College and stuff

I'm graduating high school in exactly one week. In one week, an entire chapter of my life will be over. Am I sad? Not really. I'm not really losing anything other than the wonderful daily experience of people not knowing how to properly walk through a hallway and the privilege of having an 'honor card' that displays, in physical form, how far the administration trusts us. (Answer: up to six infraction before you lose privileges like 'wearing jeans occasionally.') Am I happy? Not really. I've enjoyed high school, for all my complaints. Am I scared/excited/nervous? Well.

Hell yes.

I'm about to make one of the biggest changes in my life ever. I'll be moving out of my parents' house. I'll be living with one of my best friends - with someone who I choose to live with, instead of someone I'm obliged to live with. Meanwhile, three of my other best friends are moving to a college three hours away (164 miles away according to Google) and I'll see them at best once a month - less than 5% of what I'm used to. I'm going to lose the security of having 90% of my time scheduled by someone else, and gain the freedom of getting to schedule that time myself. I'm going to have to do things like pay for gas and food for myself all the time. I'm freaking out.

But I'm going to do it. I'm going to rock it. I'm going to send my friends stupid texts once a day. I'm going to enroll in classes that make me happy, that teach me. I'm going to make awesome music. And I'm going to do it on as cheaply as possible, 'cause, you know, poor college student.

Rock on.

Stuff and a Character Interview with Cale and Tammany

First, I have a guest post - a legit essay and everything - on the wonderful blog The Critical Psychopath. So. Go check that out.

Second, I applied for Harvard and Carleton today. Neither have the best music performance programs - or, like, any at all - but I applied. With essays and everything. There's a really big part of me that's freaking the fuck out. Because I'm going to be a legitimate adult, with responsibilities and stuff, in less than a year.

And on top of that, it just sort of hit me today that NaNo is in about nine days. I don't remember much after that revelation, but apparently I froze for several minutes and whimpered slightly. It was reported that I was also mouthing "Ohgodohgodohgod."

That more or less sums up my current feelings.

So I know I posted here a warm-up for the TCWT blog chain. That's not going to happen. All the people who say senior year is easier than junior year are lying liars who lie. I'm having to work far harder this year than I ever have before, which means that even a plot with the silliness of Ada Lovelace's ghost isn't going to be feasible, because it requires thought, effort, and a modicum of research. None of these are things I have in excess this November. So. Instead. My current plot idea is taking a bunch of characters I've thought about before and throwing them into that omphalskeptic favorite - "A Bunch of Friends Hang Out In a Coffee Shop and Don't Do Very Much," or as I like to call it, "[CENSORED FOR COPYRIGHT PURPOSES]". Highly original, I know.

On the upside, my favorite teacher and possible new best friend gave me permission to do NaNo for class credit instead of the normal assignments. So all of a sudden I have forty-five minutes a day to dedicate to NaNo that I've never had before. He might even participate in it, too. So there's a good thing.

But back on the topic of my own NaNovel, I have some characters that I've been sitting on for a while. I have the dynamic between them ready, I know who they are - I just need to send them into action. So, without further ado - Tammany Dreisang and Cale Smith.

• What is your lifelong dream?
• T: To own my cafe, which I've technically accomplished. To have it become a local Place, capital P, not just a Starbucks. To own a first edition signed copy of all of Neil Gaiman's books.
• C: To have a successful band. To not have to be an accountant other than for said band.
• T: And me?
• C: ... Fine.
• How do you feel about your life in general?
• C: Other than wishing I had an actual band, it's not bad. Sometimes a bit lonely, but whatever.
• T: I'm good. I don't really want anything more than what I've got now, except maybe a few more customers. I'm easily contented, I guess.
• C: Except when it comes to the last muffin.
• T: Shut up or I will end you.
• What do you fear most?
• C: Being a white-bread accountant for the rest of my life. And spiders. Spiders are scary.
• T: Teenage vandal hooligans with spray paint coming after the cafe at night and defacing all it's windows with nastiness.
• C: Bit specific, isn't it?
• T: At least it's not spiders. 
• If you could spend a week anywhere in the world, where would it be?
• T: San Fransisco, definitely. 
• C: Can I travel in time, too?
• No.
• C: Then... Sundance?
• Acceptable.
• T: How are you talking to the questionnaire? Is that even possible?
• C: Trade secret.
• What's the worst argument you've ever been in?
• C: Well, there was a nasty political argument that sort of got me exiled from my group of friends junior year of college, but I think the worst would be when I took Tammany's muffin. She would not rest until I had been thoroughly doused in cheez-wiz.
• T: You absolutely deserved it. A once in a lifetime experience - a cranberry triple-chocolate muffin with walnuts, custom-made by my favorite bakery, and you eat it. Idiot.
• C: You covered me with cheez-wiz. You are not the sane one here.
• T: Well, you grabbed the whipped cream and started spraying me back.
• C: Self-defense.
• Who's your best friend?
• C: We just told you about a cheez-wiz and whipped cream fight.  You need to ask.
• T: Yeah, honestly.
• If you knew you were going to meet your true love tomorrow, how would you react?
• T: I'd laugh so hard I'd probably pull something. 
• C: Hey, don't knock love.
• T: Wait, the high and mighty Cale with a soft side? Be still my beating heart. No such thing as true love.
• Final question: How would you react if your friends suddenly no longer wanted anything to do with you?
• C: Ask what took them so long. Go write depressing songs. Maybe move.
• T: Spend the night sobbing. Maybe get falling-down drunk and make some new friends.
• C: I don't think I've ever seen you drunk. No one likes you.
• T: Shut up, muffin-stealer.

I honestly really like these two. They'll be fun to write, at the very least. Next are Jim, Morgan and Nathan.

College Visit!

So as one of you knows, I'm on a college visit to the far off and strange land of Minnesota. It is so far off and strange that we saw snowflakes this morning at the hotel - something that would never happen in Wisconsin. All the natives act surprised, but I'm onto them. This place is odder than it seems.

So I've done a bunch of stuff whilst here at the college I'm visiting. I've done the requisite tour and information session, I've gotten a sweatshirt (I'm wearing it now) and blue and gold rugby socks (unfortunately, I'm not wearing those). The normal stuff.

I'm on an overnight stay, though, so beyond the normal stuff I've also hung around with college students all afternoon, evening, and night. They're fun. We walked the forest trails on campus, hung out with some freshmen, and I learned some choreography for a volunteer dance troupe. Belly-dancing lessons, even only three weeks last year, came in handy. I more or less fell in love with the place.

Then the evening happened, which was interesting until it got late and I went back to my host's dorm room.

Also - I discovered a new allergy, and decided on substance-free housing after seeing students on their way to and from various parties. There are stories behind both of those comments. However, it's late, I'm super sleepy, and I've an interview in the morning, so they will wait for another day. Maybe once I'm actually attending a college.

An Actual Post About Stuff

Hello people. I know there are at least a couple of you out there, because the majority of the hits on this blog are from the US instead of Russia. (On the subject of blog hits, someone got here using the search 'scared I drank mold.' I am, of course, the premier source of information on what to do if you're suffering from mold poisoning. Obviously.) You three are cool.

My musical is going more or less swimmingly. I love it. There's an awesome review here. I'm not mentioned, because I don't have a huge part, but still. And everything said in the article is true, and everyone in the show is awesome (especially some other people who weren't mentioned - Kitty, Claire, and Andrew, you are all too cool). I'm going to be taking pictures of my costumes tomorrow and doing a post with pictures, because the costumes are amazing. And I sort of want to buy the party dress for a Homecoming outfit, just to see how people would react, because I love it.

I'm quite happy right now, is it obvious? I've gotten enough sleep for the first time since dress rehearsals about two weeks ago, so I'm on my own little natural high. Wheeee!

I've discovered during the course of the shows so far that I'm possibly clinically oblivious to certain normally obvious things, like when I'm being flirted at. However, someone is beating me with a metaphorical cluebat, which is appreciated, and I will have updates on that later, I hope.

No, please use it! I'm so confused!

Later today, I'm going to a movie to see off one of my best friends, who's going to college in four days. Then tomorrow or the day after, I'm making random pancakes with Kitty and her girlfriend, to see her off to college. I'm in a bit of a Peter Pan state, therefore, covering my ears and going 'lalala I'm never going to grow up you can't make me lalala.' Very mature. But since I've been writing college essays in between doing Camp NaNo, it's not working very well. At least I can reuse them once or twice. And then I have to write my resume and get senior pictures taken tomorrow and apply for scholarships and go on a final college visit and figure out how to take Creative Writing as a class (thereby making NaNo a legitimate use of my time) and survive five more shows and audition for the next play and...

You know, excuse me. I'm going to go and watch childhood cartoons for a while and pretend I'm six.

YES.

How Not To Choose a College

Today, I was going to do something productive, like clean my room or try to plot out a story using songs on Spotify, but I was distracted when the mail came. A while back, I got a scouting letter from Yale, one of those mass mailings sent out to everyone in the top ten percent of their class or something. I get a lot of college junk mail, so the only reason I noticed the Yale one was because, holy crap, it's Yale scouting me. I ignored it though, because none of the East Coast schools are super high on my list of potential colleges; I joked about it, in fact, saying that if I got one from Harvard, I'd race the two letters to see which one won, and that would be the elite school to which I'd apply and from which I'd be rejected. Well, the Harvard scouting letter came today, and I remembered that I kept the Yale one, just in case. So today, instead of being productive, I staged a grand experiment: Which School's Paper Airplane Will Win?


Now, I'm going to do this right, because: A) I'm really bored, and B) I think it's funny. So. Here's the experimental log.

The Great Paper Airplane Race

• Goal: To see which airplane flies furthest
• Necessary Materials:
• Two (2) scouting letters, one each from Harvard and from Yale (each letter having two (2) pages)
• Two (2) plain sheets of printer-quality paper
• One (1) kitchen scale
• One (1) tape measure
• One (1) large, open basement in which to fly the planes.
• Procedure
• Weigh all sheets of paper, to determine if there is a bias towards either of the schools or the control. Not for any real reason, just for kicks.
• Take one (1) sheet from each scouting letter and one (1) sheet of regular printer paper, and fold all three sheets into a normal paper airplane, like so.
• Take the remaining sheets of paper and fold them into a different design of airplane. (I chose a slightly modified version of the Dart, the difference being that I folded the wings to give them a larger surface-area to weight ratio)
• Carefully throw all six paper airplanes across the basement.
• Measure after each set of throws and see which airplanes went furthest.
• Results
• (I'm going to record my thoughts here - bad form, I know)
• Harvard's paper weighs in at .010 pounds per sheet, while Yale weighs .015 lbs each and printer paper weighs again a light .010 lbs. This may result in a bias against Yale. Sorry, Yale.
• So, from a steady position  kneeling on my couch and leaning over the back, I start launching paper airplanes. First up were the normal planes. 
• Test One (Normal planes)
• Yale went first, with an unfortunate distance of ten feet, and an odd spin as it fell to the ground. Poor show, Yale
• Harvard did the exact same thing, however, with a worse showing of six feet. 
• The control went last, and did a loop before landing upside down, a somewhat better fifteen feet away.
• At this point, I realized I'd folded the planes oddly, a mistest was called,  and time was taken to correct their wings.
• Test One-B
• Harvard was thrown again, with better results, but was batted from the air by a rogue cat before the flight was completed. Second mistest called.
• Test One-C
• Harvard successfully flew twenty feet, with a graceful twirl and upright landing
• Yale successfully flew a surprising twenty-four feet, with a smooth landing and subsequent skid
• The control went roughly twenty feet, but ran into a box before it could skid further.
• Test Two (Dart planes)
• After numerous mistests, the causes of which included but were not limited to: planes circling around and flying essentially negative feet, planes falling open and drifting to the ground mid-flight, another rogue cat, and a plane circling around and hitting me in the head, a stapler was procured and one (1) staple was added to the tail of each of the three dart planes, for structural support
• Harvard flew a disappointing fourteen feet and landed upside down.
• Yale flew a somewhat better twenty feet, landed upside down, and pulled a 180 degree spin upon landing.
• The control did a nosedive, only flew eight feet.
• Discussion
• I should probably have thrown the planes several more times, just to make sure I achieved scientific rigour, but as the point of this experiment was mostly to entertain myself for an evening rather than actually prove anything, I'm not going to. 
• Mean Distance Flown
• Harvard: seventeen feet
• Yale: twenty-two feet
• Control: fourteen feet
• I'm thinking that the control's paper, not being of the nice, high-quality, quite-possibly-parchment stuff that the colleges' paper was, didn't have quite the lift that they did. Or maybe I just threw it weird. I don't know.
• Conclusion
• Yale wins!

So much for choosing what elite school I want to be rejected from in a mature, adult fashion. Huzzah for paper airplanes!

Creepies Crawlies and Coffee

I've discovered two sites in the past day or so, one of which I have become addicted to and the other's products I would like to become addicted to.

The first is the SCP Foundation. It's motto is Safe, C ontained, Protected, and after reading the site you'll be glad that they are. Specifically, SCP-682 (pic not necessarily Safe For Stomachs) and SCP-001 (in all its iterations) are better kept under safe control. Or, at least, contained. Supposedly. I lost the majority of the Memorial Day weekend to this site. It's Slenderman crossed with TV Tropes. And it's amazing.

The second one is Black Blood of the Earth Coffee. It is a magic coffee. I want it. The world might not survive, but I want it. It is possible to suffer caffeine overdose if you drink too much. I still want it. I will drink two ounces a day and bounce off the walls.


I have five days of school left before I become an official Rising Senior. I'm a bit freaked about that. That gives me less than a year to choose a college and apply and get accepted and choose my life's course and, and, and *headsplosion*

Glowing Bacteria and College.

So I made bacteria glow today. Sort of. Supposedly. If the cultures grow. My CAPP Bio. class transferred plasmid DNA into bacteria, and so if they live through the fridge and the incubator, they should fluoresce on Thursday. How cool is that?


I'm a little freaked out at the moment. My junior year ends in two weeks. I have to start really paying attention to college stuff. I need to write a resume for scholarships. I need to write essays. I need to choose like four colleges to apply for. I need to decide whether I actually want to major in Music Tech. I need to stop hyperventilatasdfl;j34



I think I'm better now. *deep breaths*

I should just run away from home and start a science commune in Nova Scotia. It would be so much simpler.

Musical Affections

So I'm a profound music nerd. Music Tech and Performance are what I want to double major in.* I go to amateur orchestras and vocal jazz festivals for fun. I have been known to go into a sort of music fugue state when I'm allowed to play a really good grand piano. This is all backstory for a recent discovery I have made: music crushes are totally a thing.

Now, music crushes aren't like normal crushes. It's not the person themselves that is the object of the crush: it's their talent. For example, Kanye West may be an utter [REDACTED], but his music is good. If someone has a music crush on him, they can completely dislike him, but want to run away and elope with his talent. That person has a music crush on him. Music crushes are completely unrelated to gender, they can compliment or be separate from every other realm of human affection, and are closely related to celebrity crushes in that neither require ever actually meeting the person in question. Music crushes are simply a more refined sort of celebrity crush.

I have a ton of music crushes, due to hanging around with and/or listening to many, many amazing musicians.  I am not afraid to admit this. Cases in point: Roger Treece, vocal improviser extraordinaire, **  my piano teacher, my all-time favorite accompanist, improviser and orchestral composer, my all-time favorite straight piano composer, my vocal coach who is a wonderful woman and unfortunately does not have a website, and many, many more.


Um, there isn't really a point to this, I guess. Except maybe to show off awesome people, all but one of whom I've talked to.* So. Go to those sites!



*I'm also a bit of an English nerd. I was in fits trying to decide whether to strand that preposition or not. Then I decided that 'are what in which I want to double major' sounded utterly stupid. It still sounds wrong, though. Gah.

**I sang for him once. He's awesome, and looks a lot like this guy, who is completely unrelated but also awesome, for completely different reasons.

Bits and Pieces

I'm writing this during French, during some free time. I got through two sentences before I realized I didn't know the word for something or other that I've now forgotten before I realized I was writing the wrong language. Oops.



I was talking to a friend about philosophy a little while ago, and when I went to look up a little extra information on a specific viewpoint, my first reaction wasn't to go to Google. It wasn't to go to a dictionary, or to an encyclopedia, or even Wikipedia. I went to TV Tropes first and searched their 'Useful Notes' section. I'm not sure what that says about me, except maybe that I'm a geek. In my own defense, I've learned quite a bit from that site, actually. For a site that claims to be 'a buttload more informal' that Wikipedia, they do take pride in making sure their information is right. I usually double check anything I learn there somewhere else, and they tend to not only have it correct, but explain it more clearly and with less pretension. It makes casual research into random topics way easier.



Dear blog, today I realized that no college I've considered applying to has Music Technology as a major. This might be an issue. Seriously, a college with a conservatory of music doesn't have Music Technology. The only one I've found so far is that does is Transylvania, but A) it's not even in the top five on my list, and B) it's in Kentucky. But it's called Transylvania. A tough decision.

And I have to start getting ready to apply to everywhere soon. And take the SAT. asdfqwesdf *headkeyboard*