"I know a place where no one's lost..."

"... I know a place where no one cries
Crying at all is not allowed
Not in my Castle on a Cloud."

Ha! March thought he could get away without a single blog entry from me! Nope, as of today, I'm coming down from my little Castle on a Cloud and I'm giving you all a long-awaited update of the life of me.

So. What has happened? Well... my last update was one February. The first weekend of March, I came and visited home, mostly because of my brother Graham. March 4th was his birthday. We went out to eat at a Japanese Steakhouse. It was one of those resturaunts where the a stove was built into each table, and they cooked the food right in front of you. That was exciting! They had some talented chefs who not only cooked delicious food but practically juggled it for us! They also juggled their utensils, set the food on fire, etc. It was pretty awesome. The next day, my brother had a solo/ensemble performance, so I watched him do that. He did very well, and ended up making it as 1st Alternate--Second place in state! That's a step up from last year's third place, and if consistancy does it's job, next year he might actually make state. THAT would be exciting!

Anyway, after that little shpiel, it was off to school again. I registered for next quarter's classes. I'm taking an Environmental Studies class, Intro to Linguistics (and I'm surviving that one with Alan), and Intro to ural Anthropology. I planned to drop the last one and try to get into another class, because a) I'm taking it Mon/Wed/Fri from 2-3:50, making coming home difficult and b) I've heard not-so-good things about the Anthro department. However, I have failed to find an suitable replacement for that class, so I'm stuck with it. *Sigh* Oh well... I'll try to survive this quarter anyway. Afterall, I'm only taking 3 classes...

So in the meantime, this quarter's classes were kicking me into overload. English 101 being the main culprit. Time slowly but surely wore the weeks away to week, then to weekend. Two of my finals (my important ones) and my English portfolio were all due on the same day, Monday. Therefore that weekend truely turned me . Studying my poor little arse off, writing writing writing... and come Sunday, I hardly took a break.
Sunday was also my friend Kit's birthday. Poor ... as you can imagine, having a birthday on the day before finals start isn't exactly a truely happy birthday. However, some of us did our best for her. Her boyfriend took her out for dinner and a movie the day before, and some of us who hang with her on a fairly regular basis sang to her at dinner. Alan and I wanted to give her some chocolate for her birthday but:
Saturday, we walked down to the chocolate shop after 6... we probably should've known it would be closed after 6. So we walk down Sunday... closed on Sundays. We beat our heads against the walls a bit, and then TUESDAY (on monday we had a load of finals) we walked down one last time and finally gots them chocolates! We even made the bag they came in all pretty. We presented them to Kit that evening, and it was all good.
Then as of Wednesday morning... I was all done with finals! HOORAY!!! So that whole day I devoted myself to chores--I did a buttload of laundry, vaccumed the room, cleaned my desk, and put some pretty lights over my bed. And that was the day my poor little laptop's adapter cabled decided to die... so as of then, I didn't have a laptop for a while. Suckage.
Thursday, Alan and I celebrated our 3-month (that's right--three months now) early. We watched the terminal in the morning, hung out the rest of the day in both our dorms, drank our last smoothies of the quarter, and then in the evening we walked down to a Thai resturaunt he raved about to me. And it turned out his raving was accurate--damn, that stuff was delicious! I had a well-deserved good day that day.

Then Friday's story: It was that weekend that Alan and I planned for me to stay at his house. I was very curious to seek his neck of the woods. After a brunch of leftover Thai food, we were to catch a Greyhound bus to Seattle at 1:30. We arrived at the station a little after noon... to find out that all tickets to said bus were sold out. After our jaws lay dropped for a few minutes, we had no choice but to go for a 4:30 bus. And we spent the next four hours--the next... four... hours... at that bus station. Do you know how tiring sitting around at a bus station is? Extremely. Eventually, as perhaps some of you guess, the bus finally chugged around the corner, several minutes later Alan and I reclined in our seats, and a few hours after that, we left the happy little Greyhound and hunted down our next method of transportation, Alan's mom's car.
Soon I was in the place where he lived, surrounded by his family. We talked over dinner--Alan's two parents, his older brother, Eric, himself, and I, about this and that. I'm not sure what a normal conversation between them is, but I'm pretty sure I got the real thing while I was there. Overall, I find his family to be very awesome--his dad's really funny, his mom writes cool songs (both Alan's parents are musicians), his brother is a dorky goofball (one of the highest compliments I can give someone), and Alan's just... well, there is a reason why I'm still happy with our relationship. Many many reasons, come to think of it. And he's got kitties! Anyone with kitties is good in my book. Kes and Pixel. Meow.
So, the next few days were spent eating good food (roasted chicken, italian sausage and pasta, "Dad's special pancakes," "Alan's special quesadillas"), watching Robots, watching an old video of Alan acting in a high school production of "The Wizard of Oz" (*revering voice* "The Great Ozzzz!"), hanging out with his 13-year-old cousin (who still stands by the repuation I was given of him as a cool kid), beating Kingdom Hearts, watching "Ruthless people" (funny!), watching "Joe Vs. The Volcano" (Weird... and funny!), going out for Chinese food, watching "How to Irritate People" (helpful hints), watching him play the piano, and at one point, blowing and chasing bubbles. All in all, it was a fun time all around, I am so glad I was privilaged to live there for a few days. Sadly, come Monday, it was time to leave that place of good times, and return to my humble abode for the rest of my spring break.

So, I leave here on the happenings until Monday. What will come next? Stay tuned for the next entry of Rowan's Blog: "Let Me Stand Next To Your Fire!"