Merry Holidays!

Well, kinda. Depending on who you are.  I didn't really want to say "Merry Christmas" because that could quite possibly be offensive and make people go, "THAT'S OFFENSIVE WHAT IF I WAS JEWISH?!?" Well, you know what? If you wanted to say "Happy Hanukkah", you could. I honestly don't care. In fact, I'm not Christian. But I do celebrate Christmas, and I'm not a Nazi, so I'm not going to persecute you if you're Jewish or Muslim or animistic or Bhuddist or Taoist or Hindu or Deist or Atheist or Agnostic or Gnostic or Rastafari or Pastafari or Samaritan or Ayyavazhi or Bhakti or Din-i-llahi or Yazdânist or Zoroastrianist or whatever the hell you are because I believe in freedom of religion. You can be whatever you want to be and that's fine.


Just don't push it on me.


Again, I believe that everyone has the right to worship freely as they wish, but I swear the next time someone tells me that I should be ashamed of not believing that Jesus loves me and God will forgive me if I pray, I will slap them in the face. Not really, because I would never actually physically hurt somebody, but I would certainly feel like it.


Also, gay rights.


(Most) Evangelist Christians annoy the hell out of me when it comes to gay rights. They think that it's a choice and that it's perfectly fine if you're in a same-sex relationship just as long as you don't have sex. That's like saying that it's okay to like strawberries and you can have them around the house, just as long as you don't eat them. It doesn't make any sense, right? That's what I'm saying.


On a completely different topic, my history teacher, Mr. North, suddenly retired without telling anyone. So we were left in kind of a lurch with a sub that was even worse than Mr. North was. We only had him for a week, and yet I didn't learn anything and he made us write a page-long paper on something that only took 5 sentences to explain. Needless to say, everyone in the class had their grades lowered because of this.

Glory day, oh glory day however today. Ms. Erickson, who is my most FAVORITE SUB EVER came in to teach. But she's not qualified to teach history, which is an issue. However, both the administration and the students loved her so much that they begged her to come back and teach, and she was able to tame the feral lion that was our class at the time. Seriously, it was the quietest it had ever been in that class today.

To help Ms. Erickson with her lesson plans and everything, along came the Academic Something (I can't remember the full title, but it helps students raise their grade and get their credits), Ms. Blanche, and the honors history teacher, who shall remain unnamed because I'm fairly certain I'm never going to mention him again. I learned far more in 55 minutes today than I had in three and a half months in that class because Ms. Blanche is so amazing at teaching.


But yeah. That's about what's been happening in my life. And now I must go if I am to get anything accomplished today.


Farewell, my friends!

I am a horrible student.

I finished my literary analysis on the day that it was due, after that class had ended. And it wasn't even the final draft. I'm a very bad student.

I have a theory about that, too. If I have a good grade in a class, it's mostly because they give me classwork that they base my grade on. If I have a bad grade, it's mostly because they base their grades on homework. This happens because school, for me, is a place to work and study and listen and do well so that you can be a good upstanding citizen and not do drugs and things of that nature. So when you hand me work to do while I'm in class, I'll do it, no questions asked, and I'll do it rather quickly at that. However, when you put work in front of me when I'm at home, I'll be all like

And not do it.

That's why I always have really bad homework grades and missing assignment lists that are two pages long. I'm bad at staying on task when I'm not in class because to me, unless you're supposed to work there, doing work there is weird and abnormal. Which is redundant, I know. But whatever.

You know, I think high school should be optional after 10th grade, and there can be elementary school, which has 5 years, and then middle school, which also has 5 years. There would be a nice even multiple of 5, and people who don't want to be scientists or mathematicians shouldn't be made to pass classes that are supposedly "preparational for adult life". Because, you know, EVERYBODY uses Algebra 2 and Calculus and even Advanced Calculus daily as an adult. It's just one of those simple things. And who uses the knowledge of how atoms work and naming compounds and identifying different types of organisms and their habitats and ways of living all the time unless they're a scientist? Seriously, I don't see why it's mandatory. There should also be competency tests dealing with the English language. Things like the difference between "your" and "you're" and "two", "to", and "too"; capitalization; spelling simple, commonly used words; when to use a semicolon, comma, and ampersand, how many times to use question marks and exclamation points for effect; and the reason why you shouldn't replace "g" with "q" on Facebook. That's because "qirl" isn't a word, whereas "girl" is. You see? I don't understand where this started. It looks even stupider when they're writing in all caps and they say "OMGGGG I LUHVVE UU QQRRL" Then it doesn't even make sense.

Oh, and I also hate when people put tildes at the end of everything as if it's a comma or a period. Tildes aren't real punctuation. I use them sometimes only for separation effects and to express kind of a chibi happiness at the end of a short comment. And then I just put it AFTER the period. Like so. ~

I've also noticed a pattern. People who like pages like "i dont read" and "i hate books" have the worst grammar because they don't learn anything from the books they read. I love reading, but really only in my spare time when I don't have to because then I have more time to enjoy it. That's all you really need to do instead of a Language Arts class. World languages make more sense to me because it's helpful for traveling and seeing the world. Art, to me, is a weird class to get a grade on because if you're not creative, you end up failing that class and it doesn't make sense because it's not who that person is. Math is useful up until geometry, and then it just doesn't make any sense unless you want to be a mathematician, and geometry is only really useful for people who want to be architects, because anyone else in the real world would most likely not have to find out how many diagonals a 37-gon has very often. Calculating tips and sale percentages would be helpful, but they really don't teach that. Ever. Science doesn't make sense either unless you want to be a scientist or a philosopher because I, for one, don't care how atoms are made up or how people work or how the world turns. I just know that it happens and that it's the natural order of things. I really really don't care. Don't get me wrong, people who do care should be able to take those classes, it's just that people who don't care at all should be able to get out of having it as a core class.

To recap:

• Language arts can be solved by reading a book once in a while. Grammar is useful, though. That should be a class by itself.
• Math is useless after Algebra 1 unless you want to be an architect. Or a math teacher, which is kind of a vicious circle.
• Science is only useful for people who are curious about those types of things.
• Geography (which I haven't mentioned) is useful and History is only useful for people who are curious about those kinds of things, much like science.

That's it. I should probably stop now before I make something implode. It might not be a part of my body, but something will implode. So I'll stop.

See ya!

Blech.

So, I pretty much missed an entire month of posting.

Again.

It's simply because I'm up to my scalp in business and I can't find time to make time, if that makes any sense at all. All of my friends are really busy to so I can't have fun in order to procrastinate. I have horrible grades so I think it's fate telling me to get some work done, but I don't have to listen to fate. Fate can say whatever the hell it wants to. Right now fate is telling me to make a blog post though, so here I go.

I think I should start out by saying that this hasn't exactly been a great month for me. I don't want to be a downer, but it pretty much feels like all of my friends have abandoned me, and the ones who are still technically there aren't really there in spirit. It doesn't help that they talk about things that don't interest me. Hell, they don't even talk about boys. Now, I'm not gonna lie. I like looking at boys. Primarily the pretty ones. It's pretty much 75% of what I do during class. And when I find one I particularly enjoy looking at, I like to talk about them. But when I have friends who are girls who don't like to talk about them and they look at me like I just grew an arm out of my head when I do, It's not fun. REALLY not fun. Because then they change the subject to something I don't care about, like hair and clothes and makeup and musicals I haven't seen, and I'm both at a loss for things to say and I really stop caring at that point. It's like they're still in 5th grade. Seriously. And I can't talk about video games and geekiness with them because they don't get that either. It was fun the first couple of weeks, but then it just got dull. It's boring being a girl.

On the other hand, I can't go back to Zack and Toby and Andy for a few reasons. Firstly because Andy's a douchebag and I really don't want to be around him; secondly because I'm pretty sure they're happily rid of me and they don't want me back; and thirdly, I think it's best for me because I didn't really have that much to talk about with them either, especially because Andy's a douchebag, and also because they're extremely critical about everything I do and it makes me really really self-conscious.

I'm sure you can see the predicament I'm in.

Moar sadness, because we switched seats in my two favorite classes so that it's not fun anymore. And also the person who sat next to me in my least favorite class dropped off of the face of the Earth, so that also makes me sad.

Also, on that note, I've been ultra sick and coughing up an insane amount of mucous. Which is lovely, I know. And my nose always runs or gets an inconveniently placed booger lodged in there whenever there aren't tissues easily accessible. My sickness has a way of doing that, I've noticed.

Thanksgiving is coming up. It's supposed to snow this weekend, so that's good. And I cannot WAIT to have turkey soaked in cranberry sauce. So delicious.

I finished the scarf that I've been crocheting for the past 7 months. Cashmere. Blue, green, and white. Very nice.

I also began writing a song that I don't hate. Go figure.

That's all. Goodbye.

Caffeinecaffeinecaffeinecaffeinecaffeine

I am a despicable human being. I didn't post on the 7th and now it's been more than a month. Where oh where does the time go?

And to answer that question, I have a story prepared for you.

It all started at 7 am on September 7th (See what I did there? So many 7s!). I woke up, got dressed, etc., preparing for the worst. I knew I wasn't going to like school, so I thought I would make the best of my suffering and at least have a good attitude about it.

So I went upstairs and my dad offered to drive me. Not willing to pass up this opportunity to not exercise, I said sure. On the way there, Dad asked if I wanted anything from Starbucks, since there was a Starbucks extremely close by. I said sure. Stupidly, I got coffee. The barista even asked me if I wanted decaf, and I said no. To this day I have no idea what I was thinking.

I started out just nursing it. Taking little sips now and then. That's how sophisticated people drink coffee, you know. And then the day started.

I sat in the car for about 5 minutes debating with my dad whether I should go or not, and, of course, he won and I went. It was about 7:45 by now, and the next 15 minutes was spent standing in a very large and very thick crowd of people that were signing up for something that I thought was important. I didn't actually get to the front. I think I moved about 6 inches from where I was standing in the first place.

8 'o' clock rolled around and I awkwardly carried my coffee into the gym, where there were bleachers that we, the freshmen, were supposed to sit on. Thankfully, I found Rosetta and her friend Aria and sat with them so I wasn't completely alone. Then we did little trust exercises with all the other freshmen, which was really awkward and didn't help anything. It was around this time when I started downing large mouthfuls of my coffee. Then we met up with our "Link Crew". Apparently this happened because there were too many freshmen and not enough junior/senior volunteers to be their personal "buddies", so we were split into groups with one or two "Link Leaders" who would "help us through our first year in high school". Only one of the people in my group of eleven was a douchebag, and that is also something for which I am extremely grateful.

I believe it was then that we had lunch. I sat with what remained of my old group and pretty much all The Middle School kids who were decent enough (except for Norah), and, to be honest, I didn't have fun at all. And I also couldn't keep still worth crap and my heart was beating and I was sweating like I had just finished running a marathon. Thank you, caffeine. You helped ruin my day.

And then, of course, I had a run-in with Toby. Imagining me insanely hyper and Toby a little more tired than a normal person, this is somewhat how it went:

Toby: Hey, did you find your locker?

Me (fanning myself with my little card of locker info): Yep isitreallyhotinhereorisitjustme?

Toby: Uh... It's just you...

--

So that went well.

Then we sat through what seemed like an eternity of YMCA demo courses, and at 2:15 I left school because I didn't know that we were supposed to get out at 2:30, and I walked home.

That was my 1/2th day at school.

My first day went a lot better. But I'm not going to go into detail because I'm fairly certain that everyone reading this right now has been through a first day of school, and it was not interestingly different at all.

Rosetta and Aria are my new go-to for everything, and I'm pretty sure we're best friends. Or something like that.

On a more familiar hand, I feel like guys have been taking an insane interest in me. Max asked Kathy for my number, Kevin got all coy when he was asked if he liked me, Toby is starting to talk to me, and I always see Zack staring at me from across the room in class. I might just be getting my signals messed up, but to be perfectly honest, I really hope I'm not. I am super excited to think that guys might actually think of me as more than "you know all the right answers so I'm going to be nice to you".

That's all for now. I'll update you when I'm not weighted down with being a teenager.

The TumBeasts have awoken!

The world might just explode. I have created a Tumblr account.

You can see it here. Facebook started sucking major ass, so I tried to find something worthy of replacement. This might just be it.

Sorry for the annoyingly short post, but I don't feel too terribly good right now. I just thought this should be an update. I will update again tomorrow after (dun dun dunnnnnn) school so that you can know how it goes on the first day.

That's about it. See ya then.

An Ode to the Interwebz...

Not really. I'm not very good at poetry. But I do love the Internet. It's amazing.

Today I was interested in what would come up if I Googled myself, and I found my legit birth story, written by my mother herself. Apparently, I was 5 1/2 hours of labor total from when my mom's water broke to when I fully appeared outside of the womb. Amazing. I guess I was always as awesome as I am now.

I also found an article on the Seattle PI about my family. But what really touched me was seeing my mom's obituary on the Seattle Times website. I didn't know that she was that awesome. I guess I inherited some of that. Emphasis on "some". No matter how awesome I turn out to be, I will NEVER be as awesome as that woman. Nor will I ever be as awesome as Tyler was when he was three, as mentioned in my birth story.

Needless to say, I had a pretty good cry.

~*~

So, last night, I was up for a very long time, mostly on YouTube, but also using StumbleUpon. Now, I love SU, but it always makes me bookmark crap I don't need but every time I look at it, I want to keep it. So I decided to make folders. And that turned out alright.

I've also been thinking, and if I'm going to leave Seattle, I might as well go really really far away to see more interesting things than most of the U.S. holds. Not that I don't love my country, I just want to see something else for a change. So I decided that my dream is to go to London. It looks ridiculously beautiful and a lot like where I live now except the streets are a bit more crowded, they use weird words, and they drive on the other side of the street. Which is fine, I guess. I'm just going to need some funding.

I did some research, and apparently the minimum legal age in the U.S. to travel alone as a minor is 15. I'm totally not going to have the money by then. So when I'm about 17, I think I might go over there to see if I like it first before making any commitments. I've been looking at Oxford and so far they have the most to offer funding-wise, so hopefully going to college itself won't be as bad as the travel expenses, and the transportation expenses, and the living expenses. God knows I don't want to live in a dorm. Public bathrooms are SO not my thing, especially to shower in. My grandparents also apparently have a college fund stored away for both me and my brother, so that will be good too. I used to think that I didn't need scholarships, but this is going to be really, really expensive.

I'm still going to have to do more research, of course, to see if Cambridge has anything more to offer. Either way, it's going to be extremely expensive. It's a good thing I'm not planning on going to college for more than four years. Requirements are also weird because all they talk about are A-Levels, and we don't have that here. It's kind-of confusing. They did talk about International Baccalaureate, though, which they have at Sealth. Which I'm not going to until next year. But that's alright, because the IB programs there aren't offered to freshmen.

But before I bore you with incessant babbling about educational things, I will be off.

Annoyance: It just comes naturally.

I was in a critical mood today so I decided to keep writing footnotes on Stephanie's old old old story that she gave up on a while ago. It keeps me occupied and it really gets the creativity pumping. Not that it needs any more pumping.

But then, as if I needed more annoying things in my life, I looked at pictures of Kathy's boyfriend-thing-whatever and remembered how much he annoyed me. I don't know what the hell propelled me further, but I looked through every single picture of him that exists on Facebook.

I'm sorry Kathy, but your boyfriend-thing-whatever annoys me. I can't help it.

I also watched Selena Gomez attempt a cover of Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me and that made me sad. Mostly for the future of humanity, but also because I have more talent in one skin cell than she has in her entire body and she's famous and I'm not.

Who, me? I'm not bitter. Nooo. Never.

However, my friend Samantha sings. Yes, she does. There is not an available video. The only video there is of her singing is not mine, therefore I cannot embed it.

Ah, well.

I'm probably going to Wild Waves tomorrow. Again. Which is a good thing. I like Wild Waves and last time I went I didn't get to go on all the rides that I wanted to go on. So this should be fun.

Addictions...

Okay, so if you haven't heard of CupOfTeam yet, it's high time you should. Not because you're out of the loop or anything, but because I love them. A LOT. I've probably re-watched their entire video archive three times since discovering them and none of the videos I re-watch get old to me.

So I have compiled a list of my favorites.

Watch them!



WARNING: This next video contains slightly dirty content. Emphasis on SLIGHTLY. It's supposed to be immature, anyway. If you don't get it, see this link for more information.









So yes. That is... all, I suppose. Just an update.

Well, actually, there's the fact that I'm pissed off that at the rival school, you get your schedule on the first day instead of getting them mailed to you beforehand like normal. Apparently, getting your schedule on the first day is normal, but not for me. We also have to get "student mentors" who are juniors/seniors who are supposed to "help you out with the transition into high school". I learn by personal experience.

Kill me now.

I KNEW No Good Would Come From City Folk and Their Flying Machines!

If you don't understand my obscure hipster quotes, that's from the Lost Episode episode of Spongebob.

But anyway, what reminded me of that was this:

I was playing some good ol' RollerCoaster Tycoon. And, of course, the hipster in me plays the very first one from '99, which requires 8-bit graphics. So usually, when I play the game, it automatically switches to 8-bit and then back to ten-billion-gazillion-million-and-one-bit HD graphics that my uses.

This time, however, it did not.

I was very frightened. I thought my computer was going to stay like that forever, because I didn't know how to go in and manually change the graphics quality back up. I thought restarting it would help, but it didn't. Oh noes!



So I went upstairs, near hysteria (because I love my computer that much) and my dad did it.

So that's what happened today.

Also, I will be featured in a Let's Play of Terraria on Tyler's YouTube channel. I will post about that when it's made and also if I think it's worthy of sharing, which I'm not too confident about at the moment. If you don't hear about it within two and a half weeks, don't count on it.

On a completely different note, I've decided I'm going to The Rival School instead of Insight. I think it would be good at broadening my horizons, so to speak. Also, it won't be as bad knowing that neither Zack nor Toby (possibly Andy, but... meh...) got in either, and that my old friend Rosetta will be going there. It should be interesting.

Holy carbs, Batman!

I just weighed myself in at 150 pounds. It might be because I'm "growing", but I just think it's because I don't move around that much and I love food. And when I say I love it, I mean I LOVE. IT.

Come to think of it, I am getting a bit of a tummy.


In other news, it's my first day back from camping with over 450 girls for three days (dear GOD the estrogen). I was initiated into the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls. Don't judge me, because I'm not Masonic by ANY means. However, I do have a teeny bit of Masonry in my family, seeing as my grandmother was a Jobie.

I've decided I'm not an atheist either. I've decided agnostic is the way to go, because of this great quote that I found that totally reflects my beliefs:

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

 And then there's the song by Depeche Mode:



So yeah.

Anyway. Camping. It was fun.

I'm not allowed to talk about the initiation because it's apparently a secret, so I won't.

Granite Falls was super duper pretty though. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera, so I didn't take pictures.

I also got an Amazon Kindle  from my lovely grandmother in Cali. Since then I have been reading A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett, a wonderful book. I love Terry Pratchett. So much. I think I take after my mother in that area. I also seem to have inherited her love for Douglas Adams because I read the first three H2G2 books and so far have been to lazy to either go to the library or buy the eBook of the fourth one. I think that's another reason why I gained weight: I'm extremely lazy.

I went to 7-11 today with Kathy and got some lazy food, which consisted of Chex Mix, Ritz Bits, and white cheddar Cheez-Its, as well as serving-sized Lucky Charms and Froot Loops. No, I didn't eat them all in one sitting. The Cheez-Its and the Ritz Bits I ate in one serving; the Chex Mix was eaten gradually and it came later. I haven't eateen the cereal yet. That'll be tomorrow. It doesn't help that I had ice cream (chocolate chip cookie dough; be jealous) and that my dad made his Cheesy Pasta for dinner tonight. I also used real butter, not margarine like I usually do, on my bagel this morning as well. But the bagel, I think, was whole wheat, so I'm not worried about that. I doubt I had any lunch, either. I never do. Yes, I know it's bad for me, I just don't get hungry so it slips my mind. I don't get hungry until about 4 pm and then it's to late to eat because dinner will come soon after. Oh, AND there's pudding in the fridge as I type this, AND there's a whole bucket of various assorted cookies and brownies sitting on the counter. I also ate at 9:30 last night because I got back in Seattle at 4:30 but my parents weren't home so I waited at Stephanie's house and they came to get me around 9. I didn't eat dinner there because Stephanie pulled out a tub of Phish Food and we were watching House and it was very suspenseful, so I didn't even think about food at that point. So when I got home I had half an apple fritter and a small portion of refried beans and Mexican rice.

I also have yet more to say!

Sadly, I did not get into The School. As you might have known, I was number 80-something on the waiting list and had turned in an appeal to get me up to number 1. This did not happen, and my appeal was denied. So you know what? Screw you, Seattle Public Schools. I'm going to Insight! Next year, though, I'll be coming back more prepared and in person so that you can't not get my forms.

But anyway, I think you ought to know that life has been treating me swimmingly and that I have been a lot happier lately than I have been in a very long time.

I shall leave you adoring fans to your business now. Godspeed, and may you never awaken one morning and find yourself with Iranian death camps for hands and Gorbachev's eyelids attached to your feet.