A Two-Purple-Cars Kind of Day and Two Dreams

As you might have guessed, the title of this blog entry originates from an unusual phenomenon that we witnessed today in the car on the way to Borders. We were driving along Country Club Road when I spotted a bright purple car passing us by on the left; not a minute later, another followed it. I told my mother and Gary (our friend from Virginia who arrived in town a few days ago) that this was the first time that I had seen two purple cars in one day.
Weeks are passing by in the post-winter-break sort of daze. It seems that everything just speeds up until summertime, and then time mercifully slows down for a few days while everyone basks in the glory of sleeping in and similar freedoms - but of course, as soon as this becomes a routine, life speeds up again. It's funny how it works.
If I didn't mention it in my last entry, my birthday and ensuing events were a success; my dad and I went to a Symphony concert last week, with guest artist Chris Thile - who plays the mandolin. T'was interesting. Also, I've started to learn the trumpet, and I was allowed to take home Mr. James' trumpet yesterday to practice with over Spring Break. I rode home with Elisabeth yesterday, along with Anita, to celebrate the former's birthday. Yesterday, just after the bell rang, I met Anita in the band room; it was raining, which was our reason for seeking shelter inside. Elisabeth was late for some reason, and so I pulled the trumpet from the case and played it for a while. Mr. James, hearing me play, emerged from his office, offering a few tips as I was playing. Soon after, Elisabeth arrived, and the four of us carried on an awkward conversation, us three girls sitting down and Mr. James simultaneously leaning against and straddling a stand-up bass. Mr. James and Elisabeth bounced random facts off of each other, and Anita and I observed as though watching a tennis match; at one point, Mr. James mentioned the fact that he had once been on the debate team. He went on to describe an occassion in which he had made a vegetarian girl cry; she was attempting to defend the morality of vegetarianism, when Mr. James stood up and presented as an argument a false study in which scientists had supposedly recorded the screams of vegetables being pulled from the ground. The girl reportedly faltered, whimpering, "But - no, it can't - carrots!" and then started to cry. As Mr. James told us, it was "rather amusing." The sleepover itself was fun - we spent most of it in Elisabeth's room, listening to Enya and watching Anita attempt to solve Elisabeth's many wooden puzzles.
I had an odd dream last night; we were watching "The Calendar Girls," but I was far too exhausted to attempt to understand the heavy British accents, and soon succumbed to slumber. I dreamt that my English class took a trip to Montreat (which is where our youth group voyaged this past year in the Autumn). We were in a long, oaky cabin hall; all of the students sat around the fireplace for warmth, waiting for Ms. Jones to join us. Suddenly, a man with a large, brown sack arrived. He wore a postal service hat, which indicated that he carried mail - sure enough, he produced letters for everyone from the bag. It apparently was late February in the dream, because many people received heart-decorated mail. Girls gushed over valentine cards sent from their boyfriends and boys tucked their cards secretly but proudly into their shirt pockets. I was disappointed to receive only three cards - two that I could immediately tell were from my parents. I read these, filing them in my purse, before opening the third. This one was a shock. It was from the Kapellmeister of our church; it addressed plans that I have to organize a benefit concert in the near future at our church. It was about here that I woke up.
I also had a dream last week that I will only touch on briefly. In this dream, my father and I were on the Disney Cruise that we rode on last summer, except there was a very stringent schedule for all of the passengers. We all had to be in specific places at specific times - at the indoor swimming pool for lessons at 4:00 sharp, at the top deck for silent tanning at noon, etc. If we were late for one activity, we would be given punishments by the leader of that activity, the nature of the punishment varying from written lines to silent detentions to other similar things. Things left unremembered or said are the identity of the swimming instructor and my somewhat-purposeful plot of being late to that class. Nothing eventful happened, however, and so I woke up.