I have finally gotten my cummerbund and shirt for concert choir. Through some miracle, the first one (both shirt and cummerbund) I tried on actually fit, saving me the embarrassment of needing to order things in extra large.

At least we have no bow ties this year.

Came back from what I term Homecoming Dinner at Tara Asia, since I didn't have a ticket to go to actual homecoming. Everyone looked spectacularly nice. I remember what the girls were wearing, and since the guys probably didn't notice and girls spent so much time "primping" I ought to give them credit. Basically the first half of this blog entry is fashion commentary. Not very detailed though, for which I apologize.

-Elissa: Dark blue dress with black lace and a black necklace thingy, similar to those loopy tattoo necklaces but not.

-Janis: Black strapless dress that people kept commenting about and black gloves.

-Silvia: Red dress.. of some sort. Her hair was down, like in her senior photos that she showed me. She was sitting at the end of the table so I didn't really see her really closely.

-Lizzie: High waisted red dress with beading on the bodice, spaghetti straps.

-Cathy: Red dress, darker than Lizzie's, no beading on the bodice. It was sleeveless with a scooped neckline. I think. Nick B said that the two dresses looked exactly the same. Fool. It's not like the red dress pairing was planned.. apparently Cathy and Lizzie had both undeliberately both worn blue dresses to prom too. I say it's not a big deal- there are only so many colors in the world.

-Sharon: V neck sleeveless black dress, and she put her hair up, which is something I actually have not seen before.

-Dena: Black dress with silver stitching going diagonally down across the waist. She curled her hair, which made people comment that she looked like a female Tadzio. In a good way.

-Ranwa: Black shawl and a black dress.

-Ruchita: Lavender dress, which Sarah commented really complimented her complexion.

-Sarah (Gordon): It was black.. all the black dresses are running together in my head. She had curled her hair, and was commenting how much she felt like Emma.


We got 17 people... poor Alex left his ticket at home and had to get it, but he came back. The restaurant was rather crowded with .. everyone else going to homecoming (but presumably not the freshmen, who were rumored to be eating at.. Taco Bell), so we encountered craploads of people we know, like Carmel (in a short dress that looks black but actually turned out to be very very dark blue) and Lili (Sarah said she'd cut her hair so that when she put it in a bun it'd be small enough to fit into the metal spiral thing) and Polomma (purple dress with a high neck) so it took a while to get seats and we were scattered across this long table. My food was weird.. seafood (scallops, mussels, squid or something) in coconut milk.. it's the weirdest thing I've ever eaten, and Alex agreed when he tried some. I have notoriously bad luck randomly picking things off menus. I stole Nick B's bowl of rice and his cashews since he wasn't eating them. Um.. anyhow. Plentiful jokes about Nick B's lack of masculinity, which he tried to rectify by wearing sunglasses (which just functioned to make him blind indoors), and other bold women tried to rectify by attempting to attack him with lipstick, and threats of eyeliner and mascara. People made sexual comments about Alex "tying Nick's tie." Nick S moved to our end of the table to counter the overwhelming female ratio.

People were frightened by the prospect of red bean ice cream or green tea ice cream for dessert, so we relocated to Ben and Jerry's after trying to get Puffy to divide the check for us in his head, but he'd forgotten all arithmatic. We ended up dividing it wrong and Nick B ended up padding the bill by paying a twenty, but he generously declined offers by us to pay him back when we realized our math errors, saying that it was his parents' money anyways. How cavalier.

I should note that the Nicks were hella dashing tonight, possibly because Nick B didn't have stubble. Nick S was our resident photographer and Nick B gets brownie points for giving his jacket to Lizzie when she was cold. (It wasn't really cold, as it still feels like summer in Rockville, but rather windy, making me glad I was I had sleeves.) See.. I have this theory that modern fashion has it so that men wear jackets with their suits and women wear evening gowns with low necklines so that men are obligated to give their coats to the women. (Edit: Nick B says the jacket was Lizzie's to begin with. Well hell, I still stand by my 'jackets and evening gowns' fashion theory.)

We went walking to.. uh.. the homecoming place, singing really loudly (Nick B, anyways) but since there weren't many songs all 17 of us knew, we ended up singing the Star Spangled Banner spontaneously until we cracked up laughing when people who passed us, like cops, gave us funny looks. I must say we actually sounded good though. Ranwa suggested "Onward Christian Soldiers" but none of us knew that and none of us were Christian. Puffy and Nick B broke into "Hava Nagila" and Puffy sung three verses of Battle Hymn of the Republic (he knows all five, but he stopped, mercifully). Barry was prancing around clicking his heels together. When we got to the homecoming place, most of the girls pleaded fatigue due to walking around in heels and went inside, while a handful of us continued wandering around the block singing loudly and badly. I think we did that again until we came back around in a circle. So.. me and Puffy went around the block.

Again.

It's actually a lot more fun than my blog is making it sound. We encountered Josh going to homecoming with his date, who advised us on his devious ways of getting into the previous homecoming dances without a ticket, but Puffy declined because of moral issues and I declined because I wasn't dressed for the occasion (Brutal but true.) J Ro argued that since Puffy was already using stolen chopsticks from Tara Asia as afro picks, he was corrupted already, but Puffy didn't buy it, so we went on our way. Puffy later imitated being a geisha. I walked him to the Metro. I was being picked up at 9 and we still had 15 minutes left, so he walked me back to Rockville Town Center. And then he went back to the Metro.

Yeaah. So that's my story.

Let me tell you about Friday.

Went to the Natural History Museum with Shpachee, because museum-hopping is a hobby of mine. The elephant statue in the entrance hall had been renovated, so that you could no longer pick up a phone plugged into the plinth and listen to the audio documentary about pachyderms.

Had a precursory look at the modern Mongolia exhibit, mostly because we had to walk through it to get to the Dinotopia exhibit, though there were interesting reconstructions of yurts. The Dinotopia exhibit seemed more like a total plug for the miniseries instead of an actual point of academic interest worth being in a museum. Even so, the parts of the exhibit unrelated to the semi-crappy miniseries were great; James Gurney really deserves his reputation as an artist. The architectural miniatures were really shoddy, but the paintings.. it was great to recognize them from the books, except the originals were so much richer, and at their original size, you could pick out an amazing amount of detail. Of course, the best ones in the exhibit were the best ones in the books.. Waterfall City, Canyon City, World Beneath. And Chandakar, which isn't in the books. I think it's sort of strange and a bit disturbing that I get a more spiritual experience from reading fantasy books and walking through Rock Creek Park than from going to church. Though if atheists are to be believed, it's only a matter of picking the best work of fiction.

Uh, some Southeast Asian history stuff and the African cultures section. And the pre-Ice Age mammals exhibit, which I thought Alex would have liked. It was quite a novel experience, because as a little kid on field trips I'd only look at the dinosaurs. Giant sloths! Giant elk! Mammoths! Giant armadillos! Pigdogs! Thin rhinos! Tiny horses! I saw the dinosaur exhibit too, which I've seen once or twice before, but it was still awe-inspiring when you're actually aware of the size of these things.

We would have watched Cirque de Soleil (with Shpachee mocking my bad French) on the IMAX, but it aired at 5:45, so we just left and went to Dupont Circle by Metro. We were trying to walk to Georgetown but we got lost, but it was still pleasant getting lost in a non-touristy part of DC. It was actually quite quaint, with brick houses and windows with shutters and gardens, and we went into an actual general store, the type that sells everything. Shpachee said it was like being in a book because it was so quiet. But we did get to Georgetown eventually after getting a bunch of retarded directions.

Chili fries at Johnny Rocket's, a retro diner with a soda fountain and jukeboxes and oldschool "Coca-Cola" posters plastered over the tile walls. Chili fries get really squishy and gross halfway through, and they are possibly the unhealthiest food product in existence, but they were still good. Shpachee wondered how they could be considered a side.. who'd be hungry enough to eat anything else? I ordered some Mr Pibb (with no dot after Mister) because it's a running gag on 8-Bit Theater, then realized that a webcomic was affecting my consumer decisions. Freaky.

Went shopping (or Looking, since we're too poor for Georgetown) at Commander Salamander and Urban Outfitters and United Colors of Bennetton and American Eagle and other places that sell useless but expensive articles of clothing, such as....

-Sweaters knit from really thin material. Too thin to actually protect from the cold, too thick to wear by itself, liable to fall apart 30 seconds after you buy it.
-Shirts you wear over your actual shirt. So.. not really a jacket.. but not really a shirt..
-Halfling shorts. Known as such because maybe they'd be decent on a hobbit. If you combine two of these shorts to create a pair of SuperShorts, you'd maybe have a pair of shorts for human girls that'd come down to the middle of your thighs.
-Teenytiny TankTop. I thought it was a purse, until I picked it up and realized the bottom was open. You could stitch it closed, and it would be a purse.
-Pants That Are Too Tight On Me. Pretty self-explanatory.

Tried to walk back to Dupont station, got lost again, collapsed in a Starbucks near the station after we found it, drank some super expensive tea, went home, got picked up by my mom at Twinbrook, went home and ate corn on a cob and generally hung out.

And that was my day.

Quotes of the day:

"Let's have phone sex with the elephant!" -Me about the old elephant statue in the Smithsonian with those phones. Maybe this is why they renovated it.

"Is this the way to Reagan National Airport? I need to get off at Gallery Place. Is this the way to Gallery Place?" -Old out-of-towner on the Metro with luggage, despite repeated instructions to just get on the damn train when it comes, and get off when the station says "Gallery Place." It's not that hard.

What did medieval people do without shorts? Did they wear those funky tunics without pants underneath like Prince Valiant?

Ok. NOW I'm going to sleep.

My sister's wedding is next week so me and my mom went to G Street Fabrics on Saturday to buy cloth so she can make her dress. My mom's dress; my sister already has a dress. It was cool at first going 'ooh, shiny! Pretty! Soft!' but then it got annoying after like two hours with my mom going, "This shade of purple is too dark." "Too light." "Too solid colored." "Too hard to tailor." "Too aquatic." "Too blue." "Too red." "Too expensive." "Too cheap-looking." "Too thick." "Too sheer." Blah. Then she found an employee there (who was also an immigrant) and they commenced to have a strange strange cloth and sewing and whatnot conversation in broken English. ("It's lavendle. You use eet for ze linink. Ahn'd you use zis for ze girtle. And zis for ze skilt.") I went to sit on the sofas by the front door to wait for my mom to finish, which were apparently put there just for that purpose because the only other people sitting there were really bored looking husbands (and sons.)