stopped the flow of traffic from our lot. Only one exit - one way out. The problem was that several cars got impatient and thought they were going to plow their way out of the lot. Neat lines turned into a free-for-all scramble for the exit. Imagine what a demolition derby looks like with cars scattered haphazardly in a gigantic enclosed area. That was the parking lot last night. People were cutting people off left and right, horns were everywhere, pedestrians were dodging vehicles, and it was one big jumbled mess funneling down to the bottleneck at the single main gate (only a single car-length wide). Keep in mind that not only were most of these people hot and tired, they were drunk. Thus, they were crazy. And several of them were from New Jersey.

10 minutes later and still no movement. Guy behind us cranks his music and starts shouting like a traveling preacher to the crowd of cars.

15 minutes later and still no movement. A car 15 feet away shuts off its engine in place, all the kids pile out and set up a beer pong table and start playing.

20 minutes later and still no movement. A guy behind us starts screaming like a madman, "LET US OUT, MOTHERFUCKERS!" (keep in mind there were no parking attendants anywhere within earshot).

30 minutes later and still no movement. People are getting bored and restless. Someone starts beeping. Everyone starts beeping. People start beeping songs. People start "partner" beeping things like, "Charge" and other football game rally cries. It was perhaps the most amazing thing I've ever seen. One big sea of car horns beeping songs in unison.

40 minutes later and still no movement. People are angry and fights are breaking out among cars. Then a group of people in the back of the line get out of their vehicles and BUST DOWN the back entrance gate and cars start trying to BACK out and maneuver to this new, alternate exit. A security guy suddenly appears and sees what is happening. He rushes over and tries to shut the gate (smart choice buddy) and people start screaming at him and threatening him bodily harm if he deters them. He gives up, realizing if he detains these cars any longer, a riot will indeed break out. He goes for reinforcements.

We manage to slip out with the small group of cars that makes it out before a cop comes over to lock the gate. We saw this happening behind us and wonder if a riot may have broken out. All the signs of complete madness were there...

The moral of this story is: Do not go to Camden unless you...
a) ...really really love a band and they aren't playing anywhere else close by
b) ...don't value your life or
c) ...aren't afraid to deal with the bad situations that the place inevitably brings on. I'm 3 for 3 with bad Camden experiences now.

At least Coldplay kicked ass.

My Testimony of the Day

Today I was thinking about all the assholes that have passed through my life and the lives of my closest friends... all the people who have hurt us because we are good people who trust rather than question... all the people that continue to have a small hold over us, even after the dust has settled.

And I came to realize something. I've come to realize that people who are weak in soul are truly not worth having in your life. You need to surround yourself with people who make you feel positive- people who make you laugh to be alive and make you want to embrace each day as a new challenge and a new adventure. Because really, what good does it do you to be with people who have lost (or have never had) the dream within them? Know what you want and go for it- and cut off the dead weight that drags you down!

Share the love with those that are worthy... don't waste it on the assholes. Let 'em go, guys.

An Addendum to "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing"

I've received some interesting possible explanations as to my teacher's shadiness as describe in my past post, "A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing..." post. Theories are as follows:

• He is a secret government agent serving as an undercover spy in the New York mob. He infiltrated for a specific purpose. The teacher thing is just a cover up.
• He is living in Harrisburg as part of the witness protection program because of the danger of his past line of work.
• He serves as a consutant to the mob (or any other facilitator-type of role) rather than actually being in it.

Interesting... possibly more to follow.

Music, Sex & Cookies - Hippie Parties Pt. 2

My month of hippie parties is well underway. I spent this past weekend hanging out on an organic farm in Berks County (outside of Reading, PA) at the Father Folk Fest. This music festival features approximately 50 musicians/ musical groups from the mid-atlantic region and about 200 spectators. It is an "invite only" festival, meaning that only family, friends, and friends of friends of the "fathers" are invited to attend. My family and I are lucky enough to be friends of two of the "fathers."

This festival is very home grown. Some guy donates the use of a big glade on his farm for the festival each year (this was the 7th year, I think). It is a beautiful location with lots of green trees and chirping insects. The mid-size bandstand is hand-crafted out of logged trees from the farm. People come for the weekend and camp on the far side of the glade. 48 straight hours of music. It's pretty fantastic. Where else do you get to hear bluegrass, folk tunes, acoustic classic rock, country, sitar and dijeridoo music at once?

The highlights of the weekend:

• Hearing my brother perform - he kicked major ass
• Lots of laughs with Caitlin and sharing the FFF love with her
• Great food, great friends, great family
• The festival's vibe, period
• The cool-ass original T-shirt I bought - these festival shirts are legendary

I had an interesting conversation with Dave Martz, one of the musicians. Dave is in his 60s, I would imagine, and has a long white beard. He played 2 great sets of original tunes on his 1932 dobro (steel-infused, old-sounding guitar). Also known as "the Road Man," Dave travels the folk festival circuit every summer spreading the joy of music. His songs are catchy because he talks about fun, every-day life things that color his life. He said to me, "You know, so many people tell me that they wish they lived as interesting a life as I do. But really, we all lead interesting lives... the difference is that most people don't take the time to step back, realize it, laugh, and appreciate the things that happen to them."

So true. Many of these things, to me, are what embody the philosophy of 21-humor.

Dave dedicated a great little tune to Caitlin and I during his second set. It was entitled, "Music, sex and cookies" and it talked about how they make the world go 'round. He talks about how there are other things in the world that are fun, but these are the best - the song ends with him talking about how he got rejected by a woman at a bar, but then he went home and put on some blues and got out the old chocolate chippers, and realized that "two out of three ain't bad." I suppose this was this man's testimony to the younger generation of hippies...

Despite the heat and not taking a shower for two days straight, I had a wonderful time at Father Folk. I spent the weekend knitting and taking in the lovely sounds of Americana and feeling the 60s love and idealism that is still very much present if you know where to look for it. Oh, what a feeling!