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So my job recently took a turn for the AWESOME. I now get to write blog articles, trawl the internet for links, and post stuff to Facebook and Twitter - and get paid for it. That's pretty cool. It also means I have cash (woo!), which means I can do stuff like a pre-order signed copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane  and freak out over it and see if putting it next to a signed Terry Pratchett novel will spawn a signed Good Omens. Unfortunately, it has not as of yet.

So my life is pretty cool right now. Have a poem:


In days long past, when night was gone
Us children faced the sun;
We'd sing and play, we'd grasp the day,
and enjoy the light we'd won.

From the to now the night is nothing
but the shadow of the world,
Not a terror or a fiend
nor dangerous flag unfurled.

I remember days long past
when daylight was the goal
To survive the night, spread wings, take flight
and escape the darkness whole.

Where did the sense of terror go?
And the joy of fighting through?
Why do only children fear the dark,
What was it that we knew?

I wish that I could feel again
that fear, that fierce desire,
To know the night as children do,
and to know that inner fire.

Dammit Jim, I'm a Musician, not a Housemaid!

First off: for the like two people who still subscribe to this blog, ask me a question in the comments and I'll answer it in its own blog post!

Secondly, it has recently been brought to my attention that I am not the most orderly of individuals. I was getting ready to head out to work for the first time at my employer's new office, when I realized I could not find my wallet anywhere. At all. I spent half an hour of the forty-five minutes I still had before there was no physical way I could get there on time looking for it, so I could drive there only semi-illegally. (In other news, I figured out basic car repair last night and replaced one of my car's headlights, because I'm too broke to pay someone else $100 plus parts to do it for me.) My wallet was eventually found underneath a pile of laundry nearly a foot high, in the pocket of the pants I'd worn two days ago, and I was left with a mere 15 minutes of getting-lost time. Luckily, I only used ten of them trying to get out of the evil pitcher-plant-like parking lot I turned into, in hopes that putting the address into my GPS would help. It did not.

But anyway, when my mother found out about said search, I'm 90% positive that her gloating 'I told you so' was psychically broadcast as far as Thanatos. What she said was merely, 'Then maybe you should clean up.'

Here's why finding the wallet was so hard:

My keyboard and desk, both in their natural state of 'hosting any object that wants a flat surface to sit on'. Beneath both lie many many books. And hey, you can see my TARDIS poster.

The fateful pants, with the pile of laundry in the background. Also, books that my cats have flung from their shelves and part of my closet door.

A view of under my keyboard, all the stuff on the stool and underneath it. I'm not sure how the one stack of books hasn't collapsed. And hey, my wallet!

Just. My floor and chair and bookshelf. That white and black thing on top of the stuff in the chair? My prom dress. The grey thing on the floor? My back pack. And in the lower right corner, a another cameo of my wallet.

The point of all of this is that today I'm cleaning my room. Wish me luck.

Speeches are Fun

So now I'm officially done with high school. It's weird, thinking that if I didn't want to, I would never have to go to school again. Of course, in reality I still have another four years, because I don't want to be homeless/live in a box/live in my parents' basement. But still. I'm practically a legal adult, guys. In commemoration of this momentous event, and because apparently everyone who heard it liked it and because you get to read my salutatorian speech. Whee!






Good evening, ladies and gentleman. As some of you probably know, I wasn’t thrilled when I found out that the salutatorian had to give a speech too - I offered Blake five dollars to do it for me. He refused. I’ve winged most of the speeches I ever had to give, so I was nervous. I had no idea about a topic, I had no idea what anecdotes I wanted to include – nothing. I was stuck staring at a blank screen. I searched my past for something on which to base my speech – the least idea of what I might write. I thought about how my class might take anything I say on a certain topic in the light of how they view me. I thought about how I viewed my class. Then I thought about what I was doing, and I realized that I was focusing on the past. I was focusing on what we have been, rather than what we will be. And that’s what graduating is about. Right now, we’re transitioning from our past, from what we’ve done, to our future and what we are going to do.

Right now, we’re completely defined by our pasts. Most of us have been together for four years now, and we’ve all done something that people remember. We’ve probably all done something we wish everyone else would forget, too. I know that I’ve never lived down G1H1 or my Iron Curtain comment – strangely enough, Mr. V was behind both of those. We’ve had to live with stuff like our GPA, our past relationships, and others’ perceptions of us. But now, we’re moving on. We are getting a clean slate, a chance to start over. Once we leave here, we won’t be surrounded by forty-seven people who know us too well. We’ll be around new people, who judge us on our own merits, not our past. We can be the people we want to be.

Graduation is not an ending, it is a beginning. We are moving forward, to new things, new ideas, new people and places. We should not be sad at losing anything, because if we truly value something or someone, we’ll keep in touch. And no matter what, we’ll always have the memories. I don’t think any of us will ever forget Chase's bitty wanter, John's amazing hair in the musical Thirteen, and Meg’s ACL. We’ll remember Guy Levine the push-up machine, Lucas’s floor-rattling bass voice, and Bryce’s drive to win everything he does. We’ll remember Anthony and French 5’s strange obsession with Joel, Madame's husband, Jenny’s artistic abilities, and Gloria’s award-winning cows. Just because high school is finished doesn’t mean we can’t hold on to the memories. Those will be with us forever.

And the best part is that now we get to start making new memories. We are going to new places, we’ll meet new people. We’ll make the best decisions of our lives, but probably a few mistakes along the way. We’ll have our friends, we’ll have our families, and best of all, we have the world. We have the rest of our lives. We have, to quote a famous Doctor, “All of time and space; everywhere and anywhere; every star that ever was. Where do you want to start?”

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.

Character Interview with Jim, Morgan, and Nathan

 So the basic layout of relationships at the beginning of the book is going to be three separate, distinct groups - Tammany and Cale, the Cafe group; Jim, Morgan, and Nathan, the Music Inc. group; and Andrew and Grace, the New-to-Town group. The NtT's are hired, one at the cafe and one at Music Inc., and that's when the overlap starts. Outlining through blog posts - acceptable or no?

Background for the three:
Jim Reinhart came from a very blue-collar family, with parents who worked basic service jobs for cash. He won a full ride to College University after writing an essay expounding on the rights of the lower-class and the responsibilities of government. Now a math major, extremely intelligent, will flirt with anything that moves - a defense mechanism, because charm got him out of a lot of trouble as a kid.

Nathan Harding came from American nobility, more or less - his father owns the major recording label Music Inc. He works there as a BI manager, and is amazingly good at what he does. He's more or less expected to take over the company after his father retires. He met Jim when they were in college, and they were roommates for two years - they still are, Jim paying minimum rent to Nathan because he doesn't want to feel like a leach while he figures out grad school. Nathan's cynical, sarcastic, and generally expects the worst from everyone. However, when he meets someone whom he deems 'legitimate,' he is the most loyal person on the planet. Has a soft spot for his cousin Morgan.

Morgan Hart is the other heir apparent to Music Inc. Where Nathan is probably going to be the director of the board, Morgan is going to be the actual power behind the throne - key to choosing soon-to-be-popular bands, etc. to add to the label. She always seems to know just a little bit more than everyone else - wrong-footing her is almost impossible. She loves her cousin, and likes some people, but she doesn't suffer fools gladly. It's a regular joy for those who know her to watch her destroy someone who's being an idiot seemingly on purpose. She will occasionally go a little too far, and tends to feel guilty for that.

• What is your lifelong dream?
•  J: Graduate school. Don't know how, because that shit's expensive. But yeah, a Master's in math, if not a PhD.
• N: Becoming the head of Music Inc.
• M: Original. To become a world-recognized salsa dancer.
• N: That's a complete lie. You want to move to England and have ten cats.
• M: Five.
• How do you feel about your life in general?
•  N: I'm quite happy with it all. No complaints.
• M: I'm a little bored, but I can usually fix that by meddling in others' lives. 
• J: You're an evil woman.
• M: Yep.
• J: Anyway, if I won the lottery and didn't have to work in a freaking gas station to earn enough for my Master's, I'd be perfectly happy. Actually, I'd probably settle for just not having to work at the gas station.
• What do you fear most?
• M: In the secure knowledge that everyone involved will forget this entire conversation, I can safely say my greatest fear is loneliness. That's why I have so many friends.
• J and N: .... Seriously?
• M: Shut up.
• J: Greatest fear would be heights. 
• N: Morgan, you're sure no one will remember any of this?
• M: Of course.
• N: Then disappointing my father.
• M: I KNEW IT. 
• N: Shut up.
• If you could spend a week anywhere in the world, where would it be?
• N: New York, in the boardrooms of iTunes and Spotify.
• J: All work and no play makes Nathan a dull boy. 
• N: It also makes him successful.
• M: Now, boys...
• J: Anyway, Oxford or the Bahamas, with a tall, tan someone.
• M: Any hints?
• J: No.
• M: Fine. Probably Paris during Christmas.
• What's the worst argument you've ever been in?
• J: My father wasn't happy with my choice of career. That's all that needs to be said.
• M: There was that row with my friend Molly, back in high school.
• N: I don't argue. I discuss at high volume.
• Who's your best friend?
• M: These two.
• N: These two.
• J: These two.
• If you knew you were going to meet your true love tomorrow, how would you react?
• M: I'd be incredulous. I don't believe in true love.
• N: What she said.
• J: I'd be interested, but wary. Meeting true love at this point could screw stuff up.
• M: Such a romantic.
• J: Says the woman who doesn't believe in true love.
• Final question: How would you react if your friends suddenly no longer wanted anything to do with you?
• N: I wouldn't be surprised. I migh be a little pissed off if they didn't give me a reason, but I wouldn't be surprised.
• J: I'd say go screw yourselves and find new friends.
• M: ... Have a panic attack, maybe. Enter a depressed spiral of booze and pills.
• N: That would be a sight.
• J: Hey, Morgan, no one likes you.
• M: Go screw yourself.

These will be fun to write, I think. My favorite character and his sister come next, though - Andrew and Grace something-or-other. Who needs last names?

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.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

So this came from a prompt to find a random book, turn to a random chapter, and take the first sentence as the opening line and the title as the title. Obviously, this is from a chapter from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I've never read that book, which made it easy to take the story in an original direction.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

The men called on Liz the same evening. They were snappish and tired, the result of a long, failed search for a man who would not be found. Liz had known they would undoubtedly call on her. There were few in the city who’d been as close to George as she’d been, and now that he’d been revealed as an agent for the Enemy, of course they’d ask her. She knew nothing, though. She’d never known anything about him, really, and she was only just realizing that now. She sent them away clueless, because she had nothing to give them.

It was a quiet evening, after they left. Liz sat in her living room, surrounded by full suitcases she no longer wanted to use, staring blankly at the silent TV. She wasn’t sure what to think, anymore – everything had been turned upside-down, because of a single revelation – a single person wasn’t whom she’d thought. Suddenly everything was under examination now. The postman who smiled at her every day suddenly seemed like a sinister character, even though she’d known him for years. The woman down at the pharmacy was under suspicion of being an Enemy Aggressor, sabotaging the country silently and slowly by adultering their medicines. Even her TV was suspect – the Enemy were said to be extraordinarily good at infiltration. Who was to say they hadn’t infiltrated the television channels? After all, that was just acting, and George had managed to actually live another life.

She was distracted from her reverie by a knock at the door; at the back door. It wasn’t the men again. They were too stuffy, too proper, to ever come to the back door of a house. Actually, no one much ever came to her back door. Only George.

She was up and racing towards the door before she was even aware of it. She hauled the door open, and stared at a surprised George, who still had a hand raised to knock.

A beat passed, then George said, “It’s not what you think.”

“Then what should I think?” Liz asked. “You’re being hounded by the police, for God’s sake. There’s nothing else I can think.”

“Maybe that I’m innocent?” George said, stepping inside and shaking the snow off his jacket.

Liz just looked at him for a moment. George sighed. “Fine. I’m not.”

“And you’re getting water all over my floor, too,” Liz snapped.

George looked down, guiltily. “Sorry,” he said. Then he looked back up at her. “Come on, Liz, you know me.”

“How do I know?” Liz asked. “Apparently you’ve lied to me about your basic side in the war for however many years. How do I know you?”

“Remember the time I had the flu?” he asked. “When I was delirious and half-dead from fever?” Liz nodded, grudgingly. “You probably heard me going on about everything and anything. Things I’ve not told anyone else. Therefore you know me – the actual me, not the spy whose been blackmailed into this – better than anyone on the planet.”

“I also know you have an unholy obsession with grapefruit,” Liz told him. She was slipping back into the easy banter that they’d developed, she realized. That had to stop. “The whole ‘foreign enemy spy’ bit is sort of a big exception, though, don’t you think?”

“I repeat, I was blackmailed,” George protested. Liz realized they’d been moving further into her house as they talked, and George was now leaning on her kitchen counter. She shooed him into the living room. “Look, I need to hide for the night, and tomorrow morning I’m leaving. For good, probably. You’ll never have to deal with me again. Can I stay here for the night? Please?”

He gave her puppy dog eyes. She’d never been able to withstand his puppy dog eyes. “Fine,” she told him. “But only for tonight. And you’ll sleep on the couch. And I’m not making you breakfast.”

“Duly noted,” he said, and fell down on the sofa.

She had a strange night. She was awake for what seemed like hours, tossing and turning, trying to decide what to do. George was a traitor, obviously. He admitted it. He should be arrested and thrown in jail, maybe deported or even executed for treason, eventually. But she couldn’t imagine ‘George’ and ‘Evil’ in the same sentence. He hadn’t even been in a particularly high-ranking spot. He knew troop movements, but as far as Liz knew, the only thing that had been done with that knowledge by the enemy was to avoid surprise attacks. That was saving lives, not ending them. Turning George over would be wrong, in that context – punishing someone who was helping both sides.

Once she finally did fall asleep, her dreams were tormented. Visions of George in prison, of thousands of people dead, of guilt, of pain, permeated her sleep. When she inevitably woke up, it was gasping amidst tangled sheets, her heart pounding. She couldn’t turn him in.

But even as she struggled to calm down, she knew that she couldn’t remain and not say anything. She was an absolutely awful liar, and her sense of national guilt would get the better of her eventually. For her to be silent and for her to remain here were mutually exclusive goals. But to her surprise, she didn’t feel any strong desire to remain here, in her home town. Seeing how everyone had turned against each other in the past several days had soured the town she’d formerly thought of as quaint. Now it was just backwards. Mulling over this new thought, she slept fitfully until morning

She did end up making breakfast for him. He was sprawled on the sofa, an arm dangling over the edge, snoring like a buzz saw, fit to wake the dead (though there were fewer now, because of him). He woke up slowly at the scent of frying ham and the sound of dishes clinking. “Whuzzit?” he asked blearily, in the time-honored tradition of people awoken from a long sleep that was nevertheless not enough.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she told him, sitting down on the chair across from his erstwhile bed.

“About what?” he asked, struggling upright. “Is that bacon?”

“It is indeed, and I’m coming with you.” She watched George eat ravenously for a moment or so, before he paused, fork hanging in the air.

“What?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not,” he told her. “You’re going to stay here and tell them you never saw me.”

“You’ve got two options,” Liz said, calmly. “Either you take me with you, and no one is ever the wiser – I was to take a vacation today, no one will be worried – or you leave me here and I tell the entire town you came here, broke into my house, demanded that I shelter you at gunpoint, then ran off in whatever direction you go when you leave.”

He stared at her for a moment. “Have you always been this conniving?”

“More or less,” she said, then got up to get her own plate of food. She heard his fork clink on the plate, and turned to find him behind her.

“Look,” George said. “This is going to be dangerous. More dangerous than you could really understand. I’m a wanted man in two countries, and most of the world has extradition treaties with one, if not both of them. You coming with me means that you’re going to get dragged into all of this, too, and I can’t guarantee your protection.”

“I’ve thought I was safe for the past who-knows-how-long, and it turns out that there was a foreign spy who could call down fire on my head should he have so chosen,” Liz said. “Safe doesn’t mean much anymore. And you need someone who can actually cook something edible and make sure you don’t run yourself into the ground.”

“Point, set, match,” George said, and shook his head. “You’ve got about fifteen minutes to pack, though. We need to leave ASAP.”

She grabbed the case she’d held her basics in, and said, “Ready. I was going on vacation anyway, remember?”

He grinned, and said, “Well, come on, then.” And so the Spy and the Lady went back out into the cold.

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.

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.

This Posting Thing is Hard

First - mea culpa. School is hard and distracting and the head cold from Hades hit two days ago, so I've only been partially conscious for the past seventy-two hours. (Boo! Hiss!) Hush, imaginary audience spawned by cold medicine, I'm making my apologies. You aren't helping.

Second - Today's my birthday! I'm officially a year away from being a Legal Adult. I no longer need parental permission to give blood. I can get senioritis and only be normally annoying. Good stuff.

I received, so far, cash, from the vast extended family that my mom knows intimately and I've never met; a GPS to remedy the sense of direction that can lead me in circles until I lay down in the metaphorical sand pit that's following me and wait to be rescued; a MLP cake, because my parents think they're funny; a Doctor Who shirt that tells the world Rule #1 (The Doctor Lies); a thing of Thunderstorm perfume that I can't actually smell yet, but I'm told it smells like dust and wet grass; and finally, a poster of my favorite painting, Chop Suey by Hopper.

So pretty.

I've used the GPS to get to school, I've used the perfume and I'm told I smell quite nice, although that's mostly hearsay at this point, I'm in relaxed dress (which means jeans, because my school is the kind that requires collared shirts and khakis normally) and wearing the Doctor Who shirt, and the poster is on my bed at home, waiting for me to figure out what posters get the chop to get it to fit on my walls.

Robotics began last night, and all my favorite people are on the team. It's pretty cool. Even Intelligent New Senior Guy with an Amazing Voice is on it. My only issue is that I'm beginning to suspect he's me, only gender-swapped.

My ginger and I found out that we're actually living in each other's heads, after we spent about two minutes talking in sync with each other and finishing each other's sentences. The rest of the seniors ran away from us, convinced he'd stolen my soul and was using it for demonic purposes.

I diagrammed sentences in English whilst valiantly battling my sinuses for air. Diagramming's hard, people. It's as hard as correctly reading maps. I'm no good at either.

And now I'm doing college applications. I'm up to three on the Common App, which is awesome. That means I only have one extra to do, and that's for U Idaho, and therefore should not be too hard. Now excuse me, I need to go see if drilling a hole into my sinuses will relieve the pressure.

Tiny Mini-Post (Now with Extra River Water)

Here's a quick rundown on what's happened in the past twenty-four hours:

• So at some point yesterday, I hit my thousandth view, and I'm pretty sure only about half of those were attributable to spambots. You guys are cool, you know that? 
• Twenty-one hours ago, I went to the reunion party, and spent it singing show tunes whilst being accompanied by an awesome dude I probably won't see again. Also, we watched a taping of the show, which was awesome. 
• Four hours ago, I went out to go picture-hunting for my new job.
• Two hours ago, I found a fountain. 
• An hour and a half ago, I fell in a fountain. 
• Eighty-nine minutes ago, I realized the fountain was basically river water and thus nasty and filled with paper mill gunk. 
• Eighty-eight minutes and fifty-seven seconds ago (give or take a few) I all but levitated out of the fountain and started squishing back to my car.
• An hour ago, I had to explain to my family why I now smelled like nasty river water.
• Fifty-five minutes ago, I was sprayed down with a hose before I was allowed to enter the house.
• Fifty minutes ago, I finally got to the shower so I could stop smelling like the river, much to my relief.

It's been interesting. I'm going out again in a couple minutes to finish grabbing pics, to make up for those that I didn't take because I was overbalancing into a fountain. At least my camera didn't get wet.

Chocolate and Weekends (Why I Like People)

So this is my first weekend of the school year. I have chocolate (I assisted a friend with the eight page summer Calculus assignment. He was appreciative) and I just got a job that pays surprisingly well. It's basically taking pictures and filling in paperwork. I am the paperwork queen. I can fill in paperwork like a boss. And my camera is a boss camera, too. It has three different interchangeable lenses. Yeah. That kind. So. But that's half of why I like people right now - they apparently want to give me chocolate and cash for doing what I end up doing anyway. (There is an ungodly amount of paperwork involved in being a senior. Like, a lot a lot.)

Also, I have a party this afternoon, the reunion party from Mame. I'll get to see bunches of people again (except for the FOUR PEOPLE WHO LEFT FOR COLLEGE. They know who they are. And probably don't read this blog) and eat junk food and ignore the literature analysis paper I have to write. (In my own defense, I've already written a paper and half a short story this weekend.) And that's the other reason why I like people right now - because so many of them are cool and throw parties to which I can go.

In general, though, I like people anyway. There are the occasional [inventive expletive deleted] whom I wouldn't mind if they just sort of fell off the planet, due to some freak accident with a trampoline and a tomato, but by and large, people are cool. Rousseau is right, in my opinion. Even the people who I'd prefer were quietly turning into further debris in Earth's ring might be cool in another context. For example, the most hated teacher at my school (disliked to the point where pronouncing 'false' as 'faltz' is both instantly recognizable and will get you smacked for reminding people of her) is also a loving mother and volunteer. I just would prefer to never be in her company ever again.

But I like people, in general. I've got fundie friends (although I'm not entirely sure they've caught onto my beliefs), jock friends, friends who spend their days working on linux stuff (Oh, yeah, that experiment? Only semi-successful. The computer gained sentience and growls at me whenever I try turning it on), and friends who give me blank looks whenever I use a word with more than two syllables. I like all of them, as long as we stay off certain topics of conversation. People are generally nice, and I find it pays to give them all the benefit of a doubt.

Also, people like happy people who like them back. It forms a feed-back loop of shared chocolate and party invitations, one that I take full advantage of. If people are willing to give me chocolate, eclairs, and party invites because I give them recommendations and smile a lot - I'm completely good with that. That... doesn't sound like I meant it. But still.

Camus and Happines

So I was told I should write about Albert Camus today, because I was totally blank. Camus was a groovy guy, and is completely misunderstood by my English class. It's probably got something to do with the general philosophy of the school - very much so about a loving God, and not about accepting the fact that reality is pointless. Now me, I quite liked The Stranger, which is basically all about that. I get that we live in an uncaring universe, in which there is essentially no point. It's just that I don't let it get me down.

My basic personality type is happy. Not super gleeful, although I can get there after a new episode of Sherlock or Doctor Who, or a new Terry Pratchett novel. Not morose or depressed or angry, although I can get there if I'm tired and people are idiots. My base state is a little floating bubble of contentment. It's pretty cool, being well-endowed in endorphins. Because of this, I have a generally sunny outlook on life.

However, I was raised on sixties sci-fi, the Internet, and whatever I could get my hands on at the library. This led me astray from the comfortable naive state most naturally happy kids with a library nearby live in, and to a state of cynicism. I'm the first to predict someone's going to be an idiot, that I'll fail a test, that it'll all go wrong, because stuff does. The universe is, in my opinion, basically uncaring. You just sort of bounce around inside and see what happens.

The thing is, these two viewpoints seem to mesh relatively well together. I think the universe is pointless, but I don't care. I think that humanity is fundamentally a collection of neuroses bound together by random DNA and molecular bonds, but I think that's cool - that it's amazing we function as well as we do. I make a point for myself. Currently, that point is music and continuing to be happy. Fun is a good thing, as is happiness - I did an essay on happiness here - and that's what I'm aiming towards. Maybe I'll even manage to make other people happier. That would be neat.

I think what I'm saying is that my basic philosophy is, "Nothing matters but life, so why not be happy?" Not the most resounding thing, but it works for me. It's also a little vague, because I've got a much longer, stricter moral code for myself that I might write on sometime. But basically, if I could get to the point where that was truly my guiding principle, I'd be in a good way.

School and My Opinions About It

Quick self-promotion: guest post on La Stranezza's blog! 

School started (is starting) today. I'm a little torn right now, because on one hand, I get to talk to everyone again without having to figure out where my phone went. On the other, school is starting, and there is no longer any caffeine sold in the cafeteria. (EDIT: Yes, there is. I just didn't see it. Alas.) I'm a bit exhausted. Because of that, this is a class by class breakdown and opinion series!

• Senior release
• I'd like this better if it weren't at the beginning of the day, when I can't sleep in. Right next to lunch, maybe, so I could wander off for an hour or so. Probably going to be my designated piano/choir time, since I'm not technically in that class this semester.
• AP English Lit.
• This is a good class, if I ignore Jack the [donkey] who sits in front of me. We have to diagram sentences this year, though, because the last senior class sort of sucked and did know a verb from a prepositional phrase. I'll be able to remember that, though.
• Creative Writing Independent Study
• Favorite class, bar none. A one-on-one class with my favorite teacher, Mr. H., in my co-favorite subject. Yes. I have free reign to write whatever I want. Je l'adore.
• Side note:  Facebook and Armor Games aren't blocked. My productivity (what there was of it) just disappeared like a mirage.
•  Ecumenical Issues
• I'd love the teacher if he taught anything else. At least this is basically comparative religion.
• Update: Homework assigned first day. A one page essay due tomorrow.
• Side note: 'A one' looks weird, but sounds right. I think I'll call it 'a single,' but I'm not correcting it, because this side note would then be pointless. 
• Jazz Band (during lunch) 
• This is going to be fun. Also: new senior alert! Intelligent, musical senior! Mission: Get to know him.
• French 5
• All three of us. We've been in French together since freshmen year. The class has shrunk every year. Now there's three of us left, and only one shall survive, on.... Survivor: French Edition!!
• I hate myself a little for that sentence.
• Yearbook
• I'm Senior editor now, in charge of all the pages involving Seniors. Which is like a third of the yearbook. Huzzah for responsibilities and resume-building! Also for having Mr. H twice a day! Woo!
• Physics
• This is the scary teacher, but I love her. She's intense. My first day ever at high school, second semester, first class, 7:45 AM, she pulled out a Vandergraph generator and shocked the jock in front of me who didn't know what it was. I sort of want to be her when I grow up.
• Calc. B
• This is the teacher that makes me a real teacher's pet. She is amazing. She is the reason I got an 800 on my SAT for math. And I'm pretty sure this class is going to be sink-or-swim, honestly. It'll be fun.

  There we go. School is basically over and I'm going home to do homework. Fun. *headdesk*