one-way looking glass

I need there to be a way to say "I want to read these people's journals, but don't want to show up on their friends lists", and "I want to list these people as friends, but don't want to read all of their journal entries on the same page"

It's sort of weird. Although I guess there is a weird LJ culture of just adding people because you read their journals or whatever. But in this case there are two people who are friends of friends that I find vaguely interesting and keep reading their journals once a week or so anyway, though I don't want to freak them out by adding them to my friends list.

And then there are some times where I just don't feel like wading through the entire friends list thing on here, because I have too many people. So I wish I could like have a "Claritech Friends" page, and a "CMU Friends" page, and a "CMU Alumni Friends" page, etc. I dunno. I know you can start groups or whatever, but I'm not sure that sounds like what I want.

I've been writing my journal about the past few days in my other journal, so I'll port relevant parts here in a bit.

oh, what i want to know is, where does the time go?

oh, so here's another thing that pisses me off lately. it seems like i never get to just, like, hang out with people anymore. there's just so many things i feel i want to do, like shopping with random people, or watching movies, or playing video games, or sitting around and talking, etc. and it just seems like there's no time left to do any of it. i mean, i do that a little bit, but it feels so scheduled. like i play a lot of D&D, but that doesn't really count, does it? and i go to sunday dinner, but again, that feels like a scheduled thing. for some reason it seems that no matter how much time i try to set aside to spend with eli, that's not enough, either. but if i try to think of who i've been hanging out with and all, it hasn't been anyone. i've just been working, going to scheduled things, or being at home.

there are all these things it feels like i need to schedule. like shopping with sally and erin, or clubbing with laura, or watching anime with anyone, or going to phantom with deryck so we can buy minis for D&D, or playing bridge with drew and whoever, or going dancing again, or playing more ddr and stuff, or just basically seeing the interesting people in my life. blah.

the loss of college-style dorm-hopping and hangouts is really getting to me sometimes. what i wouldn't give to be four years younger and still in college. sigh.

Kiltie Band, Parties, D&D, and more

Yesterday after work I went to Kiltie Band. We started working on some kickass new pieces, specifically the Legend of Zelda (as arranged by Bob Rost) and the main theme from Megaman 2 and 3 (arranged by Sam Pinansky). It was so cool to hear the whole band playing video game music instead of just subsets of us. And I mean, Mr. Gerlach was even conducting it like normal, like "okay, now let me hear the trombones, baritones, and tenor saxes at measure 34.." and such. It was way cool!

So anyway, about the Kiltie trip. Saturday was a very long day. I woke up at 5am because we had a Kiltie away game at Franklin & Marshall, which is in freaking LANCASTER. I forgot how fast my clock is, so I got to Donner at like 6:35am. The only other band member there was Josh Grim. He had the first boston kreme donut and I had the second. James C showed up a bit later and was sorta pissed that there were no boston kremes left. Oops! Anyway, the bus was pretty freaking late. I must have sat around for like an hour and a half before it got there around 8ish. I guarded Sally's lunch and talked to random people. I got on a bus and sat with Nick Jong (because we'd said we were going to sit together when I had dinner with him on Thursday - even though Sally made my day by asking if I wanted to sit with her! i hate feeling like the left-out kid on the bus! fortunately Sally got to sit with the lovely and illustrious Dan Fernandez, who brought knives and razors to the picnic). I brought a bunch of movies, and so did other people. Unfortunately, two things happened. 1) The Gerlachs sat on the bus with us, so we theoretically couldn't watch some of the worse movies (though we did anyway). 2) The VCR didn't freaking work! Disappointment claimed us all and we took naps and stuff. Around 10:20am we pulled into a rest stop on the turnpike though, and the bus driver managed to fix the VCR. Yay! So we put on Office Space and watched that, and it took us most of the way there. We put on Fantasia after that and ate lunch and changed into uniforms. When we got there, we didn't do a pregame show at all - we just marched over to the stands.

The game was just way fun. A bunch of alumni had driven up there for the game. Like Tim and Fred came from Baltimore, and Laura came from Philly, and Tal had come out as well for some reason. And people's parents showed up, too. So the band had quite a following. Even better, our video game repertoire has really grown. This week Bob arranged the Vegetable Valley theme from Kirby's Adventure, which really sounded quite nice. So rather than being bored in the stands, we kept playing lots of music. Halftime was fun, the Franklin and Marshall pep band came up and played Soul Finger with us, and they sat in the stands with us for the third quarter. There was also a funny incident wherein I was talking to Lacey and Marta, and they found out I was an alumni and were really surprised. Like, "I had just been wondering who the heck in the band is an alumni. It's you? Dang! I thought you were like a senior or something." Whee band.

So the game went well, the football team is still undefeated, the Kiltie Band is still undefeated, etc. It really was a fun game, and a lot of us had a great time. Of course, 5 hours of bus rides home sort of sucked. We stopped at Hoss's and I was at a table with Clinton ("Clintron"), Nick, and Bob Rost. Bob is so cool! Not only does he arrange good video game music, but he is doing a senior research project in building a nintendo game! That is so cool! I might get to help him with the storyline and stuff, if he ever gets around to bugging me about it. Whee! Anyway, we had watched Clerks on the bus before Hoss's, but Mrs. Gerlach specifically asked if we could watch something else. So Nick and I made everyone watch Kiki's Delivery Service. It's a Miyazaki anime about a cute little witch who goes off to a village and becomes their magic federal express equivalent. It is SO CUTE! Afterwards we played silly logic games like Around the World and "I'm going to a picnic..." etc. Dan fucked up and it took me a while to guess one of the rules. Then we played Hearts for a bit. Then it was 11pm and we were home! Clinton gave me a ride home, and then I changed into a black dress and boots and stuff and went off to the Logout Party.

Oddly enough the first people I ran into at the Logout were KDan and Jen, who are mellophone players in Kiltie who were even on my bus for the trip. Apparently they went straight to the party when we got back and were on their way out when Eli and I got there. I saw a lot of cool people and talked to them. Chris brought Krispy Kremes, so I got to eat another one of those! I drank some alcohol, but you know, I'm really not nito drinking, to be honest. It was good to see people though. The basement had its usual blacklight and I got to chatting with random people. One of my friends that I hadn't seen in a while, somehow we were talking about D&D, and he mentioned that he'd like to find a group, so now I have to find a group for him. Hmm. So the party was sort of wacky. I remember going to the Logout last year and feeling really out of place since I didn't know many people, but this year I knew a lot more so I only felt halfway out of place. Heh.

Oh, and then on Sunday Drew tried to kill us at D&D. He had our party ambushed by ghouls. (The best line of the session was when I yelled, "You go, ghoulfriend!") It came down to Deryck making a saving throw exactly by rolling an 8. That was way cool. Drew was disappointed, he was hoping that at least Jim's character would get eaten by the ghouls. Alas, we were just too cool.