Socialization: Not Just For Other People!

I never realize how unsocial I normally am until something or someone smacks me upside the head and says "Go do something!" That's more or less what happened yesterday. I had a jazz band concert (nothing like getting sheet music two weeks before a concert, except for maybe have less than an hour's worth of rehearsal with the full band before said concert) and some vocal solos at a local Oktoberfest.* And I actually talked with people - my favorite sophomore and junior, as well as New Senior. I need better names for all these people, honestly. We checked out the car show that is a necessary part of a Wisconsin Oktoberfest , drooled over various old cars, discussed whether metallic orange was really a good color for a classic pickup, and then hiked up the two-hundred foot high hill to get back to our various cars, bemoaning the fact that the parking lot was at the top rather than at the bottom.

Then I was assailed with a text informing me that my best friend was in dire need of someone to come to a party with him, because it was being run by the local church youth organization and he couldn't get out of attending. I had a mental battle with myself - go, rescue him from the likely complete awfulness that such an event would entail, and have to sit through it myself? Or stay home, not deal with the sort of people who would consider me a heathen devil sent to murder them, and let him sit through it alone, knowing his tolerance for that kind of stuff is only about a percent higher than mine?

I went.

And much to my surprise, the worst of it was the fact that we were basically the oldest people there. There was no Kumbaya singing, there was no lecture on the evils of atheism and homosexuality, and no one entreated me to accept Jesus as my lord and savior. In fact, there was Capture the Flag and Ninja. I was crowned queen of the Ninjas (empress, maybe?), because Ninja is something at which I rock like a hobby horse. I have no idea whether the Zombies or the Ninjas won Capture the Flag, because by then it was nine o'clock, people kept moving the boundary line, and it was pitch black out. My friend and I mostly just hid in the bushes by our flag and jumped out to tag and terrify any little kids who might be coming in that general direction. It was pretty cool

Then we went back to his house and I watched him and his little brother play ping pong and talk trash at each other, laughing so hard I thought I was going to fall off my chair. It was a good night.



*If you don't know what Oktoberfest is, you immediately lose any right to claim German heritage and your alcohol tolerance falls by fifty percent.

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.

Final Preparation

So Camp Nano 2012, August Edition starts in eleven hours and twenty minutes for me, as I write this. I'm hoping to start at midnight, for that all-important head start. And so, if I'm very good and/or very lucky, I'll have 3k words - perhaps an entire chapter! - to be posted sometime tomorrow afternoon. My average wordcount goal is once again 2k a day, but it never hurts to have a buffer.

In other news, Mame opens in a week and a half. So I've got an entire other thing to be freaking out about, so non-story posts may be a little thin on the ground until I stop hyperventilating. Sorry. Go watch me dance (I'm the one with the pale, pale legs) or read TVTropes. Or read about zombies.


Link to Portable Solar Panels

Excuses and SUGAAAR.

I've been away for a bit (yeah, sorry about that), but it was for, if not a good purpose, at least an explainable one. Rehearsals started for Mame, my current off-Broadway summer show, and also, I got The Long Earth. (squeeeeeeeeeeeeee)

So that's taken up most of my time for the past couple days. But never fear! Tomorrow a review of The Long Earth shall be put up, because now that I've said it will, it will hang over my consciousness until I actually write it. It shall hang like a doomy cloud of doom. Doooooom.

The reason it isn't being written now is because I'm on a bit of an adrenalin-and-sugar high, because my SAT scores just got in and I'm celebrating with an abundance of reese's cups. :D Nothing I wrote right now would be as coherent as I'd want a review of a Terry Pratchett novel to be, so I'm going to hold off until after the sugar crash.

 Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

List list list

So far today, I've:

• Pulled a Hanukkah-style miracle, only with gas and without religious significance
• Nearly been electrocuted twice while setting up game buzzers
• Moved a grand piano
• Sung an unexpected solo
• Faced the wild, nasty unknowns of the basement armed with only a garbage bag, washcloth, and bottle of cleaning spray, and not only lived to tell about it, but also cleaned it up relatively well.
• Won three games of Twister

So far today, I have not yet:

• Practiced my accompaniment piece for tonight 
• Oops
• Figured out a way to lock my room so that the invasion of eighth graders soon to take over the house will stay out of it
• Figured out why the TV is in the back of my car and how they fit it in there
• Eaten anything other than a waffle and some tabasco-flavored Cheezits
• I may need to correct this at some point.
• Figured out why the piano had been moved into the calc. room in the first place
• Discovered the origin of this sudden strange sense of foreboding
• Check that, it's because of my sister's party. May the FSM save my soul.
• Used this quote in conversation:

Styrofoam, SATs, and Sodas, oh my!

The Secret Styrofoam Project is finished and some freshmen were staring at it in awe earlier on Friday. I'm taking that as a compliment. I'll take a picture of it, maybe, if I remember, and post it for the world to see.


I'm going to perform later today, the biannual School Concert. I'm suffering from a sneaking suspicion that it's not going to be one of the better concerts for which I've sung. I'm singing my Exemplary piece for it, though, which should be interesting. (I got an Exemplary! *squee*)  The acoustics in the commons are crap, I'm so glad we're getting a real auditorium next year.


I'm taking the SAT in two weeks, so I'm taking a practice one today. I just wrote an essay on motivation. Is anyone actually going to read that? How is it going to be scored? I have no clue.


Right now, I'm drinking a Mountain Dew Throwback (Made with Real Sugar!). It's got me thinking about all the different variations on the theme of Dew. There's regular Dew, which is my manna from heaven on Tech nights and during Hell weeks. There's Diet Dew, which I won't drink, because if I'm going to give in and drink caffeinated beverages, I'm not going to have them pull any punches. There's the orange and red flavors, whose names I don't know. There's Throwback (Made with Real Sugar!). There's Caffeine Free and Diet Caffeine Free, which I don't understand, because who drinks Dew for the flavor? There's the White Out, which looks like someone dissolved sugar in water and didn't stir well enough. There's blue Dew, whose name I also don't know and vaguely resembles dish soap. So many flavors. Mountain Dew is so generous, giving us all these ways to drink their product.

Dew's not the only company that gives an almost stupid number of options. Coke does it too,  and Pepsi, and every soda company ever. Every drink company ever. I have nothing against variety, but seriously. Jones Soda offered a holiday pack with Candy Cane, Gingerbread, Pear Tree & Sugar Plum flavors, and there was a very real chance that Christmas Ham might have been a flavor released. Seriously, ew. Even if I weren't vegetarian. Ew. I understand that it's a limited release, but still. Ew.

It's like every company out there is trying their hardest to come up with weird things that will be mistaken for awesome and thus become popular. Sometimes you get a Cherry Coke, sure, but a lot of the time you get New Coke. Or just stuff that resembles half the other stuff on the market, like Cherry Pepsi. All cherry colas taste the same! There's nothing new and unique about you, Cherry Pepsi!

Anyway. I don't even particularly like most soda. I just think the evolutionary style of flavor release and withdrawals and mixes and stuff to be somewhat odd.

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.

So much stuff

In the past 36 hours, I have gotten six hours of sleep (unfortunately, not all consecutive.), been at home for seven (same), ridden on a bus for four hours, (ditto), received a 1st for a piano solo at State, received an Exemplary for my classical vocal solo (!!!), and I'm about to go spend the next eight hours running a charity event and being fake paparazzi. I'm exhausted. I love my life. :D

Also.

EXEMPLARY. WOO!

Alright, I'm better now.

Flooding and Stuff

So it rained here last night. Not just some little May shower. We have major highways closed because of it, and we don't even close them for snow a lot of the time.

Yeah. That's a picture of one of said highways this morning. More storms are rolling through right now - I can hear the thunder from inside my school. I'm waiting for the semi-inevitable  storm warning and getting sent to some classroom without windows so the tornado won't get us.




Skies aren't supposed to be that dark gray at nine AM, are they? It's actually darker than that where I am.



Anyway. Just took a Psych test, not sure how well I did on it. I'm just glad that I got the extra credit questions (Carl Rogers developed what type of therapy? Client-centered. So glad I studied vocab.)

There's a drawing of Clippy the Irritating on the whiteboard, and there has been for a week now. Someone erased him yesterday, but he's back now, saying 'Erase one of us, and two will return in his place.' I want to try that, and see if he does return double. My dilemma is that the world doesn't need more Clippies.

I have no voice right now. This is a problem, because I have State vocal performances tomorrow and the day after. Time to drink tea by the gallon! (And maybe run away.)

But I Like Being Barefoot

Screnzy Update: 56k and counting. Got my words in yesterday super early because of Prom & Solo and Ensemble. They're out of the prison! Finally!



So, as stated above, I had Prom and Solo & Ensemble yesterday. None of it started until one in the afternoon, which was quite nice as I was able to sleep in until noon. Then, of course, I remembered that I had to write my 2k words, which woke me up immediately. Never have I written so much so quickly.

Then I donned highly uncomfortable shoes and went to UW ________for S&E, whereupon I was immediately pounced by a friend I haven't seen in ages and taken up three flights of stairs to her performance. She rocked it, by the way. After I stumbled from her room, suddenly feeling a bit more insecure, I went down four flights of stairs to find my accompanist and my duet partner, who weren't there. So I wandered the building for a while, running into a surprisingly large number of people whom I knew, and climbing and descending stairs in uncomfortable heels enough that I just took them off and carried them around with me.

Finally, I found my duet partner, and he and I returned to the basement to warm up, sans accompanist or piano. We received applause from the other people in the room. That was cool.
When our accompanist finally showed up, late due to three delayed rooms, we went in, performed,  were told that we'd sung it the way it was meant to be sung, and got a 1st. (insert ensuing freak-out here)

Then we immediately left for a hair appointment, and I spent an hour and a half without my glasses and therefore blind, sitting in a chair while a scarily competent woman armed with five kinds of hairspray, four curling irons, three sizes of bobby pin, two hair-clamp thingamabobs, and a partridge in a pear tree did arcane and possibly magical things to my hair.

As soon as she was done, I proceeded to go home, get dressed for Prom in less than fifteen minutes and eat for the first time all day. I had neglected to do so earlier because of nerves about the performance, and I had begun regretting that decision roughly halfway through the Battle of the Curling Irons. I got half a grilled cheese sandwich before I had to leave to be on time for pictures at a friend's house.
Everyone looked gorgeous and/or handsome. It was discovered that I am the only person who can actually pin flowers to lapels accurately, so I spent fifteen minutes getting four guys to stop fidgeting and let me jabs pins at their chests. Brave men.

Finally, pictures were taken, and we left for the restaurant. I'm never riding with the guy who drove the car I rode in ever again. There were at least 5 G's pressing us back into our seats when he accelerated. We scared some poor burger joint where we ate, then we drove around for a while, not wanting to be unfashionably on time. We ended up in a Hobby Lobby parking lot, parked, with the girl wearing the neon green dress covered in sequins stood up through the sunroof as a signal for the other cars who'd gotten lost to come here. They found us eventually.

Prom itself was next. By the time I got into the building, I never wanted to wear shoes ever again, so I dumped those immediately after pictures. Even though it was an hour into the actual dance, no one was dancing, or even really there yet. We were still one of the earlier groups. It was boring until after the Grand Crowning of the King and Queen, at which point they started playing good music.

That was the point at which I was called over to a dance circle by a couple girls who remembered what had happened at the last dance I attended, and I was brought to the center of the circle. What followed was my second dance-off ever.

And my third.

And my fourth.

Then I ran away, because there is only so long I can dance in front of everyone at Prom before I really, really need to. The circle had dissolved back into the normal mass of people by the time I got back from a much-needed water break, thank god.

And then Cotton-Eyed Joe was played and I ended up in a line dance, because we're from Wisconsin, gosh darnit, and we'll line-dance at our prom if it's the last thing we do!

And then I figured out that the guy with a huge mass of hair standing in the balcony overlooking the dance floor was the sound guy, and not some random creeper, which was a bit of a relief.

Then Prom ended and I went home, my hair flat, my ears ringing, and barefoot.

It was awesome.