(Tony) Hawking it Up

This post is dedicated to one of the more famous Hawks out there.

Over the weekend, I bought a skateboard for $25 (a bargain considering the usual prices) with the help of my shady business partner the Duck. The idea is that since the time it takes to lock a bike would negate the benefits of biking around my tiny college campus in the first place, I'd teach myself how to board over the summer. Why a skateboard? I didn't feel like shelling out the $200 for a longboard, and all my Ebay bids on cheaper, used versions were easily outbid or failed to reach the minimum threshold. Besides, there's something uncomfortable about paying big bucks for an item before you see it.

I spent a little time rolling around my kitchen, which is a pretty small place. It was pretty hard getting my balance (and getting up the guts to put both feet on the board while it was moving), but the crowded kitchen had plenty of handholds. I must have added a couple dollars to our energy bill every time I grabbed on to the fridge for support, since the door opened whenever I lost my balance (often).

But once I had a little bit of confidence, I trekked over to my grandma's house in search of a helmet (not only in observation about California's helmet laws for minors, but also because college is starting soon and I'd rather not lose any more brain cells than I already have over this summer). I found a treasure trove--wrist guards, knee pads, and elbow pads. I geared up. With all this protective equipment and a helmet, I was soon sweating bullets under the heat of the afternoon sun.

Which brings me to the question--why was I doing this at 4pm, when the sun was high in the sky and shade had retreated from the street I was practicing from?

I am a creature of whim. That is all.

But because of the added layers, I was definitely craving a whimsicle (see what I did there?). I spent about an hour soaring up and down the paved road in front of my house, flapping in a rather ungainly fashion and running foolishly after the board the few times it got away from me.

But it was a thrilling experience. The road rumbling beneath the wheels, the adrenaline rush and sense of doom as I looked up from my path to see my brother's Mustang directly in front of me, the sigh of relief as I stopped myself by grabbing onto the mailbox and the screech of pain as the hot metal burned me (ok, so the Mustang-mailbox part isn't true, but it so could have happened).

I can now coast in a relatively straight line and make extremely wide turns. Unfortunately, I can only turn to the right. I know everyone has a "good side" to them, but seriously. This is a little ridiculous. Maybe I'm just paranoid about falling onto my butt, the ONE place I was not artifically padded up on.

P.S. I noticed that my rendition of the Super Mario theme and the Schubert piece are woefully below the level of quality that the pieces deserve. Expect repostings of those sometime this week.

PLAIDIPI

PLAIDIPUS.





We had a little trouble with the pattern, resulting in many different sizes of Plaidipus, like this longipus





Plaidipus stack!

Dork Days (hella videos ahead)

I had the house to myself and...I like to make noise. So I pulled out some sheets and tried to sight-read a little.

No, I haven't figured out a way to get better sound quality. Apologies for that.

We begin with a nod to all the Legolas lovers out there. Because everyone knows that Link=Legolas.


My favorite game. I'll see YOU on omgpop.com (though I haven't been on in a while)

Unfortunately, that theme sounds so..dead and unexciting. I tried to make it more exciting. Did I succeed?


And no nerdfest is complete without Naruto.


It's not a party without Mario. This one was the hardest of the bunch =(.


At least this one was easier.


Logically, if you're a good pianist, you should be able to play all sorts of music easily. For me, though, video game music is kinda hard to learn. Maybe it's because I was taught by a--I guess you'd call it classical?--piano teacher. It's sort of how abstract art is different from "real" art. There are strange phrases and, personally, I find that my fingers don't really move the way the Super Mario Theme demands.
Here's one of my favorite "classic" pieces :)--Schubert's Impromptu. I should post a better version of it later.

I...don't know what to say.

http://xkcd.com/621/


On another note,

http://mylifeisaverage.com is pretty rad too.

Seeing both sides.

Today's installment of "A Lifeguard's Doody" is brought to you by the always epic, I-can't-wait-to-see-if-Marco-has-a-Phoenix-Zoan, newly posted chapter of One Piece.

A Lifeguard's Doody
'Cause Doody or Duty, it's nasty either way.

Incident I

I was lounging on my plastic green chair on the lifeguard tower and shifting uncomfortably as the vinyl rescue tube (which I OCD-ly always arrange so the "GUARD" painted on it is the right side up) slowly began to adhere to my sunscreen-coated legs. And, as was my wont, I was people-watching.

A man hopped into the medium lane, which was already occupied by another man and a lady who had split the lane. And this is where the problem began.

Lap lane etiquette isn't that hard to learn. You want to swim with other people, you tell them--better yet, you ask them politely.

So the man began his doomed quest to notify the two members already in the lane. The other male acquiesced nicely, but the lady kept swimming. And swimming. Not only that, she was swimming at a distressing speed that wouldn't stratify nicely in the pool's sophisticated "SLOW, MEDIUM, FAST" system and at the moment was causing problems with the other two men in the lane. Looking around, I saw that there was only one man in the slow lane. Solution: GET!

The new man tapped the lady on the shoulder, but she shrugged him off and kept swimming. Whoah. So I sighed and got off of my perch, waited until she got to the wall, and then tapped her on the shoulder. She did stop --which I took as a good sign, since it showed that she would comply with my requests, right? I asked her to move to the slow lane.

And she started screaming in my face.

"I'VE BEEN IN THIS POOL FOR FOUR HOURS AND YOU LIFEGUARDS HAVE BEEN MOVING ME BACK AND FORTH. AND I HAVE TO ADD TIME."

Needless to say, I had no freaking idea what she was talking about. And it was rather disconcerting to get hollered at when I was asking politely. But at least she moved. And, sadly, I was so rattled I almost wanted to cry.

Yet as luck would have it, there was already a man in the slow lane, also. When she joined HIM, he stopped her for some reason. Probably because she hadn't notified him about joining or something. Part of the fault for that could lie with me for not telling him myself. The next thing I know, she's screaming at HIM and pointing at me "SHE asked me to move here. So DEAL with it, old man!"

Wow. I run over to the old man, who is standing in the middle of the lane, looking rather shocked. I try to apologize, telling him that she's a little cranky and that I did ask her to move.
"She's a BITCH!" he cried. Wow, every single member I had the misfortune to interact with that day was not quite in a jolly mood. "She was here yesterday, too, and they kicked her out because she's a BITCH!"

I was sorely inclined to agree at that point. But anyway, it was all over. So I crawled back into my chair and memorized the lady's swimsuit pattern and the color of her swim cap (blue) so I could stay away if I ever saw her again.

All the OTHER lifeguards on duty had heard that lady, even over the screaming of little children on the waterslide. But of course, no one really understood what was happening. I chalked it up to the lady's pure crankiness and eagerly watched the clock for quitting time.

But right when I was leaving my station at the end of my shift, I started talking to one of my guarding friends. He'd heard about the fiasco with the lady, also. "Yeah, I feel kinda bad for her," he said.

Whoah. What? From what I'd seen, I would have been feeling sorry for the old man in the slow lane. Or the guys in the medium lane. Or me.

He elaborated. "She's got a kidney problem, so she has to swim continuously for three hours a day or else go on dialysis. And the speed she swims at--she's not slow enough to be slow, and she's not fast enough to be medium, so she's always getting moved around. And whenever she stops, she has to add time."

I mentioned the old man in the slow lane and his glowing reception of her. My coworker shrugged. "Oh, that guy. Yeah, he's the crankiest guy in this pool."

With all this spinning in my head, I waddled to escape the pool deck, excited to get home and watch Hannah Montana with a big bucket of ice cream to drown my confusion. I was almost at the door--

"Excuse me, miss?" I saw a blue swim cap and cringed mentally, but turned around. I faced an elderly lady with a kind-looking face. She wasn't much taller than me. "I'm sorry about earlier. It's just that I was in that pool for so long and they were moving me back and forth and--"

Well, we had a pleasant conversation after that, during which I assured her that I now knew about her condition and would watch out in the future, and her re-asssuring* me that I wouldn't need to do that.

So just remember, kids--most situations, no matter HOW one-sided they seem, could always use more perspective. I didn't appreciate Picasso before, but I sure do now-- in a metaphysical sense at least(refer to the title of this post).

On a side note, TWO HUNDREDTH POST. WIN.

*Yes, I know the actual word is spelled "reassuring." *props* if you didn't need this footnote to tell you the misspell was intentional.

It's a Blackberry shirt with a lego man on it.

I woke up this morning and I had no sense of purpose. Life is so directionless when your movements aren't mandated by the necessity of performing perfunctory duties in order to "bring home the bacon," as you will.

In other words, I have the day off and I was bored.

Sound quality is terrible--yeah, those weird noises are NOT all due to me messing up. The stupid video ended TEN SECONDS before the end because my camera's 4 years old and has a 3-minute limit =(. Taken from the left side because that's the more exciting side--there are a lot of chords farther away from the main body of the bass rhythm, so my hand jumps out and attacks once in a while. It would look more impressive from a bird's eye view, probably--but I was too lazy to figure out a way to rig that.


I dusted off my old CM piece, too (right hurrrr ). To accommodate the limit, I only played 2/6 of the pages. I did record the other 2 parts, but meh. Two videos in one day is enough.

I might redo these and upload versions with better sound (and fewer mistakes). But it is kinda fun to watch the attacking hand.

Note: awkwardhawk is a different YouTuber. I'm THEawkwardhawk, tyvm.

Battlefield

I do apologize for my long absence. But I have returned, and hopefully you will all find me as eloquent (or not) and befuddling as ever.

Today, my mother had a colonoscopy. I can't even begin to comprehend the pain that that procedure entails, especially as it involves getting a camera shoved up one's ***** and FASTING for 24 hours before the procedure. That's right. NOT EATING. I don't think I could have survived.

Of course, being the obedient daughter I am, I decided to do something nice for her. Knowing that she'd probably be starving once she stumbled home, I cast around for something I could prep for her. Note the word "prep," because my skill with a frying pan extends to crumbly scrambled eggs and warming up precooked ham (warming up because I'm too scared to leave the stuff on the stove for too long out of fear that it will burn). I spotted the watermelon.

No challenge, right? It's a freakin' producer, after all, and hawks are at least tertiary consumers. I was above it in both stature and metaphysical presence in the food chain.

But I was wise. I did not plunge into the fray with butcher knife a-swinging (though in the end, a similar scene did ensue). I googled "how to cut a watermelon." I kid you not. There is no such thing as an adversary you should face unprepared, and even a swollen plant ovary detached from its mother is no different.

The directions said to cut off the ends and then slice the watermelon into quarters lengthwise. With this plan of action, I pulled the skinny, serrated fruit blade out of the knife block and marched off to battle with the misplaced confidence of Napoleon heading into Russia wearing nothing but long johns and a wifebeater.

I had forgotten the watermelon, which was sitting happily on the ground outside the kitchen. I sheepishly replaced the knife, then swung the watermelon up into my arms like it was my loving mistress. I balanced it awkwardly on the dividing section of the sink, then tried to give it a quick rinse. Unfortunately, when I tried to swing the faucet head to the other side of the watermelon, the melon was too fat for it to cross. That was only the beginning of my problems.

As the process continued, I realized how woefully unprepared I was for this undertaking. As I cradled the now-damp melon in my left arm and reached for the cutting board with my right, my side started to cramp up. The heavier the melon is, the more water it contains, and the more delicious it will be. Well, my mother had watermelon-picking down to a science. Whenever I went with her to our local Costco, I would stand by on the sidelines in amazement as she knocked out some strange Aboriginal rhythm on the watermelons, intervening only to crawl to the top of the stack of boxes to pull down the one melon she just HAD to get. Digression aside, this melon must have been ambrosia in a striped jacket because it was HEAVY.

As I plunged the knife into the body of my victim, the straight cuts I had envisioned in my head and planned to replicate in reality became jagged, drippy edges. Frustrated, I finally settled for pulling the watermelon apart with my hands. Now I had two halves of watermelon, and I set aside half for later. Easier said than done. Our crowded countertop provided me only a narrow avenue to work with, and the half I set aside teetered precariously in a basin I had put it in to catch drippage. I was sure it was going to fall over any second. And it almost did, but I put my arm out--and the knife fell to the floor, bouncing around joyfullywhile I executed a rather sloppy rendition of St. Vitus' Dance and prayed that a visit to the hospital was nowhere in my future.

But the hard part was over, and all that remained was for me to slice up the now-manageable pieces. Tupperware after tupperware was filled with chunks of the watermelon's carcass and marched off to the fridge to cool. The microwave and my brother's MuscleTech water bottle, which were unfortunate enough to be in the splash zone, were bathed in the juice of my hack-and-slash job.

Finally, finally, it was done. The sliced up half of the watermelon that I had finished occupied the entire top shelf of the fridge, and the half that remained in its plastic basin was removed from its precarious perch (you could almost hear its sigh of relief) to rest on the shelf beneath. But I observed the kitchen. Juice drippings from my pilgrimages back and forth from the refrigerator had left a trail of fructose that would send an extended family of ants into paroxysms of glee.

I knew that cleaning the floor was my brother's chore, and I was sorely tempted to leave it all to him. But not only was stepping on the tacky surface disgusting, but the filial obedience that had gotten me into this entire mess (and fear of my mother's wrath if she happened to wake up in time) kicked in again. I sighed and reached for the rag.

P.S. If you could figure out what the stars stood for, you're amazing because I sure as heck have no clue.