wrap (up)

the christmas/graduation part of the holidays is over, and for the past few days i've been doing a whole lot of nothing. it's not too bad. i'm trying to somewhat vibe will crowley who, and i quote, "just spent a lot of time alone. which i like." we'll see if i can ever get there. i doubt it.
i feel as though there is not any coherent narrative way to wrap up these last few weeks, which in all honesty have seemed like months. so i guess a bulleted-type thing will have to do.

- i said goodbye to a lot of people. it was really sad, and i only really almost cried when i hugged my friend keith, drove jamie back to her apartment in pullman before she left for new york (i don't know when i will see her again), and when i hugged my freakishly smart and lovely volleyball player kimika and my favorite student-athletes of all time, michael willis and kendrick dunn.
i for real cried while i turned in my keys to work for the last time: walking out of bohler gym while the place was completely deserted and crossing by the football practice field by the library. i had walked that path to the elevator thousands of times during my time at wsu. and i still remember walking up those stairs to todd hall for my first HD 101 class of freshman year, panting and thinking, "my GOD how do people walk up these?" two weeks later, i discovered the elevator. success.
- i drank in excess only one time in my "sarah says goodbye to the palouse" time. i was carried home by my firefighter friends ted and jon. a fitting end, i suppose.
- i graduated. the ceremony was sweet except for the bitter seattle times owner complaining about his industry going down the tubes. andy's text to me during his commencement, "wow. this guy's a dick." couldn't have said it better myself. my father wore flannel and fell asleep during the commencement. my sister wore her Ugg boots and i still love her. my mother ironed my gown in the hotel room before we left. some things really never change.
- i packed my entire life in moscow up in 5 hours. i should have been better prepared.
- i wrapped andy's and brelin's christmas present in newspaper this year. a first. i say that i am helping the environment, but really i didn't want to get the wrapping paper from under my parents' bed out. pathetic.
-i watched movies and cried. the notebook on abc family by myself (because dementia is sad) and the curious case of benjamin button (because growing young/old and getting dementia-ish is sad).
- i drove all the way home from pullman with a broken thermostat in the snow. this means that the windows inside my car were freezing, forcing me to scrape my window so i could drive. thankfully i didn't have to change lanes very much.
- andy bought the john mayer live album for me and i found O.A.R.'s live album while packing. listening to them religiously.
-nancy bought me martini glasses. because graduation matters.
- i had a surreal experience while at the semi-annual sale at victoria's secret on monday- it was like that episode of friends where monica beats up the woman for the sample sale wedding dress. being there alone surrounded by dazed boyfriends and ravenous women looking for bras made me thankful once again for having a male twin. he might not be that nice to me, but at least i don't have to fight him for undergarments.
- i procured myself a date for my friends' wedding january 3rd-- my most favorite and attractive ex-boyfriend will. he will look nice if someone takes pictures and he's a hilarious dancer. i hope he doesn't back out on me. otherwise it's smith-- who doesn't really want to go. in fact, when i told him he didn't have to go with me he whooped. i have never heard him whoop before.
- i rescheduled my appoinment to shadow and then hopefully get signed on with Washington CAN january 6th. it's becoming real.

time to get geared up for the last eve-eve party i will be attending. a little sad.

proof

i drank my way through this semester and got a 4.0.--proof that i needed to be done with college.
it's not as if grades really mean anything except for the fact that i can do school. woot. but it's nice sometimes, the validation. i wonder where it will come from in the future.

...now to nurse my hangover.

miles

one of the group members for my black pop culture class is a guy named miles. this is a CES 336 class, which counts for my minor. most of the people in the course are either CES majors or minors. it's a nice, happy, diverse club. i am one of the only white girls in class. it's a lovely change.

there are also students in the class who are not majors or minors- this course fulfills at Tier III requirement for graduation. needless to say, some of these students stick out like sore thumbs. those who are not in the "club" of CES folk look like scared puppies- and most of them are white as well. honestly, they probably haven't seen that many brown people in a WSU class before. the class is loud, boistrous, and out of the ordinary. it's "edutainment" as KRS-One (a rapper, listen to his stuff) calls it. i love it.

for this semester we were put into groups for the dreaded final group project. we did not get to choose our groups and i happened to end up in the only all white group (a change for WSU). we're writing about political hip hop-- i promised myself we wouldn't be lame.

while i immersed myself in the lyrics of KRS-One, Public Enemy, and scholarly work on hip hop (yes, it's out there and a growing field) we asked Miles to do his piece on the music composition of hip hop-- the sampling, the disco rebellion, the scratching, etc. we knew he was a trumpet major so i was pretty excited to see what he came up with, considering in know nothing about music composition.

this skinny white kid who comes in every day blasting jazz on these ginormous headphones killed it. he downloaded this virtual dj thing with turntables you can scratch on your computer and demonstrated how to sample stuff. he made a break beat to play while the rest of us were giving our presentation. he put on the gangsta look, made sure we all had our MC names and taught us how to properly hold a mic like an MC and how to scratch records. he was phenomenal. his name is miles raker so he went by dj moon raker- so brilliant.

as he was going through his thing the class couldn't stop laughing- they loved it because they wouldn't expect this to come from a skinny white kid, and miles bought in to the whole dj persona. while not a gangsta in any way that you would imagine, miles might be the most gangsta of them all because he did his thang. skinny white kid with sweet sampled break beats...who woulda thunk it.