Today was the second day of continuous rain here in Los Angeles, California.
The rain is pretty depressing in this city. It's not the heavy, dramatic, exciting rain like in New York; rather, it's the slow dreary drizzle you get a lot in Geneva, and it's constant.
As if instead of getting your hand chopped off in one sudden blow, it's eaten off bit by bit by fire ants.
Ah... It is dreary.I'd much rather a sudden downpour to come and render everyone awestruck with its ferocity, then the sun to come out again and dry everything up. As it is, it's been soggy and damp for the past two straight days, without a hint of drying up anytime soon. As a result, everything I wear becomes wet and gross, and needs to be hung up on all of my furniture for many many many hours before I can throw it in the hamper. The air is humid, it feels heavy in your lungs. Things decay faster, and the plant life is drowning. Everything in general smells worse than it should, because everything is soaking up water from the air. Time passes slower, and everywhere you can hear the shrill sounds of sorority girls complaining about their hair and clothes.
Ah. Tedium tedium tedium.
Yes... USC doesn't really look its best in the rain, does it? Heh.
I saw these fellows while walking on the way back to my dorm from my history class....One thought that occurred to me was,
"What are seagulls doing here, in the middle of the desert during a rainy spell?"
...Ah yes. Look at this veritable lake engulfing the entire walkway. There's about 10 centimeters of brick on the left side that one can tiptoe across in the manner of a dainty hippopotamus, but really, this says something about the efficiency of the sidewalk drainage system here at USC. Then again, USC doesn't really need a sidewalk drainage system, as apparently on average, it rains for only 10 or so days a year here. So I suppose it's forgivable, but still. I miss the efficiency of sidewalk drainage that they had in Geneva.Another thing about the rain is, I can't use my longboard when it's raining. I mean, well, it is physically possible, of course, but I don't want my bearings to rust. If the board is constantly exposed to water, I'm afraid that the trucks and bearings will quickly degrade, which wouldn't be good. If that happened, the wheels wouldn't turn on the axes as well, and making turns would be much more difficult. Furthermore, I'd have to replace the parts sooner, which definitely isn't a good thing. I mean, decent bearings alone can cost anywhere from 50 to 100 U$D, and that's not even considering the trucks, kingpin, bearing spacers, wheels, etc etc. All in all at least a couple hundred dollars. I am not willing to spend that much money on replacing parts on my board because I was unintelligent enough to ride it when I shouldn't have.
There are some people riding their boards in the rain, though. Which I find to be somewhat foolish, obviously. Their poor boards, I see them ride by with their trucks completely covered in a sheath of water, and I sigh. They will have to get new boards soon. I made a few friends who longboard here, and some of them do that; then, they wonder, "Why does my board not ride as smoothly as yours, Michelle?"
Oh, I wonder.
Anyway.
Enough talk about the rain, it's depressing enough as it is without me going on and on about it. Moving right along, then.
For the longest time, I had no plans for Halloween, as I didn't think it would be important to plan anything for the holiday. I figured, I would just sleep early or something.
Ha!
You see, I'd forgotten what a huge, big deal Halloween is in America. While in France/Switzerland, I grew accustomed to thinking that while Halloween is acknowledged, it's something that people put a halfhearted attempt into, but don't really care that much about.
What a shock I had, then, when I came here and saw people making Halloween plans from the end of September! In fact, my roommate had made plans for Halloween before she even came to USC, which was in mid-August!
Wow.
So the day before yesterday, a group of friends were admonishing me about my lack of plans for the Hallow's Eve, and I inquired as to what I might do, then, to pass the time on the annual day of celebration of horror, nightmares, and the creepy-crawlies.
They told me about this AWESOME EXCITING THING THEY'RE GOING TO,
which actually does look pretty awesome and exciting. So I decided to go to it, and now I'm going :P . It's called HARD Haunted Mansion, and it's two nights, but I'm only going on Saturday 31 October. Basically, it's a giant rave at this place called the Shrine, which is right next to the campus on the north side. A rave is like a discoteque or nightclub, but with electronic-techno-house sounding music, a lot more people, a lot more lights, and sometimes dry ice. Hence a lot more adrenaline, and thus a lot more fun :D .
Dictionary.com provides a lot of definitions for the word 'rave', but the two I found to be closest to the meaning I present in this context are;
rave (n) :
An all-night dance party, especially one where techno, house, or other electronically synthesized music is played.
Chiefly British A raucous party; a rave-up.
So, that's what's doing on Halloween for me. I'm ordering a costume off of Amazon, because in order to buy one from a store, I'd have to get a friend, most likely Jason, to rent a car and then take me up to somewhere to shop. Then I'd most likely spend hours looking for an outfit, and possibly not find one. If I did, I'd pay for it, pay tax, then get poor Jason who'd been waiting for hours to take me back, and of course I would have to pay for the car rental because the trip was taken on my behalf.
All in all, it just seems much easier to choose a costume that comes with free shipping online, and pay for them to bring it straight to my dorm. Right? Right.
At first, I was told to dress as a sailor, but there weren't any sailor woman outfits online that made me very happy. So I decided to dress as a policewoman instead. Albeit a somewhat liberal policewoman, but a policewoman nevertheless.
One of my very close friends here, named Julio, was having a bad day today. He's having a hard time with school, he's not very involved on campus, his skin is breaking out with acne, and in general he's just feeling really down about everything. So for a while this afternoon I sat in his room and we talked about everything that came to his mind. In fact, it was one of the most profound discussions I've had so far at USC. I was very intrigued, as I thought no one in my year at USC really had very deep thoughts. Anyway, my point is, Julio is a really good friend of mine. After we had spoken for a good long while and he was feeling better about himself and life in general, I proceeded to invite him to come to HARD. Julio told me once that he's a shy sort of person, but he really wants to get out there, because being exceedingly shy is a handicap. Of course. That's true, yes? I figure, he should have fun at HARD, so I asked him to come. And upon hearing the description, he agreed with fervor. I'm very glad, as I relate very much to being shy and finding it hard to put yourself out there and take advantage of opportunities that present themselves. So now Julio's coming to HARD, and as far as I'm aware, the people going are myself, Ivanna (my roommate), Ivanna's little brother (of 15 years), Ivanna's female cousin (I think she's the same age as us), Julio, Jason, Rachelle, Ellie, and... Yes. The last two are girl friends of mine, who are in this 'circle' of friends I seem to have developed. So yaaay, we have a group going. It will be good.
Ho hum.
Guys seem to have issues with creativity when it comes to thinking up costume ideas, but not Julio. Haha. At first he was pensive and confused, but when I told him I was going as a policewoman, he instantly brightened up.
"Oh, I know! I can go matching you!"
"...oh? Will you be a fellow police officer, then?"
"Nono, I'll be your convict!"
HAHAHAHAHAHA it's so brilliant!
I'm excited for the matchingness. I've never dressed to match or be a set with someone, ever, so this should be interesting.
And last thing I'll mention briefly before I go;
What's a "sonic forest"?
Apparently, there's one set up here. Basically to me, it just looks like a lot of emergency poles emitting random noises.
What you do is, stand next to one and wave your hand in front of the little holes in the poles you can see in the photo. A motion detector will sense that your hand is there, and the pole will emit some random noise. I don't really know. When I walk past it and there are people there, it just sounds like a jumble of unharmonious, jarring notes.Ah well. That's all I have to say for now.
A la prochaine, mes amies :)
