Monday, August 30, 2004

 Oh noooooooo the Olympics are ooooooover! The closing ceremony was boring, but i still had to watch, because i can't miss all the wrap-up montage stuff. Really, that's the best part of EVERYTHING. All the best stuff edited together and set to inspirational music! It's like the same reason i love movie trailers. I'll tell you, Misty May and Kerri Walsh winning women's beach volleyball was so CUTE. And i'm gonna miss all the stuff. You know, the sports. And such.

Uh, there's another hurricane out in the Atlantic. Everyone is overreacting since we were just hit, so the news is like "IT'S A MONSTER PREPARE FOR TOTAL DESTRUCTION there's room for error but IT'S COMING STRAIGHT FOR US". It's still really far away, i hope it, like, boomerangs back over to Africa. I don't want to go through this shit AGAIN. The news sucks over here, i swear the weather people are pointing the models directly at us just to freak us out. Maybe they'll close school, though! That'd be swell!

- 5:22 PM

Saturday, August 21, 2004

 Agggghh, i am back up at school. But! I am not AT school. I am off-campus. And my room? Is fucking huge. I mean, it's not... really huge, but compared to my last room, it's the spaciest spaciousness that ever spaced. And i'm all moved in and it has all my own furniture, and it's so pretty and actually homey. I'm a little depressed to be back up here, because i always get that way after i've been living at home again for a while. It's like, i get annoyed with my family a lot, but then i get really sad when i leave them. And i hate being surrounded by so many dumb college kids. But my room! The whole apartment! It is nice!

Oh, the drive up was BOOOOOOOORING. Got stuck in traffic for... i don't know how long, it was a while, just inching along. And my mom kept telling me what to do, she's so tense about tiny things ("BRAKE HARD! BRAKE HARD!" I teased her about that the rest of the day, it was fun!). But, uh, we did almost get hit by a large sheet of metal that came loose from the bed of a truck driving ahead of us. It flew into the next lane over, but we ALMOST DIED.

You know how i said the hurricane hit here? You can tell. Pretty much all of the trees are bent so they look constantly windblown, tons of them are snapped in half, and some are completely uprooted. A lot of business signs are blown out or fallen over, and most rooves are missing shingles and patched up. I saw one building with a hole in the side. It's pretty crazy. At least the power is back on- apparently it had been out for several days. Like, traffic lights and everything, so there were hundreds of accidents. I sure am glad the power is back on, though, so i can GO BACK TO SCHOOL! Wouldn't want to miss that! Oh ho ho!

- 8:53 PM

Friday, August 20, 2004

 I got to see Garden State! Just now! My life has meaning once again! There was a review in the paper yesterday, and i checked the listings and it actually is playing in a few theatres around here, so that was EXCITING. I was like "AAH HAVE TO SEE IT NOWNOWNOW", both because i've wanted to see it so badly and as a last hurrah before i leave tomorrow (nooooooo). It was just as beautiful and funny and sad and poignant as the previews led us to believe. I adored it. The music, the cinematography, the writing, the acting, omgZachBraffiloveyou. A lot. And, total bonus with going to see awesome gorgeous indie movies? Awesome gorgeous indie previews! I just saw the I Heart Huckabees trailer for the first time the other day, which is SO great. And finally a trailer for The Life Aquatic eeeeee! I! Love! Good! Movies!

Oh my, i also love watching the Olympics. Every time they happen, i end up watching all the time and getting all caught up in it, and then when it ends i am left feeling HORRIBLE EMPTINESS. What will i do with my life? Where will i go, without tons of sports i normally care nothing about to watch every waking hour? I'm so saaaaaad that the swimming ends tomorrow. I... but... Phelps and Thorpe! I loved them in Sydney, too, you know. Back then it freaked me out that Phelps was fifteen, a year younger than me. I don't know why, but it's just not right. And, uhm... i like the low-riding swimsuits. (hey, it's not my fault that hips are like, my favorite thing ever! and Phelps shows them off so nicely, the slut!)

Uhhh, i have to move back up to school tomorrow, which sucks. Most of my stuff is packed up, but... man, it's such a pain. Living up there is going to be much more of a change this time, because i'll be in a completely different place, living with someone i'm actually friends with, and i'll have a car (i have to drive up tomorrow, too, and it will be the longest single distance i have ever driven). Also, i got a cell phone today. I have never had one before, and am probably the last person to ever get one, as even kindergarteners have them these days (i saw some dickwad kid riding home on his bike the other day, he was only middle school age, tops, and he was on his cell phone. Talking about WHAT? Baseball cards? Whether he's watching DragonballZ tonight? Surely something urgent! Fuckin' KIDS). The only reason i wanted one is because i don't want to get stranded in the middle of nowhere with no way to contact anyone if my car breaks down or if i'm in an accident. So... yeah. It's very very pretty and shiny, but also a thing of evil (omg obnoxious ringtones! looking like an asshole! i'm finally a part of it!) and i have NO IDEA HOW TO USE IT. I should figure that out! Hoooooo.

- 8:19 PM

Sunday, August 15, 2004

 HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE SERENITY TEASER. I... just... words fail me. It's going to be a MOVIE. With the asskicking and gorgeousness and NEW FIREFLY AQJFHJHSAFDLJFGAKH

I could go on with the random letter-spewing for a while there, so i'll spare you.

Anyway! Just yesterday i finally saw The Bourne Identity. I kept hearing good things about the sequel, so i wanted to see the original. Which is much more difficult than it sounds, apparently. We have three Blockbusters within a few miles of our house, and not ONE of them has had the dvd for the past... however long it's been since the sequel came out. And my dad kept checking back to see if any of them had it in, until he finally got it a week ago. After all that trouble, if it had sucked, i would have been very disappointed. But, fortunately for everyone, it was very good. Absolutely gorgeously shot, soooo much pretty grey-blue lighting, and i mean, immense artsy prettiness for a big action movie, that's good stuff. So we saw The Bourne Supremacy today, and it was equally good and pretty. The car chases in both movies were the BEST THING OF ANYTHING EVER. I may have used a little bit of hyperbole there, but they fucking rocked, dude. All the action was AWESOME. And i mentioned the prettiness, right? I have decided that i quite like Matt Damon. Sometimes i like Ben Affleck, because he often seems entertaining and intelligent (e.g. Chasing Amy, Good Will Hunting, Dogma, Project Greenlight, Matt&Ben4ever), but then other times his celebrity status and sometimes-questionable movie roles make me... not like him so much. But Matt! Matt. He's a good one.

- 11:56 PM

Saturday, August 14, 2004

 Welp! Everything is okay. We left at like, midnight on Thursday so we missed all the traffic (and the tolls were freeeeeee! boy, we should do this all the time!) We watched the news all day on Friday (and it was actually not boring! maybe because of the blind panic, i don't know). We had a good time making fun of how many times the newscasters said "hunker down". Friday morning, the models still had it on a direct course for Tampa, and then at around 2:00 it changed to hit land further south and got upgraded to a category 4 hurricane. So we seriously lucked out. As it happened, we ended up getting even less than what we get with regular thunderstorms, and up at my grandparents'- where we were pretty much completely out of the path- it only rained twice during the day. It's been way rainier today, and there have been tornado watches all over the place.

Apparently, there was some damage at my school, and obviously a lot of other areas got slammed. Some of the footage of the wind was insane, ripping the roof off a Ft. Myers post office, shoving around trucks and planes, and the aftermath is downright frightening.

Now i have to unpack all my stuff, which is annoying (and i can't just leave it packed for going back to school, because this is emergency packing, so everything is thrown together in a big mess). But it's a lot less annoying than it would be if it were all wet and ruined, sooooooooo, you take what you can get.

I didn't get to see Last Comic Standing because of, you know, THE HURRICANE, but apparently John won? Woo! Awesome. I've been watching the Olympics, that's fun. I wish i were athletic or, like, in shape.

- 10:42 PM

Thursday, August 12, 2004

 So yeah, we have to evacuate by tomorrow. We're going up to my grandparents' house tonight, taking computers and photo albums. I've got most of my stuff packed up and elevated and just have to hope it'll all be okay (oh dvds and cds and comic books, i love you! be safe!). They're predicting the storm surge to be between 10 and 14 feet; our house is at 9 and a half feet above sea level. Weeeeeeee bit of a discrepancy there! Hopefully we'll get back on Saturday and everything will be perfectly fine and we can all have a hearty laugh at ourselves for packing everything up. Ho ho ho!

It's really assy that it's still perfectly sunny out, too.

- 4:54 PM

 Dear Hurricane Charley,

Please go away.

Sincerely, Marina

Goddammit. We don't really ever get hit directly where we're at (the most recent close call was when i was in... 11th grade, or around there, they closed the schools and we had to pack up stuff, but we didn't evacuate and the water only came up to the bottom of the yard). At the moment, they're predicting this one to come straight for us and hit tomorrow, but hopefully it will... not do that. The news isn't looking good, though. The thing we have to worry about is the house getting flooded (it's never happened before, but, like i said, we don't get hit directly, either). So just to be safe i have to move my shit around so it's not all on the floor, which is highly inconvenient as, being home from school temporarily and not having enough room for all my crap, EVERYTHING IS ON THE FLOOR. Plus, i have to get ready to go back to school in a week (AGH NO) and i just got my brand new computer and am still working on getting all my files onto it, so it's just not the best time for a hurricane. I'm really attached to my stuff, and don't want it to get ruined, OKAY!

- 11:17 AM