Tuesday, March 18, 2003

I got up this morning at 6am to go into Philadelphia to do some research at Temple for my senior project. Last night was St. Patrick's Day. That was unfortunate. My celebrations had to end early. But what can you do. Though it took some serious will power to get out of bed, I was so excited to see the morning. 6-8am and 4-6pm are my two favorite times of the day and for parallel reasons. The sun is rising and setting at those times and there are shades and shadows in everything around indicative of things to come or things that have passed. They're the peaceful parts of the day bookending the choas and urgency in between. The morning is crisp and hopeful, the evening is loose and contemplative. Good times. It was really cool to see Philadelphia at this time too, with all the shadows the sun-stained high rise buildings cast on the streets.

I had some Starbucks coffee on the way to help me wake up (I got a Starbucks gift card for $30 at Christmas from some family friends, and now I go all the time). As I stood in line, I read a little poster they had up near the napkins and straws and whatnot that talked about their commitment to Fair Trade coffee and supporting the cultivation of coffee growing nations. I was pleasantly surprised to read that - they're not as much of an unethical corporate monster as one may think.

I had a fun little embarassing moment about 30 mintues ago. I walked into my Charm of Music class just after it should have started, a video was playing and my teacher was sitting there and gave me the head not as I came in. As I walk back in the semi-darkness towards my seat, I realize that these aren't my classmates. As I'm about to sit down, I look at my watch and realize it's 10:30 not 11:30. So as I was half sitting down I just went right back to standing up and walked out. A little embarassing, but hey, it made me laugh.

Now I'm just listening to No Rain by Blind Melon and it's making me think of 7th grade and a girl named Katie. Since I went to public school, we didn't have religion classes and as part of my catholic upbringing I had to attend CCD (don't ask me what it stands for...just know it's basically catholic class). It was pretty lax, but anyway, in 7th grade I had this cute girl named Katie in my class who was blonde and played soccer, and I had a big crush on her. For Halloween, all the CCD students from the different classes went to Knott's Berry Farm (an amusement park in Orange County). They make it Knott's SCARY Farm for Halloween and people dress up like monsters and jump out at people, the rides become haunted rides, there are a bunch of shows, lots of fog machines, and it was a really fun annual event. So there were 6 of us who hung out that night. Me, my friend Jeremy, this other kid I don't remember and three girls, one being Katie. So we were basically paired up for the night and I went on all of my rides with Katie. It was 7th grade bliss. We talked and on some of the haunted rides she'd hold onto my arm or get close to me, which I loved. A lot of smiles came out of that night. So at the next class we had, I hear her singing No Rain by Blind Melon. Of course I went out the next day and bought the album cos I figured if she liked it, I could learn about her by listening to it (that was the first time I did that...now it's something I do with everyone - junior high was when my love affair with music began to fully blossom). Nothing ever happened between us. She went to a different junior high, and when one of her friends asked me if I liked her, I denied it (you just don't admit these things when you're 12 years old). So yeah, who knows where Katie is today, but every time I hear No Rain, I think of her. Funny how people stay with you like that.