BEREA FEST!

So it is Sunday and I am finally home after an amazing weekend. I went to this festival in Berea appropriately named 'Berea Fest'. It was a musical collaboration of DIY/folk-punk bands from around Ohio and the US. There was about 30 bands there and it was an all around good time. A couple bands that I knew some of the kids in played the show, along with a couple pretty popular(in the genre) bands were there. I was most exited to see Paul Baribeau, Spoonboy, and Defiance, Ohio and they played amazing. It was such a good time and I wish that I had more pictures and more desire to type. It was so good I can't even put it into words, so I am going to stop trying to...But yea, you are jealous.

Where Does The Time Go?

So here goes. I finished my first year at OU with honors(cum. GPA- 3.94) OU-O YEAH. Upon finishing school and moving out of Lois's home I went to athens to say goodbye to all my friends and help a few of them move. After that I went back to Chillicothe to hang out with my friends one last time. I say one last time because two of them, Steven and Luke, are going to Alaska to try and live in the wild for 4 weeks and I am pretty sure they won't make it. I am honestly afraid that they are going to get killed, but to each his own. I wish them the best. When I came home I was happy to see a bunch of my friends and the fam, but had to quickly figure out what I was going to do about money and a place to live. As you all know this was a very stressful couple of weeks and I was unsuccessful in finding a job at first. I was very stressed out and very depressed, it was hard on me, but good in some ways. So, with the absence of a job I spent a lot of time with myself and finding and meeting new people. Because of this I had an almost complete music change, and my view of alot of things has changed. I am still the same Julie, but I think that the Julie from 3 years ago would seriously beat up the Julie of today. But it's alright. The song "Christmas Lights" by Paul Baribeau really sums up my first few weeks back from school. Please give it a listen, the song means a lot to me.
I started to try and get into the local music scene again, and it has been really great. I usually go to Kent with my friend Brett and watch and sing along to my friends bands. So let me explain who Brett is. He was the Kid in the video from my last post, and it is really weird how it came about that we are friends. Well, Brett goes to Kent, where he met Libero. Brett then came to Westlake to hang out with all of the high school gang and they all became friends while I was away. Then, Memorial Day weekend we were all grilling out and Libero says his friend Brett is coming to join us. When he gets there everyone offers him a hot dog and he says "no thanks I don't eat meat" to which I reply "me too, here I have veggie dogs" and the rest is history. Now, that's not that weird but it gets more strange, Brett and I hang out and one weekend we go to Kent to meet some of his friends. Now it just so happens that his best friends from school are kids that I used to play shows with back in 2004 and I hadn't seen in 4 years. I don't know it just is crazy to me.
My friend Bohardt came up to Cleveland to do his internship and he's living with Drew. Things ended up not really working out between us, but that's ok we are still friends. He works alot, and so does Drew so he keeps busy without me. I also have been hanging out with Lynn, Mitch, and Ryan, but Lynn works all the time and I live far away from Ryan and Mitch. But when we do see each other we have good times.
The other week we threw a Surprise B-day party for my friend Danielle and it was fun to see all the kids from high school in the same place again, I got to see some people that I hadn't seen since graduation. Fun stuff.
OH YEAH, in case you didn't know, I moved in with Cece about a week ago. It has been fun but now we both work all the time and don't really get to see each other. Cece was awesome enough to get me a job at The Frosty Dog, an ice cream place that is owned by Pam and her parents. I work pretty much everyday and it's a lot of work, but also we have a lot of fun. I like the people I work with, and I like getting ice cream for people and making them happy. One of the best things about this job is I don't have to work for "the man" which was a big problem for me when I was job searching. I get to see and work with the people who own the place I work for. It seems silly, but it was an important factor for me.
Well there is way too much to tell everyone, I just wanted to give you the gist. Hope everyone is doing well.

Sorry for the Delay

I know I haven't updated in a month. I am oficially a sophomore in college with honors and I am back home. I have been having a lot of fun and I have a lot of stories to share. In the meanwhile, this video should hold you over. This is my friend brett getting a plug from Mark Norton

Severe Weather Alert!

So last Saturday was a really good day. I was here in Athens and When I went online to check the weather it said "Severe Weather Alert Athens County" it was predicting tornadoes and everything. So I look out the window and it was probably the most beautiful day I have seen in a long time, no clouds, not too hot. So I said to myself "if by 'severe' you mean SEVERELY AWESOME" So at about 12 and we all decided to go to Dow Lake and swim around and tan. Now as you all know I am one of the most pale people ever and have suffered from sun poisoning for a long time now. But I tried to tan and even though I did burn a little bit surprisingly no hives and no throwing up. YAY, so maybe I am not as bad anymore. Another thing, I found out that Elisa Buccur is getting married and is gonna have a Baby!! I am so excited and I get to be the Great-Godmother since Christie already gets to be the Godmother. I kinda made that title up, but I'm still pretty stoaked about it. Well anyway, yesterday was a really really good day.
Also, I started to run again. I haven't run since I was in cross country in 8th grade and I am incredibly out of shape. But, Bohardt runs and I have been looking for a way to exercise that would push myself and help me stay in shape. So I ran about 3/4 a mile on Friday and then again Saturday. I am in so much pain, I stretched a little bit, but apparently not enough. I am walking like Frankenstein and it hurts A LOT!
In other news, I also got a new digital camera. Well I didn't buy it or anything because I don't have any money, but Lois gave it to me because she didn't have any idea how to use it. It's a 12 mega pixel digital camera, a video camera, an mp3 player, and it can record audio files. It's pretty neat, but it is kind of awkward to use. I took a bunch of pictures so that I could give you guys an idea of the place that I stay, but I had some memory card issues and lost them. But I figured it out in time to take a couple pictures.
This is a picture of my friend Keith. He is a hilarious guy and I decided to start taking pictures of him because I am obsessed with his shirt.
Some people might find it offensive, but it's supposed to offend no one and everyone at the same time. I don't know I just wish that I had bought the thing.


Ok, so this next picture needs a little explaining. If you remember in my post 'Recovery Week' I spoke of stepping on glass and being retarded for not wanting to wear shoes. Well I refer to that day as 'Night of the Broken Glass' or if you know German and a little WWII history-Kristallknacht(I think that's how you spell it) Even though this isn't the exact pile that cut my foot, you get the idea...

All idiot comments welcome.

On a side note, I started this post on the 1st but it is now the 4th and there was some severe weather in Chillicothe. Last night there was a tornado warning from 8:30 till 3:00a.m. It was thundering like crazy and there wasn't more that a 1 second break in between lightning. It was raining like a tsunami and there was hail with intense wind gusts. When I looked outside I didn't see any rotation in the clouds, but the tornado siren was activated anyway. When we heard this Lois and I went into the basement and hung out till the first tornado warning expired. But the lights kept going on and off and the sky was so ominous looking. It was really cool, but also scary. There are still flash flood warnings today, but I think the worst is over. phew!


P.S.Well I know it's a little late, but I'm going to post about my memorial day weekend eventually.

Crazy Bananas

Wow, so I am going to type out this whole post again because blogger decided to not post it and lost the whole thing. So here it goes again.

Boy does it stink here, literally and figuratively. Literally because the water main that goes to the dorms flooded and there was no running water to any of the dorms and it smelled like sewage. And figuratively because I am SWAMPED with work, and swamps tend not to smell too good. I have 170-210 pages I need to read for my Poli Sci test on Monday, and I’m stressing about that. But I can’t get motivated to just read and I keep doing anything else to not have to do it just yet(hence why I am writing the post!) I also have two paintings in the works and have a paper due in my Sociology class. But I have another week or so to write it. (I wrote my last paper on Cannibalism and I got an A-, but I got 4 points off because it wasn‘t really a ‘current‘ social issue. Even though with the food shortage, many researchers have projected that cannibalism may become a food source for impoverished countries.) Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m going to write my next one on.
But the big thing that I have going on is the play in sign language. In my class, 40% of our grade was determined by our final project. The original plan was that we were supposed to create and execute our own board game that related to deaf culture. No one in the class was too enthused so we decided to write and perform a play instead. It started out as just a cute little thing that we would have fun with, but it has become significantly larger than we had anticipated. The premise of the play is a young deaf boy and the struggles of growing up deaf. It is called “A day in the life” and it is performed in a deaf theatre ‘shadow’ style. This is where if you are speaking in the play, there is a person dressed the same ‘shadowing’ you and signing what you are saying, and vice-versa for signing and someone speaking the signs. This is popular in deaf culture because hearing and deaf people can enjoy the play without missing anything looking at the interpreter.
This is really cool especially because it is only a ASL level 3 class. We are donating the money to The Ohio School for the Deaf which puts together a camping trip every year for the deaf kids. Since it is relatively expensive they have a charity that allows people to donate for the kids to be able to go.But I am really starting to enjoy DSI more and more and I'm begining to be able to carry on conversations and not just recite sentences. It's really exciting.
So we are all pumped about the play, but no one was willing to take charge. So now it is up to me, Julie Decamp, and Sandy to do just about everything. I’m writing some of the script, Julie is making the flyers, and Sandy is getting the food and helping with the script as well. So we are working pretty hard and it’s tiresome. BUT to add a little more pressure, the board of the OSFTD is coming to watch! Crazy Bananas!
Another crazy thing that happened this week is that someone tried to steal my car! YES, SOMEONE ACTUALLY WANTED TO STEAL MY CAR! I was walking outside of my last class of that day at about 9 at night and while I am walking to my car, I notice my door is wide open. I know that I had locked it because I wanted to get something out of the car but I had already locked it and I was too lazy to unlock it again. But I left my passenger side door was unlocked, because the door handle is broken and it’s almost impossible to get in. But as you know my ignition is broken as well. My car will start, but won’t stay on unless you have something to hold the key in place. So unless you know how to get it to stay on it will turn off. So not only was the thief stupid enough to TRY and steal my piece of crap car, he was too stupid to figure out how to get the car to run to actually steal it. But I am incredibly lucky and am oddly enough grateful that my ignition is broken.Crazy Bananas!

Recovery Week

Once again my body has felt the brutality of Athens's wrath, and I considering wearing an 'anti injury bubble' to protect myself. I tried really hard not to get hurt because of an incident with a brick wall the week before, but I failed. I was doing so well and then out of nowhere I start getting all cut up out of nowhere. First, I was working on a car with Drew when one of the tools fell down onto the battery shelf. I had the smallest hands to get to the tool and in the process of getting it, I jot a cut on the top of my left hand. Later, we were all sitting outside and Eric wanted to break a glass bottle on the brick wall and couldn't do it. So, in my natural fashion I showed him up by breaking the bottle on the first try. But in the process of doing it I hit my knuckle on the brick wall and took a chunk out of my pointer finger. If that wasn't enough later ran outside really quick to grab something without shoes on and as a joke Eric gave me a little push. When he did this I stepped directly on some other broken glass. I didn't think my foot got cut cause it didn't hurt at first. Then a couple minutes later I thought to myself "why is it wet everywhere I step?" Sure enough there is a gash on my foot that you could fit a quarter into and it was bleeding like crazy. Needles to say there was blood everywhere and the cut was so deep if I pushed on my foot I had a sort of "puppet" that I could make talk :) Luckily it didn't hurt until the next day when I had to walk around a lot. Anyway, there is a ton of drama going on in Chillicothe that I am not going to get into. But Athens is surprisingly docile at them moment. All in all I am doing well, a little tired, but good none the less.

Doing Good Deeds

So lately I have been feeling selfish and self centered and have been trying to think of ways to give to people rather than receive. I was feeling a little bit discouraged because I have been having a rather strange week and I haven't been feeling the best. But anyway tonight I finally found a way to help somebody.
I went silent bowling with my ASL class, we try to go once a month and I went and had alot of fun signing and bowling it up. While I was there is saw someone eating Wendy's and I thought to myself "I don't care if I'm a vegetarian, I want a JBC and I will get one!" So at around 11p.m. we finish bowling and I drive over to Wendy's to get said cheeseburger. While I was ordering a man approached the car behind me, and it was obvious he was asking for some kind of help. I also saw he was with a pregnant woman and a little girl. So after I got my food I pulled around and asked them if I could help them in any way. The man said yes, their car had broken down about 6 or so miles away and they had been walking all day trying to find some help. They were from Atlanta, Georgia and were up in Columbus visiting the Woman's Dad who was really sick. They were on their way back when their car died. They asked for a ride to Wal-mart to get some money for a hotel room or find another ride because not only did their car die, the woman's purse was stolen the day before and they had no bank card. I call her a woman because she is a mom-to-be, but she was actually only 18!! That could have been me sitting in a Wendy's parking lot confused in Chillicothe, Ohio. So instead of dropping them off at Wal-mart, I took them to the local hotel and I payed for their hotel room and gave them some money for food, and since they hadn't eaten all day, I gave the little girl my JBC and she smiled and said thank you. So I didn't get to break my Vegetarian-ness but I feel really good. Not like I need a pat on the back good, More like it has been so long since I have helped somebody who needed it because of my selfishness and it felt nice to step outside of myself for once. So I hope Steven, Sarah(i think), Steven's daughter Whitney, and their future child well and I hope they get back to Atlanta alright.

New ipod!

Yeah, you know it, I have a new ipod nano. As you all know I haven't been in the best of moods lately and thanks to dad, I now have a new lease on happiness. Not that material items fix all your problems, but it definitely didn't hurt. I wanted to post a picture of it but my phone won't send me the message because of poor service in Athens. Well it is beautiful and I pimped out my little box that it came in so I can protect it in style:) I will post a picture as soon as I can but in the meanwhile, I can't.
Before I left for Athens I did update the pictures of my painting. It's coming along well, but my teacher absolutely hates me. Not with and intense feeling of loathing or anything, but she really doesn't like my unconventional and quite odd painting style. She likes the product, but not the process. Anyway, I am not really enjoying this painting anymore because of all the guidelines. She actuall ythreatened to dock me points if I didn't listen to her advice, thats kind of discouraging. Oh, well.



Well, there's my progress. At least I don't completely suck...

I'm feeling utterly worthless

So this is the first week of 10 that I will be isolated here in Chillicothe once again and it has dragged out so long.I have 4 classes, Poli Sci 150, Soc 210, Basic painting, and DSI 113. The Soc and Poli Sci class are very similar in nature. Soc is called "Contemporary Social Problems" and Poli Sci is called "Current World Problems" But they are different enough to make me not want to drop one. This week has gone by at an alarmingly slow rate. Today, I woke up at like 11 and from 12 to 7:30 I worked on a painting for my art class. We had to do research on the difference between pattern and motif, so then we had to create our own nonrepresentational motif and turn it into a pattern. So I was making this pattern/painting all day. The terrible thing is, I didn't even put paint on it until 5:30. It is a pattern design and I decided to get really anal and make everything exact. So I started painting and then I was all "Wait...How do I want to paint this?" so I have my design all drawn out and some white paint strategically placed in areas I will make lighter.

And here is the motif that I am turning into a pattern.

It doesn't look like much but I will update on the progress.
The reason why this week has been dragging on so much is the fact that Drew has not answered a single one of my calls in the past 5 days. I have talked to him twice for around 15 minutes and then I feel weird and get off the phone. He sometimes answers my texts and will promise to call, but he simply hasn't. I mean I'm not obsessive or anything, and I've tried to give him some space, but being straight up ignored is killing me. I've had one or two of my calls ignored every once in a while, but this hurts so bad. I mean to just be ignored and treated like an annoyance is one of the most offensive things I have ever had done to me. So that is why I feel worthless. I was actually ok with it for a couple days, just to you know, cool off. But now my wits are gone and my anxiety has taken over. So I'm alright, just kinda hurt right now. (p.s. don't hate Drew or anything, I'm not just complaining about him. That's just the only other thing that has been going on and it's on my mind so I posted it. But yea, don't hate him.)
Hope everyone is doing well and I'll get back in the habit of updating more.

Not this again!

Yes, It seems like just yesterday I was sitting at home and the most important thing I HAD to do all day was to tell Lynn about the dream I had last night. Anyway I am back at school and am feeling lame. I wanted to come back so bad, but once I got here it is like "man I don't want to do this again" oh well, just wanted to let you know I exist... again.