So, I had an interesting dream last night. Considering I haven't posted here in a while, I figured this would be a good re-entry into the blogging world.

The two main things were that I went back to my old high school (I think I had graduated from college already), and was essentially offered the lead role in the winter musical. This is strange because they normally do one-act plays in the winter. It was also weird because I wasn't a student. The second thing that happened was that I lost two teeth. Yes, as a 21-year-old, I lost two teeth. Just yanked them out of my mouth. I wonder if the tooth fairy pays more for adult teeth?

Yeah. Strange dream.

Yay for Christmas Eve. My family still has yet to decorate the Christmas tree, or get into the Christmas spirit in general. We're all about being last-minute. Today we're decorating the tree, decorating cookies, wrapping presents, and all that good stuff. Hopefully Love Actually makes an appearance at some point!

We're keeping this one short, sweet, and insightful.

1. Watermelon milkshakes at Cookout are really good. They're seasonal, only offered in July and August (maybe September? I can't remember). There's real watermelon in there, which makes it even better.

2. Tomorrow is the first Fourth of July where I actually have options about what to do. One of the many things I love about Duke in the summer.

3. One week left of my internship.

4. I missed So You Think You Can Dance tonight, so I have no idea who was eliminated. You'd think stuff like that would get posted online within minutes of us finding out, but no. Alas, I'll have to find out tomorrow. (EDIT: I found out that Kourtni and Matt were eliminated. That one made sense, and my favorites are still in!)

5. Lawson should never be allowed to have control of what music is playing. That makes absolutely no sense to anyone except for the four of us in my apartment right now, but yeah, I felt it was important enough to write on here.

6. 3 Day Weekend!

First off, Wall-E is a great movie, and everyone should go see it! The digital short before the movie is absolutely hilarious as well.

'Twas quite the eventful weekend. For starters, I started moving stuff into my Erwin apartment (yay!). Our Duke Engage activity this weekend was "wafting" on the Eno. And no, this isn't pronounced how you would think it should be pronounced. Rather, take the word "rafting" and just switch out the "r" for a "w." Yep, wafting. Made me think of Elmer Fudd the entire time with his "wascally wabbits." Anyway, this activity was essentially canoeing on the Eno River. The canoes were inflatable and could hold two people, and one person paddled at a time with a double-sided paddle. Our guide was named River Dave. He's been doing this for 19 years, and just as you might guess, is a bit cooky. He told us stories about seeing UFOs, about becoming one with nature, and about trying to make wafting an Olympic sport. It was entertaining because it was really nice outside, but I'm not sure I'd be able to sit through the tour again. (Though, if you read this and have never been before, I highly recommend doing the tour for the entertainment factor)

I went and saw Wall-E last night. Like I said before, it is a great movie. There isn't too much dialogue in the movie, but it's really not necessary. It actually made me nostalgic... I think I might watch Toy Story tonight.

Today I watched the Euro Cup finals. It was a pretty good match. Spain had some great shots, but couldn't finish most of them. The lone goal was quite amazing. Congrats to Spain for being Euro Cup 2008 champions, joining the ranks of Germany and France as the few countries to hold more than 1 Euro Cup title.

July 4th this weekend! That means I have a 3-day weekend! Yay weekends!

But first, I must make it through four days of work. Oh, excuse me... "work." At least I have assorted TV shows and other activities scattered throughout the week that I can look forward to!

Ok... Wow. That’s pretty much all I can say to describe Chamas.

I got there with Ruben and Nick at around 8:15, at which point we were seated and a waitress came to take our drink orders and explain how the restaurant, a Brazilian steakhouse, works to those of us who had never been before (read: me). I’ll explain it by example. First, we waited for a few minutes until Laura and Matt joined us. Then we began.

It starts off with a trip to the salad bar. That was the boring part. Kidding. There was a decent selection there, including many cheeses. I made the decision, though, to not fill up on salad, so I grabbed a somewhat small portion of the things I liked.

Once I finished my salad stuff, it was time for the fun to begin. Each person at the table has a circular card with red writing and a red outline on one side, and green writing and a green outline on the other side. When we wanted our meat service to begin, we flipped the card over to the green side. The staff would be walking around with different kinds of meat, and we could accept or decline any of the meats that we wanted. Oh man, how could it get any better than that, right?

In come the meats. We started off with a guy offering sausage and chicken. Both were very good. After that, I can’t name everything that was offered. According to the waitress, they offer 27 different meat choices. Oh man. Here were some of the highlights; they had filet mignon wrapped in bacon, chicken wrapped in bacon, garlic steak, top sirloin, pork... everything was great! The one that I wasn’t a huge fan of was the lamb. I’m not sure I’ve ever had lamb before, though, so the taste was foreign to me. Anyway, we were at the restaurant for about two hours, and I think a good hour of it was spent eating the different meats they offered to us. I feel like I should mention that I didn’t eat a big lunch in preparation for this... I just had a bag of Doritos.

After dinner, they rolled out a cart with the dessert options. We sort of laughed at first because we were so full, but then our sweet tooths (sweet teeth?) got the best of us. Ruben, Laura, and I opted in for some gelato, which was great. I got cookies and cream. It was light enough that I didn’t feel sick afterward, so the gelato was a great choice.

We finally rolled back to our respective places of residence around 10:30 last night. When I got up this morning, I couldn’t eat breakfast because I was still full, which leads me to believe that last night’s trip was a success.

As I’m writing this, I’m waiting for the Time Warner guy to come install cable and internet in my Erwin apartment. Once I have internet I can finally watch So You Think You Can Dance. So far I’ve watched Twitch & Kherington and Jessica & Will. Both were great performances, so I’m expecting a lot of the same from the other 6 couples!

There's so much work to do at my internship, so naturally I had to take a break.

... Right...

Anyway, last night, I watched Nashville Star. There was absolutely nothing else on, and I had nothing else to do. Luckily, I was with other people, so it became much more entertaining since we could make fun of it. And there was much to be made fun of.

First off, all 9 contestants started off by singing a group piece. The song was "Like A Prayer." Yes, as in Madonna. But it's a country show, so they had to make it country. It was the biggest piece of garbage I'd ever heard. Each soloist brought his or her own level of awfulness to the song. I'm talking wrong notes, bad trills (even for country), etc. The best part was that the theme for the week was "pop goes country," so the contestants had to choose a pop song, countrify it, and then perform it. This meant we got to hear such gems as "You Drive Me Crazy" by Britney Spears, "Bye Bye Bye" by *NSYNC, and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper. And, of course, they were done with country style... different instruments, different vocal intonation, etc. It was hilariously bad. As in, so bad we couldn't look away. There was one, MAYBE two, people on there that I thought I could sort of like. Of course, one of them sang a song that was pretty much already country ("True Colors," also by Cyndi Lauper).

The worst part was the elimination setup. They call the contestants down to sing one by one, and the last two who haven't sung yet are the bottom two. They both get the chance to sing, are given phone numbers for fans to call in and vote for them, and THEN they are told who was voted off from the week before.

Speaking of TV, I'm very interested to see "I survived a Japanese Gameshow" tonight, as well as half of "Wipeout," since I'll be at a Duke Engage session until around 8:30. Watching television is what the summer is all about anyway, right?

My laptop's warranty expires in 4 days. I'm debating between sending it in to get a few things fixed, or dropping it off of a tall building and sending the shambles in to hopefully get a new computer.