***stardust

Went to the choral concert tonight.. tho at first I definitely wasn't in the mood to go (and not *just* cos of yer ZooLar, Megs..but, admitedly, he was a part of it ^^; ), and I had cookies to finish baking. *grr* But, I'd promised people I'd be there, and I knew I'd be sad if I didn't go, so I went. (And once things got going, I was very very glad I went so it's all good. ^_^) Got there shortly before it was gonna start, looked about and wasn't seeing *anyone* I knew..
..'til I spotted James and Ryan (both of whom graduated the year before me) down there waving at me. I didn't hang out with them a *ton* in school, but James and I were friends, at least, he and Heather hang out a lot, and he and I talked a lot when we went to Italy a few years back. So, went and sat with them - Heather'd told them she'd be there, but she never *did* show up.. (despite the fact that she was one of my closest friends all thru high school, I've not seen her in months... in fact, probably not since Christmas break or so, I'm not sure). So the three of us sat together and talked and hung out...
...and I realised again how much I've always liked James, for as long as I've known him.. (which is since 8th grade, really). I dunno. It started cos Heather had a crush on him 'way back in jr. high, and then I noticed him, and he was cute and he sang well. *g* Then she got to know him better, and we realised he has a great sense of humour and he's cool. Then yeah, there was Italy, and he and I talked for hours on the bus one day, sitting by each other, about music - we're both in love with music in general, and while it's stuff like Dream Theater and Metallica that he's more into than me, there's a fair bit of overlap between his music and mine. Then in math my..senior year? yeah. he sat by me and Heather and the three of us got yelled at a lot by evilMrs. Moran all year, and listened to stuff on James' cd player. *hehe* great fun. Summer after we graduated, I saw a good bit of him, too, just cos that was the group of people I spent a lot of time with for whatever reasons..
Anyway! *laughs* It's not really a major thing, it's just been kinda lurking a bit for a few years, is all. But, for whatever reasons, he's still in love with Stephanie, tho she's been a bitch to him... *shakes head, smiles a bit* He's an impossible sweetheart, gentlemen, etc., tho, he's honest and loyal and caring. and funny. and cool.
And I realised tonight for the first time that he bears a bit of a resemblance to Bowie.
^______^

*Anyway*, moving on!!!! *laughs* I really didn't meant to write that much on here, but I'm in the mood for writing tonight.. (don't worry, Laur, I still have plenty of steam left for *really* writing. *smiles*)
Concert was great.. James and I realised how much we miss it, being in choir and all... I mean, we *hated* it plenty of days at the time, Goodling was a fookin' slavedriver but...when we sang.....*shakes head* ..it was absolutely amazing. I mean, honest, you guys are still great, you truly are, you deserved every one of the awards you got this year. ^_^ ..and I know Mrs. Rice does all she can, and I know she's a good director.. but Goodling was..I don't even know, legendary, I s'pose. *grins* There were sme points in what choir did tonight where I was glad, the quality of what our music program's always been is still there..
..just not quite in *every* note, the way it once was. Which is no-one's fault but the school's for pushing out Goodling. Fooking evil bastards.
But yeah. *g*
Michelle *blew* me away.. Brandon's composition was, well, not the most catchy tune ever by *any* srtetch of terms! *laughs* but it was incredible.. Nicole was great, Steph Brew was great.. all the solos were great, Daf and Laur I couldn't hear you guys of course but I watched you and I know how you guys must have sounded and yay. *claps* *g*
The thing that made me really happy about the Singing Saints bit? They put the *singing* back into it again. The choreography was swell, it really was, but never did it overshadow the singing, there was only that one part where they sang but didn't dance.. and there the accompaniment took over anyway and *wow* Mead frickin' rocks. ^_^ (So do Pete Myers and Mike Landers, tho, really.. it made me *so* impossibly happy to see the two of them down in the pit playing, it really, really did.. they're both great guys and great musicians. ...and not at all bad-looking, but that's besides the point. *g*)
The senior song.. again, I'm annoyed that you guys got to sing in Italian when *we* were the youngest who'd gone to Italy. :p *giggles* But it was a gorgeous song.. and a lot better-done than they've been in the past, I think. To most people the whole thing probably felt drawn-out, but not me..cos I knew about half to three-quarters of those who were onstage......and *I* was about to start crying, for a lot of reasons... it reminded me of my last concert, last spring..and my friends...and choir and school in general and all the good times we all had...Blake...our whole jr.-high group of people...spending hs with Daf and Laur, guys, my senior year was still the best ever, we were all so close and I would never change a thing abuot it... ...and then I looked at all of those onstage and I realised that most, I'll probably never really see again..I can come back and visit next year, or the year after, but no-one will be there..... and even those whom I didn't talk to much, or never really knew personally, I'll miss.. and it's the same with people I graduated with, and who graduated before me... you share your life with these people and they're *all* a part of it somehow.. the girl you sat by in 9th grade choir..the guy behind you in band who made wisecracks about everyone...the guy in your enlglish class whom everyone loved, and who still managed to laugh about everything even when he was on crutches, never once did I hear him complain...your adversaries, your bandmates, your friends your crushes your everything.

After it'd ended, James and Ryan and I all headed down towards the stage, where all the now-seniors still were, laughing and crying and hugging, mixed in with other graduates doing the same. Found Blake, said hi.. *still* wanted to hug him but gehhh I didn't feel there was reason enough and chickened out. (as I did earlier when an opportunity popped up to glomp James...meh. *smacks self with stale breastick*) Saw Greg!! yay!!! ...haven't seen him in a *year*, what with him being in Spain for first semester, then down at SUNY Purchase the rest of the year.. now he's coming back here to go to RIT, which is cool. He came over and hugged me and it was sweet. *smiles* Katie G. was there (she had a codename here but I'm blanking on it just now..*g*), Jess Dewalt was there, glomped Daffy, Laur glomped me and we *both* nearly fell over! *laughs*, talked to Holly and Melinda and Michelle and Nicole and goodness me everyone.. eventually went to the cafeteria and had something to drink, chatted with more people.. Laur kept alive the stocking-sliding down the back hallway tradition!!!!! hurrayyyyyy!!!!! :D Hung out with Laur and Daf and Calypso (whom I'm able to at least stand sorta better now..*shrugs*..we'll see), and people, and all, for nearly an hour... hitched a ride home with Laur, checked messages...
..and decided it was far too nice of a night out and I had too much energy to just sit here.

So, went for a random bikeride. *G*
Rode down to the IGA parking lot, went around there.. came back up, saw a small pick-up turning onto my street, followed it - it was, as suspected, Calypso bringing Daf home.. I called out and said hey when she got out of the truck.. then went riding off again. Randomly went down Himeros' street.... ..nearly ran into this guy's dog he was out walking - the guy was dressed in black, the dog was black, I didn't see them 'til I was close, then the dog walked out to the side in front of me.. *laughs* ..it was ok, tho. (I was good, I'm wearing a white tank-top. *g* And it wasn't terribly dark anywhere I went - it's cloudy tonight, so there's still city-glow, for one thing.)
Started to ride up Westside a bit, then changed my mind, as I've ridden to the school enough lately..
..decided to go ride over to Reddick Lane, where I lived when I was little, before I moved out to Perry. (It's like, a two-minute drive from where I live now..very odd, I know.)
So, rode over that way.. passed Reddick at first, rode onto teh bridge and looked down at the creek..and though I could barely make it out in the darkness (and I wasn't about to stay long on the shoulderless bridge late at night - there are very few streetlights around here), I didn't really need to, I could still see it perfectly in my mind and fill things in, the smell of it came faintly up and I remembered it the rest of the way...
Turned about, then onto Reddick, and rode slowly up my old street... the trees have gotten much bigger since I lived there..I realised, it was *twelve* years ago (well, about a month short of that, but close enough) that I left there... but I looked at the locust tree and the - *my* - black maple out front, the front door, my old bedroom window... the interior of the whole hoiuse flashed thru my mind in an instant, I could draw our exactly where everything is even now...
Rode the rest of the way around the neighborhood, went down Donlin, remmebering the day my friends and I'd gone out for a walk around the block, and as we turned onto that street we were caught in a sudden downpour, and were offered refuge in someone's garage 'til it passed... and went slowly past Zinni's old house.. the tree out front that we all climbed in, that we have pictures of all of us in (hey guys? did I ever *get* a copy of that one great shot we had? if not, can I borrow someone's and scan it or something? *g*)... remembered the water balloon fights we had, with everyone there, inc. Blake and Sham... the *endless* sleepovers in the basement... parties always going on fron five hours to seven hours to nine hours to sleepovers to two days ^_^ ....the Frodis tree out back.....

What is it about memories that makes them so sweet? I mean, really. When Laur told me that there were *Perry-people* at the State Envirothon competition (which reminds me, CONGRATS ON PLACING FOURTH, you guys ROCK!!!! :D ), I *flipped* out, it made me so mad crazy happy... ..seeing the creek by Reddick again, looking down from that bridge... looking up at my old window...thinking back on the attic over the garage, which I only ever saw up into maybe once or twice...Dad sawing wood and us playing with all the odd-shaped left-overs like blocks....thinking back on all the times we spent at Zinni's....thiking back on junior high, and how close Blake and I were, remembering the Ensemble trips to Darien Lake..and that first one, where I had no-one to sit with on the ride home that night, and Mrs. Oldfield asked Blake if he'd let me sit with him, which of course he did, and we talked the *whole* busride home and it was one of the best nights of my life.....I don't know of any sort of words to describe the feeling I get when these things come back to me..are there any? there shuold be. *grr* *g*

But, when I remember all these things... so often, I miss them *so* much...so much that it hurts, many times...and it makes me so sad to know that those things will never come again, I'll never quite have our little group from jr. high back as it was then...I'll never sit in Zinni's basement over there with Daf and Laur and Zin and "psychoanalyze" and bare our whoel frickin' souls until all hours of the night...and we'll not even get *into* Perry cos that's a whole, still-larger, thing to itself... ...and I realised that when it ends, I'm going to miss Fredonia and my times *there* *terribly*, too..... ...so I think one of my main troubles is that I love too much. Really, I thought it through, and that's what a lot of it, I love so many things so much that I wind up having an overdose of bittersweet... like I said before, all those people, even those I barely knew, or just saw around, I miss...places, and things, and events...that first year of our Leo Club that we started...the giant prickers on the bush out back on Reddick...the reddish carpet in our living room there that looked like tomato soup swirled around in a bowl when I stood in the middle of the room and spun around and around until I nearly fell to the ground...the day we spent our Wildlife Ecology class putting woodchips onto the trails, me right up there with the guys pitchforking and shovelling the woodchips down off the giant piles, working harder'n about anyone else, as I recall... every little thing, I've loved in some way... it's like yesterday, I wrote about how I stood out at the border between the woods and field, watching that first deer, and just... was overcome by the beauty of everything? and I kissed a bunch of fookin' *leaves on a tree* cos I didn't know what else to do, my heart was about to burst with it all.....I get those moments quite a lot, actually, and..
*laughs* I've no idea where I'm going with this tonight, I'm just writing... if it makes no sense at all to you, don't worry about it, this is what goes thru *my* whacked-out mind, I don't expect anyone else to get it, or care. *g*

Rode my bike along Brewerton, somehow it's still field in behind those houses which made me glad...
Then rode back here. Had come out teh back door of the garage (cos the main doors are *loud* to open and Dad's sleeping *g*), so I walked my bike by the side of the house.. Daf's light was on, but I don't know if she has the screen down or not yet and if her window was openable..plus I didn't want to wake anyone or get her in trouble, so I headed on out back.
Parked my bike, peeked into the now-dark pond, then lay down in the grass for awhile. Considered briefly sleeping out there, decided against it. *g*

So then I came in and now I'm sitting here wondering what on *earth* to do about those cookies cos the batter was only supposed to be in the fridge for three hours - whicih ended at 7pm, when I was trying to leave for the concert. I'd planned on baking them when I got back, but I didn't get back 'til 11, then rode 'til 11.30, then came up here to type and now it's 12.30. hrmmm.
Well, the oven itself doesn't make any noise.. it's rolling out the dough that I'm worried about..hmm.
*closes eyes a moment, thinking*
*yawns* ok cookies are gonna be done tomorrow, I just realised I'm sleepy! *laughs*
Time to write awhile, I think.. or at least read.

*Ananda Daydream * 1:05 AM * *

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~