:(

I had my hair trimmed for the first time in three years today. I'm in mourning. My hair seems absurdly short now, though it's still past my waist--it was nearly to my knees before, but the ends were getting really ugly and dead. Now my goal is to get it to that length while still keeping the ends as healthy as possible. It still hurts though. I'm kind of proud of my long hair. I remember reading in Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks about how there were a few Frankish noblemen who chose death rather than have their hair cut, and I'm kind of sympathizing with them right now.

Luckily my hair grows quickly, so hopefully it'll be nice and long again soon. My mother just rolls her eyes and says only I could feel that waist-length hair was hideously short.

A humorous Easter prelude

During Good Friday service this evening I was sitting with my five-year-old brother, Elhendur, on my lap. He's a very clever, imaginative, and goofy little boy, and halfway through the service was extremely excited when he noticed that my grandmother and aunt were sitting two pews behind us. He grimaced and grinned in their direction for a while, trying to get their attention, and after a few minutes my aunt evidently noticed him, but my grandmother did not.

"I'm going to keep staring at her," he whispered to me, "until she sees me." Whereupon he fixed this ghastly stare and impossibly wide grin on his face and commenced his leering. This lasted about seven minutes, until his five-year-old patience wore thin and more drastic measures were apparently called for.

He tapped me on the arm. At this point in the service there was a hymn being sung and the priest had gone to bring in the Eucharist from where it was in repose after being taking out of the church in a procession the night before for Holy Thursday. So things were somewhat lulled. Still, I was somewhat distracted because I was listening to the choir--which was remarkably good tonight--and so only paid the cunning little guy half my attention.

"Say this," he was telling me. "Say: hibbly dibbly hobbly doo, I make Booma look at you!" ('I' meaning me, and 'You' meaning himself, and 'Booma' being the name my siblings and I give to my grandmother (long story.).)

Not thinking much of the request (I have really weird siblings, okay?), I did as he asked, in a church-appropriate undertone. He looked intently to where my grandmother was sitting, still oblivious.

After a moment he sagged in disappointment against my front, clearly put-out that nothing of note happened. But ever the optimist he then leaned back, looked up at me thoughtfully, and remarked musingly:

'I think you need a broom.'

And that was when I suddenly was very glad that the choir was singing loud enough to prevent anyone else from noticing that my younger brother had just been encouraging me to attempt witchcraft in the middle of the Good Friday church service.

Little kids. You gotta love them.

. . . Even when they matter-of-factly reveal that they think you are a witch in the middle of Mass.

"Tangled" Tomorrow!

I am so extremely excited about this film, it's unbelievable. It's an obsession. I'm terrified it won't live up to my expectations. Augh, why do I do this to myself?

Here's a shiny new trailer--Japanese, no less!--which is a million times better than the standard American trailers. Why couldn't the American trailer been more like this one in tone? It gave both me AND my 16-year old brother goosebumps. Take a look. The audio is in English, never fear, although the voiceover is Japanese. I tried to get my brother to translate for me, but he was able to manage translating only about 60% of it.



I've been kidding my younger sister and saying that we shouldn't comb our hair until we watch the film. My younger sister is 10 and has never had a haircut, and my own hair is down to my knees, so we are major Rapunzel fans.

Sacramento was gorgeous and fun. The drive there and back went pretty well, all things considered--we got a new 12-seater van, which was really strange, especially since I was sitting in the back and found out the hard way that my parents in the front seats can't hear me when I'm way back there unless I yell at the top of my lungs. HR, my 6-week-old baby sister, cried sporadically but overall was extremely well-behaved. I'm very proud of her.

I did not recall in my championship, but I did place 22nd. To be ranked 22nd in the entire Western Region is not a bad thing; sure I wish I had placed high enough to be recalled, but I am grateful I was able to dance at all, and enjoyed myself. I haven't been to any big competitions in a long while.

My little siblings weren't that excited about the competitions, since they go to feises all the time; dance is old news now. Instead, they were excited about other things: a horde of cows we saw (and smelled) on the drive; trying to translate the Latin painted on the walls of the cathedral we attended Mass in; howling with laughter when the wind blew my umbrella inside-out during a rainstorm; seeing magpies for the first time; collecting the bright-red fallen maple leaves. I liked all that too, as well as the cold weather; it was nippy, but so refreshing a change, especially seeing all the fall colors.

There was a basketball court at the hotel we stayed at, so my dad got a basketball from the front desk and we all trooped outside to play. The littlest kids have never played basketball before, so it was fun teaching them and seeing them attempt to dribble and shoot a ball which is basically as big as them. Then we had an impromptu game after dividing up into teams. It was fun until my 16-year old brother for some reason decided to pass the ball to me by throwing it as hard as he could at my face while I was standing about two feet away from him. I was afraid I had broken my nose at first, but it seems okay now, though still very sore if I touch it. That was the end of the game for me, anyway.

Now I will spend the rest of the month focusing on exercising, "Tangled" (I am saving to buy the soundtrack and graphic novel), Thanksgiving, and my NaNoWriMo novel. Said novel is currently only at 15,000 words, partly because I spent the last week or so devoting all my writing energies to writing a birthday story for one of my sisters (it ended up being 38 pages long), and partly because of how dance has been eating up my time this month. I wrote a lot more on the car trip though, and I'm determined to get back on track. Somehow. I'll do it. I WILL.

The Tsunami-That-Wasn't-A-Tsunami

On my list of things to do while in Hawaii:

1. Climb Diamondhead Crater [Check]
2. Spend a day at Waikiki beach [Check]
3. See a waterfall [Check]
4. Experience a tsunami [Check . . . sort of.]

Of course I'm being a bit silly--I don't really want to be in a tsunami. Today was an interesting experience nonetheless. I woke up to the sound of sirens, but was too tired to really understand that they were sirens. After learning from my early-bird grandmother that we were scheduled to have a tsunami today, I was a bit surprised, but not too worried, as I don't live that close to the water, and people had plenty of warning. Grandma and I did walk to the local supermarket, though, to stock up on some food we had needed anyway. There were hardly any cars on the road, but an amazing number of cars crammed into the tiny parking lot of the grocery store.

I've read things about how you really learn a lot about a person when that person is in trouble. I'd like to add a postscript and say you can learn a lot about a person by what they put in their shopping cart when they're bracing for trouble. It was incredible, the kind of things people in that store were shoving and piling in their carts; It looked like every cart had half the store in it. When I was standing in the checkout line it took forever to buy the stuff because the poor cashier had to ring up all the stuff the guy in front of me bought: an enormous bag of charcoal, two cakes, an enormous bag of potato chips, two full trays of green tea, SPAM (of course; we're in Hawaii!), a bag of onions, six giant containers of drinking water, frozen pizzas, I couldn't even count how many cans of soup and vegetables and things . . . It just went on and on. And there were people I saw wandering around with even fuller carts. One man passed me in the cereal aisle carrying three slices of cake. That's all. Tsunami celebration?

All in all, when comparing the contents of my basket (a box of Smart Start cereal, a carton of milk, two packages of club crackers, and ten carrots) to what everyone else was buying, I felt remarkably Spartan, and said as much aloud to no one in particular. My grandmother, hearing me, responded with "Yes, you are pretty." So maybe she didn't really hear me as well as she thought she did. Or maybe she just doesn't know what Spartan means. Anyway, right after saying this, I turn around and see an old Japanese woman shuffle politely into line behind me, pushing her cart slowly into line. And what's in her cart?

One block of tofu, and one small bottle of dishwashing soap.

Now that is Spartan. I am still imagining her living off of that tofu, making some magical dish out of it in her one cooking dish and using the soap to clean her solitary bowl and single pair of chopsticks. Wowza.

Anyway, I carried all the groceries home, ate my breakfast of cereal and milk, and then retreated to my room to study for my Nutrition exam on Wednesday. And then promptly fell dead asleep, despite the warning sirens still sounding at regular intervals outside. And guess what? I slept through the whole "tsunami", which turned out to be, what, little tiny wavelets shyly scurrying on the edge of the beaches and not daring to encroach any further inland?

I'm delighted that this means nobody was hurt and no property was damaged. But I can't help but feel a little let down, too. Today was an anti-climatic day. And now I can say that not only did I experience a "tsunami", I slept through one, too.

And I'm wondering what all those people stocking up on all that food are going to do now that there's no emergency. Maybe they can have big Post-Tsunami parties. That cake looked good.