how tall was the trojan horse

First of all....excuse me? I seriously find the best titles for blog posts just going through past subjects. I'll give you a few runners-up:

- back to those raw foods
- Cats Rule! Dogs, well you know the rest...
- daddeeeeeeeeeeeeee, i waaaaaaaaaant one!
- Had an odd experience at the garden nursery yesterday
- eatin' stuff rocks

...And these are just a FEW of the myriad which grace the screen and save me from writers block. Which I never have. Because I can always talk about myself.

Anyways...life! Well, I had a great time in Mexico. Everyone was amazing and Erika's cousins are AWESOME. There were 7 of us 13-17 yr. old girls in one corner of the girl's bunkhouse and I had hence to thought that I had finally outgrown giggly teenage girl slumber parties. Nooooooot so. They follow me like a curse. On a diamond. The. size. of. my. HEAD.
Quite the contrast to debate-laden Birmingham.

Speaking of debate, (my 2nd favorite past time, my first being debate itself) I finished the first rough cut of my Duo for next year and am fairly happy with it. It's running 12 minutes or so so I'm going to need to shave off another 3-4 minutes but I'm excited about it. It's a really theatrical piece, so it has lots of potential for really cool effects. I'm also excited to see how my duo partner will like the piece. He's agreed to do it with me but hasn't actually seen the script yet. He's a great actor - he's been in productions everywhere from 5th Avenue to Seattle Opera but he's a really reluctant sort of person so I'm looking forward to pushing him with this piece. It's dramatic (YES.) and I am sure he can do it, he just needs to be confident in his abilities. That is the unsurity.
I've decided for next year for Pattern A I'll do Duo and when my partner can't make it I'll do extemp (God save us all) and B will be Imp, and possibly an IR to shake things up. It would be on bubble gum, btw. As for debate, I'm going to do LD but definitely keep in the congress circuit. I would really like to effect some permanent, competitive changes in WA congress before I graduate, but it's a daunting task. I hear Brandi Spani (My congress hero) tried it and failed. But we'll see, I know most of the major congressmen in the state and I think if we all work together along with our coaches and parli's and judges from our respective schools that would be a good start. (One of them, Jon Mount, goes to TJ and if we could get Turnner on board I think we would have a VERY good chance.)
I don't know, though, because part of me likes the way Congress is a great entry event for all the newbies who just want to see what debate is like. They might get overwhelmed if we make it too like National-style congress, but on the other hand we more experienced congressmen need the experience. Gah, what to do, what to do.
Well...damn I like talking about debate. :D
On the home front, I'm reading some really interesting books this summer:

- Gaspipe *finished* - non-fiction account of American Mofia. Really exciting!
- War of Nerves *in progress* - non-fiction history of international chemical warfare. HIGHLY interesting.
- Zeno's Conscience *in progress* - fictional Italian classic, apparently, of man called upon by psychiatrist to remember & recount life's story. It was great until he started cheating on his wife. :( The book translated beautifully though, the language is incredibly humorous and the story is witty and imaginative.
And as always, these are balanced out by liberal amounts of Pearls Before Swine, my personal favorite comic book. :D

The rest of my summer consists of A&P2 and incredibly odd talks with my lab partner. I kind of got all my socializing in two huge doses in Birmingham and Mexico so right now I'm loving being largely on my own but I'll probably start being social more by the end of summer. Perfect timing, I know.

Until then, have a happy and safe summer! I'd love to hear from you - correspondence is always welcome (although I think I owe most of you emails/letters. Sikes...)


(And to answer the title "over two stories." and I used quotation marks because I am automatically skeptical of wikipedia due to my forensics background.)