~ Road To Nowhere ~ Ramblings of a Renegade

388 Days Later

2010-01-23T12:53:00.003-06:00

So. It's been ages. I've missed an entire year. For some reason I don't think that was detrimental to anyone. Do I have an excuse for myself? No. Do I have anything particular to say today? No... at least I don't think so. I just felt like I needed to update. Perhaps my lack of communication with the online world has to do with the fact that I have come to writing letters about anything and everything, so things get said there and then get pushed to the back of my mind. That's just what happens when you learn to use writing to communicate the words you just can't say but that need to be said, and you're in the woods all summer so that's the only way to do it anyway. Then when you keep contact with that person and you learn to open yourself up to them more than you ever have before in your life, you would think you could say everything, yet sometimes you still can't. And when you're bored in study at school because somehow you're still on top of all your homework, writing letters takes up the time and makes you feel like even though you're just killing the time, you're still accomplishing something. So that's where everything has gone for the past year and a half. I have said before that I will try to post more, but you've seen how well that's gone, so I won't even say it now, I'll just remain hopeful. We shall see.

For the time being, I'm taking my ACT for the 6th fudging time because my full ride at college flew out the window when ACT gave them the wrong info. I'm on top of coursework right now, but we'll see how long that lasts. However, having a study every day is probably the best thing I ever gave myself. I'm back dancing, but that's a huge long story that makes me want to cry every time I think about it, so maybe someday I will get bored enough to post it, but I can't now. Musical starts up next month and I'm finally dance captain, only my co-captain is someone I absolutely cannot stand and who has no dance technique at all because she never danced very long, nor did she care about it when she did (she was at my studio, trust me I know), so we'll see how that goes. My dark kitty had an abscess on her neck, that was a huge scare for me because we already had one who went through feline leukemia and didn't make it so I was afraid that it was a tumor enough that I didn't say anything for a couple weeks. Eventually though I did tell my mother and she took her to the vet, and they got most of it out but it's been draining and making a huge matte in her fur that I had to cut out last night, yes I've been failing at my mommy duties because I hadn't brushed it in like a week. What else... siblings M and P have been gone to Washington DC and won't be back until tomorrow, so I've taken advantage of the space in my room to try to get things organized and cleaned out, since it's only a couple months until I move out (FINALLY!!!), and yes I'll be at camp for the summer but there's no way I'm leaving my stuff here for another summer to get ruined once again especially if I'm just coming back to move it out again, so everything's going in May. And between now and then I have school, dance competitions, musical, college, and my Girl Scout Gold Award to concentrate on, so I want to do what I can now. Anyway that's about all I have to say for now. Just my last couple months in a nutshell. Hopefully more interesting stories will come later.

The Most Eventful Christmas Ever

2008-12-31T22:17:00.009-06:00

Four posts in six months. Rather pathetic for me, but what can I say? Most of my post-worthy material gets discussed into the ground over IMs with G these days, and life's just too much in the way all the time to let me come back to it all on here.

I don't really have anything to say, but I feel like I should wrap up 2008. I swear this blog's really just becoming my life story, or rather a summary of, but hey if you've read this far you obviously have nothing better to do, so here goes.
The rest of October ~ Halloween was quite uneventful compared to last year. A-Hawk and I crashed at BJ's, from which we were going to M's party, same as last year, but we decided that the three of us hadn't hung out enough lately, so we ended up staying there. Not too exciting, but not cause for a screaming match and breakdown either. Last year that night just sucked.
November ~ Not really anything worth mentioning. We didn't do Thanksgiving at my house this year, instead going to my aunt's about 3 hours away. We weren't there long though, because we all went in one van (that was rather ridiculous, but somehow we made the round trip without any violence) and my mother had to work at like 7, so we made the round trip plus horsed around with the cousins in the huge yard and ate lots of food. It was tiring. Most of us were either asleep or trying to be on the way back. Can't remember the last time I actually succeeded in sleeping in a moving vehicle.

December ~ Oh December. The first two and a half weeks were just wretched. That first week I had I think six essays due plus a project and a presentation, and my history research essay revision and writing portfolio for essay writing were due the week of finals. My research essay kind of really needed the extra chance at a good grade, but of course I completely forgot about it the night before it was due. So yeah, that didn't happen, and my grade certainly shows it. I had A's and high B's all semester, until December hit, and then I started tanking. And that's much sooner than the usual slump that occurs in late January or early February, so it's definitely not a good sign. But anyway, after quite a few sleepless nights (and I don't just mean troubled sleep, I pulled several almost-all-nighters during that time) way too many arguments with people I couldn't see to straighten things out with because schedules were too tight, and a whole lot of stress, break finally arrived. I don't remember what I told myself that Thursday and Friday nights to let everything go from the previous three weeks, but it must have been convincing, because on Saturday morning I was off to northern Illinois with G to visit her family for Christmas. Yay road trip, seriously. The two Christmases we went to were nice, and I made out like a bandit, as G said. I was expecting one or two things from the few people who knew I was coming up, but I got a good deal more than that, and I'm grateful but I still kind of feel bad for not really having anything to give back. Those two events were on the 20th and 21st, and the next few days we were going to spend visiting G's relatives and just relaxing, before heading back on the 24th.

However we had complications. Not positive where the bug came from, but the whole time we were up there the two of us were fighting off stomach flu, though it got the better of G on Tuesday morning. And she had a doctor's appointment that afternoon, so when she got there there was dehydration and a fever to ad to the reason she came in, which was essentially a way confused heart rate. All of those in front of a doctor were certain to land us a night in the ICU, right? We should have been prepared. But alas, we weren't, and we ended up staying at the hospital for 24 1/2 hours. I'd say it was a good thing I always have a book on me, except I was trying so hard to not get sick the whole time myself that I only got through like 20 pages. Plus there was the fact that neither of G's parents wanted to stay there, but I wasn't leaving, so her mother stayed too, and the whole time she was trying to separate us, I'm not sure why. It's not like I was in the way, there were only two patients on that floor. Well actually I do have a pretty good idea. Goes along the same lines as my dad's assumptions at the end of the summer that the two of us were together as lesbians. Did I mention that before? I can't remember. But anyway, her mother was quite irritated that I wouldn't leave, because she would never leave the two of us alone together for more than a few minutes, although she hid it pretty well. Anyway, for a while we weren't sure if G'd get discharged after the set 23 hours under observation, and first the plan was if that happened to send me back home via train so I could do Christmas with my family. But no one in my family was available to pick me up that whole day, so it ended up being that however long G stayed up north was how long I'd be there too. Gotta love parents, right? Christmas for five kids was enough, they didn't really need that sixth one there too.

Well it turns out she did get discharged on time, and we went straight back to her parents' house to pack stuff and then buzzed out of there. It was several hours later than we'd initially planned, but we still got back in time for midnight mass. And that whole day, after leaving the hospital, G got better and better, and I guess as the threat of her staying there longer or going back kept diminishing, my guard kept slipping. I felt pretty decent most of the drive back home, and even kept down McDonald's. But we made it to mass, and that was as far as I got. Usually I like the smell of incense, but I think that's what set me off. No I did not lose my stomach in the middle of church - actually I almost never lose it until I get home, I can keep it down for a pretty long time, even when it won't stop churning - but I was just in agony the entire time. Church cleared out pretty quickly after mass, as it was already after 1am when it was over, but it still took my family a good bit of time to take down all the music stuff. All of us and G were the last people to leave, and I ended up in the van with both of my parents while my brother took the rest of the kids home in the other van. Now up until that point, the entire time I'd felt sick, I was forcing it back so it wouldn't make matters worse, especially while G was in the ICU, because I knew she would blame herself for getting me sick, and she didn't need any more stress. But once we separated after church, I guess I hadn't realized my guard was down as far as it was, because it was a like a sigh of relief that I didn't have to push myself anymore because she wouldn't see me if I did get sick. But it wasn't even my stomach that won me over, no, it was my brain.

Don't think I've ever mentioned how my brain likes to make up scenerios where people I'm close to get hurt. Sure, lots of people do that too, but usually in mine I'm the one who gets hurt, and I come up with all kinds of bad things that could happen to me, and there's never any good ending to it. I don't even see my death, I'm just there, in some right state, until I lost consciousness thinking about it. In fact that's how I've made myself fall asleep for the longest time, I'd think about stuff that would make me pass out until I actually did it. I know that's rash, but that's what my brain likes to do to itself. And it would have been okay this time around if it were me getting hurt, but no, that time it was G. And even if the situation isn't bad at all, I don't care how cliche it sounds, but seeing your best friend in a hospital bed and knowing there's nothing you can do gets you thinking about all the stuff you've never told them and all the time you've wasted with them doing nothing. So I had those thoughts in the back of my head, plus the song Christmas Shoes, plus the images of her i the ICU, when she had just gotten hooked up to the IVs and heart monitor and everything and her fever spiked so she was all red yet pale at the same time, and just dead tired... just not a good combination. So my brain decided to play with all of that, and I was so tired from fighting off the flu (there was a cold there too, as I found out the hard way) and staying up all hours of the night before that I couldn't fight it, my brain won out. The situations it put me in were so different ande unexpected that I don't think I could have fought it off even if I was healthy. Anyway, I was mentally freaking out the whole way home (and I swear my dad has never driven slower), and when I got there, I had just enough time to change out of church clothes and hide under the covers before the breakdown. And man was I falling apart. I wasn't just depressed or not feeling good or whatever, I was scared out of my mind, and completely unable physically to protect me from myself. So yeah, not a good night. I ended up on the phone with her for almost an hour, and I would calm down enough to almost pass out, but then I'd get smacked with another scenerio, and I'd pull right back out of it and be even more tired and scared than before. UGH talk about a rough night.

I finally did pass out for good some time after 3:30am, and was up bright and early because little kids on Christmas morning won't ever let you sleep. To spare you the boring details, we opened presents at my house and then went to my dad's parents' like we always do. Got more stuff there, and spent that night there too since the next day was my youngest sister's birthday. My dad's two sisters and my parents came back on the 26th so we could do cake and stuff for her birthday, and then we went home so the girls could change, because my mother's mother and sister were taking us to see the Radio City Rockettes that night. It was a pretty good show, though being a dancer myself I did have a few small issues with certain aspects of it, because I can't ever watch other dancers without critiquing them. Guess 10 straight years of competing will do that to you. Anyway, that night was the night I decided to stop fighting the illness, but it turns out I decided to stop fighting about an hour before it stopped pushing. That hour was just painful, because I'd just wanted to throw up and get it over with, but I'd fought it off long enough that I couldn't anymore, so my stomach just kept churning. Which is pretty amazing in itself, considering how little food I'd had in the several days prior to then.

The next day, that Saturday, we had Christmas with my mother's side of the family at that same aunt's house, and then on Sunday I slept in and did laundry and organized Christmas stuff and went to church with G. I spent that night at her house, and somehow my parents let me spend the next two nights there too. Yes I spent three nights in a row at her place. I'm just as amazed as you are that my parents let me do that. And it was good break time, as I was away from my family that whole time and did literally nothing for a good bit of it. It really is nice to just spend time with someone once in a while, when you don't have school or work or family to stress you out. I'm sure it'll be quite some time before I get that kind of chance again.

Okay, turns out I did have a bit to say, at least regarding the last eight days. (Ooh and I now have a title for this post.) Hope I kept you entertained. And I hope you don't read this right away, as you should be off partying with friends or something, and not sitting here by yourself at 11:30pm on New Year's Eve like me. In fact I'm going to be even more of a bum and go to bed after the countdown I'm listening to on the radio is over at midnight. It might seem kind of sad that I'm doing nothing on this semi-holiday over break, but I've done quite enough already to last me another week off after this one's done. Not to mention the fact that I've only slept in my own bed three nights since break started, 13 days ago (I'm not counting the night of the 24th, because I only got like 2 hours of extremely troubled sleep then anyway). So I'm tired, and you're probably just about begging me to shut up and end the post already. Yes I realize how long it is, but that's nothing new for me, you ought to be used to it by now. But anyway, I will be nice and end it here. I do appreciate the fact that you've read this far, I really do. Happy New Year to you.

My New Year's Resolution: write short posts. Haha yeah right.

Blog Birthday

2008-10-28T21:29:00.005-05:00

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my blog. Have I accomplished much with it in that time? Not really. Ugh. Wish I could put up some great statistic or whatever, but all I've got is a few followers and a bunch of crappy stories. This might bring about thoughts of why I'm even still on this thing if it hasn't done anything great for me, but actually it has done enough. I don't write as much as I wish I did, and updating on here makes me feel a tad bit better about that. Also it allows me to keep track of all my fandoms, because really there are quite a few, and it does happen that I forget about certain ones at times. And then there's the fact that I have all kinds of home problems and don't have the time or the patience anymore to journal, and then on here I just have to say it once and then can direct people back to it for the full story - saves conversation time when you already barely get to see certain friends anymore.

Anyway, BJ we have a fic to finish. That really needs to happen soonish so I have a reason to make myself write more. I need to know where my potential stands with that so I can figure out the rest of my college confusion. Also I know I have cd's to finish. I will work on that if we can squeeze in some writing time. As for everyone else, I don't hang out with any of you enough anymore, so free up your schedules and come steal me. My current employment status gives me more free time, however I'm hoping that won't last, so now's your chance. Carpe diem.

By the way y'all should listen to the song Already Gone by Sugarland, cuz it's great and I said so.

Reason for a Memory

2008-10-10T16:54:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was my birthday. I had meant to post but in the midst of everything I'd forgotten. Yes I said everything, as in stuff actually happened this year. This is only the second birthday in the last six years that hasn't been completely forgotten, though if it weren't for my friends it probably would have been. Let me start from the beginning.

The night before I attempted to go to bed at a decent hour, getting offline shortly after 11 like I'm supposed to. I was almost asleep when my phone went off at 11:50 to tell me it was 10 minutes until my birthday. I'd forgotten I'd set it to do that. I smiled at the reminder and closed my eyes. Ten minutes later, the other phone goes off (yeah btw I have two phones now, story to come at a later date) because it's midnight and it's my birthday. Another smile, and I fell asleep. Then at 12:54 I woke up to a text message from a camp friend J saying happy birthday, and at 04:55 I got one from G as well. Then I woke up to an alarm at 05:25 so I could shower and eat breakfast before leaving for zero hour. Morning was freaking cold, btw, but it warmed up as soon as the sun came up. So far so good.

Made it through the half day at school without a problem, as it was my easy day. They announced my birthday on CJ tv and I got a cup with candy in it that I snacked on in study. Oh and after zero hour I found my locker to have been attacked with six different signs from J, all with camp stuff on them. That totally made my day, cuz I was expecting something on my locker but I didn't know what, or when I'd see it -- my sister had ever-so-undiscreetly asked to borrow my planner in search of my locker number and combo, the latter of which wasn't in there, and I wonder what I would have found if she did find it. Anyway school let out at 12:10 after announcements, and I met G in my parking spot, since my brother wasn't there to take it (he's driving my carpool currently as we have to share the car and he starts school later and gets out earlier than we do). We headed down the highway and stopped at Chuck's Boots. We'd had a three-day conversation before this about where I thought we were going versus where she was taking me, as neither of us entirely let on to the other what our thoughts were. I did guess right though, as we both knew, so anyway we ended up there and didn't find quite the right style I need for the barn (mine are kind of falling apart, need new ones real bad), and then we discovered there was a chance that one of the records of a gift certificate sale could be mine (lost the certificate when my purse was stolen), so we opted to have my mother contact them about the credit card and we'd come back. Then we stopped in at Taco Bell for lunch and then went to G's apartment.

I hung out while she went to work across the street, which she couldn't get out of. So from 2-7 I played around on facebook (got 51 happy bday wall writes between the two accounts, that was neat), did some homework, ate ice cream, talked to a neighbor, read some of Breaking Dawn, washed G's dishes, and watched part of the sunset. Then she came back, and we went to Bandana's BBQ for dinner. The plan was to meet J there but she ended up not able to come, so we just talked to her on the phone instead. Btw there was this one waiter who looked real nice and another who looked even better; several eye candy jokes were made throughout the time we were there. The one for our table gave me a blue bandana saying happy birthday and that he would sing but there wasn't enough staff on hand to do it. I was slightly confused, since as far as I knew G didn't say anything to tip them off. We figured it mighta been her mom who we'd talked to on the phone right when we got there, though that was awfully quick for her to figure out which one were at and make a call if that is the case. Still not too sure about that one. Anyway we left there and headed towards my house, though we went to Wal-Mart first, as is the common necessity for camp staff. Found out that that particular store wouldn't replace watch batteries if the watch didn't come from there, that was kinda interesting. We shopped around a bit and then headed back to my house, where I found a package from G's mom and a card from one set of grandparents, along with more college mail. She hung around for a few minutes to talk to my parents and my sister, and then left closer to 22:30.

I hung around online to wait for 23:23, which is when I'd officially be 17, and I found the Supernatural episode on youtube but I couldn't watch it because my parents were around and they thought I was doing an essay. The time came and I turned 17, and like 20 minutes after that got off to go to bed. Couldn't fall asleep for some time, and couldn't get up on time this morning either. I think I've gotten a total of like 8 hours of halfway decent sleep over the last two nights, which I definitely felt this morning when I finally crawled out of bed at 06:40. Seriously I don't remember what I slept like before camp, except that I'd frequently lie there for up to 2 hours before I fell asleep, and during the school year there were times when I tired myself out so much between school and dance that I actually could pass out shortly after I hit my pillow and sleep all the way through the night. Well I was fine at camp, got used to the schedule. Came back and slept for the majority of the next four days; I guess the fatigue finally caught up to me when I didn't have to be up. However every single night since then I have either suffered from insomnia or just slept fitfully, waking up 5 and 6 times in the night. Yes, every single night since then, no joke. I have contemplated my relationship and experiences with my family enough to figure out that subconsciously I don't feel safe here and that's part of why I can't sleep well, but I have no clue what to do to fix it, except of course move out, which ain't exactly an option right now.

Anyway K gave me a plate of cookies this morning, and between today and yesterday I've heard the words happy birthday a total of 21 times, which is like more than the last 10 years combined. Yes I counted. I do have Twilight and Supernatural to thank for making the day extra significant and memorable, because the hype from those plus it being a half day gave me reason to be excited all week and keep mentioning that it was my birthday. I realize I may sound somewhat vain with how often I kept bringing it up ahead of time and even now, but think of it this way - when you know you're getting attention for it you can say you don't want it, even if you do, cuz no matter what you say if people care about you you're gonna get it anyway. However when you don't ever get the attention and blatantly get ignored it kinda makes you crave it, so when circumstances work in your favor and you know it's coming you can't really deny it. I hope that made sense to you. So I thank my fandoms for making the day memorable, and I thank my friends, especially those mentioned already plus A-Hawk and Butterfly, for giving me something to remember. Seriously, the five of you plus a few select others are more of a family to me than anyone I live with (well besides my cats). Without you guys I would not have grown out of the person I was freshman year, and BJ don't feel bad for not liking me then cuz I didn't like me either. So thanks for being there, and for giving me my first memorable birthday in years. Let me know if any of you need me to get you tickets for a rated R movie. :]

Four Months

2008-10-04T18:37:00.011-05:00

Hello all. Wow it has been forever, yes I am aware. Turns out my time off schedule at camp worked out differently than originally expected, and then school got real hectic real fast, so this is really the first chance I've gotten to post an update. Anyway, here's just a list of what all I've done this summer (feel free to ask for details):

~ DURING CAMP: dealt with little girls - dealt with snotty staff - made 3 really good friends - saw my employer at its worst - lived on my own away from family :) - watched raccoons tear apart the dumpster (and then cleaned it up) - watched international staff get WAY overexcited at the sight of such creatures - played with fire (lots) - gained 7 different nicknames - got pushed in pool - rescued a rogue canoe by jumping off the levee into it - got myself a real mom - made momma (lotsa) presents :] - visited Peoria - left purse at Dairy Queen (someday I'll post that whole story, but good grief not now) - got permit #3 - got lotsa driving experience with mom - danced in dance teacher's wedding
~ AFTER CAMP: crammed to do all summer reading and homework and lotsa chores in a week and a half so I could go out of town to visit friends, only to have parents not let me go, resulting in me sitting around for another week+ before school started - only got laptop back on Sunday night before first day of school - was accused of being either bisexual or lesbian by my own father
~ SINCE SCHOOL STARTED: kept up on homework - started working at camp barn again - dealt with way too much crap from parents

That, in a nutshell, is what I've been up these past four months. I should add in new name shortenings, for clarification in upcoming posts. My new mom friend is G, which is short for her camp name - real name would be A but the A's are already confusing enough. Also B is now going by BJ, since there's another B from camp who I will surely have to complain about at some point during the rest of the work season at the barn. And there's P2, who I've been to camp with for a few years and wasn't really friends with but we were fine together, except she worked with me all summer and now she absolutely hates me. She's also working at the barn, so guaranteed ranting to come.

Of course, I can't close without something about Supernatural. Basically I'll say this - season 4 so far is FREAKIN AWESOME!!! Again, link to CW site is conveniently to your right, for those of you who are a bit behind. ;) Also, next Thursday, premiere of ep 4.04, happens to be my 17th birthday. YAY SUPERNATURAL BIRTHDAY!!! I mean there's only 5 seasons but 7 days in a week, so there was a chance I would not get a Supernatural birthday. There's also the chance that that day could be a rerun, or for some reason there could not be an ep. Neither of those are likely with my birthday, as it's so early in the season, but I thought I'd point out all the possible reasons I could not get a Supernatural birthday since they make the one I am getting seem even better. In my opinion, at least. Also I don't mean to like drill the fact that next Thursday's my birthday into your brains, I mean I'm not conceited or anything, but I really can't help being excited about it this year, and besides A and I have plans for that day after school, since we have a half day and she has only a few hours of work. Someday I'll post about our relationship, since I've really only explained that to one person, and I know she'll be in here lots in the future so I want those of you who do read this to understand and know that I haven't traded you out or anything. I thought about putting part of an essay I wrote (about hers and my relationship) for essay writing in here, might do that after I get the final grade on it. But seriously, I've talked to A-Hawk about this already, but not to the rest of you - honestly I do consider A my best friend, but I don't see you guys any less of my friends for it. I still want to hang out with you all at some point, and BJ we still gotta finish that fanfic (good grief it's been like 10 months since we started it). So leave comments! I want to hear from you (I have a particular two of you in mind), since I don't see like any of you guys in class anymore.

Okay wow, that's like the shortest post I've ever written. Actually I'm not sure about that, but this is way shorter than I was expecting, and I knew it'd be short. Apparently the longer I'm away from here (after a certain point) the easier it is to write short posts. Maybe I should just stay away for another four months.... Ha yeah, like that's gonna happen.

Summer Begins

2008-06-04T13:07:00.005-05:00

This one's going to be rather quick, as I have to give up my laptop shortly to the tech guys at school for re-imaging. And they're supposed to be keeping it for about a week, which is WAY nicer than the two months they had it last year, except that I leave for camp on Tuesday. Granted it's only precamp, when all the staff come in to meet each other and get used to everything, but still. I will be back every Friday afternoon through Sunday morning though, so I'm hoping to have my dad or someone pick up my laptop as soon as it's done so I can have it back that first weekend. If that happens I will be sure to come here and let you in on more of my summer schtuff, but if it doesn't happen right away then I don't know when it will. Hopefully really soon, as not only am I way too attached to the internet for my own good, but I won't be able to update my iPod any time soon, and that's absolutely going to drive me insane, as I'm supposed to be going to A-Hawk's at some point over the next few days to get more music to add to my iPod. Which I still have to name... yes I name things, my laptop is Sammy (she's a girl, cuz I can't have a crush on my laptop, but you oughtta know who her namesake is - there's more reasons for that but I won't go into it now), my old phone is Sophia, and my iPod was Jenny. Except my brother also named his iPod Jenny and she died, so I have to rename mine now. Oh I finally got a new phone - it's rather crappy, but it works and it covers my three basic standards - it's gotta be black, gotta be a flip, and gotta have a camera - so I'm dealing with it.

As this is the beginning of summer, I should wrap up the school year. Except I really don't want to. Let's just say that things finally calmed down in that last week before exams, and thank Dean we wrote our World Lit exam essays in class the week before the exam, because that one was on the same day as World History was. Except Mr. T was nice and didn't make us write an essay for history either, which just made that day so much easier. Latin sucked, what else is new? But thank goodness I'm finally done with that thing, never to be touched again. It was only my second choice language but originally I thought it couldn't be that bad. Except the teacher is absolutely HORRID, as in she doesn't teach us anything and she rushes stuff way too much, and her "quests" (usually a cross between a quiz and a test, so larger than a quiz but smaller than a test) are WAY harder than they should be. And our textbook was definitely college material, way too difficult to comprehend when you're new to the language. So I suffered through that for two years, barely scraping by on nothing but memorization, and with luck I would actually understand a chapter every few months or so. Now I would complain about my grades, but to be honest you probably don't want to hear it. And I'd really rather not think about them right now. School is like the furthest thing from my mind. Sorry if I sound kind of negative right now, but I'm in that sad running-out-of-time mood, as my dad will be home soonish to take Sammy away from me, and then I don't know if I'll see her again in 10 days, but that's the soonest it would be possible. As I said before, I'm kind of ridiculously attached to my laptop.

I'm sure you're wondering where all my Supernatural banter has gone, right? Don't think I've forgotten about it, I haven't. But as of nearly 2 months ago some friends from the CW lounge started a new forum for spoilers, since the mods/admins there went on this huge crackdown and banned tons of regulars and just made everything suck, and now it's major chaos over there. Have I mentioned this before? Sounds familiar.... Well I won't go into too much detail, but basically we at that new forum have already reacted to and discussed the finale down to nearly every single screencap, and I really just don't have the time or patience to re-encounter my whole reaction experience. If you've seen the end of it then you should understand why. Let's just say I cried. A lot. Info shorts - Season 3's dvd set is set for release on September 2nd, and right now Jensen and Jared are both filming their own horror movies before they start up with season 4. Oh and I'd seen this before on Live Journal (yes I do have one of those, but I'm barely ever on there and currently this is just easier to use. I'll fix it up one of these days) but I lost the link when I lost my Firefox last year and then I sorta forgot about it, but a friend re-linked it for me - basically these're parody cartoons that play off of Sam and Dean's brotherly banter, among other things. Just take a look, this thing is great: it's called Encyclopedia of Weirdness.

If you haven't noticed I like linking up youtube vids. Well the current song favorite is "Hallelujah" by Kate Voegele. If you don't know her music I highly suggest you check out Kate's myspace, as there's a mini player on there that plays several of her songs plus a little clip of this one. She's really good, just listen to this. I've also added two songs by Bethany Joy Lenz: "Let Me Fall" and "Halo." She sings both as Haley on One Tree Hill, and that's where these clips are from. I'd add her duet of "When The Stars Go Blue" with Tyler Hilton if I could find it, cuz I love their rendition, but I can't find the right one so if you want to hear that one you'll just have to look it up. :)
Video credit goes to uyuyuy0, asc8989, and nathanecemm, respectively.

Also, because I love my customization of this thing, here's the lyrics for "Hallelujah."

- Kate Voegele Lyrics

I Have The Easiest Yet Most Dangerous Job In The World

2008-05-02T23:52:00.011-05:00

Okay WOW, it's been ages and I've been SO busy! I really would have posted sooner if I could have, but life's just been insane. Actually I wanted to follow my trend and post on the 22nd again, especially because that was Earth Day and it should be recognized, but the change never rose. Anyway I'm going to go with random thoughts here as they occur to me to catch up on everything. And I'll break off the larger sections, but bear with me.

I know I said in my last post that I'd talk about the mayhem of the Easter weekend with the remains of the flooding, but at this point that seems entirely irrelevant so I'm not even going to bother. *** I realize none of those vids I've posted of SN eps work anymore, but I don't have the heart to take them down and I haven't quite figured out a substitute yet. I've got one in mind, I just haven't had the time to mess with it and get it set up the way I want it. *** School's been insane, as usual, especially with that research essay being due recently. I never did get that letter back from Kripke, which means that my thesis for that essay had to be reconfigured like 10 times and it ended up sucking. I mean I had it all figured out down to a T, but I needed that letter for it, and as I never got it I had to totally reconfigure my thoughts, because there was no replacement for that source. I'd go into more detail except that there's still a chance I could get his response, and if so I plan on using it in some future essay (I've got the one in mind) so I don't want to share anything now. Also we're working on another slightly smaller research essay for history right now, only he gave us like less than 3 weeks to do the whole damn thing in. It might have really been more, but between the thesis submission and the due date it was not that much time, and of course it comes right after my free month.

Speaking of that free month, we started up the spring session at the barn last weekend. That day was just the workday for the younger half of the staff (the older half was there the weekend before) so we could get to know the new horses a bit and orient ourselves with the stall placements, because with new horses you can't always keep all the returning horses in their old stalls - you've gotta watch them out in the pasture to observe new ranks in the pecking order and put everyone by others whom they like or at least won't tear to pieces. We even finished everything in time for a trail ride. Granted we skipped lunch but we were done by 2 so it didn't concern anyone too much. Now Saturday May 3rd was our first real workday, and of course I end up leading the very first trail of the year. Well we didn't use 5 of the 25 horses we have at the barn that day, 2 because they needed to be refitted for tack and 3 because of that and 'cause they were new, and you can't put too many new ones out on the first trail because the old ones are still a little nervous about new footing and weather and all, and the new ones will be even more nervous and just feed off the returners, and you just can't deal with that with a bunch of little girls who don't really know how to ride horses even in a straight line.

So as we want to scatter the few newbies we used with the older ones, I ended up riding this really proud horse named Dude. Now Dude knows that a lot of people are scared of him, especially smaller people, as in little kids and anyone under 5'5"-ish, and he's pretty high up in the pecking order so he hs no problem at all with pushing people around. He's also known for his teeth, cuz man that horse knows how to bite and make it hurt. Anyway, I was a little rushed trying to help get the first troop on the their horses and then gather myself to ride Dude, so I bridled him and prepared to mount before I remember to shorten the stirrups, and then I nearly mounted him without taking the lead rope. Needless to say I was a bit nervous. Anyway I finally collected myself enough to get my foot in the stirrup and pull up, but when I did his saddle slid a fraction of an inch and he freaked and skirted to the side, and with me halfway up there he started bucking. (I just realized that as I've been typing this Dude section the song "Bad Company" has been playing on my iTunes lol.) He didn't buck full out, I mean he couldn't with me on his one side, but he sure as hell tried. All I even remember is the bend in my leg that was in the stirrup and the positions of my arms on the saddle, by which I can infer my body's height off the ground, and seeing his head and neck as he tried to buck and hearing the head wrangler's voice as she tried to calm us both down. I have no idea how the hell she got his head as fast as she did, because she was in the middle of the arena and I was out in the paddock right before I mounted him, and you can't exactly jump that wall, and all this happened in like 6 seconds mind you. But I'm not complaining, cuz without her there to hold his head enough to make him stop bucking I probably would have fallen under him and been trampled, no joke.

And that was only the beginning. After he stopped and I fell off of him (I was amazed I ever stayed on in the first place, cuz one of the girl's dads from the troop we were taking on the trail also ran over and got there right when I fell off of him, and he said he thought he was going to have to count to 8 seconds and call 911) I managed to mount with the HW still holding Dude's head, and we started out. I know I did a pretty good job of calming my nerves and being positive and telling Dude I was his boss, but it was so cold with the wind up on that hill that my whole body was shivering anyway, as were everyone's, and that really didn't help any with the new horses and the sketchy weather. Geez I'm internally shivering right now just thinking about it (and look at that, "Cold As Ice is just ending... I swear I don't hear these songs playing at all till they're practically over when they have relevance to what I'm thinking about). *takes deep breath* So anyway I had trouble controlling him in the gravel parking lot (which we have to cross to get to the upper pasture gate where the trail starts) and had to have someone lead him all the way to the gate. Then we were somewhat okay but he was antsy all through that pasture, and when we hit the first hill to go down he was all over the place. At the terrace of that hill (and the bottom part was steeper, mind) we had to stop because so many of the horses were acting up, and it's not like the girls have any clue how to deal with them and they don't do what we tell them to do, and we even had two girls break down on that part. Eventually we got to moving again, but right as we started down the hill again and Dude and I got to a point where no one but two or three horses right behind us could see us because of the bend in the trees, he started full-out bucking. With me on him. I have no idea why, or I didn't at the time. Now I could keep him from putting his head too far down and kicking up (cuz there's no way I could sit that anyway), but I could do nothing about him rearing up. And we were on a freaking hill, where the other two wranglers with me couldn't even see me! So somehow I got him to stop bucking and stand still, at which time the girl behind me was completely frozen in mortification, so I got off and led him by lead rope for the rest of the trail. If it were any other horse I would have remounted at the bottom of the hill, but after the way my first mount attempt went with Dude I wasn't chancing it with no one else there to assist me. I was just extremely thankful that the horse right behind us was well behaved and didn't freak out (she's been shown before in both English and Western as a hunter/jumper, so she's used to more commotion than some of the other horses), because if that girl would have lost control then everyone else would have as well and it would have just been hell, only with a lot more injuries and possibly even fatalities by trampling, with that many horses on the fritz.

So that trail had a lot of other problems, and at one point all three wranglers were each leading our horse and another one with a girl riding it from the ground, and we only got half as far as we should have in that amount of time before we had to turn back. Going back was a lot smoother than going out, but it was still pretty bad. *sigh* Anyway, that trail eventually ended and I told the HW about Dude's bucking, and no one rode him on the next trail but on the following trail one of the two assistant HW's rode him to give him that firmer hand. After that two other girls closer to my level rode him and had no problems, I was told I was riding him on my last trail. On my second trail I got a different horse who I'd ridden for a whole week as an AWIT (Advanced Wrangler-In-Training) last summer, so I knew about all his kinks and how to deal with them, but even he was antsy the whole time. Actually there was one point at the bottome of that hill where he saw the road to go up it and refused to go any other way, and the girl behind wouldn't stop her horse from following, so I had to get off then and lead them back to our route. Though that time I got back on him about a minute and a half later, so no troubles. Anyway, when I went to tighten Dude's girth and shorten his stirrups he kept kicking at me with his back leg and trying to strike with his front when I moved away, and if I got any closer to his head he'd go for the bite. He was tied up but he still wouldn't stop moving, and I had that same assistant HW holding his head and even smacking him a few times when I did manage to get up. But that time another wrangler told me some tips with handling him, and that whole ride he was antsy but under control. And there were only 6 girls on that one, plus it was at the end of the day, so it was SO much easier than that first one. So I eventualy figured out through trial and error that it was entirely the saddle that was bothering Dude, because if it slid the slightest bit I would have to stop him and attempt to push it back with my weight. However he didn't like that either and would still try to buck, so I had to be really gentle and discreet about it, only I don't weigh enough to push it gently and actually get it to move back, so it didn't help much. I ended up riding almost that whole trail sitting crooked to try to keep the saddle straight, and that coupled with me looking back constantly (cuz you have to pay attention to the girls behind you when you lead a trail) resulted in a LOT of soreness that afternoon and the next day. (I even had to drag myself up the stairs entirely by my arms when I got home cuz my legs hurt so badly by that point.) But I made it back to the barn without ever having to dismount, and I got high praise from the assistant HW who wasn't riding the trail with me for controlling Dude and finally getting him to quit freaking out. *heavy sigh* So that was my first day. My second day was supposed to be today, but I not enough troops signed up to fill the day so they cancelled. Which really sucks, cuz my only day left (if I don't end up subbing for someone later on *crosses fingers*) is next Sunday. And after that I won't get to go back to the barn until late August or early September.

Now that soreness wouldn't have bothered me at all if I didn't have my last dance competition that day. And it was even worse that they did solo's first, so I didn't know how slick the floor was or that there were a bunch of huge air bubbles in it (a lot of companies bring their own floors and either lay them or tape them over the stage, and this one was thin enough to be taped). I wore my foot thongs cuz someone had told me that it wasn't slick at all, which I later discovered it wasn't in jazz shoes, which was great since it's always slick in those. Anyway it was WAY too slick with those, so I couldn't quite do anything full out without falling, and I felt terrible at the end of it even though everyone told me it was awesome. I ended up with a gold and 5th overall teen and older solo, which isn't bad except that I expected more out of myself and I know I would have done better if solos had been last, as they usually are. Anyway I don't know what the rest of my dances got, since my mom made us leave before awards started for mass (which we got to WAY early, which really pissed me off because it was our last competition and we so could have stayed), and then my dad wouldn't let me go to dance on Tuesday and they didn't give out the ribbons.

So last weekend I was going to finish up that history essay that was due on Monday, which I virtually still had to write all of, but my dad turned off my wireless on Friday afternoon. Not only did he turn it off, he fully disconnected me from the thing. With no warning or anything. So I asked him about it and he says it's because I hadn't mopped the kitchen floor all week (oh excuse me, I had homework and dance and work to worry about) and my room was only half clean. And because all of my grades weren't chipper A's. *rolls eyes* Anyway we battled it out all weekend (don't feel like details, sorry) and he didn't let me have internet until almost 11 on Sunday night. So I could finally get to my sources to START the essay. Not to mention that all the rest of my homework that weekend required the internet, except for drawing that I couldn't do because I'd left my sketchbook at school because she graded the previous assignment late. Anyway I pretty much BSed the rest of the essay and turned it in late, although Mr. T still thought it was great enough to sit me down near the end of class on Friday to tell me all about it. And Friday was the seniors' last day (same with my bro's school, so he's off now), so there was a lot of funness for that. Oh and I should mention that my dad didn't give me back my wireless, hell no. That would like, make sense or something. *rolls eyes* He instead is forcing me to plug in in the kitchen. Which really pisses me off. Throws off my sleeping patterns too, because I can't get anything done in here while anyone else is around, and I can't really start other homework till I've gone through my emails and everything, so I end up starting it at like 11 and going to bed at around 2. Our new SN forum really helps in keeping me up when I get tired - we had a really organized Season 3 Spoiler Info thread going all year at the CW lounge, but they recently got rid of it, with no warning or anything. There's a pretty long story that goes with that too, but I'll just say that some of the regulars there started a new forum for us since we're now not allowed to have spoilers in that lounge at all without the Snow Patrol (meaning we type that part in white and leave a warning so people who don't want to read the spoilers don't have to), and that thread was pretty much our safe haven for analyzing/discussion/theorizing and general chat (the rest of the board is pretty scary and can get very nasty at times). So now a lot of the regulars from there are at our new forum (linked if anyone wants to check it out), and being there definitely helps me stay awake when I need to.

Speaking of Supernatural, I should also mention that our budget has been cut pretty drastically for next year, resulting in Bela's axing! Though I'm not happy with the way she went out (and I could go into a really long rant about this but I won't) I am glad she's gone. I just really don't think they did her character right, especially because she didn't even start off as the antagonist we were told she would be back in July. And season finale this Thursday - already! I still can't wrap my head around that since we lost 6 eps due to the WGA strike, which has definitely taken a lot away from this season (again I could explain, but I won't unless you really want me too). And Thursday's going to be hell too because I HAVE to watch this when it airs, no question about it, and my dad's had the tv blocked for a while now. For the past three eps I've listened to A-hawk's tv over the phone and had her explain things and then watched them the next day, and this week's was online at about 11 on Sidereel (that place is GREAT). I'm pretty sure they'll have the finale up by then if not sooner, and CWtv might too since they had the finale up at 12:30 last year, but I seriously can't wait that long, and I besides I want to be able to freak out and discuss with everyone else on the forum right after it airs. The current plan is to feign a history project so I can spend Thursday afternoon up through the ep at A-hawk's, but that plan isn't perfect or okay-ed yet, so the whole deal still worries me.

I should add that last night 9 of us saw Speed Racer in IMAX and it was amazing, there was so much color! For my first IMAX movie I'd say it well worth it (though now I gotta find 12 bucks haha). That whole ordeal was really fun too, as we met up at B's beforehand and went back there afterwards and played Guitar Hero and DDR, both of which I hadn't done in a while and so was really in the mood for. It did stink that I couldn't spend the night, because I had dance in the morning and couldn't get there if I did, but it was fun while it lasted.

So I don't know if anyone noticed that I actually started this post last Friday, May 2nd, but then it disappeared...? Well I wanted to post on that date because it was Sam's Birthday. And actually that was also the day that Sam was resurrected - in actuality, not the day that ep aired (that was May 17th). Which also means that yesterday (only over an hour ago as I haven't gone to bed yet so technically I could say today) was the day last year that Sam died. Or the day we saw it happen. Ironic how that worked out. The only reason this post doesn't still have that date on it is because I couldn't finish it all at once when I went to edit it (lol can ya blame me?), so I had to save it and it did so as a draft and therefore took off the post. So now it's for May 11th or really late on May 10th, as I prefer to think. And I think that's all I have for now. Trust me when I say I could go on into WAY more detail about all the Supernatural stuff, but this post is certainly long enough, so I'll leave it there for now. Oh wait one more thing - I've decided that Three Days Grace is awesome, and I need one of their cds. Like now. I saw SN vids for their songs "Over and Over" and "Never Too Late," and I was amazed at myself for never putting two and two together and realizing that I didn't have anything from TDG. So here're those two vids, plus three others that are absolutely phenominal and deserve to be linked. Credit goes to takeeightyfour, SNObsessed, glittergoddess, Lsketch42, and mnallison02.

EDIT - I posted this and discovered that it does still say May 2nd. Talk about irony.
Also, I realized there are only 4 vids in that player, because the one that should have been third has disabled embedding. So here's the link: it's to Nothing Else Matters by Metallica.

Catching Up to Spring Break

2008-03-22T16:21:00.012-05:00

You know how I said I might not get back here for a while cuz I have so much stuff going on? Well I meant it, for those of you who couldn't figure that out. Sorry if that sounds heartless, but I did actually have to tell two people to go reread my last post when they repeatedly asked where the next one was. Anyway this will probably end up in no particular order, since I have a lot to catch up with.

Dang it's sure been a busy month. I'll start off with the dance competitions, and since I can I'll tell ya what all of my dances scored at each one:
"Such Great Heights" - modern line - Stage One: high first; Starbound: High gold and 8th overall jr/sr group; Dupree: gold.
"Nice Work If You Can Get It" - small group tap - Stage One: High first; Starbound: high gold and 10th overall jr/sr group; Dupree: high silver.
"My Momma Told Me" - large group jazz - Stage One: High first; Starbound: High gold and 4th overall jr/sr group; Dupree: high silver.
"Eyes Like Yours" - modern solo - Stage One: high first and 8th overall sr soloist; Starbound: gold, 6th overall sr soloist, and judge's special recognition award for stage presence.
If you can make heads or tales of that, we did pretty well at Stage One, really awesome and Starbound, and not so great at Dupree. That's all to be expected though, so Stage One was our first competition of the year and Dupree was also a convention, which means that we were all already really tired from dancing intensively all day, and the stage is ridiculously small and the judges are right there in your face, so yeah it's really hard competing at conventions. And I didn't get to do my solo at that one cuz each studio was only allowed to enter 20 dances, so our director kept us to our group numbers, as we probably have at least 20 solos, duets, and trios aside from those.

Going along with that, I have to point out my company's proneness to injury, cuz this year so far it's been ridiculous. At Stage One A from the line below mine sprained her ankle during her first dance and had to do 3 or 4 more on it, and the day before our second competition S from my line sprained her ankle really badly (it was all purple and swollen) when she fell while cheerleading (and our studio's founder always tells us that she hates cheerleading, haha), and then E from my line sprained her ankle like 4 days before the convention, though hers was fine by the weekend. And then at the convention yours truly follwed suit and did it too. Actually I have to start with last Tuesday, cuz at some point during modern I displaced my left big toe, and I popped it back in a few times but it was never quite right. By Wednesday I could barely walk on it and was limping around everywhere, cuz it was that whole quarter of my foot by then, and when I got home that night I literally had to crawl up the stairs it hurt so bad. I never figured out what it was though, and it felt fine on Thursday and Friday. So I danced on it all day on Saturday without a problem, but during the competition it started hurting really badly when I put my tap shoes on. I had to dance on it anyway though, and it kind of numbed up from it. Thank goodness that was the last dance we did though, because after that it got a whole lot worse. See when we got offstage it suddenly started hurting so bad I almost fell over. So I'm limping back to our dressing room when my tap teacher remembers that she wanted a picture of us all in these costumes, so I attempt to run back there and catch em all before they change. Actually running on it felt better than walking did, up until I rolled my ankle and put all my weight on it when I did cuz I was running. After that I was really hobbling back there, though no one was too far changed to really get mad about it. So we took our picture and I talked to my tap teacher about it, and she didn't know what I could've done to it but she suggested taping up that whole part of my foot, which I did that night, and I iced my ankle too. I came in on Sunday with it still taped, and my ankle was okay for the most part until after the tap hour and the auditions when we went to hip hop, for which I had to borrow S's ankle brace cuz it was all over the place. So that's why it was wrapped and taped at school, if you didn't get the full story then. And of course on Monday my shin splints started coming back, so I had to tape for that too, although I'm just about healed from all that now, thanks to my studio being on spring break this past week.

Speaking of spring break, so far this has been one hell of one. We've had all that snow lately, and the meltings of it from more northern states have finally flowed down to us, and that toppled with like 8+ inches of rain in two days has definitely taken its toll on the rivers here. We've got three, and they're all flooding beyond belief. The major highway that links everything to everything else here is totally under water in probably two places by now, and the one's one hugeass lake. It's supposed to have covered the interstate that crosses over it by now (I haven't caught the news today so I don't know exactly where it is). And honestly this whole thing is pretty neat, for those of us who lived right on the river through the flood of '93 but were too young to remember any of it. At least it's cool to look at as long as the waters don't breach the levee surrounding my old hometown of VP. And really it sucks too because A-hawk lives like a minute from my old house, and her and B and T and I (and SC, but she's on vacation so she's out) still want to do our seasons 1 and 2 back-to-back SPN marathon, and we're supposed to do at least the first half of it at her house. The second half we can probably do at mine, though that's not been confirmed yet. And really it's not a problem for B and T, who live far enough away that they can just take a different route to get to her house and it's no problem. It's a lot more of a problem for me, cuz I live the closest to A-hawk of us all and the direct route from my house to hers involves taking the highway that's now under water. So going all the way around is going to be a bitch, if my parents even let me do it. I'm thinking I might have to meet up with B or T first and then hitch a ride with one o' them to get there, cuz with my parents there's no way they'd take me.

So I still gotta see about finishing the rest of the marathon here, which shouldn't be a problem except that the four sibs under me still have school that week, although we'd be in the basement the whole time so it shouldn't be a problem. But then we gotta figure out when we're gonna do the movies thing (we want to watch a bunch of Jared and Jensen movies in a row, though we can only come up with three), if that can even happen during the break. We'd have more time for it if this weren't Easter weekend and if I didn't have dance on Monday and Tuesday nights. *sigh* We'll figure it out somehow.

Oh, back to business - If you've noticed I took off the Supernatural reruns petition widget, cuz we made ourselves heard and the CW actually responded! Starting April 3rd we get reruns of 3.09 MM, 3.10 DALDOM, and 3.11 MS. Then you have a week to watch 3.12 JIB on the internet (if it's not still up on the CW's video page (link is under my links thinger to your right) you can watch it below!) before our first new post-strike episode airs on April 24th: 3.13 Ghostfacers. We get four new ones before this season's up, and while 16 episodes is nothing compared to a normal season of 22, it could be worse had the strike gone on longer, so I'm going to try to keep my future complaining to a minimum. :) Oh and we got an early renewal for season 4! I was real excited about that, although now I'm somewhat worried that Kripke'll use that assurance as an excuse to leave us with a cliffhanger involving Dean's deal. He'd so better not!

Oh and school, I can't believe I almost forgot about that! Well on top of all my weekend dancing, I've had like 4 projects, including this hugeass documentary for history, and a huge research essay and a TON of tests in the past month. Cuz you know everyone has to get their class a test or three in right before spring break, and what better time to assign a bunch of projects then when everyone else is doing it! Man I've been so stressed lately. And my history class absolutely sucks, cuz it's a bunch of people I don't hang out with and barely talk to at all, so when Mr. T said get a partner for the documentaries everyone had one as soon as I turned around, except for M. Now everyone reading this knows I absolutely hate her, though my class didn't, so no one offered to be either one of our partners after they all picked theirs. Anyway, I got sick of complaining about her to my friends and trying to explain our history, because I hate her so much, so we now call her a certain Latin word. With no capital letter, cuz she doesn't deserve it. Our history's way too expansive and bitchy to go on about here, so I'll just leave it where it is. But anyway that whole project absolutely sucked, cuz I tried to be nice about it and we were relatively fine the first day we worked on it, but after that she just got bitchier and bitchier, and it ended up with some really nasty emails on her part, only one of which I (ever-so-politely, btw) responded to, and since then we haven't spoken or made eye contact, which I'm actually totally cool with.

One more thing - my research essay is about urban myths and legends in literature and the media, to put it generally, and I finally wrote that letter to Kripke and sent it two Mondays ago. I really hope he responds soon too, cuz otherwise I'll have to totally rewrite my essay, most of which I haven't even written yet how I want it because I need his responses to do it. My rough and conference drafts were totally BSed, so I hope I get a response from him soon to resubmit my conference draft. Actually I've decided that if I don't receive a response from him by either Thursday or Friday I'm going to have to refocus the entire thing and write it without his input, which will totally suck. I thought after I sent it that I should've included my email address, in case that would make responding easier on his part, but then I'd rather he sent the actual letter anyway.

Okay I think that's everything for now, if not I'll be back with an edit. And Easter madness will be on the next post. :)

EDIT: I have to include a song with this post, because it is just too amazing. I've listened to it many many times today alone, just to learn the words, and thensome after I did. It's a pretty good smack in the face for when life goes insane, as mine frequently does. Anyway the song's Stop and Stare by One Republic. [music video]
2nd EDIT: I liked the other one a lot better, cuz I customized the colors and you could control the speed to keep it with the song as it played, but it's stopped working and I can't find another one like it, so we get the heart instead. Hopefully whoever hosts those things will fix the problem before I need another one. :)

OneRepublic Lyrics

- OneRepublic Lyrics

SPN. 3.12 Jus In Bello

2008-02-22T16:53:00.006-06:00

The Calm Before The Storm

2008-02-15T17:53:00.010-06:00

Hey, I'm back. I realize I never posted last week, but life just got ahead of me. This week seemed really rushed too, but I have some free time now so here I am. [edit - And welcome to the new layout - I thought this one just seemed a bit more homey, and I'm gonna need that if I wanna be able to write here at all in the coming weeks. Let me know what you think of it.] Actually I should be working on an essay outline I have to do by 8pm tomorrow that I haven't started yet, and I should be getting my dance stuff ready and going over those with my sister, because my company rehearsal is tomorrow afternoon, and we have our first competition the following weekend. Honestly I doubt I'll be able to post at all next week, or not till like the Wednesday after the competition. I'm entering the really hactic and really stressfull part of the year here, because dance competitions take up your entire weekend from about 6am or before to at least 11pm, except for Friday nights most of the time. And while at those things it's nearly impossible to get any homework done at all, and with dance and family chaos during the week I already have to push a lot of things off till the weekends.... My competitions are as follows: Stage One Competition is February 22 - 24, Starbound Competition is March 1 - 2, Dupree Convention and Competition is March 15 - 16, and then Applause Talent Presentations is May 2 - 4. So the next 5 weeks are gonna be hell, before I get a weekend off. Now don't get me wrong, I absolutely love competitions, and you'd never believe the amount of energy competition adrenaline can give you for a whole weekend. But by the time we're getting our senior solo awards late on Sunday night, well that's usually when you crash. There was one point last year where two friends A and D and I were running around the place trying to amuse ourselves because we were sick of watching lyrical solos (for the 14 - 15 category there's only about 100 of those, every year) and we still had energy to burn. Well we were running down the hall at the place doing leaps, and after a few I tried to do a right grande jete, barely made it off the ground (like 3 feet, that sucks), didn't land and went all the way down. I seriously could not get up for 5 whole minutes just because by that point my energy was completely spent. So sure I love competitions, but the way they drain you to a prune is just killer when you have 5 days of school immediately following that, and the homework never lets up which doesn't help either.

Actually this same scenario happened last year with the scheduling, where 3 of our competitions ended up in 4 weekends, and we had this huge bio project due at some point in there, and I was so strained trying to get that done that I fell behind in all my other classes and then barely ended up with half the thing done when it was due, and I don't remember full details cuz I tried to block that part of the year out of my brain, but basically my parents noticed it in my grades and then started the major crackdown. Right around then I got sick for like two days (go figure) and rediscovered the CW lounge, which I had joined in August of 06 but didn't come back to till February. Well that place really helped me stay up till 3 and 4 am when I had that much work to do, and it was being there and a challenge among some buds that caused me to discover the true meaning of insomniac. It's not impossible at all to stay awake for 113 hours straight, without caffeine - actually after the second night you kind of grow immune to sleep, and then after that you can really go for a while. Seriously, it becomes second nature and you don't even need it, as long as you're not exorcising too vigorously late at night anyway. And soda pretty much loses its effect of the sugar high after that. The bonus of being able to drink 4+ sodas and get all up on your sugar high but then ease out of it as opposed to just crashing, well that's pretty amazing. Oh and I should say that just tonight I finally discovered how to get on certain blocked sites like youtube and supernatural.tv without using a proxy. Honestly I'm surprised I never discovered this before, but I'm not complaining. And actually that's perfect timing, since I'm almost done with a SPN fanvid and it won't let me upload vids at school. Go me.

Speaking of amazing things, last night's episode of Supernatural was absolutely wicked. I was so excited during the first 40 minutes that I was literally jumping up and down and running in circles bouncing off the walls, all while on the phone with A-Hawk. It really weird being on the phone with her during the ep cuz my tv's 8 seconds ahead of hers, so I'll like freak out or something and she freaks out cuz she doesn't know why I am, and then by the time she gets to that part I've already moved on to another. It's still really fun though. Also it was really awesome cuz they showed the recap, no teaser but a short episode section instead, flashed the title, and then showed more episode - 16 minutes without a commercial break, and right in the beginning too! It was amazing! Granted, later on they showed one like 4 minute section between commercials, but the first stretch more than made up for it. [edit - My calendar, The Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls, and Witch Hunt, as well as A-Hawk's season 1 companion, have all come in since my last post. They're amazing too!] In fact, to celebrate my excitement of regaining youtube access and watching the episode last night, I've compiled a playlist of the parts of the episode: season 3 episode 11 Mystery Spot. Enjoy! ;-)

High on Supernatural

2008-02-02T21:31:00.000-06:00

I am so in Supernatural-marathon mode right now it's insane. Actually I haven't seemed to register in my brain yet that it's February, like I still keep thinking it's January 31st, which actually fits right in with my current mood, as that was the first full-on Supernatural Thursday we've had in nearly two months. And Friday was a snow day and we have Monday off, so pretty much I've extended the 31st to Tuesday. Yesterday I watched all of disc 5 of season 2 and then 2.01 IMTOD with commentary, and that was just yesterday, so basically this is the most Supernatural Thursday ever. And I'm not the only one feeling it - A-hawk and I've probably spent a grand total of about 8 hours on the phone talking about Supernatural since Thursday night, and that discludes when the episode was actually on cuz I didn't get to watch it right away (details on that in a sec). So on Wed I went to bed at about 3am cuz of my research essay notecards (I only have like one of my sources right now), and then on Thursday we talked on the phone till 1:30ish, and then last night it was 3am again before we hung up. So basically the return of Supernatural has gotten me so excited that I've thrown my sleep patterns all off, and I even spent two hours last night trying to perfect this order of Supernatural stuff I got for myself on Amazon. I wanted one thing and then another and another, and then I qualified for this free shipping thing if I got so much more, so A-hawk said if I get her the season 1 companion she'll pay me back for it, so we did that, and then I went ahead and got myself the calendar too, cuz it's absolutely amazing and it was about $40 less than list price. Not that SPN isn't totally worth it, I just can't afford that right now. So anyway I ordered the stuff and then checked the confirmation email, which told me that my order of A-hawk's book, the Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls, and my pre-ordered Season 2 Companion wouldn't arrive till mid-April. Well that was a problem, as I intend to use the 2nd one as a source for my essay, so I had to cancel that part and re-order those three, only to get the s2 Comp. shipped separately so I'd get the other two in a timely manner made me not qualify for the free shipping, so that pissed me off a good bit, but it really wasn't that much extra, so I went ahead with everything. If that confused you to read then imagine me attempting to figure out how to fix everything when it went wrong and having to type in my info about 85 times. Yeah. But anyway I'm excited for those, and the first shipment should arrive on Friday. I'll be telling all about that when it comes. Oh and I had two other SPN books, Nevermore and Witch's Canyon, shipped to a Mrs. Dean Winchester who just happens to live at A-hawk's house, just because we thought it was funny, and her mom really thought we were insane when she heard about it. It was great.

So wow that part was long, and I'm not even done yet with Supernatural. :P Well okay first I'll say how Thursday went down, with the shrink and all. After school I'd forgotten that my carpool can't take me home on full Thursdays anymore, so I didn't have a ride, and everyone left real fast cuz of the weather so there was barely anyone left at like 3:30. A-hawk and I hung out in a conference room in the library till nearly 4, when she left, and I called my dad a little bit before then to tell him I needed a ride. He wasn't too mad, which was unexpected, except that he wouldn't be able to get me until about 6:20, so I just stayed in my conference room. By 4:30 every student and most of the teacher's were gone, and by 5 the maintenance people had even left, and all the library lights were off except for mine. That was creepy. But then, when I finally left closer to 6:30, I found my way out of the library to discover that every other light in the school was on, and I mean every other light, and all the classroom doors were open too, but there were no people; the place was completely deserted, except for me, and with all the lights on and doors open that was actually a lot creepier than the dark library. So anyway in the car my dad informs me that we won't have time to go home before the appointment, which was at 7:30, but we'd stop somewhere for food before we got there. Well that one nearly sent me through the roof, cuz if I couldn't go home then I couldn't set up the vcr to tape Smallville and Supernatural. With how obsessive I've been all weekend (and for the last 2 1/2 years), you can just imagine.

And we didn't even get food till the thing was over, cuz my dad rather'd us get there early and have more time to chat with the shrink. Usually at these things I can be pretty tolerable and at least keep talking, but I kept watching the clock, and by 8 I was shutting down out of retaliation, so by about 8:20 they (my dad and the shrink) couldn't get a word out of me. Except when she accused me of being just mad at my dad for no reason I had to go into a rant about how I had something way better to do than be there, and after she tried to explain how helpful she was (not) being I refused to say a word and just glared at the both of them until she finally let us go, which was at least 10 minutes after we should've left. I'm pretty sure my dad could tell how annoyed I was at that point, so thankfully he didn't push it, and he tried to make a few jokes in the car to lighten the mood but if I've learned anything from the Winchesters it's stubbornness, so when he realized he was getting nowhere he finally stopped and we drove through Taco Bell and that was that. Anyway when I finally got home and ate it was closer to 10, so I called A-hawk who was still on the line with B, so we three-wayed and they tried to give me the details of the episode I didn't know from the spoilers, but it really didn't give me a lot. Eventually B dropped out and it was late and well you know the rest. Yesterday afternoon the ep was finally up on google video so I watched it, and the beginning part where Janet's teeth all fell out actually creeped me out. You know Supernatural's been gone for too long when it comes back and I'm actually creeped out by something. And then Paul eating the maggot-hamburger, that was just absolutely disgusting. I doubt I'll be eating any of those for a while.

If you remember the whole Halloween fiasco, you know that we still haven't had our season 2 marathon. As I've been so in the mood this weekend, A-hawk and I dicussed (haha I typed disgusted the first time) having one, and the chance is always slim with her mom much less her house, so I asked my dad but had to ask my mom (and never did), so a few hours ago I convinced my mom that since we had Monday off and we'd be in the basement out of everyone's way and I (for the most part) cleaned my room, she said it was fine. So tomorrow mid-afternoonish A-hawk and B oughtta be here and instead of watching the Superbowl (that took a few tries to type a different word from natural after Super, haha), we'll be enjoying the Supernatural bowl of popcorn, or the Superbowl of natural popcorn (the second one's more accurate since we get actual kernels you have to pop on the stove, as opposed to the microwave bags). Obviously eventually we'll have to have the big s2 marathon with everyone else, but I'm getting so sick of waiting around for a time when we can all do it and A-hawk and I were both really in the mood, so yeah it happens tomorrow, and it's gonna be good.

One other thing - while I was in the library on Thursday for 3+ hours, well after A-hawk left anyway, of course I wasn't gonna do homework, so I got onto the CW lounge. I don't know if I've already mentioned this or not, but my latest flash update lets me get on there, and as I still can't at home I take full advantage of it at school. Anyway I was on the season 3 spoiler thread and right after I got on like 10 other people did too, so we talked for a while about how excited we were for the ep that night, and then we started cracking jokes about every which thing, which led into t-shirt designs somehow. Then we were jokingly brainstorming color and design ideas for t-shirts for all the spoiler junkies of our thread, and someone said too bad we can't really make those and I said actually we could, it would just be a little difficult since we'd have to ship them all over the country. But we all decided we were up for the challenge, so a few of us are going to ask around and see where we can get the best prices, and then we'll compare and decide who'll be in charge of this whole thing. So pretty much I'm even more excited, cuz we've joked about gettingt t-shirts for a long time on there, and now we're actually doing it. Call me crazy for trying to organize this over the internet with a bunch of people who're as crazy as I am about Supernatural and who live all over the country, but I think we can do it. And when we do succeed I'll be wearing that shirt all the time. ;)

Pro-Life Trip and The Aftermath

2008-01-25T22:23:00.000-06:00

As I've mentioned several times already, this past weekend was the pro-life trip in Washington D.C. We were scheduled to have mass at 1:30 and then leave by 3 on Saturday for the 18-hour bus trip to DC. On Friday I just kind of chilled at home and procrastinated doing homework (which was a really dumb idea), and then I started packing and with all the chaos of 6 of us going I didn't get to bed till around 1am. Then I was up pretty early for a Saturday to finish packing and run some errands with my dad and sister M, and my dad was so harried the entire time, complaining about how he wasn't getting his work done, even though he's the one who wanted to go on this trip. Anyway, I got a new pair of tennis shoes (the first since the beginning of 8th grade) and eventually we left. The bus was pretty fun, for the most part. There were tons of 8th grade girls, including M, and that woulda been more annoying if I didn't know half of em already. I was sitting by a freshman guy M, and that really wasn't bad at all. Not that I like the guy or anything, just that we were agreeable, if that makes sense. And my brother was two or three rows behind us, right in the back of the bus, and he didn't pick on me too much on that trip so it was okay, especially because M and my bro P and my parents were a lot farther up towards the front.

So right before we hit DC our bus stopped at Mount Vernon to tour, and I'm glad I toured that place two years ago when I first went on the trip because we only went around like half of the place because it was so cold. Seriously, it was like between 0 and Hyatt for our room keys, which took absolutely forever to get straightened out. Then we had a mass at 6 with a few other groups in a hotel conference room and pretty much down time for the rest of that day. Monday was our group tour day, so we all split off into premade groups none of us were really happy with 100% and toured around DC. We all went to the World War II memorial and then up into the Washington monument (I have plenty of pictures from out those windows) and then the groups separated. Mine went around the Lincoln, Korean War, and Vietnam war memorials before lunch at a St. Louis-priced Subway we found inside another building (btw all the food and such in DC is really expensive cuz it's such a huge tourist attraction, soif you ever go bring a lot of your own food, and water too!) and then we went through the house that Lincoln died in. Ford's Theater across the street was closed for renovations (until February 2009) and the line for the National Archives was 2 hours long, so we didn't see either of those things. But after all that the groups met up at the Hyatt and our bus took us to a Denny's like 25 minutes out of the city for dinner. That was really fun, cuz we had all the servers come out and sing happy 12th birthday to our main bus captain, who's at least 40-something.

Tuesday was march day. Actually first we went to the youth Rally at the Verizon Center, and the rally wasn't as good as last year's cuz there was this new girl who sang a bunch of songs no one knew, and they were all too long to hold your interest. But it was still pretty good, and then the mass was pretty neat too, especially cuz there were about 35 bishops there, maybe 100+ priests, a bunch more deacons and then at least 200 seminarians, and they did this whole procession thing that was really cool. After that we went back to our hotel to load up our stuff on the bus and then head to the march. This year we got dropped off at a different spot than in previous years. This year we ended up in the middle but more towards the front of the crowd, and before we marched we actually got to hear some of the speaches, and to be honest in the past we've been so far back that I didn't even know they did speeches. But talk about motivation, you should hear thoes guys talk, dang. So anyway it took forever to do the march cuz people don't know how to walk around corners and it took forever for us to really get moving. But at the top of Capital Hill you get a really amazing view of what must be hundreds of thousands of people behind you (and again I have pictures) who all believe in the same thing you do and want to make a stand about it. When we got to the Library of Congress there were maybe 50 protesters (aka pro-abortion - they told us not to call em pro-choice cuz it is what it is). After the whole march we split up into different groups to go find somewhere to eat, and on our way back to Union Station to board the bus and take off we passed the Library again, and there were may be 15 protesters left, as opposed to hundreds of pro-lifers. After that we got back to US and left.

It took us a good hour to even get out of DC, cuz there are a lot of other buses who leave at the same time we do, trying to beat the rush and in turn creating it. However we eventually got out there and headed home, stopping every so often for rest stops, gas stations, or McDonald's once or twice. In the morning we stopped in Effingham Illinois for breakfast, and we made it back to our church by like 11:30, which is a lot earlier than we'd expected. But anyway we made it home and my kitties were alright, jsut craving attention, and my dad and I went to get the dog from the kennel and turns out she too survived the weekend. It woulda been a great ending to the trip if it hadn't felt so much like spring break when we got home, cuz I didn't start any homework until about 8:15, adn then I couldn't keep my eyes open past 9 cuz I was so exhausted, so I just went to bed then, even though I didn't fall asleep for a good half hour. Thankfully Thursday was one of my easy days, and it was a half day too. So instead of taking advantage of that free time to do the homework that was really piled up for Friday I took my time making and eating lunch and then I watched two episodes of One Tree Hill on MP's dvds. It also took a good while to catch up on emails and such, and I wanted to post here actually on Wednesday but I never got the chance, as I was too exhausted to do anything by then.

In fact tonight I'm supposed to be at B's with A-hawk, but my dad was being his usual asshat self and wouldn't let me go, after he told me last night I could. I did berate him until he let me stay at her houes for a while as long as I was home by 10, but that so wasn't fair, especially because he had no real reason for keeping me home, and T and M get to have friends over so why can't I go to my friend's house? We do have our father/daughter banquet for school tomorrow night, but that's just the last 4th of the day, it's not going to take up the whole thing. And really I don't have a lot of immediate homework this weekend, plus I still have all of Sunday to do that on, so I don't really know what his problem is. But we did make the most of our time, working on our SPN/Twilight crossover fic some, and we're almost done with our very detailed plot outline, which means we should get to actually writing it soon, yay! Whenever we get another chance to work on it, that is. So anyway now that I'm home for the night I'm stuck with not much other than homework, which I really can't bring myself to do any of right now, so that's actually why this is the first chance I've had since last Thursday to post on here. I'm hoping tomorrow night will go smoother than this afternoon did with my dad, because I'll have to deal with him in front of my friends which I usually avoid doing, and besides it's his birthday so he'll probably be all picky about not spending any time for himself, blah blah blah. Oh, and the bus captains told us we need to get more people for next year so we can fill up another bus, and I was mainly thinking B and/or A-hawk (whom I already mentioned that to), especially because barely anyone else ever reads this. Let me know if you might be interested B. Also of note, my last post was on my mom's birthday but I forgot to mention it; not that it really makes any difference, it just felt wrong to ignore it, because I, unlike some people in my family (and by some I mean almost all) don't ignore people's birthdays! And one more thing - new episodes of Supernatural start back up next Thursday! That I am excited for, except my dad recently told me I have another effing shrink appointment that day, so hopefully I'll be back in time for both Supernatural and Smallville and not be in pieces by the time I get outta that place. And finally, RIP Heath Leger.

Luke 18 and Sleep Deprivation

2008-01-17T16:35:00.000-06:00

I totally posted that last one on a Thursday, so I can't figure out why it's still telling me Tuesday... whatever. Anyway, this has probably been the most tiring week of my life. Luke 18 last weekend was really fun - I hadn't been sure what I thought about it in the days leading up to it, but it was just as great as the last two years, so I don't really know what I was worried about. I guess it's just so much different from what I've gotten myself used to this past semester, and I found myself almost insecure at times with all these people from my gradeschool, few of which were in my graduating class, since my high school friends are so different and I relate to them so much more. However, even though I did Cori Team again, my gradeschool bff A (also CT) and I headed a sleep house since there weren't enough disciples for it, so that renewed my sense of superiority a bit. That probably sounds a little conceited, but being honest I know I have a lot of pride, and I don't really know why but my position this year kind of made me feel less important. Long story-short, I got about 10 hours of sleep all weekend, which is in fact really good for such a retreat.

By the end of tomorrow I will have had three days of my hard classes and less than two of the easy ones, so I'm really tired at this point. I've just spent the last 5+ hours on homework, and I'm not even done with my Latin yet. And I just found out today that I have to make up a chem test early, so I'll be attempting that after school tomorrow. Tuesday was a late start, and that was nice, except my sister turned off my alarm so I didn't wake up until I was supposed to be leaving, and then I was rushed and my dad barely got me to school on time since we had to bring my brother first. I should mention about that night though, as this week was 'bring a friend week' at dance, and B decided she wanted to come. So after my ensemble practice we went to my house and did nothing and then went to dance. My first class was ballet tech, which I made her do some of, and all technique aside she wasn't that bad. And yes I realize that's totally redundant irony, but well what can I say, she's not a dancer, so coordination's all we could really go for. It was pretty amusing on my part anyway. It's like the bible, B - you get credit for trying. :)

That Pirates quote reminded me of my onle pick-me-up this week - a few of us decided this week (we extended it to next week also) is Super-Special Awesome Week - In America! Basically we've chosen a fandom for each day and collected points for ourselves by making as many references and quoting it as much as possible. For instance, we've had Supernatural Monday, Doctor Who Tuesday, Catherine Tate Wednesday, and Hitchhiker's Guide/Top Gear Thursday. I don't currently remember what Friday is, but we've got more of that coming. I'm at something like 38 points right now, which is actually kind of sad when you think about it, but today was kind of a letdown since B wasn't there to kick things off (get better, you!). We did attempt some stuff though, like when A-hawk brought me home and a good chunk of the way we discussed the number 42 and green towels.

On Saturday I'll be heading off for the pro-life march in DC, around midday- or early afternoon-ish. Again, there are 6 of us in my family going, so I'm expecting one hell of a time (that can be interpreted however you like). And we won't be back till Wednesday midday- or early afternoon-ish, so I won't be back at school till Thursday. Which is just as well, since by that point I'll be at the point of insanity with sleep deprivation and then trying to catch up on homework. Thankfully that Thursday's a half day, so it'll only be 1 1/2 days all week for me. Then Friday I'll probably sleep for 18 hours, and then I should be hanging out with B and A-hawk, cuz it's one of those weekends. So I've got lots ahead of me. In the meantime, I have Latin sentences to translate and a chem test to cram for. Lucky me. And I guess I should mention that I've been so busy lately I haven't had any time for thoughts por family drama, and my dad finally accepted that I'm going to keep using my laptop in my room whether he likes it or not and he's pretty much left me alone, for the most part, all week to do homework. I don't know where that came from, but I'm extremely glad for it. Also I pulled out four posters from my Horse Illustrated magazines and put them up on my wall after I moved the wolf to over my bed, so I spent some time on that, which is really the only me-time I've had all week. Hopefully at some point the bus trip will be quiet so I can catch up with myself.

Depression Returns...

2008-01-08T16:56:00.000-06:00

I've decided to ditch the set posting dates, cuz on Sunday I didn't really have anything to say (except go on about what I did/didn't do this weekend, but that just defies the purpose of having a journal), and then on Monday I had loads but it wasn't Thursday yet. So from now on I'm posting whenever I want, and don't worry about me not updating for a while cuz with the amounts I always have to say well trust me I'll be back often enough.

So to run down the weekend, on Friday I went ice skating with B and C and other guys B and M, and that was fun cuz it wasn't so hard on my ankles that time and it didn't take as long for me to get in to it, so to speak. Also B and I got a lot of chat time, about our books and fanfics and religious views and friends' opinions on some of our views.... Also I ended up riding with guy B back to his house with C to get C's car so C could drive me home, and I managed that without getting raped (lol don't worry about it - if you don't know us then just ignore that), so that's good too. We also discussed B and C's relationship in the light of how it got started, cuz I'd really only heard her version in full, and from B's blog we all know that that one's messed up. I'm trying really hard not to hold anything against her, but she's done a lot of that stuff lately that just tries our patience.

Saturday was boring. I don't know what I did all day cuz I'd accidentally left part of my power cord for my laptop in my history room at school, so I had to be really conservative with my battery. Oh wait I know - Siblings T and M and I had dentist appointments in the morning, and those took absolutely forever - afterwards my grandma asked us to come visit for a little bit cuz she's not too far from the place, so we did that and we just talked and ate pizza. Then I went home and was bored for a while, and then I had this Luke 18 lock-in thinger and mass, which was just an extended meeting to get the last of the prep together cuz the retreat's this weekend, and lemme just say I had no idea it was this weekend. And the weekend after's the pro-life trip, for which my mom signed up 4 of us and herself and my dad, so that's gonna be one hell of a weekend. So yeah B sorry to break up our schedule, but we'll make up for it. So that was Saturday. Sunday entailed me sleeping in and being home and more bored. I did manage to stay off my computer most of the day, reorganized a bit, and then used up what was left of both of my computer batteries reading Supernatural fanfiction.... See why I didn't want to post on Sunday? Oh and my battery probably wouldn't lasted long enough for it anyway.

Tuesday was my class's retreat, at a much nicer than that place we went to last year. The chapel was like right out of a really old English monastery - that was pretty cool. Also the fact that B was up there serving the mass with two different shoes on (A-hawk and B and I had all traded one shoe, so we were each wearing one of ours and one other)... that was gold. Especially when the priest finally noticed on the way down the isle at the end, and A-hawk and I just cracked up. Yeah good stuff.

Today coulda been great, but instead it was pretty good for about 3 hours. See it was a half day and B and I wanted to go out for lunch and then to the mall so I could finally get the new purse I really need, and I have that gift card I need to use so I gotta go to the one certain mall. So we had lunch and that was fun, but when we go to leave the car doesn't start. We did blame it on playing "Bad Moon Rising" in the car so many times, but now it could be that or our decision to play a joke having to do with an R-rated movie on our religion (or history) teacher or our threatening to convert if the car didn't start (I swear that was a joke)... okay so that sucked cuz B's dad had to come get us cuz we jumped the car but it didn't work, so since he had things to do they just brought me home and we never went to the mall. I mean I'm glad the car's all fixed up now, but it really sucks how it shot our make-up weekend, since I'll be on Luke 18 all this weekend, and the following is the pro-life trip in D.C. which I'll be at from Saturday till Wednesday.... So basically the weekend after that we have to do 1 1/2 weekend's worth of stuff to make up for the remainder of this one, and I still need a new purse.

When I did get home from that whole thing I was okay for about 5 minutes, and then I just slumped into this huge state of depression. I have no idea why either, cuz I can't think of anything currently that would bring me down like that. It wasn't the whole car deal, cuz we were laughing about that, and then it was just a disappointment that couldn't be helped and we brushed it off. I know part of it was boredom, since I only got one assignment on Wednesday to do for tomorrow, but it's not like I'd spend the whole night doing homework if that were an option. So pretty much I watched two episodes of One Tree Hill from M's season 3 I just borrowed, and then I slumped even farther and made myself an iTunes playlist entitled "A drink called Loneliness," which is actually a line from Billy Joel's "Piano Man." The songs in there are all either softies that you can sing to and that have a lot of emotion behind them (but aren't too lovey-dovey) or just intense emotional rock songs. So when I finished that I drew myself this big emo slogan picture and taped it to the side of my dresser by the wall, so it can't be seen unless you look for it. That one has the chorus for "The End" by Linkin Park on it.... Seriously I don't know where this is coming from at all. Oh and my brother T was hounding me for not going to youth group tonight and not telling him why. Well I've only gone like twice all year, and those were at the very beginning when school had started but Supernatural hadn't yet, so I had nothing better to do. I didn't even watch Smallville or Supernatural tonight, and I know they were reruns but still that's SO unlike me. But anyway I just told T that I have some problems with youth group right now, which is true but I don't really want to go into all that... B knows what I'm talking about. I really don't think it's fair that I'm getting pressured to do certain religious things I don't want to do (for different reasons)... isn't that what usually makes people convert? I'm not suggesting anything for myself, I'm just saying.... And I should say that saying all that about tonight gives me flashbacks to about February/March/April of last year, when I had pretty severe self-diagnosed depression. That whole thing is a really long story and has a lot to do with my parents being control freaks and a biology project going completely wrong and falling the most inconvenient time the entire year and my dad abusing me in more ways than one... okay I really can't go too far into that, but I'm really hoping that this year doesn't turn into that. Since I know who my real friends are this time around (if you're reading this you're one of 'em), I'm pretty sure my support system is strong enough to keep it away from that, but well I guess this is my warning.

I had more emotional stuff to say at the beginning of the week, but I didn't come here then so I don't remember what any of it was, so that'd be why this post seems very bland, which it does. Oh, and the CW's seriously considering giving Supernatural's time slot to Reaper for reruns after the new eps run out in the beginning of February, which pisses me off beyond belief. Reaper's brand new this year so there's nothing to show, and Supernatural has a history so they could show the first or second season again, if not anything from the third (since they'll have already shown the first 7 eps twice each, and the ones after that are too new to rerun). Fans are rallying to do stuff about this, but I can't exactly do anything as I'm still at my parent's house and I don't have a car or a well-enough paying job and I don't live anywhere near where all this is happening. I could write a letter, but with my upcoming schedule I won't have time to do that for about three weeks, and I don't know where to send it either at this point. I know where I could find that out, but I can't get on that forum cuz it's effing blocked. So there's not much else I can say about that whole deal; I just thought I should mention it since I'm the ultimate news resource around here as far as Supernatural goes. Okay so I might be back later if I think of anything else that's actually interesting to add to this... otherwise, until next time, I'm off to sulk some more.

Closing Out Christmas Break

2008-01-03T19:45:00.001-06:00

Except for actual Christmas Day and the day after and the day we had Christmas with my mom's family, I've had three days of excitement this entire break. Sad, yes. And as they were this past Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I didn't get around to posting here; though there wouldn'ta been anything to post if I did. So now you get to hear all about my exciting not-weekend. I talked to K for a while on the phone on Friday night, and we discovered that out of 50 of her dvds, I'd never seen 27, and you'd punch me if you heard the list. We also decided we needed to go purse shopping at the mall, but we couldn't do it Saturday cuz I had this Luke 18 planning meeting from I think 2-4:30, so we set it for Sunday. Turns out my brother wanted to stay for mass after the meeting, and I didn't have another choice since he was my ride, so I just went to mass on Saturday, which made things a lot easier cuz it eliminated me having to wait around for forever for my dad to get back from church and then to do his usual yellings about how we need to clean the house and get lunch for the little kids and then to take his time changing or something before he finally brought me there. Oh and at some point on Friday I think too maybe B asked if I wanted to do anything so I invited her along to the mall with us. Then I heard from K that her dad decided she was having a belated birthday party with his family or something on Sunday, so she wouldn't be able to meet us at the mall till 4:15. Good thing B'd joined us. So since K wasn't allowed to see Golden Compass, B and I did that. The movie was at 1:50, and since I didn't have to go to church on Sunday but everyone else did, she graciously drove to my house and we made our escape while everyone else was gone. Then we went to her house and played some DDR, which I hadn't played in ages but after a few warm-up rounds I was kicking butt. Okay only on some songs, but whatever. :) So we saw the movie and then met K at Borders at the mall, and I bought the His Dark Materials trilogy so I could read em all for myself and then formulate my own opinion about the whole religious controversy thing, which I will post about once I've read the whole trilogy.

After the mall (btw we'd forgotten malls close at 6 on Sunday, or that it was Sunday, or maybe both of those), so time caught up with us before I got a purse, although I think I found two or three at Penney's, so I just need to get back there at some point to buy one. And I don't know what I'm gonna do about my Westfield gift card, cuz apparently both malls near me are not Westfield anymore, and it makes me mad cuz I wanna use that thing. I'm hoping I can maybe get a refund for it, or replace it with a new mall gift card, cuz the money hasn't all run out on it yet, and I don't really feel like actually spending $30 on a purse, though I kind of really need a new one. So anyway, we said bye to K and went back to B's house and met her bf C to go ice skating with his family. That was really fun, even though I discovered that ice skating and dance habits do not mix well. My natural turnout kept making my outer skate slide sideways, and I managed to not fall at all, but by the time I figured out how to sickle my ankle enough to keep the skate upright, well I ended up with a nice bruise on that ankle. However it's not that bad anymore, so I don't care. And after skating we went out to eat, and that was fun cuz we were eating breakfast like after 11pm. Then we went back to B's and I spent the night - if you haven't noticed we've sort of made a pattern of doing that every two weekends, which is just fine with me, and actually I think we should keep it up cuz it'll give us something to look forward to during the next few drag months. For anyone else who's reading this, well we can do group stuff or else you and I can do something on the weekends in between, assuming dance doesn't interfere, cuz we are coming up on competition season. :)

On Monday the two of us literally spent like 6 hours working on our fanfic, taking breaks for food and the occasional facebook-related other thing. We're almost done with the really detailed outline of the entire episode - it's more so an episode of Supernatural than just a story, so I'm calling it that - so soon hopefully we'll be able to get on with writing it, and once we start posting the chapters on FF.net y'all'd better read it! And since I can't exactly review my own story and I'm usually the person who does that, well we're gonna need some others to do it for us. *hinthint* Anyway, at like 7ish C showed up again and the two of us played more DDR (I only beat him like the last 1/3 of the time), and then we headed to M's new year's party. That was pretty fun, even though originally we barely did anything. I mean there was some chatting and eating and pinball, and then the 11 or so of us crammed onto M's nice long couch to watch The Shining, which was beyond creepy. Not really scary, as horror flicks don't really scare me anymore (at least not since I started watching Supernatural), but that Jack guy was just fudging creepy. And I know Dean actually mentioned The Shining in one episode, but I hadn't realized that Supernatural references it like 6 other times, which adds to the show's scare factor, which actually just makes it more appealing, in my opinion. So for as creepy as the movie was, I was really kinda glad to be so crammed between people on the couch (I ended up almost in the corner with C on one side, another guy B on the other, and with M's legs across us for some of the time). After that we watched Transformers, which was good, and we took like a 10 minute break in there to go watch the ball drop on tv and drink sparkling cider - kind of a letdown compared with my actually being allowed to drink champagne last year. Oh and as for that whole movie section, B I gotta say - could you have picked a flirtier boyfriend? Cuz jeez! I mean it's nice to have not-awkward male interaction, cuz I don't get much of that anyway, but C just keeps at it, and it's fun and all but he is supposed to be your bf, right? o.0 Haha just checking.

The boys all left by 1:30ish, and then the 7 girls that were left ended up all crowded in M's room, not really paying attention to the movies we put in and just messing around and talking and playing some Guitar Hero and drawing random pictures to stick on M's bf's car cuz he lives across the street from her. I think I may have achieved an entire hour of sleep, in broken pieces. Three of the girls left at like 9:30 I think, and then M's mom made those of us who were left a really nice breakfast that we ate pretty late. We couldn't think of anything else to do for the rest of the time we were there, so we just messed around a bit in M's room and talked. M's mom took me and J home around 2, so B you left before that but you really didn't miss anything.

And once I got home I was positively bored out of my mind, at least until I decided to move some books from my closet to my dresser for more shelf space. I found this wire shelf thinger in the basement, and between today and yesterday I managed to prop it up on some green roof panels from my dad's old Lincoln logs set - it did fall a few times, and it was a bitch to put back together every time, but I've managed, so my dresser that I finally cleaned off maybe a week or two ago is now all pretty and organized with two rows of books and some dvds on top of it, and I now have 1 1/2 free shelves in my closet. However the closet's a whole separate project that I'll doubt I'll even get to until maybe spring break. Oh and I moved this Rack drawer thing I had in my closet to next to my dresser, and so far I've reorganized three of the drawers in it - only four more to go. And I plan on reorganizing my dresser drawers too, cuz currently I can barely open any of the drawers cuz they're so crammed full of clothes, and they're not in any particular order anymore so hopefully (maybe this weekend, maybe not) I'll get that done. The only reason I spent so much time on that today anyway was cuz my dad took my computer last night cuz he thought my use of iTunes was a distraction keeping me from cleaning my room. Let me just say how mad that made me, cuz he just took it and shut it down, and I had a bunch of stuff up and it just made me generally mad cuz I haven't restarted my computer since I think before exams. He said he wouldn't give it back till I had cleaned up the entire huge pile of stuff by my dresser, and while that pile doesn't usually contain the same stuff for long periods of time, it's always there, like another piece of furniture in my room, so it just aggravated me cuz he was so just using that to take something from me, which I've somehow prevented all break. However I did still have my iPod, and my sister was at school and her iPod speakers were right there, so I made do with that all day and just caught up with emails and such when I finished cleaning up that pile (a lot of which happened to belong to other siblings who didn't live in my room) and got my computer back, and here we are.

Oh and I put up three new posters. One of them's this dance one that fell off the wall maybe a month ago and was only up for about a week before it did, so now it's reinforced. There's a girl in pointe shoes and a long tutu on it coming out of a grande jete, but even though she's coming out of the leap you can tell that it sucks... or at least I can. There's also a wolf poster now up by my window where the calendar would usually be, except I didn't get one yet for this year so there'd be a huge blank wall space if I didn't put it there. And then I finally put up my huge Dumbledore's Army poster too, and I was hanging off the head side of my bed trying to do it. For the position I put the poster in and as high up on the wall it is, and considering that it was pretty tightly rolled up beforehand and it's rather huge, it was ridiculous trying to put it up. Also my sister hates it, so I like it even more. And after going through all that, B I've come to fully appreciate your efforts in putting yours on the ceiling.... In other news, I should mention that my phone's been being really screwy since like the 23rd, with just turning itself off randomly, especially during conversations, and then it would refuse to let me turn it back on unless I took the battery out and cooled it off for like 10 minutes. I think I've fixed it though, cuz I don't know why it was doing that but I just let the battery die down and then recharged it all the way, and since then I haven't had any problems with it, so yay! Y'all can call me now, and even though I already took the liberty of writing down the cell and house numbers of everyone I talk to often, I don't think I'll need it. And I have yet to decide on a new year's resolution, cuz the keeping my room clean thing never works past March, if even that long.

EDIT - B's bf C wanted me to say that (at M's party) we were having a massive oragy (sp?), and it was hot. In fact that's a direct quote from him (that whole sentence, not just the second part). Just thought I'd add that in.

The Aftermath of Christmas (and Boxing Day)

2007-12-27T18:37:00.001-06:00

Ah Christmas... well let's start with Christmas Eve. We went to midnight mass, as usual, and normally I wouldn't have a problem staying up till 1:30 or 2am, except that we got the really boring priest for this one. He did just about everything in the beginning of the mass wrong - trust me, when you're an altar server for 3 1/2 years and you always have to do it cuz no one else ever shows up and you're always there, so basically they recruit you for all the important masses cuz you're always there, well you know how things're supposed to go by then, and this guy just screwed up everything in the beginning. And then I don't even know what his homily was about, but it was some joke another priest had told us a while back so it wasn't funny, and then I don't even know cuz I fell asleep twice - only for like 30 seconds each time (don't ask me how I know that, I just do), but it was that boring. Anyway, Christmas morning all slept in longer than usual cuz my dad had to play the 9am mass and we had to wait for him to get home before we did anything. When he did get home we got to the presents, and my parents thought they'd be clever this year and instead of wrapping ours all in different paper and us telling them apart by the ones in our stockings, they wrapped em all differently and put these cryptic clues on em. For example, one of the easier ones was "quite contrary, with a garden" - I'll just say that that was for my sister Mary, obviously. Most of them were harder than that though, and they even threw in two or three with lyrics from some 80's songs we totally didn't know. And then my sister M got the iPod speakers/radio/cd player I wanted, and my sister H got the portable cd player I'd asked for cuz mine broke, and then my mom got the exact leather boots and jacket that I'd asked for, which is weird cuz my dad bought em for her and I'd told my mom I wanted em. There must've been some communication between them on that, cuz that's just weird if they didn't.

After all that we went to my grandma's - oh, but before that happened I'd plugged my iPod into my laptop to charge, and it decided to reset itself, which absolutely SUCKED. See I have a nano, a little 2 gig that's supposed to hold 500 songs. Well before the reset I had 709 songs on my iTunes and a bunch of playlists plus an entire 30-or-so episode podcast, and it held it all. But after the reset it made me put the songs I wanted into a certain playlist and now it only takes those, and it's terrible cuz it'll only hole like 466 or something. Anyway, we went to my grandparent's and did presents over there with them and my dad's two sisters, and the only thing over there I got that I'd asked for was a digital camera, which actually my other grandparents said they'd get for me for my eighth grade graduation, and it never happened. Oh and I got the Official Companion book for season 1 of Supernatural, and I can't even read any of it cuz there's so much in there - all I've managed to do so far is find lists of episode music and pull out songs I don't have on my SPN playlist, and then look at the pictures, most of which I have on my computer already. There are these like mini-poster picture kinda things, which aren't bad but I don't want to pull them out, and honestly I was really hoping for a huge pull-out poster, but oh well. So I got some other stuff, and M got this iPup - not an iDog, cuz it doesn't function as iPod speakers, just and iPup that moves around and flashes lights and barks at you when you play music. Kind of entertaining, but add that to the speakers she already got - dude she doesn't even have an iPod! Or a computer to set it up on either, come to think of it. Now I don't mean to be bratty or conceited or anything, but it someone asks you what you want, shouldn't they at least try to get it for you? Why on earth would everyone ask you for a list and then not get you anything on it - actually getting you other stuff you don't need that you already have anyway instead - and then give other people the stuff you wanted? Kinda stupid, I think.

The six of us spent the night at my grandparent's that night and then stayed through the next day, cuz that's my sister A's birthday. I did persuade my grandma to take us to the bookstore, cuz we all already had gift cards and I had some past ones saved up for it too. Actually I think I had $85 worth of gift cards, and I ended up buying Hand A's books cuz they didn't bring theirs, so they owe me for that... mental note.... After that we went to Uno's for lunch, which was nice cuz that place is nice and the food's really good and we never go there with our parents cuz it's too expensive, not to mention that there are none anywhere near our house. So we did all that, and I finally got the 3rd and 4th books in the Children of the Lamp series, which now my mom's into as well as my brother, plus the Taylor Swift cd I could never borrow cuz I could never find anyone else who had it. Later on that night my parents came over, and T and went home and met his girlfriend L and brought her up, and we did the whole cake and ice cream thing and then we all went home. Then on Thursday no one really did anything... that was the night K asked my to do this thing at I think a nursing home that she does twice a year, where she goes and performs a bunch of dances, in costume and everything, and I think one of her siblings sings or something, and then I was gonna do it with her. But that night also happened to be the night of the camp staff Christmas party, which I was invited to for the first time since I just graduated my wrangler training program this past summer, and now I'm working the spring and fall sessions as a wrangler there, and hopefully this summer I'll get signed on as a jr counselor, if not as a jr wrangler. Anyway, my parents didn't want to drive me all the way out to K's, which really isn't that far, but there were both not home in time to bring me there on time either, so I went to the party, which was probably the better choice anyway since almost all of my future bosses were there. It was an overnighter, so out of the 30 or so people that showed up like 9 of us stayed overnight, and we talked the entire time about bad campers and bad camp experiences, which was really fun and kept us up till 3:30am.

My dad picked me up at like 10:20ish this morning for another stupid shrink appointment, which we were late too cuz he got lost trying to find the house I was at. That should've been a good thing, but she went over our time to cover for it, which really pissed me off. I had to sit through more of the just listen to your parents and life might be less of a living hell crap, and my dad gets all stuck up at these things cuz he totally acts like he's never done a thing wrong in the world, and he says he doesn't yell and just makes himself sound like the perfect father that he so isn't, and she buys right into it, and I'm left dealing with the well if you just did everything you were told and sucked up to your parents more you'd have a better relationship... more crap. Anyway that sucked, and a whole lot, cuz there's no point in going, especially not if all she's gonna do is give my dad this false sense that he's the best and he's always right and he can boss me around all he wants. Oh, and just to throw this in, on Christmas Day when we were at my grandma's, at one point my mom was kinda messing around with my brother, and I ended up in the middle of it and she ended up pinching the inside of my left arm really hard with her nails and now there's a lovely two-inch bruise there. I don't think that one counts as child abuse, but it's not the first time, so we'll see if/when it happens again. I realize there's not a lot of mental stuff in this post, which is more of what this should be if it's just an online journal, but well I guess I haven't had a lot of think time... except during that appointment, but that was all me talking to myself and saying how stupid this was cuz otherwise I mighta lost it.

Christmas Eve-Eve

2007-12-22T22:31:00.000-06:00

If I renewed my permit on Friday, I should have driven three times since then, but no, Dad's refused to take me every time I asked him - the only reason we ever did it on Friday was cuz my dad had to run to Petco to fix my dog's shock collar, and my mom made him let me drive. And I did fine, so I don't know why he won't just let me do it more. And I could've driven to my aunt's yesterday, cuz she's only like 5 minutes away from our house and I'd never even have to get on a main road, but my dad just won't let me. I still haven't figured out yet why my mom can't just take me, cuz normally she'd be at work or something when I'm free, but she's off for the holidays too so I don't know....

As I haven't been driving a lot lately, I've been ridiculously bored. On Friday night MH was having some people over for a party-ish deal (we were originally going ice skating), but I ended up unable to attend that cuz by the time she'd told me the plans'd changed I was at Petco and when we got home my parents didn't have time to take me and get back to go to my neighbor's black belt test for Tae-Kwon-Do. And they so did, but my mom wanted to get there early, so she still woulda been on time if she took me, but that wasn't good enough. And then my brother decided his bass lesson was gonna go all night so he wasn't home to take me either. That was quite disappointing. So I spent those 4 hours watching 6 episodes of One Tree Hill on MP's dvds - dvds which I should've finished and given back to her ages ago, but my dad confiscated them back before Thanksgiving cuz I was watching them over a weekend and he thought that was just such a terrible thing, and he wouldn't give them back until after exams, and even then only after I'd pestered him about it for like 3 days. So that was Friday. On Saturday (well actually the day before) K asked me to go see August Rush with her and some others at 11:55, but that didn't work since we were going to my aunt's at noon for my mom's side's Christmas. Basically we did nothing for a while, the littlest kids all decorated gingerbread houses (I got recruited for icing), eventually we ate lunch, then after that was all cleaned up (like an hour later) we did the whole presents deal, and it really sucked. See my grandma who would normally spend 300 bucks on any one of us if we asked for it broke her ankle recently, so she got everyone a gift card to Barnes and Noble and then a $50 bill. As good as that should seem, I was expecting better, especially since my one aunt got me a Starbucks gift card (when do I ever go there? Not that it's not good, but still) and the other one didn't get the older kids anything. And then my grandparents wanted to get back to Springfield before the supposed snow got them stuck somewhere, so they left pretty early, and so did the aunt and uncle with the three youngest cousins who live in Ashland, right outside Columbia by Mizzou. Then my mom's aunt and uncle left, even though they were just staying in a hotel for the night, so it was just my family and the people who lived in that house. Now all my cousins are younger than me, and my oldest female cousin is 7, so there wasn't exactly a lot I could do. Although my uncle did teach me how to solve a rubik's cube, so that took a few hours out of the boredom. However I don't have one of my own, so I don't know if I'll remember everything by the time I see them again. Anyway that was Saturday.

Today, Christmas Eve-eve, was just plain boring. we went to church and almost went to Pasta House afterwards but the wait was an hour so we went back home instead. My mom made potato soup, which was good except now we're out of milk, again, and my parents don't like buying it anywhere besides Sam's so they only buy like two gallons at a time when they go somewhere else, so it's gone in all of three seconds and then they get mad at us cuz they just bought it and now it's gone. Well geez, what d'you expect when there's 8 people in the house, seriously? Anyway I was so bored this afternoon that I actually cleaned up a good chunk of my room. Then I woulda called B to ask her what time her show was and see if she wanted to come over afterwards, but my cell phone kept randomly turning off, and it was fully charged, but it got to the point where I couldn't keep it on for more than two seconds, if even that long, and it wouldn't turn on at all 3/4 of the times I tried it. I took the battery out and put it back in a few times but that didn't do anything. After a while I switched to cord to another plug, and that sorta helped, and then I just left it alone for a while and it seemed to fix itself. So my phone conversation with A-hawk [:P] was very broken up, as we started on house phones and then moved to cell phones and then she had to call me from her on my house phone, and then my cell was working again and it just went on. Anyway I asked her over too but she wasn't able to come over tonight, even though she was doing nothing tomorrow. And B never called back (tisk tisk), so I was bored some more. And during the whole phone conversation period my parents had taken everyone else out - you'll never believe it - carolling. Seriously, carolling? My mom made my sister bake like 4 batches of different kinds of cookies, and then she split them up to give to the neighbor's as they went to each house. I blatantly refused to take part in that, not only because it was so insane for us but cuz no one else in my family can sing worth a dime so it woulda just sucked. So after all that they went to my neighbor's and ate snacks the whole night, and by the time I got off my house phone to go over there most everything was gone. Whatever - I ended up borrowing their National Treasure dvd, as I'd never seen that, and when I went to watch it the disk was really dirty and kept skipping all over the place. I cleaned it off really well, but it still kept skipping to like three minutes ahead of where it was, so I missed some bits but it was still pretty good. And at that point I was too tired to finish this post, so I just went to bed, so now it's actually Monday morning as I finish this. But I had to post it last night with those 1 1/2 sentences just to secure the date on the post, cuz I didn't wanna mess up my schedule (again) - I post on Thursdays and Sundays, plus the rare emergency Friday. :) And yes that so was an emergency.

Anyway (I sure do seem to say that word a lot), I was gonna mention how my cats've been acting really funny lately, so I've expected the weird weather changes all week, but I think there's more to it. My sister said her cell phone's been being screwy too, and my house phone even has a little bit, and so were A-hawk's phones when I talked to her. We thought it might just be the Sprint people, but then we decided it was the weather, and then it was a combination of the two, which means there's a demon cloud around just looking for things/people to possess. We received our confirmation that it was in fact the demons cuz when we decided that's what it was everything started working normal again. We're on to you demons, so don't even think about possessing any one of us - we have access to exorcisms! Okay that probably sounded really bad to anyone who doesn't watch Supernatural, but well too bad, cuz if you did then you'd know what I was talking about. (I can just see F rolling her eyes at this point. :P) And speaking of Supernatural, it's really sad but it's on it's winter hiatus and won't be back till January 31st with 3.09 Witch Hunt (that whole month's reruns before that). Very sad, yes, but we've still got a few new eps until the WGA strike completely takes over the world.... Getting off that depressing subject, I should be home by Thursday to write about Christmas, so stay tuned for that. In the meantime, have yourself a Merry Christmas, and Happy Boxing Day!

Paradox of a Tear

2007-12-20T19:20:00.001-06:00

What are tears, but an emotional reaction produced when words become superfluous?

At least that's what I thought of this afternoon. I hate tears, with a burning passion - they cause you to let your guard down and open up inconceivably when you need most to remain in control. Also they do burn, probably as a punishment for letting your emotions get the better of you. If this is true, if your tears really do mock you, then why do they come, especially when you don't want them, just so they can punish you for it? It's not like you could do anything to hold them back once they're there. I mean you can repress them for a while but at some point they always get the better of you, whether you like it or not. Therefore, I think tears are the cruelest asset we humans contain. Then again, they are a window into a friend's mind, telling the world they really are insecure and vulnerable and they could use some support, so in that respect tears can be quite useful - just as long as someone who cares is there to see them when they come. How enigmatic it is that the cruelest, most valuable side effect of a human is the tear.
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December 20th - the one-year anniversary of my driving permit. My birthday was over two months before I got the thing but my parents would never take me to get the permit until I told them we were running out of time before they changed the law and I'd have to get double practice time. So we got it before the new year, but then they would never take me driving and never let me drive anywhere once they did. So really there was no point in even getting it then, only to be disappointed later. Because another year has come and gone since then and I have driven a grand total of two times. TWO!!! I've been pestering both of my parents about it like every day for at least the past 5+ months, cuz my birthday was coming and I wanted my license. All before that I'd kinda figured we had time so it was okay if I only said something every weekend or so - major mistake on my part. I'd originally told my parents I needed to go driving a lot more than I was cuz I refused to go back to renew my permit - I wanted my license. Well now I don't have a choice - my dad's taking me tomorrow to renew it, and my mom says she told him he had to take me driving every day over break. Now even if we do manage that, which'll be a miracle, rest assured that as soon as I go back to school and dad goes back to work I'll never get to drive again... at least not till spring break, probably.

I don't know why my mom won't ever take me. It's not like it's my first time and she has to show me how to everything, cuz even when it was my first time I'd payed attention to other people driving and I already knew how to do just about everything; it was just the practice I needed. And I've driven around in circles all over my town (except not on the highway cuz they won't let me). I'd love to say that my parents were just overprotective in that they thought I was growing up too fast, or something else petty like that, but no - they're overprotective in that they think I'll crash cuz driving's harder for me to get used to than the average person with two eyes. Which is exactly why I need more practice time, and not so long of stretches in between driving sessions, but as they never let me drive like to dance or anything there's no way I can get that. It's kinda sad actually, cuz you'd think that they'd take my whole impairment thing as initiative to make me practice more before I got my license, but they're the exact opposite.

I never really explained that on here, and as I've only told the whole story to a select few people who've asked me since I started high school, I might as well do it now. So when I was two I had cancer in my right eye - retinoblastoma, if you will. I only have two memories of the whole ordeal, one being when my brother T and my dad brought pizza to the hospital and T and I ate it while sitting on the windowsill and playing with play-dough - I still remember the view out the window too, of the city at night when it was all light up - most of the time having a photographic memory is quite rewarding. The other memory I have is of me sitting in a high chair, and this doctor was telling me that either he'd inject some stuff right in my eye or I could take this medicine that would make me throw up. Well I chose the latter, so I recall a distinct vision of myself actually puking all over the tray. But anyway, I got it at some point when I had just turned two and wasn't done with everything till I was three and a half. As I said I don't remember much, but my mom's told me stuff. Apparently they can't radiate little kids cuz their systems aren't strong enough to channel it to the right spots, so I went through chemo, but after ages of that it hadn't really helped and the cancer was moving back towards my brain, so the only option left was surgery. I'm now living with a prosthetic eye on that side, and I can see fine even though everything's in 2d (I didn't even know that until 8th grade when I read something that explained how 3d glasses work - I'd never been able to understand those before), and my peripheral range isn't as wide as it would be, but that one's obvious. So now I have an extra restriction with driving - not only do I have to be wearing my contacts but I can't drive without a right-side mirror in tact - A and T for ya. Which is just great, cuz for a while my brother's car's right mirror was broken off and my dad never replaced it, so I couldn't drive that car. Dad used that one as an excuse to not take me driving at all for the longest time.

Anyway, the point behind that whole schpeal is that I'm still not totally comfortable with driving, and the more my parents don't take me the worse it gets. You'd think I'd be used to living with this by now, but driving's a whole new ordeal, cuz it's actually ridiculously frightening when someone speeds by your right side and you had no idea they were there. It's also really hard to tell how wide the car is, and backing out's a bitch, cuz I have to completely turn around in my seat to do it properly. Honestly when no one's there to be in the way I much prefer to just use my mirrors, and I'm actually really good at that, cuz my distance perception's quite good for seeing in 2d. So for me to get used to any of that I need to be practicing a lot more. Actually... okay I'm gonna be at my grandparent's for most of the day on Christmas, plus the day after - on the 25th I doubt I'll be able to get out, but on Boxing Day I'm so gonna have one of them take me out for a while. You know I'm totally comfortable with some of my friends driving me around... I can't really say most cuz there are actually quite a few who I'd have to see in action before I trusted them at it, but like B's driven me around on 2 different occasions - it's actually 5 times, if you add it up - and she's a good driver. Now if we both happened to live on the same street and do all the exact same co-curriculars, that'd be just dandy, but it so happens that we don't, so that doesn't help. Btw B thanks for the ride home today, cuz I have no idea how I was gonna get there unless I found someone.

Oh and there's the matter of my car - if I was the oldest I'm sure I'd have my license and a car by now, cuz my brother got my great-grandad's car when he passed away. Of course, T wasn't exactly that eager to get his license, so he waited almost 6 months before getting his permit after he turned 15 and then did the same with his license the next year, but then he wanted it like that, whereas I don't. And besides that car's I think a 94 model, so it's completely falling apart, and by the time I get it (we're supposed to share it this coming summer) when he goes to college I'm pretty sure it'll be dead for good. So I'm left without a car or a license and at this point without even a permit, and it absolutely sucks. If it helps at all, exams are over, and the mass today was nice, and then 12 Days afterwards was pretty funny... except it doesn't.

Weekend Review of Fanfics, Snow, and Dirtiness

2007-12-16T19:45:00.000-06:00

What a weekend... well okay Friday night sucked cuz I was bored out of my mind and couldn't bring my self to do exam reviews and just so tired so I went to bed at like 10 which is really early for me, but before that was good. See Friday was a half day at school, and then I stayed after for 3+ hours with B and we had this lightning bolt idea strike us, after which we set right to work writing our Supernatural/Twilight crossover fanfic. It's a really bad idea to start a new project and get so into it like that right before something else you should be concentrating on, like exams that start tomorrow, but yeah we didn't care. And then her dad took me home which was nice cuz otherwise I'da been stranded. Anyway that was Friday. Oh and my dad took the three youngest over to my grandma's to spend the night before the whole St. Charles thing, which my mom wouldn't let me go to since I wanted to do two other parties this weekend and I had exams. Without the other two of the older half of us it woulda been really odd though, so I might as well've stayed behind. And I found out tonight that they didn't go cuz of the weather anyway, so there ya go.

On Saturday I woke up almost 12 hours after I'd gone down, which is also unusual for me cuz I always keep my blinds open for the light to come in, but anyway I'd meant to force myself to finish my geometry review that morning, but I ended up taking a really long shower and fooling around on my computer and playing with my cats instead. At around 1:30/2-ish I realized that my dad wasn't able to take me to K's party at 7 and my first potential ride wasn't able to accomodate me coming over at like 2:30. And also I looked for like half an hour seriously to find that invite cuz I didn't know where the party was, but I couldn't find it. Anyway I called B to ask her where it was and we got to chatting and she ended up being my ride (at this point I had both cats and my laptop on my lap all at once - dk why but that seemed important). So she came over like 15 minutes before I expected her and then we hung around for the wash to finish so I could get my stuff out, and by the time it finally did my entire family was freaking out cuz they all had to leave 1.5 hours early for a mass the archbishop was gonna be at, so we left too and then just hung out at B's for a while before we went to the party. Now the party had the potential of being extremely hugely awesome, cuz the place was really big and nice and it had a good dance floor. Problem was that half the people there were KG's gradeschool friends, and half of them were guys, so we had like three different groups here that never mixed at all, plus a few random younger siblings of people too. And then a few almost-cliques broke off even out of our group, so it was quite segregated. And besides the music wasn't all that great, as in there was a good song here and there but everywhere else it was all rap or bad remixes or the occasional artist I'm just not a fan of, like the Jonas Brothers for instance (there were more but that's just the first one I thought of - don't shoot me if you do like them.) And it didn't help that B and I were the first two there either. So we had some fun dancing for a while and spent some time just talking to KA and Jem about all sorts of things, particularly about how newly-deemed Naive Bit-rich annoyed us. Anyway we left a little before the thing ended cuz of the weather getting bad. Oh yeah, it started snowing at about 2am Saturday morning and didn't stop until sometime early-ish this morning, except for the half hour or so when it was a mix of rain and sleet. It really wasn't that terrible on the roads, or at least where it was somewhat plowed it wasn't.

So we got back to B's (I just spent the night since my dad didn't want to go all the way out there in that weather at 11 at night and besides she offered, and we were "studying") and watched some youTube vids and did nothing for a while, and then we watched two Doctor Who eps, even though she fell asleep somewhere along the line. In the morning we went to church and couldn't pay attention very well cuz the priest wasn't that motivational, and besides there was no one there and whoever was was mostly old people who couldn't or just didn't sing, and B says the choir could be a lot better than it was today. And the priest also butchered Clint Eastwood lines from Dirty Harry, which was sad. I also picked out about 15 Supernatural references in the course of the mass, but I did a much better job of supressing them and at least attempting to pay attention than I would during a school mass when I'm sitting by A-hawk. So really the only thing we got out of that mass at all was that Clint Eastwood is divine. When we returned we actually did do some stuff along the lines of exam preparation, and then watched some more youTube stuff and went sledding! And I hadn't brought snow stuff with me, so I had to borrow some old stuff and the teal pants were horrendous and B wore these nasty green ones out of pity for me, so we were both wearing very obscure color combinations and we got a picture or two and it was just really funny. And before we actually went sledding we wrote a bunch of things very hugely in the snow, such as Supernatural, Doctor Who, Beware Y.E.D.s!, and Bad Wolf. And then we built ourselves this ramp over these wood planks that stuck out and were in the way, cuz the first time we smacked into em and it was kinda painful, so after that we kept building it up and going down the hill until we got some serious air under us, and it was only like 3 feet off the ground we landed on, which was nearly 2 feet under what we slid off of right before the ramp, but it was still awesome. And the first few times we did it the ramp wasn't packed down well enough so just kind of fell off the end and it was bumpy and woulda been more painful if we were guys and B kept landing on top of me sort of... well okay no not really but we made some dirty jokes out of a lot of things today, so yeah there ya go.

Eventually we went back to her house and got out of our wet stuff and attempted to dry off what we had left, and she didn't want me to say what exactly that entailed but let's just say she enjoyed it way too much. Haha well no but there's the dirty jokes again. So anyway we watched some more Supernatural and Doctor Who vids and then my dad showed up with my two littlest sisters, so I had to turn my iPod up more than usual (which I don't like doing) on the way home cuz I wanted a little bit of peace. And the county'd sorta half-plowed my street late on Saturday morning, but by the time we got to it this afternoon it had ice all over it again, so it was quite interesting trying to get down my hill in one piece. But we made it, and then my mom made us go take our Christmas picture outside by this hideous snowman someone'd built, and usually we dress up a little bit for that cuz those pictures go on our wall for a year before the next ones come up, but she'd waited so long to do it that she just got sick of not being able to get us all together and so made us do it right then. In other words, those pictures are gonna be crappy, and I feel sorry for anyone who has to receive them as Christmas cards (at least I think that's what she said she'd do with em).

That pretty much sums up the excitement of my weekend, cuz after that I was attacked by the evil pms (earlier than expected, which always sucks out loud), and ibuprofen and advil and all that just generally doesn't work on me at all unless I totally overdose on it, but I'm not a druggie like that so don't worry I wouldn't, which in turn means I got to suffer for like 2 1/2 hours and try to do exam reviews to take my mind off of it (which is just sad). However after dinner it allayed a lot, so right now I'm not in half as much pain as I was a little while ago. And I realize it's taken me a while to write all this, so it was even longer ago than that. But anyway, I'm about 3/4 of the way through my geometry review, and then I just have to attempt to memorize a bunch of Latin stuff cuz I don't know what else to do for that one. And I'll be totally BS-ing the history one on Tuesday too, and chem and lit don't bother me as much but still wish me luck. I'm sure if I fail anything too terribly you'll be the first to hear about it.

3.08 A Very Supernatural Christmas

2007-12-14T17:53:00.000-06:00

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

I'm in desperate need of catching up here, and I can't get on youtube cuz it's blocked (and proxies don't work cuz I can't update my flash player cuz I'm not administrator), and google video won't even give me the option of playing it on there, so I'm gonna try this and see if it works so I can finally watch the thing! And it doesn't help that the cw site won't post the ep until Monday either....
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Okay this is just not working at the moment, so when I get a reply from someone I emailed about it I'll be back to attempt to fix it. In the meantime, I'm left here to sulk.
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Haha, YESH!!!! I got it to work, woohoo! Now I just gotta figure out if I can get it in a playlist so it only shows one at a time - these things are rather difficult when you have to get to youtube through a proxy that won't let you sign in.... --- Okay so I can't get it to show up as a playlist, however at least the vids are on here, so BlueRayalex from youtube, I owe you!

Shoulda Been a Better Night

2007-12-13T22:42:00.000-06:00

Monday - not as bad as expected - monologue went fine, only called line once; got called up as first witness for mock trial, that sucked, but really it wasn't that bad since he knew we didn't know what we were doing that early on.
Tuesday - Also not bad; forgot to do the brain test thinger though in geometry, was looking forward to that....
Wednesday - Something was crappy but I can't remember what....
And today, Thursday - being the 13th of December, ie the night of a new Smallville and then the new Christmas episode for Supernatural, it should have been way better than it was. Well the school part of the day was okay: for example we didn't get activity period but I somehow managed to fix up the finals of my and C's religion powerpoint/video and even add a SPN thing at the end before we presented, without getting in trouble for working on it during the beginning of class. I was also appointed Ms O's favorite student in chemistry, cuz I was one of like 4 people in all her classes to do this one worksheet right cuz I followed her directions. And then in study a bunch of us went to get our PLAN results, which were so pointless since I've already taken the ACT 3 times and done better than what that thing said I should do. It also didn't give me any career options, or rather it gave me all of them, so it really doesn't help me very much. Oh and in geometry we had a test and then still some time after everyone was done, but Mrs. F didn't notice we were all done untill we didn't have time, so we still haven't done that brain test thinger - she even told me to remind her to do it right after break, so I wrote it in my planner. Or I'm doing that now....
Anyway, let's get to the interesting stuff. After school my bro T was supposed to pick me up, but he was like 20 minutes late cuz he had a flat and had to change it and then took the long was here cuz he didn't wanna take the highway on the spare. But he stops at the steakhouse up the street to supposedly check something on the car, when really he wants to talk to his girlfriend who happened to park there. So I eventually had to walk there from school, which really wasn't bad but very inconsiderate on his part, and then we didn't even leave for another 40 or so minutes cuz they had to chat about absolutely nothing. So when I finally get home it's after five, and I'm a little worried cuz no one's left yet for their stuff (if the house had too many people in it there's no way I'd get away with watching my shows). But by 6:15ish my mom finally left and she was the last one, and then half an hour later the pizza gets here (I didn't even know she'd ordered it). So I'm about to go downstairs right before 7, when my dad comes it and complains about the usual imperfections of the house, and he didn't leave the kitchen till like 7:18 or so, when I was finally able to get to the basement for the tv. Well I got nearly all the way through Smallville (missed like 1 minute at the end) when he came home again from wherever and yelled down the stairs that he'd lock the tv again if I wasn't upstairs studying for exams (psht right like I did that at all). Well I went upstairs after the third yell, to put my computer down and then go back down for some stuff for an extra credit thing I gotta do by tomorrow. While I was down there I caught about 5 minutes of the ep, except it didn't help since they were director's cut moments so I'd seen them both already. And then my mom came downstairs, and I dk when she got home but it really didn't help the situation, since there was no way I'd get away with watching it with them both right there. So I took my stuff upstairs and called A so she could dictate the ep to me as it happened. All I can say is thank Dean for spn.tv spoilers, cuz if it weren't for them I woulda had absolutely no clue what was going on.
So I pretty know that whole ep now, except for mostly individual lines, but I never really saw it. And A tried to tape it for me once I called her but afterwards the vcr tried to eat her tape, so let's hope it still works tomorrow when she gives it to me. Honestly though, other than that whole tv thing there really wasn't any parental crap, which is again extremely rare and unusually peaceful. Oh wait, then there's the whole thing with my power cord - okay I don't know when or how but somewhere along the line not too long ago my power cord acquired this small rip in the plastic casing right behind the part that plugs in to my laptop. Well I figured out how to still make it work, and it's been fine at least for me since then. Except at some point tonight I realized my laptop wasn't charging, and then I tried everything under the moon (it's nighttime now, duh) to get it in a position to where it would work, but to no avail. So now battery's almost dead, though thankfully I do have the spare. Let's just hope it can get through to tomorrow when I can borrow someone else's cord before I get a new one. And I heard that we might have to pay for those now, like they don't fall under warranty anymore (which is dumb cuz we got these things with their warranty 1.5 years ago). So if we do have to pay for that and it's more than like 5 bucks then you can be sure you'll hear about my parents blowing a fuse when they hear about it.
And my last thing for the night - I don't mean to sound conceited at all, since this'll be the third time I'm saying this, but I'm so excited I'm B's new beta reader/editor for her Doctor Who fanfics. I did have to make a new ff.net account, which sucks cuz I dk what happened to my old one, but I can deal with that. And then she gave me two shout outs already so I thought I'd give her one - ... Hey B! I'm loving the stories, and we still gotta get together over Christmas break so I can catch up on more DW, among other things we must do, like our SPN season 2 marathon (and actually do it this time!). So yeah, I think that's all for now. I if think of anything else of importance I'll come back with it at the end of this post... like right here--- :)

The Stress Piles Up

2007-12-09T23:39:00.001-06:00

And I thought last weekend was hectic.... Okay so on Friday I tried to force myself to do my geometry exam review and ended up doing like 2 questions and I don't even know what else all night. We were going to go to my grandma's to spend the night and then spend a good chunk of Saturday in St. Charles for that whole historic thing, which we've gone to for the last two or three years now before Christmas. But my brother T called her and somehow persuaded her to change it to next weekend, since apparently now he wants to go and he had something else going on on Saturday, so yeah you'll hear about that next week. Anyway I took the opportunity to catch up some on sleep, and I slept in till like 10:45 when my dad was yelling at me to get up cuz apparently we're going to noon mass. Don't bother to tell me that the night before, especially since for things like church the six of us all have to decide when we're each getting up to coordinate the shower. But of course not, so I actually ended up going without, and as bad as it felt I dealt with it thinking I could come home and shower. But while we're at church I discovered I had another retreat planning meeting at 2, so so much for that. And on the way home my dad was being all dictator-y and telling us all that we were his for the rest of that afternoon so we could scrub the whole house spotless, cuz you know it's not inevitable or anything that with 8 people and a bunch of pets the place ain't gonna be clean all the time, no.... And T had decided that after mass he was gonna take a bunch of youth group people out to Taco Bell for lunch before the meeting. Well of course I couldn't go, cuz he didn't save me a seat in his own car as usual and then I didn't have money for it anyway, so I asked my mom if either she or Dad could take me back up to church after I'd eaten and whatnot. But that one just made her mad (even though she was going that direction anyway at that time), and her being mad totally set my dad off and he screamed at me (I really mean that, he actually screamed) and told me to find a ride. So I called around and found one person who lives close by but didn't have a ride either cuz her dad was going somewhere. I told my parents about that - bad idea - and they both got even madder and had this shouting match over who was gonna do it even though they both had something more important to do, which neither of them did I might add. Anyway the girl heard that over the phone and told her dad who said he didn't mind being late for his thing if it meant he could keep her from riding with my parents in that state, and he'll take me too. So she tells me that since my parents were mad her dad would do it, and as overdramatic as the whole situation was, that one somehow set me off and I totally broke down. I absolutely hate it when that happens, cuz there's just no convincing my parents of anything, so it just makes me seem weaker in their eyes, and then there's nothing I can do and my siblings aren't exactly a supportive bunch, so I'm pretty much left on my own when that happens, and it sucks.
Okay I had my iTunes on shuffle and it played "My Wish" by Rascal Flatts and then "Stupid Boy" by Keith Urban as I wrote that part, and yeah I know that was really random but also very appropriate so I thought I should throw it in. So after all that, we had the meeting and we actually got some stuff done at it for once, and then we just stayed for mass again so we wouldn't have to go today. And then afterwards T and some others were gonna go to that same neighbor girl (M)'s house for a partyish thing, and I wasn't invited but I was riding home with all them. I thought T was gonna humiliate me by driving me home and then going to M's, but instead he drove to her house and then told me to walk home. As if my family could get any more dysfunctional - your siblings are supposed to be on your side, aren't they? Cuz what's the point of having five if none of them will fight for you? *sigh* anyway M decided to be nice and tell me I could stay since I was already there (sounded like pity to me), and we ordered pizza and watched Hairspray and played Guitar Hero and fooled around a bunch. My dad called a few times during the thing to say that we had no right to not be home cleaning, even though T'd told him where we were. Oh and he called us both about 8 times too during mass telling us we had no right to be there. Yeah, my church-freak dad, yelling and us for going to mass... incredible (and stupid), I know.
Anyway, we got home and made it all the way to bed without harm (certainly a first), and then this morning I actually got to sleep in a little bit more and take my time in the shower, since I didn't have to go to mass with everyone else. There was a problem though - both T's and my Christmas concerts were today, his at 1 and mine at 2, and our schools aren't exactly that close to each other. So I'm told that my entire family's going to his, and someone would come get me and take me to mine but then they'd all go see his, which really shouldn't have been a bad thing since it'd be more time away from my family, but it's that whole support thing again, so of course it didn't sit well. But anyway it turned out that two sibs weren't going to either concert so they came home when my mom came for me, and then she did stay at mine, cuz it's just stupid to go from my school all the way out to his for half of his concert and then come pick me up late from mine. And I guess for the most part it went pretty well, except that our pieces were too spaced out so our instruments were all cold every time we went to play them, which means they were out of tune, and we couldn't exactly stop a song to retune in the middle of a concert. Anyway, I got home and tried to do some homework and then got pressed into 1 1/2 hours of cleaning the kitchen, which absolutely sucked cuz the whole time my dad was telling me how I didn't do anything well enough, although I did get away with using the iPod this time. So I've spent the last 2 hours or so working on my monologue (all of which I now have memorized, thankfully) and this project for Lit. So actually I'm almost done for the night, which is real good cuz I'm so tired at this point... I didn't cry at all today but the act does take a lot out of you, and I don't think I'm fully recovered from yesterday, and plus my monologue's kind of emotionally draining as well, since I'm supposed to be laughing the whole time, but I can't cuz it's just not that funny. Whatever though, the teacher won't have my script so I'll be okay with what I have - now I just have to write and memorize my intro. Oh and there's a slight chance that the ice tonight could be bad enough to cause them to call off school tomorrow; the chances are slim but I'll stay hopeful, just cuz tomorrow's already gonna be a crappy day. Let's hope the rest of the week winds down a ton, especially since exams start next Monday....

Back to Where We Started [EDIT - The Golden Compass]

2007-12-05T23:09:00.000-06:00

I can't wait till tomorrow, cuz I need release now, so I'm actually starting this on Wednesday night, though I won't post it till Thursday to keep with the pattern (which I fear I may break soon out of sheer frustration with things like the day before blog day... okay that made sense to me anyway). So tonight: I have hardly any homework, yet I have a ton. Still gotta explicate a poem for lit and figure out my entire argument for this mock trial in history tomorrow, and then I need to memorize and block 2/3 of my monologue by Monday and we're supposed to do this big packet in Latin but we're going over it in class (supposedly - you don't know my latin teacher) and I'm so confused with this chapter anyway... plus exams are in 1.5 weeks and I have to do just about everything on all the reviews still, half of which we haven't even gotten yet. And there's this other late thing I have to turn in by tomorrow but I'm so ashamed of myself for not having it done yet I can't even say what it is. Oh and I kind of really need this extra credit for lit, but I have no idea when I'm supposed to make the thing, or what to make yet... okay so there's the school stress part of it. Now to add family life to it, my parents are freaking out at me for every little thing again, and my dad's been spying on my grades online again, and both parents and two sisters are sick, so pretty much all I can do at this point is not sleep in my own room and pretend I'm not suffering... I don't even know why I feel as bad as I do, cuz my situation is no where near as bad as it could be; I just feel like crap... probably because I've gone so long without it; I'm so thrown off from the normal track that it's getting to me.

---Thursday---
Man, I just had to add in that last line on my last post, about how I hoped I'd still have happy things to talk about when this one came around. So of course, things are back to their crappy selves. I did get lucky in that our trial in history got pushed off and we had a sub for lit, so it didn't matter that I hadn't finished either of those, partly because my computer wouldn't let me get on Word last night. I have no idea why, but I used that as my excuse to go to bed, as I'm incredibly sleep-deprived these days. Oh and the plastic casing for my power cord is ripped in one spot, so I'm lucky to even have my computer plugged in right now - especially since we apparently have mice running around that could chew it up (my cat just came in here with a young one and she's so proud of herself - she lets it run around and then catches it again, and it's so cute I'm just gonna let her have it). Anyway, my dad's being an ass and blocked the tv again, so I didn't get to watch the SPN rerun and had to do all my sister's chores instead. And then he yelled at me for talking on the phone, when I really was talking about homework (for however short of a time that was), and he threatened to take it away again. I had to do the vaccuuming and the entire kitchen without music too (I can't stand the silence) cuz I was afraid he'd see my iPod and find some excuse to take that too, as he frequently does.
Anyway, I might 'edit' this post tomorrow, or else I'll just be back Sunday. Hope you have a good week to look back on, and have a good weekend. *trying to be hopeful*

--Friday--THE GOLDEN COMPASS
I couldn't bring myself to mess up the pattern, but I needed to write about this a bit, so here ya go. I've heard a lot of controversy about this movie, and I find it odd that no one really condemns the His Dark Materials series but they all hate the movie before they even see it (okay I know there's the whole killing-God thing, but again I'm in no position to comment on that before I read them). Now I haven't seen it yet, but I was just reading an article in the newspaper about it, and it aggravates me beyond belief. Let's start with this extremely appalling quote: "Some Christian groups have suggested that, like the Harry Potter products that are marketed to the same young audience, The Golden Compass glorifies the occult." First off, that HP thing is total crap; Those books/movies do nothing of the sort. The whole series is about the fight between good and evil, and of course good wins in the end, so how on earth it glorifies the occult I have no idea. Obviously there's going to be stuff in there about people worshiping a false god, that is the Death Eaters working for Voldemort, but you get that with every religious view. And of course there's so-called "bad" creatures in it, like animagi (people that can turn into animals) and giants and dragons, but that's just mythology and fiction - you're perfectly entitled to write about those things when you produce a fantasy series like HP, so I don't understand at all where this "glorifying the occult" thing comes in.
The next quote I should mention is this: "The central theme of the story is the conflict between knowledge and authority. So it's not surprising that some authority figures are trying to suppress knowledge by urging a boycott of a film they haven't seen." I love the fluidity behind this one, because that's my dad to a T. I think anyone who questions this movie or its religious validity should see it for themselves and form their own opinion - it's the people who are telling you not to that are scared they're wrong. We all know that the most fullproof way to make sure everyone reads a certain book (as also depicted in Harry Potter, I might add) is to ban the thing. So with everyone telling me flat-out that this movie is bad or that the books would be bad if you read them, it just makes me more inclined to see it. And besides, it's pretty much, as one other article puts it, "Harriet Potter and the Chronicles of the Lord of the Golden Compass," and the very awesome Ian McKellan voices a main character - don't tell me your interests haven't been peaked by this point. I know I had a small discussion with two or three others about this a little while ago, so if any of you *ahem*B*coughcough* still want to see it, let me know.
There certainly are a few other bits I'd love to mention, but I can't really say much else until I see the movie. However I don't want to keep anything from you, so feel free to read the full articles I read (there's two parts) here and here and let me know what you think.

Kicking Off December (With a Bang)

2007-12-02T22:02:00.000-06:00

So it's December, the month of Christmas and New Year's and exams and all sorts of excitements... to kick it off, as promised, I have a party and dance recital and some other stuff to tell about. The party on Saturday was for B's birthday and (this sounds real odd since she's really the only one who reads these these days - and yeah so did that, but anyway) it was a hollywood theme dealio, so I dressed up like Bob Fosse. Really it kinda sucked since I don't fit into my real good Fosse costume anymore, as it was from like 5 or 6 years ago, so I just improvised. wouldn'ta been so bad if K hadn't copied my idea (we'd talked about it) and come in with a better costume than me... oh well though, it was fun. And turns out we didn't have the huge ice storm we where expecting that night, so A wasn't able to stay over at B's afterwards for nothing. Anywho I finally saw a bunch of Doctor Who episodes, which I know makes B happy cuz I'm totally into it now - found myself surfing the website even. After a good bit of that we walked around the mall and went to Taco/Hut and Best Buy, cuz B's got her license and I don't (which is sad, but I don't feel like going into detail right now so maybe you'll hear more about that later), and apparently I'm a great influence when it comes to parking. Yeah that was a fun day. And after they took me home I showered (aren't you proud :P) and then went to my grandma's, cuz it's this big deal to decorate her tree, even though the usual relatives from Louisiana couldn't come up this year... yeah that was long and drug out, kinda boring since there was no one extra to talk to. Eventually I called A (cuz she was supposed to call me back after I'd called her to tell her about this really awesome happening in the car - Bad Moon Rising came on the radio and it was awesome, until we realized we might get hit by a semi... yeah more SPN for ya :) and we talked for a while about the random movie she was watching... we tend to do that a lot. Anyway today was our winter dance recital, which usually sucks cuz there's no rehearsal for it and the number's aren't as well rehearsed, and none of the competition numbers are ready yet so they're not in it. However only the first show was really bad, which was good since B came to the second (A ran into some difficulties with coming). There were like 8 random dances in the beginning and then the huge production of the Nutcracker, in which I was in the party and snow scenes, and then as the Snow Queen I had two more scenes that involved a lot of hardcore (and very painfull, by the end of the second show) pointe dancing, but it was fun. And we went out for ice cream afterwards, and just chatted... okay I just realized how weird it is that I just reitereated my entire weekend when B's the only one who reads this anymore, and she was there for like the entire thing... and I'm still talking about it in third person too, which is also weird. I guess if you're not B and you're reading this then drop me a comment so I can laugh at myself haha. :P Anyway... I seem to like writing big chunks of entries lately instead of breaking them up and making them even longer than they already are... I should try one once where I use im language and see how much shorter it is, if at all.... Okay I'm about done here, which is probably good since I'm just now getting to homework - you can see I've been busy all weekend - thank Dean I barely have any, and I have study first tomorrow, yay! And, since I was so busy all weekend, I didn't really have to deal with any crap from my parents at all, which is totally amazing and rare beyond belief. Well there was the fact that I had to tell my dad the party started at 7 cuz I knew he'd never leave on time (it started at 7:30) - we still didn't leave till 7:15, which was really okay, but he didn't know that. Oh and he didn't trust B driving me around, since she's only had her license for 6 days now (I told him 2 weeks on Thursday when he asked - at the time it was 2 days), so I told him we walked to the mall (it's down the street anyway) and didn't mention the other stuff. All in all it was definitely a good weekend, especially compared to the week preceding. Now I just really hope Thursday's post doesn't break the happy chain.

Last one for November

2007-11-29T21:49:00.000-06:00

I've officially had this blog for an entire month and 1 day now, and my book has yet to get anywhere. Well I have some stuff, but with the dramas of high school and dance taking up all my time and paranoid control freak parents and 5 siblings to deal with, I really don't have a lot of time to work on things. And I'm still trying to decide if I should stick with the regular posting or just do it whenever something comes up.... Anyway, I thought I'd start us off with a rundown of the past few days. Let's see, I had a lit essay due on Monday (that I couldn't do until Sunday night cuz I didn't have the sheet that said what we could write about) and a dumbass history essay due Wednesday (that had absolutely no relevence to anything we're doing in class, except for like a day and a half). Also we have our acting monologues coming up, which I'm scared about cuz I know I have the wrong kind of monologue but it's kinda late to change it now, and then we were introduced to our research essays in lit on Wednesday. Pretty much as bad as it can get when it's not a test-in-every-subject week (which tends to happen a lot this year). Also I have a huge Latin test thinger tomorrow, and I have no idea what to study cuz she said it would be a 10 question quiz but then she told us we had to know like everything we've ever done before, each thing individually. So I'm definitely scared for that. Oh and I have a party tomorrow night followed by a sleepover and then hanging out with friends on Saturday, and then that night I have this whole Christmas-tree decorating thing at my grandma's, and Sunday's our dance recital, which is two shows, and I happen to have a pointe solo in it (we're doing the Nutcracker and I'm the Snow Queen), so I don't know when the heck i'm supposed to do homework this weekend... thank Dean I only have a geometry test to worry about on Monday, as that's one of my better subjects this year. Oh and as for tonight, I think my dad's set a record - he only yelled at me twice, and that was making me clean up my sister's huge cooking mess in the kitchen, and I didn't even eat anything she made... it would've been much better if we'd've had a new ep with SPN, but one can never have too much of a good thing... in my case I'm lucky enough to have made it out of the basement without my dad seeing my laptop, cuz that in itself would have raised hell around here (and for no real reason either; it's just my dad being his abusive control-freak self). So here's to a better weekend, which you'll hear all about come December.

Randomness

2007-11-25T16:00:00.000-06:00

I have nothing of major importance to say here, so here we go!
Mood: upbeat
Music: Supernatural playlist! (and other random Styx songs I just added to iTunes)
Should be doing: lit essay, and history essay outline
Instead doing: email, listening to songs I don't have on google video, playing with this
Accomplishment: upped Limewire List to 80 songs (gotta get that back...)
Disappointment: Was trying to make a SPN quiz thinger but it won't work right
What I did yesterday: taking care of neighbor's dog cuz sister is incapable, went to first Luke 18 team planning meeting (we got like 2 things done, and it was 2.5 hours long), and went to fancy-ish dinner at my grandma's for my grandpa's birthday (which is today). Also raced dad home by taking the long way around and speeding lots (I wasn't driving, my brother was).
Comments: Look outside, just look at it - it needs to snow!!! Come on, sky, just do it already!

Oh and Happy Birthday B. :)

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T21:42:00.000-06:00

Today was rather uneventful, since only 5 people came over; my aunt and uncle with 4 cousins went to Kansas City to be with my uncle's family this year, my aunt and uncle with 3 cousins went to Colorado for that uncle's family, and my uncle and last cousin went deer hunting down in Texas, although that aunt did come up (her and my uncle've split up). So it was the eight of us and 2 grandparents, one other uncle, and a great-aunt and -uncle. Not a lot of release from the normal terribleness of my parents, I will say. And last year my dad's parents came over after the whole dinner thing, and then we went home with them and spent the night there, and we went out for lunch and shopping the next day, but this year they didn't do that; they just had dinner with my dad's two sisters and called us to say happy thanksgiving. So I had to put up with my parents and siblings all day. Me and my sister M actually got along really well and goofed around a bit after dinner, but that was about the only good thing that happened. Otherwise, my mom called me a bitch and my dad said I had issues (in front of the great aunt and uncle, no less), and my brother threw a baseball at me and hit me square in the side of my arm. As bad as it still hurts, sadly it didn't bruise, so no one would have any reason to get mad at him for it. And yes I realize those are terrible standards, but what else can you do in my situation? Oh and to top it all off, there was no Supernatural episode.... Sorry about the negativity, but I really don't have a lot to be thankful for here. At any rate I hope your holiday was better than mine.

Homecoming

2007-11-18T16:54:00.000-06:00

I'm going to get this off my chest before I go into the happier stuff, just cuz I can't leave it out and if I put it after this then you'll never want to come back and read anything I post again. Anyway here's the long and short of it. The writer's strike, it has been announced, will indeed affect our beloved Supernatural. Production of the show ends December 5th, and the show will remain out of production untill the strike ends. So we were already gonna get reruns this week and next week, and then there were to be two more new eps before the Christmas hiatus and then 3.10 was to air either 01/10 or 01/17. I think they might get one more ep done between now and 12/05, but then after that it's all reruns till who knows when. I died when I found that out... no seriously I couldn't feel my pulse. I don't know what to do either, since we can promote the show but we can't do anything about the strike. We should all send letters to The Powers That Be and hope they fix this whole deal before we run out of time to finish out this season in May.

Now that that's out there, let's attempt to dwell on something more pleasant, shall we? So homecoming was great. There were 12 of us in my dinner group, and despite the fact that there were 9 girls and only 3 guys, it wasn't awkward or anything at all; in fact it was probably more fun than it would have been if it were more even. Really I think the most awkward thing all night was that all the girls and N and T's date were all under 5'5" or 5'6", but then C's like a foot taller than any of us, so really it was just amusing when the guy would come around and try to take pictures of our group (he was all over us - I swear he came back 18 times) or just when we'd do a circle slowdance or something. Anyway O'Charley's wasn't to shabby, and then the dance was amazing. I mean they did play an aweful lot of 80's songs, about 1/4 of which I didn't know, but you can still interpretive dance as you hear the lyrics; it's just more awkward that way, which makes it fun so yeah. And the dj, one of our teachers actually, totally had this AC/DC wig and it was great, and then he started to play "Wheel In The Sky" by Journey but he stopped it to do the homecoming court. I don't know why he had to do that right when he started the best song of the night, but A and I went up there to ask hime to play it again and he said "I'll see if I can work it in"... which didn't happen and was certainly a disappointment. It's too bad I don't have classes with him, or I'd be all over his case about it. But anyway, it was totally a musical reunion, as 17 of the 18 guys in our cast showed up, and ironically enough I found every one of em except for my brother. And as I took one of em, N, as my date, they tended to congregate at times. I don't know where P's date was, but he pretty much hung around our group the entire time, and he really wasn't drunk, contrary to popular belief. And M did a dance he made up for his school's homecoming about a month ago on stage, and I'm not gonna lie, that was hot. I'm sorry you missed it A - coat check's a bitch! Haha yeah... good times.

And we did in fact end up with enough cars to cart us all from dinner to the dance and then from the dance to F's house for our own little after-party. But F had the last shift of coat check, so we didn't get to her house till about 11:25 (thank goodness it was so close), and then N had to be home by midnight, so we didn't stay for too long, but he lived close too so my dad was there and we dropped N off and then we went back to F's. It was a sleepover for the girls, so the other two guys left and A and I played two rounds of pool (we both suck at it btw) and then we invented this new thing where... okay let's just say it involved flinging pool balls around and it was quite violent, and VERY fun! I still have a hint of bruise on my hand... And then we discovered those floor-rocking-chair things, and holy cow we were both so freaking HYPER!!! And then B woke up, and I don't even know what we did, but it ended up where A and I were squished into this other rocking chair (and we almost tipped it over backwards once, that was hilarious) making SPN parodies to random church songs and then Jingle Bells. Somewhere around 3:30ish the other half of the girls fell asleep, so it was just me and A up talking till I think 5:45, and when we decided to just go to sleep B woke up. And then I'm pretty sure we were both trying to make conversation to keep ourselves up but we were entirely incoherent, so I don't know what it sounded like from B's end, if she remembers any of it, but the little bit I remember cracks me up so bad.

So when I did wake up, cuz B's phone light was in my face, it was 10:11, and by 10:13 everyone else was up, and like 3 seconds later F's dad comes down to say that my mom's here already. I'm all what the heck, and she's all being fake and nice to everyone and acting like I'm some little kid to fuss over just cuz there're 6 other teenage girls around, and yeah neither of my parents have any idea how they're supposed to act around teenagers, especially the girls, so yeah that was unpleasant. And she was in some rush to get home and then leave half an hour early for church, so I pretty much left in my pajamas and barefoot and looking like shit. Thankfully she didn't notice the hole I ripped in the inside of my dress when she carried it out... I gotta fix that at some point. So on the way home my mom tells me she'll take me to the 6pm mass at a different church, cuz I didn't have time to shower and everything and I probably woulda fallen asleep in the middle of it anyway... so I got home and slept for 20 minutes before everyone else left, and it sure was nice to have some time to myself. And somehow my dad didn't notice this morning that I wasn't at mass with all them, so at like 5:35 he totally freaked out that I hadn't been to mass yet. (I told you they were church freaks - see what I mean?) So my mom says she was gonna take me but my dad insists he do it, and the whole ride there he's berating me for how terrible I am cuz apparently I had told him that I was just gonna skip mass... which I never said but honestly I still have a crapload of homework to figure out so it wouldn't really bother me that badly.... Anyway after all that he was half an hour late to pick me up, and it was frickin freezing out there!

Oh and I forgot the part where my mom was driving N and I to dinner, and she was totally lost. It was like 3 streets to keep track of, and I'd already looked up the map and everything so I told her where to go... we were going down L- and I told her to keep going but she knew we had to have gone to far, so about 1/10th of a mile from seeing the place she turns around and goes almost all the way back to the highway, while on the phone with the people to ask them how to get there. F happened to call me at that point, so then B confirmed that I was right, and I told my mom that and she was all you had no idea where you going, I can't believe you're the one who made the reservations and you had no idea... which is total bs cuz when she turned around again it was right where I said it would be... oh and the person she talked to on the phone told her to turn the wrong direction so we were totally on the wrong side of the road when we passed it the first time, and then my mom almost pulled onto another highway trying to turn us around again. So yeah, that one's really not that big of a deal, I just thought I'd throw it out there to give you a taste of my mom, since most of the problem stuff I post about has to do with my dad.

So again, homecoming was great, and N and I decided we're gonna do movies or something on occassion to keep in touch during the off-musical season, which is great cuz after homecoming last year I totally lost touch with the guy, and he was from my gradeschool so it's not like we didn't know each other.... So aside from that beginning heartbreaker, it was pretty much a good weekend! For once!

Blurb

2007-11-15T22:39:00.000-06:00

Tis time for my Thursday blurb... and I don't have anything hugely particluar to say. Well no, not exactly true... okay yes now I have something. So about a week ago our principal told us we'd get this Friday (tomorrow) off, just because we've been really busy lately with musical and open house and fall sports and all. And since Smallville and Supernatural are both Thursday night shows, they usually have to be watched in the confines of one's home, while that person kinda/sorta/not really pretends to do homework. But since we're off tomorrow (and yes we've been looking for one of these occassions for some time now just for this), A and I were going to get together at her house to watch the show and then do this mini sleep-over deal - it's mini cuz I would've had to leave at 7am cuz her mom had to work. Anywho, at school yesterday T suggested that instead why don't A and I come over to her house and spend the night and watch the shows, cuz then we'd be able to stay longer the next morning. Well I called A about it but her mom wasn't home yet, and we seriously talked on the phone for about 3 hours cuz her mom was like really late getting home (and boy was that entertaining). But when she did get home, I got an email saying it was a no for A, which meant going back to our original plan (with me getting picked up at 7am).

But then this morning... okay so I woke up 20 minutes late cuz my snooze button doesn't work right, so I told my brother he wouldn't have to bring me to my carpool's house and I'd just have her pick me up, but he somehow heard 'what time are we leaving' out of that and apparently waited around till 6:45 cuz I was in the shower (we'd normally leave at 6:20 on Thursdays). By that time he just left, and on the way out he told my dad that I needed a ride, so when I got out of the shower at like 7 (had to wait on him and a sister) my dad was screaming his face off about how he was gonna be late for work and it was all my fault and blahblahblah. He left without ever letting my explain what I said, and then he called me two minutes later to complain some more and then me that I'm grounded to kingdom come and I can't go to A's, which absolutely sucked cuz I didn't even do anything wrong in the first place!

Oh and there's another thing; if I were to go to A's I wouldn'ta been there till about 7, cuz my dad made me an appointment at 5:30 - with a shrink! Can you believe that my dad, of all people, signed me up to go see a shrink!?! Cuz apparently I'm screwed up and I totally have the wrong outlook on life, the universe, and everything... and we were late anyway cuz my brother drove me there, which meant my dad sat and talked to her for 15 minutes about how horrible I was. And lemme tell you it did not go well. Not that we broke the peace or anything, but I really don't open up to people very well if I don't have absolute trust in them, and with her telling me off constantly I can just say that there were an aweful lot of cuss words running through my mind the whole time to help me control myself (and they really do help, amazingly). So yeah we had to get gas and pick up siblings from dance on the way home, so I didn't get home till 7:30, but somehow in the car I managaed to persuade him to let me watch my 2 holy hours of tv in a week, so I went straight down to catch the second half of Smallville (I've been filled in already with what I missed), and then Supernatural after that - which was fawesome by the way!!! I'd go into detail but then I might be here for three more hours, so I won't. :)

Anyway, after that I was talking to B and A on the phone for like an hour, part of which was during Supernatural, but afterwards my dad came down saying he got an email from my latin teacher saying she didn't get two assignments that I did turn in. So I had to deal with the whole restarting of my computer a thousand times to resave everything on my school side and then email it to my dad on my home side, which is stressful enough without having to hear both of my parents scream at me the whole time about how I'm a failure at life - yes thanks, is it that apparent? *rolls eyes* So okay that really could've been worse, cuz my dad could've looked at my computer and seen the address for this blog (it's bad enough that he found out about it, I don't know how, and also he has a facebook, or so someone told me), not that it doesn't suck already. Why my parents have to be such self-centered invalids I have no idea... and yes there was something else of relevance to say but it's slipped my mind, so maybe I'll be back later with it.

[Edited Friday 11/16] Hey I remembered what it was. :) On Thursday we had this field trip for Acting, where we went to a college to see the play Hedda Gabler. It was really good, and the ending was SO Supernatural-ish! It was great! I don't remember exactly why I wanted to include that, I just remembered what it was... oh and our homecoming dance is this Saturday, and yes the guy from musical is going with me, and we have everything set up - that's dinner and most of the carpooling and the after party, so it'll be great. I'm so excited! And on Sunday you'll get to hear all about it!

Change in Direction

2007-11-11T14:49:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking the last few days about why I started this - it was for my novel (I made that decision a while ago), which was in need of some new thoughts. However, after going through my notebook, I had the thought that I could change directions and make the whole thing a journal. But, after (finally!) watching the movie Eragon and then browsing through alagaesia.com and looking at anything and everything related to JK Rowling at imdb, I realized that that would never work, since I always wanted to be a fantasy writer. And then yesterday I was looking for something else when I pulled out the first book in the Children of the Lamp series, in which I had left an envelope postmarked Royal Mail London, 14/12/05. For privacy matters, I won't say what was in the envelope or who it was from, but it got me thinking. So I went to the author's website and discovered his tips for creative writing, which was not there last time I had looked at the site (granted, that was some time ago). I found the document very intriguing, and it gave me the realization that there were some things I needed to change if I ever wanted my novel to really get going.

So back to my thoughts about journaling, I still keep my handwritten journal, as much as I can anyway given time constraints, and I still plan on using this blog for larger or more important entries and feedback (more of that would be appreciated :). However, my general outlook on the whole project has changed, so instead of my original thoughts of maybe posting my character synopses and or some of the scenarios, I'm going to deprive you of that luxury and keep them all to myself. That way I can get your thoughts straight from your head anyway, as opposed to them being swayed by anything I might've said previously, should you choose to respond. And I, like another author I'm fond of (and partially because this happened to me), would willingly recognize and maybe treat my original corresponders, once I get off the ground with this whole thing. So seriously, I need your input! I guess what I'm asking at this point is how to use the stuff that's happened to me that I've journaled about in here in a novel, like what parts I could include to change the scenes up a bit but not completely... okay it's kinda hard to explain, but basically I just want any thoughts that might come to your head as you read - type em up in a comment or an email and send em to me! Thanks so much to those of you who already have!

While I'm at it, I might as well just list the authors who're my biggest inspirations, and if you feel so inclined feel free to email me and we can chat about them and their books. Don't worry, I really do enjoy doing that. Anyway, we have the inevitable, the very J. K. Rowling so revered(Harry Potter series), and a close second goes to J. R. R. Tolkein (Lord of the Rings series), the genius. Also P. B. Kerr (Children of the Lamp series, as formerly mentioned), and Christopher Paolini (Inheritance SERIES - not trilogy!), C. S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) and Lemony Snicket (The Series of Unfortunate Events). There certainly are more, but if you have not read any of those I highly suggest you do, and all but one of them have movies that go along with them. Granted, several of the movies (okay all of them except for LotR) terribly butcher their corresponding books, but for what they do include they're all really good. So maybe those'll give you a better idea of what I'm going for. I know it's a long shot, as all I've written so far are a few short stories and mounds of poetry, but I have confidence.

Woes of a Thursday

2007-11-08T22:10:00.000-06:00

Oh, what a shame, what a rainy ending givin to a perfect day...

It started out just fine, being a half day and all. I mean my brother took too long in the shower and we left late, but we were leaving really early anyway, so that didn't matter. And then after school I went to Subway with F and then to her house, and we actually studied Latin for like 2+hours - we have this test tomorrow and we still don't understand the chapter, but I'm more prepared than usual, so I guess that's something. And when they brought me home both of my parents were gone, and there were two pieces of pizza left in the box on the counter. Thought it was great, but I shouldn't've let myself do that.

My dad walked in right before 7, when I intended to go down to the basement with my laptop to watch Smallville, but then he hung around in the kitchen for a few minutes and I got anxious. Luckily, he left to go pick up the two sisters that were at dance, and I got down there. I even brought my copy of Macbeth and my planner and opened up a notes powerpoint so it would look like I was getting something done in case I got caught, which is dumb cuz I should be allowed to watch two hours of tv in a week, but apparently I'm not (and I swear my little brother watches 12 and he never gets in trouble for it). So I got all the way through Smallville uninterrupted, and while emailing J about the show as we both watched it. And a few minutes into SPN I called A so we could talk about it as stuff happened, and it was such a good ep too! Or at least what I saw of it... cuz like 15 minutes before it was done my dad comes downstairs, starts yelling his head off at me, completely ignores the same brother and the last sister who were down there with me (who both made a mad dash up the stairs and didn't get screamed at). So as he's locking the tv, cuz you know it's such a crime to watch a good show once in a while, I grabbed my stuff and went upstairs to tell A to take notes for me. And might I add that when they came on tv I've only seen one whole episode this season, and a part of only two - the rest I've missed completely, cuz of him.

By the time my dad comes upstairs, the 8-year-old sister is screaming about who-who-knows-what (I'm pretty sure there was blood involved, but it can't've been that bad) so then my dad's screaming too, and he's all pissed off again cuz I don't know why, but he sees me still on the phone and yells that I'd better get off it or I won't see it again. As stupid as it was, I did, and told A to get on email. Anyway, I know what I missed in the ep, though I'm definitely not happy about it since the cw doesn't put the SPN eps up online till Mondays now, and since I can't get on youtube I'm restricted to google video, which isn't all that reliable since everyone puts em up on youtube and it doesn't find those very well. Anyway, I still have to figure out that Latin stuff and do a bajillion sentences in this review section we have cuz we don't know which ones'll be on the test (I do have the answer key though, and it's quite tempting, lemme tell ya), plus I have two outlines due tomorrow for lit plus two separate research things for history... oh boy. The next two weeks are shortened considerably, and moreso for my acting class since we're spending next Thursday at a college play, but I have no idea how I'm gonna get there. Oh, and my mom came up with a new one when she was talking about me to my dad in the kitchen - apparently I was too busy "dicking around" on my computer to get any homework done, even though I've been working on stuff all afternoon... and she keeps threatening that I won't be able to go to homecoming if my room isn't clean and my homework's not done, but she stresses the room thing more and I can't do that when I'm trying to do hw and I can't do that when I'm getting yelled at... at least I hid my phone this time, so I still have that.

Just walk away, ain't no use defendin words that you will never say
Now that I'm sittin here thinkin it through,
I've never been anywhere cold as you
lyrics from "Cold As You" by Taylor Swift

Illusions

2007-11-04T21:52:00.000-06:00

These past three days have actually gone pretty smoothly, to my surprise. I thought after all the Halloween drama there’d be a lot more crap, but really there wasn’t. It was basically just three normal days. Granted, I didn’t do anything extraordinary that involved hanging out with friends, even though T did ask a group of us to go with her to see a musical at a local place and I had to back down before I could even ask my parents. But the show was at 8 tonight, so simply the fact that it’s a school night and I’d be out late (and I'd have to figure out rides) almost guaranteed me a no, even if I had asked, especially cuz my dad likes to make up stories like he does. Apparently I’ve been grounded for some time now, and I have no idea what it’s for. It’s actually not for the Halloween thing, which does surprise me; he says I’ve been grounded for a while. Well whatever I did this time, it’d be nice if I at least knew about it before I attempted to make plans with people. And, going back to my original point, playing my flute in our school’s instrumental ensemble for an hour at open house this afternoon does not count as an extra activity.

So anyway, I caught myself thinking of how odd it was that I didn’t get screamed at enough to care about it in the last few days, and almost being thankful for it. But I caught myself before making that mistake again; see in my position you learn to definitely not enjoy the few good moments unless there’s some guarantee behind it, like if I were at my grandparent’s I could be sure I wouldn’t get screamed at and I could always go somewhere else, and my parents would get occupied with someone else so they couldn’t pursue. But when it’s just me and my house, well I’ve learned not to revel in it, cuz it doesn’t last.

So when I pulled myself out of those thoughts just a moment ago, the song “Show Me The Way” by Styx came on my iTunes (I always just play it on shuffle), and when I realized how perfect it was for the moment I had half a mind to type up all the lyrics right here, and really they aren’t that long, but then again that’d be annoying, and I don’t want to mess with copyright infringements, so I won’t. Instead, I have the audio clip, so y’all can listen to it, and really pay attention to the words, cuz I’m sure they have meaning for you too.
"Show Me The Way" by Styx

Note to Readers

2007-11-01T21:37:00.001-05:00

Hey, if any of you reading this happen to recognize my name, either from forums or facebook or AIM or whatever, please let me know you've seen it by leaving a comment (or dropping me an email)! Especially my SPN forum buddies (especially from the CW site) - I miss you all terribly and I'm still blocked off of them, and as you can see from my other posts my dad's not exactly going to just unblock me or change the admin rights back if I ask, so I have no idea if/when that'll all go back to normal... I sincerely hope I don't have to wait till the end of this school year (so they'd get over the whole internet takes time from your homework so you get bad grades bs), though at this point it seems like that'll be the earliest we get back in the game. But anyway, if any of you reads this and recognizes me, then let everyone else know what's going on, especially with facebook, cuz I still have people trying to figure out where the hell I've been for the last *gasp* 5+ months.... Man this sucks out loud! But seriously, tell everyone that my dad's an @$$hat and that's why I appear to have been wiped off the face of the earth. And don't forget to leave comments (or emails)! If it doesn't show up anywhere on here (I can't tell cuz I'm signed in, so of course it does for me), it's just MinxFlamedancer@gmail.com. Thanks so much guys!

Halloween

2007-11-01T15:41:00.000-05:00

Let me start here with my plans for Halloween. So a bunch of friends and I were going to M's house for a party that started at 6, and I was just gonna go straight home with M after school. And then around 11 the party was officially ending, and whoever wanted to could stay for our season 2 marathon of Supernatural, which would go up to around 3 on Thursday since we're off today. And then my brother was gonna pick up A and me to bring A and then me home.

So those're the original plans, right? Now let me tell you how it really went down. On Tuesday I had instrumental ensemble practice from 3:30 - 5, so I just stayed after school. And then R and T's moms usually trade off with who takes them both home, and T's mom takes me home when it's her turn. But I mixed up the days (we hadn't had practice for 3 weeks cuz so many of us were involved in the musical), and R's mom won't take me home for reasons unknown, so I had to call my mom who decided my 13-year-old sister was incapable of watching the stove for 40 minutes for her to pick me up. So she made me wait. Problem is, I had dance at 6:30 that night, and my sister refused to listen to me telling her what I needed when she said she's grab my stuff. They didn't pick me up till 6 and then we had to go straight to dance, and when they arrive I find out that my sister grabbed my bag but completely the wrong kind of tights and the wrong kind of leotard, with no bra or tank and the wrong shorts. Thankfully, I was already wearing shorts I could make do with and a sportsbra and a wifebeater, and my company teacher wasn't there that night so I got away with it. But that's just the beginning.

I come home to discover that my sister's absolutely torn apart my room. Now obviously since I've been so busy with musical for the last month I haven't spent that much time at home, much less really cared about keeping my room clean. It wasn't even that bad, there was pretty much just some stuff piled up in front of my dresser (not hers). So she decides to take every single thing she can find on the floor of my room, including the stuff that goes there and was organized and against the wall or something, plus stuff off shelves and my dresser, and throw it all into laundry baskets - and that includes my clean laundry that my dad had dumped on the floor a day before. So I come home to baskets of stuff, and I can't find anything and it got my really pissed off, and yeah I yelled at her. But she was a bitch about it and just made things worse by continually throwing stuff back in there as I was trying to put things away, and pushing baskets back into the middle of the floor after I'd move them against the wall or whatever. There was yelling, and at one point she wouldn't stop screaming at me so I smacked her to get her to shut up. It wasn't even that hard, but she made a huge deal out of it and my mom got all pissy and tried to shove me against the couch and punch my face. I pretty much prevented her from getting away with it, but she tried all right.

Anyway, the next morning while on the way to my carpool's house, my dad tells me that he's gotta think about my plans for the night cuz he's not sure I deserve to get away from them (just goes to show how incredibly delussional he is). But he never told me I couldn't go, so after school I went home with M as planned. (I learned how to play Guitar Hero, btw.) And I didn't turn my phone on for a while cuz the battery was low, so eventually he calls M's house and yells at me cuz I didn't respond to his email or his phone messages. Um okay, I did check my messages once right after school, and there weren't any, so I turned it back off. (Apparently he left them later than that, but I didn't know about em till he told me.) And I never got his email, cuz they were working on our network so it was being screwy all afternoon at school. And M can attest to that cuz she said she sent me quite a few in the last two periods that I never responded to, cuz I never got them! So now my dad's all mad and makes it out like I'm screwed for life, but he has to talk to my mom first to see 'what my punishment's supposed to be,' and I gotta call him back every 20 minutes till he figures it out. Well that goes on for about 2 hours (me calling and him not having it figured out yet), and I'm doing a real good job of controlling myself too, though his attitude doesn't change. Eventually his phone was turned off a few times in a row (even though he says it was never off - bs) so I just stopped calling cuz people were over and we were having fun. Btw I met B's bf C, and he's pretty cool.

Anyway my dad calls the house again around 10 and says he's on his way and there's nothing I can do about it. W. T. F. So we ended up just not doing the marathon, since me and A are the big promoters of the show and we were gonna be explaining everything to everyone else, and besides neither of us can part with our dvds, and A's mom ended up not letting her go even though she had rides both ways and there was no problem with it. When I called A about it, she was really messed up, and I felt so bad that we were gonna go ahead w/o her, esp. cuz she'd missed the last marathon for season 1 (that was partly my fault for bad communication). The others said they could just watch scary movies and it was okay, even though it wasn't. So my dad comes and I refuse to talk to him, both for fear of losing controll and cuz I just can't (I've never been that close with either of my parents, so we can never just work things out like that cuz they always make it worse than it is). I called A last night to tell her that, but she didn't pick up so I left a message. And then I was all mad and couldn't sleep and didn't have anything better to do, since I'm still blocked off every good internet site on the planet (again, cuz my dad's an ass).

So this morning I woke up later than I meant to and so missed the 8am mass - the other option is 7:30 pm, which conflicts with Smallville and Supernatural, so I hadn't wanted to go to that one; but then I discover the tv's been locked so we can't watch it, and yeah we only have one, so I can't watch the shows anyway - which absolutely sucks since I already had to wait several days to catch up on the last two that I'd missed cuz of musical. But then it wasn't just me, and this time it will be, so yeah it sucks. And looks like I'll be dragged off to church tonight with my youth group, which I'm having some issues with right now so I really don't want to go. Besides we have mass tomorrow at school, so I don't see why that can't just count, but whatever. Oh and my waking up late made me not have time to shower before my ortho appointment, and I still scrubbed my face for 10 minutes but I couldn't get all the marker off (I was Bloody Mary).

So now I'm in heaps of trouble for no reason at all, and my plans are all screwed up; - btw we'd already had to push back that marathon for a month cuz we could never find a good date for us all, and besides Halloween was just too perfect, but nooooo, my parents just have to go screw it all up again - what else is new?

Bad Beginnings (and the real reason for this blog)

2007-10-28T15:33:00.000-05:00

As my first post, I'll introduce you to my life right now. My school's musical (Kiss Me Kate), for which I was on the dancing chorus, just ended, as in our shows were for the last four days, and the after party last night went pretty long so I didn't get home till 3:30 am this morning. So I wanted to sleep in, but my parents were screaming at me to get up for mass (they're serious church junkies - not that it's bad to go to church or anything, but they act like I'll go to hell if I do anything aside from sucking up to them... they're ridiculously paranoid control freaks, so whatever), and I needed to sleep in. We're been having night rehearsals for the last two weeks and 6-7 hour rehearsals on Saturdays for the last six (plus 1.5 - 3 hour ones after school on most days since then), except for the show nights, so I've had no free time and I've been running on minimal amounts of sleep for a while. And now that my homework's all piled up and I have today alone to do it, so it's already stressful enough without them yelling at me for every little thing I never did wrong. And they single me out too. Apparently I'm worse than the 5 of my siblings combined, and I have yet to find out what the heck I ever did wrong in the first place.

As much as this might sound like some stupid little 13-year-old (as my dad still thinks I am) pitying herself and being emo about life, that's not at all what it is. I'm in fact a good bit older than that, and I'm a lot more mature than my parents are. Lemme tell ya, if you're one of those who only has one or two or even no siblings, than you've probably grown up with your parents; like their attitudes have changed as you got older and your attitudes changed. Well my youngest sibling is 6, so my parents still baby us all. So as the intro to my life as a living hell, I just wanna say that my parents are freaks and you will come to hate them, as I have. So for those of you who know me (and I haven't told anyone about this blog yet, so that's kinda creepy), you will understand why I tell you you're lucky if you haven't met my parents, and you really don't want to.

There will also be more fun stuff, cuz I'm going back to dance this week and I'm working on getting that job at the nearby stables, and I asked one of the guys from musical to go to the homecoming dance with me. So as time progresses there will be more normal life stuff to talk about (hey, I didn't call this thing ramblings for nothing - but that just means I talk a lot, not that there's necessarily no relevence).

Oh, and I forgot the main reason I started this thing - I want to organize my life in all its chaos cuz I have a few ideas for a book I want to write (mainly to teach my parents a lesson, cuz they're seriously the worst parents you don't even see on Nanny 911 or whatever that show is). It was originally gonna be a fantasy story, cuz I love that stuff, but it seems all the good ideas have been taken, and I'm having a hard time coming up with my own stuff and not just taking what's already in the books on my list under my profile. So as of late I was thinking of doing more of a teenage drama kinda thing, but I gotta figure out how to make it really good and still incorporate parts of my life without being too obvious. So if anything I say about anything at all gives you a thought (any questions/comments/concerns/hopes/dreams/aspirations/snide remarks are most welcome) then leave a comment or send me an email or something. And I swear if this book ever gets anywhere, I'll definitely leave props for anyone who helps me out in my recognitions page *hint hint*. Thanks for takin' the time to read, and keep comin back, I swear it'll get better!