De är lustiga att se...

Due to the awesomeness of my first Midsummer last year, I have decided that this is a holiday worth celebrating no matter where you are. I did have to alter the act of celebrating this day, though, mainly because no one else would give a damn enough to have a proper party on a Thursday but also because the day that the sun is up the longest is traditionally condemned in Tucson rather than celebrated. As a result, the fun times that were had were coincidentally at and around the same time and I retroactively declare them to be Midsummer celebrations.
Things of note from a Arizonan Midsummer:
-Judging from the number of kids from Sabino, I'm going to have to hang out at O'Malley's more often.
-There are at least two completely different ways to make a Polar Bear.
-One can still have a good time camping even without hot dogs or a fire.
-It's a sad thing when most people's idea of camping involves an RV.
-The forest rangers' device for putting out campfires would be a big hit at pool parties.
-People are more uncomfortable talking about the night sky than they are about sharing racy stories.
-Truth or Dare becomes Truth or Truth when too dark to see meets too drunk to walk.
-My brother and I are apparently the only two people on Earth who eat eggs over hard. (and a thank you to Keith for introducing me to the arguably best way to cook eggs)

And in honor of Swedish Midsommar, a series of photos from my year abroad that for various reasons didn't make it into the collection the first time around.

Fjortisar

One of the things I've noticed in my interactions with my coworkers is how I have not changed so terribly much from high school. In high school, for the most part, quality social interactions with was difficult with many people. I figured it was because I was socially inept (which I still may very well be) and not that it was any fault of theirs. This was slightly less so my freshman year of college and my sophomore year it seemed to vanish entirely. Of course that might have just been because I was in another country and half expected things to go back to the way it was once I got back to the U of A. And as it turned out my first semester was nearly all GedEd classes full of freshmen and my social skills were just like they were in high school. The next semester then brought classes all but devoid of freshmen and my ability to talk to people magically improved again. The people at work are no exception to this trend, the majority of them are either still in high school or just graduated and getting to know them and talk with them has been slow work. And even then I get the unshakable feeling that it is only my age that keeps them from ignoring me entirely.
I won't make some sweeping dismissive claim that every awkward or failed social interaction in my past is a result of the other person being a high schooler but it does seem there is a pattern here. While I still have a long way to go before I'm the confident socialite I'd like to be, I think it's fair to say that high schoolers/college freshmen and I tend not to mesh well even when I was younger.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End with Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. I went in to the theater expecting very little since I didn't enjoy the first one very much and was unfortunately not surprised by the outcome. As I understand it, whatever your feelings on the second movie were, it will be exactly the same for the third. So while it was agreed that rescuing Jack Sparrow was way too easy, it was ultimately necessary because focusing on one plot line for too long would have crowded out all the other ones they insisted on including. One positive thing I will say is that I was wary of them bringing back Barbossa but not making him a central character, but was glad to see that he was given lots of due screen time. All of the characters were given their fair share of screen time, actually. I guess the best thing you can say about the movie is that it allows for a lot of character development but at the utter expense of plot structure.

Girl with a Pearl Earring with Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth. The plot itself is interesting but nothing spectacular; the fact that the created a movie as a backstory for a painting was pretty cool. The truly amazing thing about this movie is the visual composition where nearly every scene can be paused and might serve as a photograph or painting in itself. The film is incredibly beautiful and the depiction of Holland is very archetypical, especially the clothing. Honestly, the film would be worth seeing even if there were no audio, the visuals are that good. I should also mention that Scarlett Johansson is much prettier than the girl in the original painting.