extra! extra!

this weekend i will be reuniting with all my old housemates from my senior year of college. we are calling it the elliott house reunion. because that's what we called our house that we lived in on elliott street. creative geniuses. i wanted to reflect on some old memories from our time at elliott. and i thought i would do so in a bit of a different format. a newsletter. here are some headlines you might have seen had you been friends with us between the summers of 2000 and 2001.

read all about it.

ROOMMATE'S CAR STOLEN
Early Monday morning, roommate Stephanie Vizdos's navy blue and rust Oldsmobile Cutlass was reported missing from in front of her two-story home. Despite filling out a detailed police report, the victim had little hope that the vehicle would be retrieved. With much delight, Stephanie received word the following evening that her car had been discovered discarded a few blocks down the street. The ignition had been tampered with forcing Stephanie to hotwire her own car for the remainder of the school year; however, thankfully, the 8-ball shaped "pimp knob" on the steering wheel survived the ordeal unscathed.

SURPRISE PARTY SUCCESS
Following another Calvin College Men's Varsity Basketball victory on Friday evening, spectators flocked to 822 Elliott street for what some are calling "the party of the century." Birthday celebrations for Sarah Koeze have been known to attract a substantial number of revelers in the past, but never before has there been such a diverse crowd gathered to celebrate the origin of one humble individual. Said one party-goer, "Hey man, all they had to say was one word and I was there: Koez."

FOUL ODOR FORCES ROOMMATES TO CONSIDER EVICTION
A roommate who wishes to remain anonymous for her own safety regrettably cooked fish last night on her George Foreman gill, leaving behind a stench so putrid it defies even the wildest imagination. Remaining roommates, having arrived home to the rancid smell permeating every crevice of their home, were forced to sit for hours with the windows open in the dead of a Michigan winter. After it became clear that no amount of fresh air was going to de-pongify their residence, two roommates reportedly ventured to their local Meijer shopping center to purchase Febreeze, air fresheners, and a brownie mix. Recounted one roommate, "We even bought a pack of cigarettes to smoke inside the house because we thought the smell of a rotting ashtray would have been an improvement."

SEWAGE OVERFLOWS IN BASEMENT. SAYS ONE ROOMMATE, "GROSS."
Upon venturing with her laundry basket down into the underbelly of the elliott house one morning, one roommate discovered raw sewage, including human waste, covering the concrete floor. A plumber was called in immediately to clean up the problem. Roommates have declined further comment, citing the ordeal as "...too horrifying for words to describe. There was poop in our basement. I just can't... Leave me alone, please."

pop culture confessions

1. the smileys on yahoo instant messenger could keep me occupied for hours at a time.
2. my opinion regarding the state of "rightness" with the world ebbs and flows with the state of sandy and kirsten's marriage relationship on the OC.
3. i am having a love affair with the new david gray cd.
4. i refer to jj abrams by his first name in conversation. we've never been formally introduced.
5. the first page i visit every morning when reading BBC world news is the entertainment section.
6. i still feel slightly affected by brad pitt and jennifer aniston's breakup.
7. i'm thinking of subscribing to lucky: the magazine about shopping.
8. i sometimes have dreams about owning tivo.

i feel better now.

cool

bryan just gave me a pocket keychain digital camera. it's smaller than a playing card. it takes really cool low resolution pics. like these.

650 1/2 croswell ave.

in two weeks i will move out of the apartment that has been my humble abode for the past two years. it has served me well. there are things i will miss. and there are things i will most assuredly not miss. here are some of them, in no particular order.

i will miss never being more than ten yards away from my two favorite things in life: coffee and ice cream. i will not miss never being more than ten yards away from a jackhammer, bulldozer, concrete splitter, or some other instrument of the eternal construction going on in gas light village. i will miss being able to run around the lake without having to take my car keys with me. i will not miss shoveling the three-foot snow drifts that collect on my staircase. i will miss the stained glass windows in my living room, the brick facade on my kitchen wall, my giant walk-in closet, and the hobbit hole where i can keep all my junk. i will not miss my broken stove, the fish smell from the restaurant trash receptacle, the eternal humming of the industrial strength fan on the roof while i'm trying to watch a dvd, or waking up at 6:00am in the winter to move my car when the snow plows come. i will miss my cute little mailbox, the cute red-haired british man who owns the soccer store next door, and walking past the cute little children eating ice cream at jersey junction. i will not miss lugging my laundry home to my parents' house or my trash around the block to starbucks' dumpster. i will miss being part of a really cool neighborhood. i will not miss searching in vein for a parking spot when my cool neighborhood is overrun by SUV's filled with east grand rapids high school football fans. i will miss the privacy of living in my own apartment. i will not miss being the only one responsible for cleaning my bathroom.

wherefore art thou

the other day while i was watching the baz luhrmann version of william shakespeare's romeo and juliet the strangest thing happened. it was towards the end of the infamous balcony scene. the tragic couple were saying their "goodnight, goodnight, a thousand times goodnights." they had made plans to get married. juliet promises to send her nurse at 9 o'clock the next morning to get the details. and romeo responds wistfully, almost to himself, "so thrive my soul." and as soon as those words came out of his mouth i had this completely involuntary reaction and tears came streaming down my face. it was like someone had flipped a switch. words were spoke. tears fell. i wasn't having a personal problem. i wasn't sad or depressed, nor was i overjoyed. i was just moved. by the beauty of the language.

and i remembered why i wanted to be an English teacher in the first place.

tgif.

celebration on the grand is tonight. it is a celebration. on the grand river. celebration on the grand always makes me feel better about the state of the world. there's plenty to feel bad about right now regarding the state of the world. and a little party in downtown grand rapids isn't really going to change that. but still, there's something about seeing thousands of different kinds of people converging on the same small grassy knoll, eating plates of greasy elephant ears, dancing together to the music of some quasi-talented local band, celebrating the same thing at the same time and not trying to kill each other that's quite refreshing. plus fireworks are cool.

first day of school... again, some more

a request for all who are reading this blog right now.

would you please, for me, write a sentence which has as its main verb the verb to pursue in the present perfect tense, the passive voice, the indicative mood, second person, singular number.

oh, and underline the full verb please.

great. thanks!

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if any of you are actually able to do this i'll eat a bee. and hate you forever. or perhaps dress you up in my clothes and have you take the english department screening exam for me. in two weeks!

it would also be helpful for you to know what an elliptical clause is, the difference between the colon, dash, hyphen, brackets and parentheses and when to use them, how to identify trochaic dimeter and how to spell every word in the english language.

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what really baffles me is how i've managed to pass 13 years of formal education in the united states, earn a college degree in english, acquire a job as a professional writer and all without retaining a single ounce of the aforementioned information.

but, here's the thing. i am required to know this information in order to become an english teacher. only english teachers need to know what a gerund is. they need to know so that they can teach it to their students, most of whom will forget it immediately and some of whom will retain it and go on to become english teachers themselves. it's a cycle. and i've suddenly found myself right in the middle of it.

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i must confess, however, that i secretly want to be one of those people who can diagram a compound complex sentence with two adverbial clauses and a dangling participle like nobody's business. i'm just not sure if i can become one of those people by next saturday morning at 9:00am.

saabwatch 2005

d&w gaslight village