www.calapitter.net

Tonight we went to Eleven Eleven Mississippi for my mom's birthday. The food was pretty good: Tyler and I had pork tenderloin over garlic mashed potatoes (Tyler's with cider syrup, mine without), Mom had bacon-wrapped duck, and Dad had mahi-mahi with arugula and couscous. During dinner, Dad told us about the terrorist drill they had at work, and I explained Calculus revolution functions to Ty. Then came dessert: my goodness. I had the Chocolate Bread Pudding (with marshmallows inside, smothered with pecan streusel, and topped with caramel ice cream) and Mom, Dad, and Ty had Crème Custard Napoleon (with carameled bananas and chocolate shavings).

Tottering out of Eleven Eleven (which should be exalted, if only for its Rufus Wainwright connotations), I complained about my Music of Latin America exam: how fair is it to ask me to identify whether a piece of music consisting only of a rattle shaking and a man's moaning comes from the Warao, Guarani, Suyá, etc. culture?????? NOT FAIR AT ALL. I described the hebu mataro rattle: a hollowed-out gourd/calabash, which, because it represents a head spirits, has slits cuts out of it to symbolize eyes, ears, nose, mouth; has quartz pebbles inside which grind up the inside of the gourd to make dust, and grind against each other to make sparks, and when the dust ignites, it makes a glow that leaks out of the slits, creating a supernatural-seeming effect which corresponds to its healing purpose in the Warao culture. In the car, I described the hoarotu shaman, which is pretty interesting, and told the story of the hoarotu shaman singing and killing the tape recorder, which you can read about on that link.

After all that talking, we came home and Mom opened her presents and liked them (except for receiving two copies of Kermit Ruffins; this sort of thing always happens, because the rest of us don't communicate with eachother.) And I gave Ty his Captain Awesome shirt, and he liked that.

Happiness ensues.

P.S. My midterm grades were as follows:
         Spanish Literature... A.
         Econonomics 101 ... A-.
         Astronomy ... A.
         Astronomy Lab ... A.
         Music of Latin America ... A.
         Search 202 ... A-.