mood: somber music: 'suzanne' by hope sandoval & the warm inventions

for once, my parents forcing me to go to church paid off.

tonight, they offered the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick to those who wanted it. all three priests came down to the waiting crowd and, one by one, placed their hands on the laypersons' heads uttering words, while in the background, the piano played a somber sonata in a minor key. then after a few, more outspoken words to the congregation, they returned to the afflicted with chism, or blessed oil. they dipped their fingers into small glass bowls and proceeded to make small crosses on the foreheads and palms of each recipient. there's just something mysterious and powerful about a group of priests dispatching through a crowd and mumbling something barely audible. i was enveloped by that macabre haze. then a cellphone rang its uncalled for hymn and shook me out of it for a moment, and one of the priests went back and made a plea for donations. and like being pulled out of a watery dream, that brought me back to cynicism.

yesterday i went to knott's berry farm with andres and kristy. originally i wasn't supposed to go and a huge group of others were, but something triggered something else and the opposite happened. it was all for the better, though. we had tons of fun despite overcrowding and an extremely long line for parking. in the span of about 8 hours, i went on 4 rides: 'jaguar', 'montezooma's revenge', the swings, and 'ghost rider', chronologically. ghost rider itself took about 2 hours of queuetime, which is a word i just invented right now. but it was worth it. for some reason, it was running a lot faster than i remember it, but the entire ride still took about 45 seconds to 1 minute, which is a long time by rollercoaster standards.

i did buy a camera with no flash for about 12 dollars, so i'll try to post those pictures once i get them developed, though i don't really know how i'm going to do it yet. i'm open to tips at this point. anyways, some of the photos were taken on the rides after i smuggled the camera in my pocket, so those will be interesting.

afterwards, we finally knocked off another norm's after months of norm's abstinence. the one in anaheim this time. oddly enough it seemed to be a carbon copy of the norm's in north torrance down to the wall clocks, so that creeped us out pretty well. (x) amount of coffees and one hot chocolate, as is standard for any norm's pilgrimage. our server, tony, saw that we were using the hot chocolate as a complementary device for the coffee, to make mochas, so he didn't charge us for it. that topped off the best carefree day i'd had in months.

now, though, i'm facing a french essay and 5 prospective bombed finals. but more carefree days are most likely to come as the winter chill forges on.

---Goei---