Homecoming and Details about my Personal Life

Dear lord, the past couple days. They've been. They've been weird.

So first, there was homecoming. The game was relatively normal, meaning we lost badly and it was abso-freaking-lutely freezing. I had on two pairs of gloves, two t-shirts, a sweater, a winter jacket, a knithat, thick sneakers and thick rugby socks, and I spent most of the game wrapped around a friend for warmth and blankets. The poor people with only two or three layers and blankets nearly got frostbite. "Welcome to the Tundra," my frozen blue fingers.

The senior class, aka my class, won the float competition for the fourth year in a row. Because we're awesome and build awesome stuff. It helps that we've got a ton of the robotics team in our class. The skill sets are largely the same. It's just sized up about a thousand percent.

You can see my epic long jacket in the background, just sort of on the ground.

Then there was the day of the dance. I have no good pictures. However, I'll give you one anyway. I'm the tall person. Normally I am not that tall, but I have four inch heels on. And I will admit that my glorious friend happens to be a bit short. You cannot tell in this picture, but it is still abso-freaking-lutely freezing out. No girl was wearing anywhere near enough clothing for the pictures. It was cold.

Then it was off to dinner. We ended up at the local mall, because apparently Mongolian theme restaurants are all the rage during homecoming, and people from all five schools who had homecoming this week went. (Sidenote - seriously? Five homecomings in one week? Awful scheduling, that.) But our replacement restaurant was awesome. They gave us crayons and covered the table in a huge sheet of paper. Never have seven teenagers had so much fun while waiting for food to arrive. I was given four cuplets of sweet honey mustard by people who don't understand why mustard is awesome. I ate three of them. It was good.

Then we went for a walk through the mall. Because my glorious friend (seen above) wanted a picture with a taxidermied bear, we ended up going through Scheel's, which for the uninformed is basically where hicks and hillbillies and sporty people get all their stuff. We wandered through while wearing our homecoming regalia. We got the weirdest looks.

Then the dance. I ended up at the dance a full half an hour or more before everyone else, because it took six people to get two people back to their car and then come back without anyone getting seriously lost. During that time I danced by myself next to the awesome juniors. And then I danced with the awesome seniors once they finally got back. It was cool. My legs didn't catastrophically cramp from heels and dancing even once. I ended up with two placards from the dance, because no one can spell or double-check what my name is. Not that I mind.

That's about it for homecoming. Yesterday my debit card had a SNAFU and I had an epic tech-support battle, and got all my money back from the store that ate it. So that's all good.

And finally, because you all care dearly about my personal life to keep reading this far, there's been the underlying psychological drama of realizing that I have a thing for a guy and that it's possible he might have a thing for me. At the very least, he spends a lot of time looking at me in the classes we share. God, I'm socially awkward. Someone just insert my mind into the internet and put me out of my misery.

That's all.

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

Geekiness and a Hail Story

Issue the Fourth from the last post was fixed with a particularly well-timed swing of a crowbar and some judicious googling. I now have Flash on my computer, and I feel like I've tripled my geek cred. I also now understand several XKCD strips much better.

I get this now!

In other news, Terry Pratchett's newest novel is coming out TOMORROW. *celebrates* I will be getting that ASAP. Because Pratchett is just that awesome. And because the book sounds awesome. Once I finish it, I might even do a review after I uncurl from the inevitable withdrawal from New-Terry-Pratchett-novel that I will go through.




Now, story time. Backstory is thus: I'm keeping an eye on my sisters while my parents are stranded at my mother's place of work due to the massive storm currently going on. One sister, acting with uncommon sense for her, is simply sitting in her room reading. The other.. Well.

We were both staring out the windows at the storm. There was two-inch diameter hail falling outside, hard enough that it was bouncing off the lawn as high as two or three feet upon impact. My baby sister wanted to go outside and play in it, because she loves the rain. I stopped watching the storm and stared at her.

The culverts were flooding. There were birds falling from the sky. There were windows being broken. There was lightning happening in force, and the resulting thunder was rattling the windows the hail wasn't. And her response to my explanations that being hit with hail hurts, was as follows:

"I'll use an umbrella!"

She continues to look at me, her eyes wide and hopeful, as lightning strikes the tree across the street and nearly deafens us with the resulting concussion of sound. I open my mouth, about to say something, but I can't find anything to say.

The storm radio went off, telling us that there was a severe storm warning for our county. I looked at it and said, "No duh." It continued on, saying that if there was hail occurring, everyone should head to the basement.

"So can I?" she asked.

With a crack resembling the thunder, the tree across the street lost a large branch to the wind, which blew it across the street and into our yard, up to the base of the window in front of which we stood - a good three hundred feet.

"No." I said. "Basement."

She pouted. She whinged. She dragged her feet. And, as soon as I had my back turned, she ran out the front door. I turned just in time to see a particularly large piece of hail hit her. There was much drama as I ran outside, grabbed her, hauled her inside and to the basement. Then she started giggling and held out a piece of hail the size of my phone. The chuck  of ice had an... interesting shape.

Which is why I now have a bruised sister and a piece of hail shaped vaguely like female secondary sex characteristics in the freezer, and I have to explain both to my parents once the storm abates.

No, you're a title!

I went on a forced retreat today. It went poorly. I'm not talking about that, 'k? 'K.

I currently have no friends, because all of them are out of the reach of Modern Civilization (AKA the internet) or have had their phones hacked by misogynistic strangers. Le sigh. I should go start up that Commune of Science (c) (tm) in Calgary or Saskatchewan. Then I'll gain myself some friends, followers, and minions, and we shall enact this:

 MWAHAHA AND PEACE AND LOVE SHALL RULE THEM ALL
(Subnormality, by Winston Rowntree)

It's been a day. I'm going to go watch silly musicals and I'll come back better in sorts later. Sorry for the lack of actual, you know, post-like posts recently.