First, let me update about Halloween! On the 25th, feeling the need to do something in the Halloween spirit, and finally having time to do so, I suggested we go to the hay bale maze. I looked it up online and they were open until midnight. We armed ourselves with flashlights and drove out past WalMart to the hay maze. It was freezing, but we had fun. The hay bales were not your run-of-the-mill hay bales - they were huge - they made walls out of them that were well over 12 feet tall. At the beginning of the maze there were only a few different ways to go, and some were relatively short dead ends, so it was easy to retrace our steps back to where we were. After about 10 minutes of this, we thought this was going to be pretty lame. But then we got into the middle of the maze where there were more turns and paths, and we got pretty lost. We were two of the only people smart enough to bring flashlights. The website said it was "dimly lit" and by "dimly lit" they meant lit by the full moon apparently. Anyways - it was fun. I could've spent longer, but Chad got really impatient at being lost, and found the exit pretty quick. All in all it took us about 15-20 minutes.
Our next Halloween activity was the Symphony Halloween Concert for school. 6 shows in all, 2 each night, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Above: pictures of the stage and our director, Captain Hook, also taking pictures of the set
The theme this year was Pirates of Madison County - it included music from Pirates of Penzance and Pirates of the Caribbean. The orchestra was supposed to be a group of oppressed pirates forced to play music by their mean Captain Hook. They are almost set free by his assistant Smee when Captain Hook mentions the keyword "treasure" and it brings the Pirate King and his Singing Pirates to the stage in their own pursuit of the treasure. They find the treasure and it turns out to be gold-foiled chocolate coins and the pirates are set free. It was fun. It was more fun because it wasn't over 2 hours long like last year. In fact, the concert was only about an hour long, and we didn't even go on stage until 5 minutes after it started. AND there was no strobe light. So. It was good. Short and sweet.
Pirate Megan - yes, that is the duster attachment to our vacuum - we don't have any legitimate swords.
On Halloween, Chad came to the second show that got out around 9:30. He dressed up as a cowboy (you are encouraged to wear costumes to these concerts). I told him that the problem with his costume was that in Idaho it's not a costume. People that knew him knew it was a costume. When we got home, I changed out of my pirate garb and attempted to dress up as a rodeo queen to match my cowboy. I spent about an hour removing black and dirty makeup and then replacing it with glittery makeup. I put on my rodeo queen jacket, my jeans with the gems on the pockets, and my boots. I wore lots of makeup and did my hair. But, hard as I tried, even after I put on Chad's cowboy hat, I still couldn't get it to work. And you wanna know why? Because in Idaho THAT'S NOT A COSTUME! People go out like that on a daily basis! So I gave up and put on my normal clothes. Chad changed out of his tight jeans and boots, and we went bowling. The bowling alley was having a sort of Halloween party. By now it was 11:00 or something like that so there weren't very many people there. About 2 frames into our game they called out a contest. Each player had to walk up to the foul line, turn around, put one foot in each gutter and roll the ball down the lane through their legs. Whoever got the most pins down won a free pizza from Pizza Hut. I certainly was motivated, loving Pizza Hut pizza the way I do. I rolled the ball, and it looked good - really good... too good to be true! I got a strike!!! And I won the pizza! Only to find out that it was a voucher for one free personal pan pizza - hardly enough for Chad AND me, but I was happy nonetheless.
After bowling we went home and that was the extent of our Halloween.
After Halloween was the election, of course. Madison county voted 98% Republican in the last election, so my vote pretty much didn't count. Except for, as my dad pointed out, making sure it wasn't 100% this election. I still registered to vote, and cast my first official ballot! I was excited. Except when the lady said "You know that registering to vote makes you a resident of Idaho?" To which I replied "Unfortunately."
There were 10 positions on the ballet - 6 of which only had a single Republican candidate listed.
After I voted, and I had inside info to lead me to believe that Obama would win, we went in search of election celebration food. We went to Broulim's, Albertson's and WalMart. Nobody had red white and blue cupcakes. I asked the girl at Albertson's and she told me "Yeah - we only make those for holidays." Pish posh. So, after searching for those Little Debbie cakes with the stars and stripes on them, we settled for Strawberry Shortcake rolls that I could unroll to see the red and white stripes, and then I bought blue sprinkles.
It was pretty dang stellar. I think we were the only ones in the state who were celebrating the outcome of the election. Chad didn't want Strawberry Shortcake rolls though, so he got German Chocolate Cookies. I don't know what kind of political statement he was trying to make with his choice of election food.
After the election, we spent the next couple of days listening to our friends complain about how they were going to move to Canada and build their bomb shelters to prepare for the Millennium. For my opinion on this, see Mollie's blog.
Since the Halloween concert, I have had a Sinfonietta concert, and will have a Wind Ensemble (Symphony Band) concert on Tuesday. I can't believe Thanksgiving is so close and then after that there's only two more weeks of school!! It's going to go by quickly!
In other news, I have hurt my hand such that I can't put any weight on my wrist or practice for extended periods of time. Lucky me. However, we have high hopes that it will get better quickly.
I also have tried to register for next semester's classes, only to find out that as the school has overhauled its catalogue in the last few years, my classes are all screwed up and I won't be able to graduate on time unless I take classes over the summer. I'm not very happy about that. But a bigger problem is that if I take classes over the summer, I am scheduled to have only 9 credits the following semester (my last semester) - meaning that I won't be eligible for my scholarship until I rack up another 5 credits somehow. This also applies to the summer - I will only be taking six credits, meaning that I will pay for each of those credits. Again, lucky me. And, actually, even if I take classes over the summer, 2 of the classes I have to take are only offered at the same time and only in the summer semester. So I win the prize on that one. Supposedly they're going to get back to me and let me know what the solution is by Monday or Tuesday. Considering I've been taking as many credits as I can every semester that I've been here so that I CAN graduate on time, I will not be happy if they tell me I can't.
And that, my friends, brings us to today. I have spent the entire day cleaning the apartment and doing laundry. Don't ask me how I spent an entire day cleaning 300 square feet of space, but somehow I did.
