technology's got it in for me.

hello, friends.

as many people who talk to me on a regular basis know, i’m up in tennessee right now. i had about 48 hours from the time i got home from the beach to unpack and repack, which is insanity. i waste far too much time for that to be adequate. needless to say, due to my inability to check, re-check, and re-re-check my bag, there were things that got left back at the house.

i basically spent those 48 hours trying to do something i find ridiculously difficult - motivating myself to do Boring Things. i had it in mind to do some of these things before i even left for the beach, but it didn’t happen. i put off a few things until the morning i was leaving, lazy bum that i am. i guess that explains why i forgot things at home.

however, in those 48 hours, i had a drastic revolution in my artistic experience. i’m a huge fan of StumbleUpon.com. if you’ve never used it, then you are probably one of those people who post facebook statuses like “I AM BOARD SOMEONE TXT ME PLZZZ”. (by the way, i almost always hide these people from my feed, so please refrain from confusing a piece of wood with a lack of interest.) anyway, StumbleUpon, the wonderful institution that it is, brought up THIS video...

and i HAD to try it. if this guy can do that in 37 seconds, i can surely figure it out.

i didn’t have any super-fancy-shmancy materials, i had $1.29 spray paint, a $3 canvas, two frisbees, a copper lid, and an old magazine. but i was really pleased with what happened as a result. also, as you will see later, technology is rebelling against me, so i can't put the precise pictures up. this computer refuses to upload them. so here -----> is the link to the less impressive, slightly blurry twitpic version of the finished product.

the whole thing took me about an hour, and that’s only because i had no idea what i was doing. i did a second one later, but i don’t have a good picture. i’ll do commissions for similar paintings, by the way, if anyone is interested.

OKAY, now let me tell you about today, which has been the worst day i’ve had in a really long time. i mean, a really long time

cliffsnote version: i spent 3 hours looking for a starbucks and ended up in the next county.

full version: i left my mimi’s house (which is in tennessee) at 5 for starbucks. i was actually going to starbucks for better wifi. you see, i’m on a mission team that’s leaving at the end of july and we have routine check-ins to make sure we are on the right track. this week was a check-in week, but at my mimi’s house her wifi isn’t strong enough to support skype. however, bound and determined not to miss a deadline, i set off for a starbucks which was supposedly less than 3 miles away.

bear in mind that i’m awful with directions as it is, much less in a state i’ve never really driven in. thus i have my handy dandy gps named Lola. she helps me find my way, normally. today she tried to kill me.

i was supposed to go to this starbucks, which was next to a target and a walgreens. this is very specific for one location, right? and odds are, there aren’t two places where a target and a walgreens would be together, ESPECIALLY if they are in the same city, right?

wrong.

Lola was trying to take me to a place that did not exist. 

let me emphasize that for those of you who are skimming this--THERE WAS NO STARBUCKS AT ALL WHERE LOLA WAS TAKING ME. 

oh, it was on the right road. and there was definitely a walgreens next to a target. here’s the thing -- it was on the opposite side of town. i’m not talking about my hometown that you can cross completely in 20 minutes. i’m talking about being 45 minutes in the wrong direction, after all was said and done, with multiple times of typing in “starbucks” for my destination. this is really weird, because i actually don’t remember driving that far. i remember calling my mom when i got to Wrong Target and telling her that i could not find this starbucks. i honestly just thought it did not exist, and the gps has merely taken me to an old starbucks location. it didn’t strike me until i’d been gone for 45 minutes and driven past the same walgreens/target shopping center 6 times that mayyyyybe i had gone wrong somewhere.

mom gave me the exact address for the starbucks i was supposed to go to, and i put it into Lola. it said that it would take me approximately 40 minutes to get there, which didn’t strike me as unusual. i mean, after all, i was lost.

on the way there, i stop at a different starbucks, because i figured that would do just as well, but mom said that i couldn’t be too far from the other one, and to just keep going. i pulled out of the parking lot and ended up face to face with a train at least a mile long. the train was at a dead standstill and didn’t move for at least two or three minutes.

at this point in time, after my darling Lola has failed me on multiple accounts, my phone begins to die. 

yeah, i know. just wait, it gets better.

so i drive for 40 minutes, just like Lola said. mom calls me every 15 minutes or so to check, and i tell her that yes, i’m on the right road, and no, i don’t think i’m lost anymore. i just kind of cruise down this incredibly trafficked area in blissful ignorance. i mean, i had the exact street address. surely fate would be kind at this point.

somewhere along this road, my youth pastor calls me to ask what’s taking so long. i tell him that i am hopelessly lost, and we have our meeting over phone instead of skype. this was both good and bad. good--i got the meeting done. bad--i ran my battery down to nearly nothing.

mom calls one more time to ask where i am. i tell her, in sequence, that i was passing a pawn shop, a burger king, a mcdonalds, and a children’s hospital.

she then informs me that i am no longer in the right town, much less anywhere near the starbucks i’m supposed to be at. oh no, i’ve managed to work my way into the downtown area of memphis, joy of joys. 

then my dad calls me. then mom calls me. then krissy calls me. i dutifully answer all of them, tell them my phone is dying, and get off the phone. mom calls me again to tell me which way to go, and i prayed that Lola could do something right for a change.

i knew i was headed in the right direction after that, because it told me the next turn would be into mimi’s neighborhood. however, it says that i’m going to need about 45 minutes and buckets of patience to get there.

traffic is obnoxiously heavy, i have little/no idea where i am, and then my phone dies.

oh, and for added irony, in the last 2.5 hours, i’ve passed no less than 6 starbucks that are NOT the one i was looking for originally.

i stop at this retro 80’s music store and try to use their phone to call mom. the lady was very nice, but basically she told me that their phone wouldn’t make out-of-state calls. that includes my mom’s cell number. by the grace of god, i was able to turn my phone on long enough to look up my mimi’s house number before it faded into a black screen again. mimi told me mom had gone out to look for me.

great.

i just turned on the radio and kept going. that was pretty much the highlight of all the time i spent alone. i found the one indie station that plays all of the weird music i love, specifically music by the Civil Wars. it wasn’t a heap of comfort, but at least i got 3 minutes and 25 seconds to sing “Barton Hollow”.

down the road a little ways, the radio station went out. just my luck.

mom ended up seeing me and pulling up beside me. she then led me to the starbucks i was originally supposed to be at 3 hours earlier. i was a heap of shredded nerves and was just happy to have someone know where i was.

to top off this comedic story of woe, as soon as i got out of the car to finally go into starbucks, the sky rumbled, cracked with lightning, and began to pour torrential rain.

i’m dead serious.

mom, as a consolation for 3 hours of insanity, bought me a frappucino, bless her heart. i followed her back.

so there you have it. today, i was victimized by every technology i trusted. mac, gps, and phone all conspired against me.

if i wake up dead tomorrow because i’ve been mysteriously electrocuted, at least you will know the truth.

now, if you’ll excuse me, i’m going to watch Labyrinth because David Bowie makes me feel like life might be worth living again.

Song of the Day: Barton Hollow by The Civil Wars. this song helped me keep my sanity.

On graduating, and on my disappearance.

i am painfully aware of how i've been absent from my blog. i am sincerely sorry. i can mainly attribute it to the fact that my internet has been rather spotty, and also how i have been excruciatingly busy getting ready for this whole graduating nonsense. (as a note of emphasis on the internet issues, i'm writing this right now WITHOUT internet. i plan to post it later when our wifi is back up. rest assured, i've written about a dozen or so full blog posts that become irrelevant by the time i am able to post them. i even had a good one about the musical and all the shenanigans from that, but alas, that ended months ago.)

so here i am, waiting to graduate in two days. well, by the time this goes up on the internet, i'd lay money that i've already graduated. it's kind of got me thinking about my future, and what i really want in this life. there's nothing that makes you question the rest of your life like 90 billion people asking, "so, what are you going to be?" personally, i always wanted to become a psychologist. yeah, a shrink. not the kind that asks weird questions and prescribes tons of medications, but a counsellor. someone who genuinely helps people. i also want to be a missionary. and an artist. and a ukulele player. and a fluent french speaker, which is called a francophone. i want a lot of things. i generally just tell people about the psychologist bit.

so how do you feeeeeeel about that? :)

one of my great muses, Amanda Palmer, has recently been tweeting "eff plan B". in otherwords, pick what you want most, make that plan A, and go for it. don't worry so much about plan B that you miss out doing what you love. i really like that idea, but at the same time, it is absolutely petrifying to not have a backup plan. if i don't get a job after grad school, i might end up selling cheap art and playing my ukulele on the side of the road for money. but i'd rather go with trying to become a psychologist than pick a guaranteed career that i would hate. and furthermore, i might just end up selling my cheap art and playing uke on the street anyway, no matter what my job is. you know, for funsies.

i seriously wanted to give a speech at graduation this year. i didn't get picked, which was their loss, i guess. 

no, they'd rather have the kid who ended up on truancy and has more absences than days present. but it's okay, i'm not upset. i just find incredible irony in it all. i go to a weird school.

correction, i WENT to a weird school.

in all seriousness, i've had a really great time in high school. i've survived, and even made it out with some really great stories. these great stories usually end up with me making a new friend and/or sustaining a minor injury.

one of my personal favorite memories comes from my freshman year, when i met Chance. we had world geography together, which was a joke of a class. most of us spent a better part of the period passing notes and counting the number of times Mr. Blackston used the word "um." he was absolutely terrible about assigning tons of these meaningless filler projects. after assigning yet another mind-numbing piece of research, chance went up to blackston and said the following--

"quite frankly, i'm tired, and bloated, and cramping, and i'm just not sure i'm emotionally ready for this!"

he didn't have to do the project.

AND he got an A for it.

my dear friend is a genius.

i'm ridiculously worrying about my college experience, if only for the fact that Chance won't be in it as often. people do not understand how he helps me function on a daily basis. in his words, it's his job to "keep tiffany's crap together." he's a pretty sufficient solution to many of my problems. without him, i would not know the date, the time, the day of the week, my assignments in french class, the best way to navigate myself to a point 2 miles from my house, how much a mcflurry with tax costs, or how to make coffee cookies. basically, i would cease to exist.

i love him ALOT.

(i did not make that grammatical mistake unknowingly. see this LINK (clickity click here!!) to see my reasoning. if you don't laugh, then you must have a serious issue and need to seek immediate medical attention.)

oh, i have the normal worries about missing my family, never sleeping, enormous classes, gas money, and so on. i just have a hard time knowing i must become… self-sufficient. *gasp!*

but, as with all things, life moves on. i heard this quote once, and i never can fully remember it verbatim, but it goes something like this: "happiness is perpetually transforming itself. it must be allowed to transfer itself, and one cannot mourn the change." basically, life is always good, even when it seems like it's not. happiness is always somewhere in life. it just never stays put. and if you mourn losing happiness in one area, you may miss it in another. so that's what i'm doing. i'm kind of in this carefree bubble right now, and my life seems a little more radiant every day. i'm kind of hoping it never ends. but if things don't turn out the way i expect, and they usually don't, then i'm going to pick myself up and look for joy elsewhere. it's been a tough lesson to learn, but i'm thankful for it.

take that, truant kid who gets to speak at graduation. you know who you are.

i can't believe that part of my life is really over. i have a mix of emotions about it, but mainly i'm just excited to be able to move on. i'm planning to reinvent myself this summer. step one -- new haircut. 

in the words of my dear friend @schoffyy, "ONWARD TO GRADUATION!"

i had a really great picture to accompany that. my scanner hasn't been hooked up yet. it will be put up eventually, though. basically, it's me riding a unicorn in my cap and gown, and i point, conquistador-esque, at the future.

Song of the Day: "Highway Unicorn" by Lady Gaga (this is kind of what i hear when i look at that picture.)