Rough Night

Last night I went to pick Chris up from the ballpark where he was doing sound at the Freighthouse.  Apparently it's a pretty popular place to hang out, even if no games are on.

I got there around 2:45am and pulled over to pick him up.  There were four cop cars ahead of me trying to remove some drunk guy who was resisting arrest.  Chris said goodbye to the Freighthouse owner and came over to the Dodge.  He put his stuff into the back and opened the passenger door.  There was a loud bang.

"What was that?" I asked.

"That dude just got shot," said Chris.  People started running in both directions.  Chris ducked behind the Dodge and told me to get down.  I wondered how I would convey this to the dogs, who were perked up and watching everything.  It was rather disconcerting to watch the cops react to something going on behind me.

There was only the one shot, and that was for Brandon Wimberly, a wide receiver for the UNR football team.  We only found that out about an hour ago.

Nevada tells football players to cooperate with Reno police in investigation of wide receiver shooting

He got shot in the torso and is recovering in the hospital.  It was the result of some fight between Wolf Pack players and some other group the police hasn't found yet.  Chris saw him fall and when we drove away, all we saw were his unmoving shoes.

The athletic director is asking the players to cooperate because apparently they are not.  That implies some problems...

I'm amazed that 1) people let arguments get that out of hand, 2) somebody had the balls to use a gun that close to that many cops and 3) that many cops- and all the others that showed up- didn't find the silver car.

Mystery Solved

At least once a day for the last week I have come home to find a blinking light on the answering machine.  I press play and all I ever hear is the click of a broken connection.

I figured it was a crafty collection agency with a "No Answering Machine" policy.

We have a weird answering machine situation.  There is an answering machine built into our phone but our cable company also has voicemail service.  What's fun is that you never know whether you will get the machine or the voicemail.

Chris recorded a message for the voicemail, but the answering machine still had the generic robotic male voice.  I decided to finally record a personalized message on the machine.  It went something like this:

"Hi, you've reached Jenny, Chris, and Anthony.  We won't answer if we don't recognize the number, so you might as well leave a message."

After all, I can't pay the collection agency $10 a month if I don't know where to send it.

I took the doggies for a long walk and then dragged the laundry to the Dodge.  NEED a washer and dryer.  Finally I'm home and it's 9:30 and the phone rings.  I let it go.  The phone rang again.  I let it go.

I stop putting laundry away and go check the machine.  It's blinking.

Message 1: Hesitation before the hang up.

Message 2: Long pause... "Hi, Anthony... this is [Sadie Hawkins].  I was just wondering if you could... call me back."

I had a ridiculous moment of celebration where I crowed about my clever trap... and then I froze in horror.  Are we seriously already at the point where girls are calling the house?

Yes, I realized, as I remembered my own early years when... um... yeah, this is karma in the worst way.

Fruity West Coast Hippies

I didn't want to kill myself in Ceramics today!

I decided to start simple.  The teacher came over and told me my slabs were perfect and the window was open.  (Thanks?)  Then he told me I knew what I was doing and didn't need his help.  Ohhhhhh rilly...

Last night Chris and I took the dogs and some food to Mayberry and had a lovely cookout.  It had finally cooled off and the dogs did not feel the need to bathe in the river so we just played in the grass.  The chicken was wonderful.  We had hot dogs that we shared with our eager and suddenly very friendly dogs.  We also had cheese puffs and a vegetable platter.  Strangely enough, we demolished the veggies and not the cheese puffs.  Perhaps we were inspired by all the crunchy granola types that live in that area.  We drove around yesterday afternoon before the cookout looking for houses to rent.  We kept seeing scraggly guys in straw cowboy hats riding bicycles with tattooed pink haired women.  Several of the women had baskets on their bicycles.  We kept giggling about what the requirements might be to live in that neighborhood.  I told him he'd have to wear Jesus shoes; he said I wasn't tattooed enough.  We'd get jumped if we didn't recycle.

"Thankfully you are anal enough about recycling," he said.

"Didn't you have a straw cowboy hat?" I replied.

Round 2

So Ant and Bubba are at Topaz.  Elaine set up a barbecue and specifically invited people with kids to hang out with the boys.  According to Elaine, some of the older kids decided to start sword fighting with sticks.  They ran out of sticks (?) and gave the 3-year-old a PIPE.  She accidentally smacked Ant in the mouth with it.

Elaine said she could recognize Ant's cries.  He insisted on going to the dentist immediately... at 10 o'clock on Saturday night.  Elaine gently laughed at him.  He went back to the dentist today and got a new chunk of composite attached.  It will be another two weeks of a soft diet and "taking it easy" before it will be "healed enough" to do the permanent fix.  I'm taking bets.  How long before the next object to the face?

It seems as though all that was lost was composite but Elaine wasn't sure if he chipped the other front tooth worse than it was already.  I have yet to hear.

I have seen too many Cupcake Wars on the Food Network lately and I am in desperate need of a cupcake.  Okay, desperate want.  I have been working hard to research cupcakeries in the area.  Don't worry, I'll split it with Chris.  Maybe.

Puzzle Progress

I've been working on the puzzle.

This is what it will look like.

Only the second and the fourth ladies are reversed.  Weird.

It's nice to be able to work on this.  It's 1500 pieces, which I think is the largest puzzle I've done.  So far the cat has not dumped half of it on the floor so let's hope that continues.  I think she's thrown- I haven't done a puzzle in so long.

Oh boy.

Good grief.

I'm not sure where I left off.  I started a blog at work the other day but would you believe I was too busy to finish it?  This week I got to feel out the Ceramics class and how it compares to the mini term's craziness.  I got an A in Children's Literature, by the way.  (Yay!)

Thursday was a seriously frustrating day.  I abandoned my Riley project and started a new self portrait.  That one wasn't making me happy either and I saw some of my classmates making bowls.  "Why am I making a self-portrait?" I asked myself.  I wrapped Riley, Jasmine, another Riley and a lumpy suggestion of me in plastic and stowed them on my shelf.  I started making a bowl and even took pictures to show you guys my progress.  I thought I'd make the bowl curve back in and like a true ding dong thought I would even make a lid!  As I added coils I was dismayed to find that the bowl was only getting wider- I couldn't get it to come back in.  I looked up again and realized that the classmates making bowls weren't making bowls at all, but parts of sculptures.  One girl was making the head of a stag.  The other had this beautiful crazy cross between wasps nests and houses carved from rock.  It was beautiful, weird, smooth and I wanted to live there.  I also wanted to crawl under the table.  I smushed my bowl, threw it in the slip bucket, cleaned up, and left to go do something I know how to do.  I read and ate lunch.

So far I've talked to Mom, Tracy, Rachel, Dad, Chris, and my counselor.  I needed some pep talks.  Today I'll hit the library to find how-to books and project ideas for kids.  I'm looking for technique and inspiration.  Thursday was my day of disappointment and giving up.  Monday I'll go back in armed with determination and a list of ideas.  My counselor suggested buying some Play-Doh to practice with at home.  I might do that.  That reminds me of being at Marshall's and finding Play-Doh perfume.  I can understand that some people might like the smell, but would you really want to smell like Play-Doh?

I am dealing with another Financial Aid nightmare, but this time I'm sharing it with tons of other students.  Every time I've gone up there I've been told something different.  At first I joked that they must  have the money in a high interest savings account and they're trying to hold onto it as long as possible.  Now I'm starting to believe it.  They always promised that we wouldn't see money until June- past when mini term fees were due.  They were adamant that we find our own way to pay for that.  Apparently they didn't mean the beginning of June either.  I can't say how many times I've been told it would be disbursed in a couple days, a couple days...  I went back yesterday and was told the loans wouldn't be in for a couple weeks and the Pell Grant not until July.  I was so frustrated that I forgot to ask WHEN in July.

The good news is that I'm not broke yet.  Chris was supposed to work last night but was asked to do the sound for the entire weekend of Carson Valley Days.  I'm gone all week, he's gone all weekend.  :(  But he's got funds coming in so we can pay bills.  Whew...  There will be a bigger mess coming.  The GI Bill hasn't paid for summer tuition yet and the VA won't certify anyone for the second term that starts in early July until they figure out how to process the changes that take effect in August.  That means fall can't be certified yet either so I don't know if my monthly payments will come to a screeching halt in August or when they will resume.  We're hoping to use some of the loans to move into a house.  We need a place with a washer and dryer- laundry is costing at least $100 a month and if I have a yard I can use a clothesline.  I need a yard to let the girls out and I would love more places to walk.  I'm pretty restricted with traffic and lack of sidewalks.  We also want to get away from the dealer that has moved in next door.  Keep those gigs coming, Chris!

Pik-toors

Mom and Marty went to Prague recently and saw an Alphonse Mucha exhibit.  They got me a puzzle.  Here's the start to this 1500 piece giant.

Here's my progress as of today.

I can't figure out how to turn this, but the right side is the bottom.

It's a good thing this puzzle isn't any bigger, huh?

It's so nice to have a puzzle and a giant non-school related book going at the same time.  I started both because I'm only taking ceramics this term.  I'll have about a month of no homework, then I'll have an English class, a short break, and then my 5 class fall semester.

We finally started playing with clay today.  The teacher lectured for two days and half of today.  Then he assigned our first project: a self portrait.  Riiiiiiiiiggghht.  Nice of you to start us off on something easy.  How about a pot?  A bowl?  Jesus.

Thankfully he said we don't have to make a literal self portrait so I immediately tried to figure out how to incorporate the only idea I've had so far- seeing what Riley would look like as an exaggerated form- with a sheep body, goat legs and beard, bat ears and whatever else I can think of.  Yes, this is a stretch but my artistic argument is that I didn't want the self portrait to be literal so I tried to make everything else literal.  So I'm imagining a short brick wall almost closed around my little Riley girl.  Yeah, I don't know.  Why couldn't we just make a pot?

Yeah, I don't know how this is going to work either, but so far I've learned that Ceramics seems to be mostly a celebration of weirdness so as long as I make it weird it should work.