I managed to absolutely slaughter "Come on Over" by Christina Aguilera. You know what sucks? They took out my favorite line for the karaoke version of that song. I was so looking forward to singing "I'm not just talkin' about your sexuality." I spent part of the time laughing because I wasn't really sure how most of the song went.

Oh, and apparently this is all on videotape. Liza's got it. No, I don't EVER want to see it.

Tim and I are going to St. Louis this weekend. We were going to go to Dayton, but the plans fell through, so we started thinking of other places that were five hours away. Here's a sample of our conversation:

Tim: Let's go to Cleveland.

Nanette: Gross, Cleveland sucks.

Tim: I was just joking. What else is five hours away?

Nanette: Hmmm. Iowa, the Wisconsin Dells, Detroit, St. Louis, Louisville, and Carbondale, Illinois.

Tim: What's in Iowa?

Nanette: Nothing. Oh, wait. The world's largest truck stop is in Iowa. I've been there.

Tim: Is it really huge?

Nanette: Well, Robin and I managed to lose someone there, so yeah. It's huge.

Tim: Let's go to Iowa, then. I want to go to the middle of nowhere in Iowa.

Nanette: Let's not go to Iowa.

Tim: Well, what's in Louisville?

Nanette: A comic book store, and a mall. The mall's pretty big, it's got lots of statues of horses, and a food court. There's also a cool record store.

Tim: Well, what goes on in Louisville?

Nanette: I don't know. I thought it was a pretty nice city.

Tim: How about St. Louis?

Nanette: St. Louis is nice. We could go to the Gateway Arch.

Tim: Let's go to St. Louis, then.

Nanette: Okay.

So I am going to St. Louis. I haven't been down there to visit since 1994 or 1995, so it should be fun. I'll bring the camera, I'll take pictures.

If you're in Chicago on Sunday night, Dan from Champainful's band, Spitalfield, is playing at Metro at 6:30 PM. Mike Quinn will be there shakin' his ass. I should be back from St. Louis in time to be in attendance as well.

The truth is, I was bored with writing here. I was updating every day out of habit, but I felt like I had nothing to say. I took the break from Amplified because I wanted to see how much I would miss it. If I didn't miss it at all, I was going to quit.

After two days, I missed it.

I had to force myself to not update. I said I would be back on the 27th, and I decided that I would stick to it, even though I was aching to write about some of the things that happened during my break.

But now...the papers are finished. I'm done with classes for the summer. I have two theses to write before August 10th. And I have so many things to tell you about...

First of all, I will most likely be doing this. I'm pretty sure I know which charity I'm going to blog for. It took a lot of thought, but eventually I came up with something local and literacy-related. Don't get me wrong, I think huge national charities are wonderful, but I'd really like to see the money in action locally. I have to talk to a few people to get everything set up, but once I do, I certainly hope you'll participate.

Okay. Now on to the stories.

I auditioned for Jeopardy last Thursday. The audition has two parts--a written test and a mock game. Colin called me on Wednesday night to let me know that the test was wicked hard, so I knew what I was getting into. And it was hard. Fifty questions worth of minutiae, trivia, and other such nonsense. I'd tell you what the questions were, but I'm sworn to secrecy, so I can't. Besides, they apparently use the same test over and over and over, and I wouldn't want to give you an unfair advantage.

I had heard rumors that 99% of the people who audition for Jeopardy are ridiculously geeky, but that wasn't the case at my audition. My group had a lot of stay-at-home moms. There was one guy in my audition who I'll call Mr. Smooth. Mr. Smooth was all decked out in a fancy, expensive-looking grey suit with a purple shirt and a purplish tie. Mr. Smooth wore his "too black to be natural" hair slicked back to show off his widow's peak. Mr. Smooth spent copious amounts of time bragging to his neighbors about his Ph.D.

Mr. Smooth did not make the cut. He did not pass the test. Twenty people from my group did pass, including, well, me. Yeah. I passed the Jeopardy test. I made the cut. I'M GOING TO BE ON TV!

(Okay, so it's not a sure thing yet, but I'm in their contestant files. Keep your fingers crossed.)

After the test, those who did not pass were dismissed from the room, and the rest of us got to play a mock game. We got to use real Jeopardy buzzers, which are cylindrical, about four inches long, and about as wide as a roll of Sweet-Tarts. Or Sprees. Whichever you prefer. The people running the audition told us that they were evaluating us to see if we were capable of speaking up, buzzing in properly, speaking clearly, keeping the game moving, etc. Oddly enough, there were still people who screwed up.

I was part of the last mock game, and I only had one opponent. He was a Baptist minister from somewhere or another. And he knew a lot about Spam. Seriously. He answered the questions in the Spam category impeccably.

As a reward for my excellent performance, I went to Sephora and bought myself a nice pair of eyebrow tweezers. Those of you who know me well know that I am extremely obsessed with tweezing my eyebrows.

After my audition, I had to go to class. I had thought about bringing a change of clothes with me so I wouldn't be wearing a nice skirt and sweater all day, but I figured that would be a waste of time and effort, so I didn't.

Bad move.

When I got up to Contemporary Lit, the professor told us that we would be doing something "different" with our class time. We would be going outside to participate in a traditional Native American buffalo-calling ceremony, followed by a festive bonfire!

I tried to have a good attitude about this, I swear I did. I let one of my classmates paint my face, I put on some beads. I grabbed some maracas to make noise during the naming ceremony. (My Native American "name" is Guided by Voices. Of course, I completely screwed up the naming ceremony. See, the person sitting to your left is supposed to announce your name. The man sitting to my left was blind. Of course, I didn't think of this until it was my turn to have my name read. So I held things up with my lack of thought, and I wasn't holding the "naming stick" during the naming [it probably has a much more formal name than that], so I guess it really isn't my name. Of course, none of this was real, and I had a few problems with the idea that we were taking something that was sacred to people a couple of hundred years ago and basically making a mockery of it, but I'm not going to go into that here.)

Like I said, I was trying to have a good attitude towards this activity. By the time we got outside, I was losing my good attitude quickly. I know I've complained about the shitting geese before. They live around the pond behind the school, and they poop EVERYWHERE, and their poop is the size of a small dog's poop. Our path took us around the pond, so it was a game of "avoid the goose turds," which wasn't too bad because it was still light outside. Once the goose poop part of the journey was finished, it turned into "avoid the bumps and holes in the ground, because you're wearing big, clunky shoes with three-inch heels, and you're clumsy, and you'll probably sprain your ankle." That part of the journey continued until I got to sit down.

A very wise person from the art class that was running this activity brought some mosquito repellent and was kind enough to pass it around. I sprayed it on my exposed skin, which was only my neck, my hands, and my face, and figured that the mosquitos would leave the clothed parts alone. How wrong I was. They bit me through my tights and through my sweater. I ended up with five or six mosquito bites. Mosquitos are assholes.

The ceremony itself was a comedy of errors. Nobody could get the bonfire to light, the dish full of cedar wouldn't stay lit so we couldn't purify ourselves, a couple of people were uncomfortable with the pagan spirituality, the readers who were reading the story only had one flashlight, the smokers just wanted a cigarette, a bunch of Native American relics almost got lost, and peace pipe jokes ran rampant. I managed to get out of the Native American dancing portion of the evening on account of my shoes. Whenever anyone questioned my lack of particpation, I just raised my foot and pointed at the three-inch heel. Heh.

Somehow, I got to hold one of the torches. It was like Survivor. I suspect that I would have been voted out of that class pretty quickly if it had been Survivor, though. Someday, when I finish all the pictures on my little camera, there will be a photo of me, outdoors, my face painted, holding a torch. Hopefully it turned out well.

When the ceremony finally ended (and not a moment too soon), we made the walk back to the school. I used my torch to watch for goose turds. Then I launched it, javelin-style, into the pond. It didn't look as cool as I thought it would, probably because I'm a wuss and it didn't go very far when I threw it.

I am so happy to be done with classes.