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.

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.

Content!

This is a bunch of random recommendations for stuff that I like, because content is hard and my brain burnt itself out yesterday. Wheeeee!



First! I'm reblogging something from the amazing Mentalfloss Watercooler Ammo emails: The Disciples, a series of photographs by James Mollison, documenting the types of people to attend different concerts. The video projection in amazing, especially the first picture, of the Goths.

Especially these four. Yes, I'm slightly creepy. Deal.

Second! This makes my day, every time I see it.

Third! I have finally joined an MMORPG. It's Fantasy Online, and this might be my addictive nature and lack of experience speaking, but I like it. Level 40 in the past week! Woo!

Fourth and Finally! MIT has designed a mechanical Willy Wonka. No lie. It is a literal chocolate candy printer, with refillable cartridges. And less specifically, there's also just a straight food printer. Gene Wilder, purple suit, top hat and all, is in my head and grinning at me.

Gene Wilder, I'm sorry we ever doubted you.

Review: Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway

Nick Harkaway has been one of my favorite authors since I first read The Gone-Away World a while back. I own that book, even, which should be an indicator of how much I love it, because I only buy books I adore lest I completely fill my room.

I'm about two series away from this.

Its cover is pink fuzzy stuff with neon green lettering and I loved it. Then I went to go read everything else by Harkaway. But much to my despair, I found out that The Gone-Away World was the only thing he'd written. Ever. He was in the process of writing a new book, though, called Angelmaker. So I put that on my mental 'Read As Soon As Available' list, and went on with my life.

Fast forward two years. In the meantime, I've reread Gone-Away at least twice, and completely forgotten to check if Angelmaker was published. (spoiler: it was) When I found out, I immediately geeked out, put it on hold at the library, and waited. For two weeks. Popular books, is Angelmaker. 

But I finally - finally - read it this last weekend. I'd say I read it all in one day, because it was that good, but that's a lie. I stayed up until 4 AM the next day to finish it, because it was that good, and that long. It was freaking amazing.

I glee'd about the last novel I reviewed, too, which may give you the impression that every novel I read I adore. That's not true at all. *cough 61 Nails cough* But Harkaway did something incredible with Angelmaker that made my head spin. He took tropes and turned them completely inside-out, then filled them with clockwork bees. No lie.

So. The first trope he made his minion: That of Those Two Bad Guys. Yes, there is a pair of bad guys. One is even tall and skinny and the other is short and fat. But they are not bosom buddies. They do not necessarily stick together. One even defects to the side of, for the sake of simplicity, what I'll call 'good,' and leaves the other out to dry. 

Then there's that of the White Sheep. Jack, the main character, is living a completely normal life, partly because he hopes it will atone for his father's former King of the Gangsters lifestyle. It doesn't work out, and it fails in the most spectacular way possible. It is, in fact, an Epic Fail. And I love it.

There's the Cloak and Dagger espionage bit. Edie, another main character, was one of England's most important female spies, and she was James Bond before he existed. Now, however, she's a 90-year-old woman who's decided to set off the supposed Doomsday machine that her lover from WWII made, because she figures the world can't get much worse.

Also, there are clockwork bees of TRUTH. And an underground criminal society! And a Prince-cum-Serial-Killer-cum-God-Wannabe. It's amazing.


I don't really have any issues with this book. Maybe a little less obscurity towards the beginning, but keeping those details hidden makes the end of the book a dozen times cooler. So, maybe not. Angelmaker has officially become one of my favorite books. *nodnod*

Scariness, Now in Mold and Energy Drink Form

Icky icky icky icky icky. Ew. Icky.

Okay, I'm better now. I just spent the past several hours cleaning up a house after some neglectful renters with small children. I'm slightly traumatized - there was mold. And weirdly painted walls. And holes in walls. And cobwebs. And mold. Normally I'm not squeamish at all.. However, after spending a good portion of the day in a house repainted pink and brown, without air conditioning in 90 F weather, scraping (I cannot repeat this often enough) mold off the windows and cobwebs, with spiders still present, off of everything, while light-headed due to having given blood recently and having consumed the ungodly power of Rockstar Energy Drink to stay awake, I feel a bit nauseous. Ew.


(Also, this is my excuse for not posting yesterday - they successfully vampired me and I was silly enough to not drink a ton of water before, so it was like trying to write in the midst of a day-long period of vertigo.)

Nauseous or no, I have come to respect the power of said Energy Drink. 

This stuff is scary.

I only drank a quarter of the can - supposedly about half a cup of coffee - because dear God, it was like drinking fruity flavored, carbonated electricity, in that it was good but sort of stung. Its fumes were worse than that of the cleaning solution I was using, and that stuff was close to making me loopy. For the time that the drink was presumably affecting me, I was like a light-headed, bouncy, Queen-belting, distracted-by-shiny-things cleaning machine. I almost didn't care about the mold (so much mold!). Then, as I had not continued consuming the scary drink, I crashed, nearly fell over, and told people it was time to go home because I said so, and because everyone was traumatized by the mold, they all agreed. I only recovered from the ensuing Rockstar-level caffeine hangover after we stopped and I got deep fried mushrooms, which are both a thing and completely awesome in a greasy, Wisconsinite way. Less cliche than deep fried cheese curds, too.

In my hubris, I drank some more a little while ago, so if I seem a little hyper, that's my excuse. I can totally see  why it's called Rockstar - it's like someone distilled one of the Who's room redecorating parties and added ionized slushy syrup to it.

I can see music. Lookatalltheprettycolors...

Pools and Lack of Murder

So today a short story I wrote for La Stranezza's 365th post went up. You can read it here. To anyone who made it here from there: Hello! I admire your taste.

Yesterday, I learned four very important things:

• The SAT is a long test, and when they suggest you bring snacks, it's a very good idea to do so. It's hard to concentrate on the proper way to avoid splitting an infinitive when you're hungry.
• There is nothing - nothing - better than a heated pool, except a heated pool at ten o'clock at night while there's a fireworks display going on down the road and you have a perfect view of said display.
•  There is very little worse than getting out of a heated pool at eleven o'clock at night after the fireworks display, when it's barely fifty degrees out, and discovering that your towel is soaking wet.
• But then there were butterscotch-fudge brownies, so it was all good.
•  Driving home after late-night pool parties sucks, and getting lost is inevitable. And when you call for directions, you will be laughed at.

In any case, yesterday was fun, up until the getting-lost-in-the-maze-of-twisty-little-back-roads-all-alike bit. But as I was not killed by a hook-handed mass-murderer, I'm going to call it a win.

This didn't get me.