Bad day...

Today was not a good day.

I've been waiting for an email for months and it was supposed to arrive today...it didn't.

I found out I can't go to a concert I already bought tickets for months ago.

I bought a piece of jewelry online and it never arrived and nobody is answering my emails (but they've already taken my money).

My throat is sore because I've been coughing so much.

I got a horribly depressing email from school about a student and my heart breaks for the student's family.

And I just basically been in a saddened mood today. I hope tomorrow gets better. It's only now that I've had a little while to process things that I'm actually starting to feel my mood lighten a little.

~Currently obsessed with the CD:

Hello Hurricane by Switchfoot

Snow Day!

It's snowing! We have no school, and when I look outside I'm reminded of Narnia. This would be a great time to get caught up on my book reviews blog and goodreads. Man, I should probably tackle some homework as well. I've been reading Jane Austen and underlining anything that I think is great.

~Currently listening to:

Ordinary World by RED

Sweet!

No school! No School! La la la lalalal.

Okay, so I'm a tad bit excited. I know I shouldn't be absolutely thrilled that we have no school, but come on, how can I not be happy. I'm going to use my time wisely though. I'm going to catch up on some sleep and kick this cold out of my body. I'm going to finish my Jane Austen novel. And I'm also going to do homework that isn't due until next week. I'm all fired up.

The one thing I feel guilty about is the weather, even though it is shutting down schools, I'm still a little worried about how severe it could get. I'm praying that it won't be too bad and that people will stay safe.

Okay, now I have to go finish sense and sensibilities.

~Currently singing:

Hill Street Blues by Maj

Blargh

I don't feel well.

I just took some cold medication. I really thought I was over this cold.

Apparently not. Gee whiz, can I try and be healthy for a change? I mean, I've been fighting this stupid cold since before Christmas. I don't understand, I've been eating way better than normal and I'm still fighting this cold. In the last three days I've eaten 7 apples. This is amazing for me, because I'm not that big of an apple eater, but my goal is to eat 365 by the end of this year.

Okay, now that I've got this out of my system, I really have to get back to my Jane Austen novel...I'm only 90 pages behind. Gee whiz, why do I keep doing this to myself.

~currently running through my head:

Let's Dance by Hawk Nelson

School?

There is a winter storm coming in tomorrow. Which means school might be canceled tomorrow. Which, of course, I would not mind in the least. But we are supposed to be checking our email regularly to see what is going to happen. I can't help but mutter cancelschoolcancelschoolcancelschool under my breathe. Not that I just don't love learning and going to classes, but a break would be nice. Because I've been feeling kind of really stressed out lately.

But still, whenever there is the possibility that they might cancel school, I'm always on the student side. Whoops.

Anyway, here is what I really wanted to write about, but I felt like I needed to give you a little backstory.

I told my sister, "I'm going to go outside to do a Snow/Ice Dance."

"What's that look like?" she said.

"It looks like a frozen Rain Dance," I said right before walking out the backdoor.

Hey there...

My blog has been sadly neglected as of late. Probably because I'm going crazy with schoolwork and trying to balance that with all the clubs and other cool stuff I'm in. Hm...I'm really not happy with how I'm managing my time skills at this point, and I want to improve so that I'm not so crazy stressed out during the week. I think the key is Friday. Because I have no classes, I should take this time to do schoolwork that isn't due until next week so I won't freak out so much. But the problem is that all I ever seem to do is think about this solution and never implement it. Gee whiz.

This Friday, things are going to change.

~Currently listening to obsessively:

Flashlight (The Cullen Song) by Eleventyseven

I'm basically a freak.

You want to know the most exciting thing I did today?

I superglued two of my fingers together.

Yeah, not cool at all.

I ended up spending 8 solid minutes rubbing them together while applying nail polish remover and olive oil to break them apart. As of right now, they are still sore and I can't really feel anything on the edges. Plus my skin kind of shifted around in the process, so now my fingerprint is kind of janky.

I've now resolved to NOT use superglue for my art project. I'm just going to stick with tacky and rubber cement.

~currently obsessed with:

Dishes by Flynn Adam

Argh

I woke up with a headache. It makes no sense. I got 8 hours of sleep. I didn't eat anything strange before going to bed. I had crazy weird dreams with subplots of Avatar, but my alarm went off and kept me from getting sucked into that vortex.

I ate breakfast as soon as I got up. But I still have this nasty headache. Gee whiz.

Hey though, you want a quick update on how I'm doing with my New Year's resolutions?

I've eaten 15 apples! Yeah, I know, today is the 23rd, so I'm 8 apples behind, but still, I'm pretty impressed with myself.

But today equals homework day. I have too many crazy assignments that are due in the coming weeks. It is crazy. I'm going to probably go insane. But that is the reason my blog entries are sometimes scarce. Hehehe. I think to perk myself up I'm going to buy some songs off amazon or iTunes. I've had a couple items I've had my eye on for several weeks now...

~currently listening to:

The Effect Radio

The neverending sludge...

Now that school is back I have loads of homework. As soon as I turn another assignment in they give me more to work on. I sometimes have a break in the sludge and wonder what I should do. I have done all the homework that was needed for class and I feel like I've accomplished something, but then I realize I shouldn't sit around doing nothing because I still have so many other projects that I could get started on...only I don't want to get started on those because I know they are labor-intensive and will take actual brain cells. (mine are currently fried at this point).

So...I sit and I meander listlessly. I have a to-do list on the stickies application on my Mac but I really would rather not check it. I don't want to look at the mountain of things I need to do this weekend. Nope.

And I definitely Do Not want to think about that Art project we're doing in class tomorrow. Nope. I will live in the delightful land of delusions and play with my pet t-rex.

This sounds like a grand plan.

~Song I can't stop singing:

Dishes by Flynn Adams

Golden Globes? No, I want the Newbery Awards!

So I completely went to bed last night forgetting that today was the day that the ALA announced their awards, including the Newbery and Caldecott winners.

I was randomly checking my email and checking out my blogs when I saw something on the side of a page and realized that it was book related and the NEWBERYS were going to be announced today. I immediately did some crazy fast internet searching to find out when the winner's would be listed and I got onto twitter to check out ALA's twitter page and found out the winners, but I didn't find the whole list.

But I found an article online that said they were posting the press release at 10:30EST and since I live in CST I looked at the right hand of my computer screen and saw it was 9:31 my time and I refreshed my page and I got the results! Here are the winners and honors for 2010!

I'm going to go put a whole bunch of books on my to-read lists on goodreads.

Conclusion

When I watch horribly depressing films that I know I'm going to cry in I will get a headache and have a small mountain of used tissues. Then I will go work on homework and not think about my cold or the sad movie.

(we watched My Sister's Keeper)

Whose idea was this anyway?

Oh right, me.

I signed up for all these classes.

I decided that three English classes and an Art class would go great together.

Yep, allll me.

Lucky little me.

So, that might be why my blog posts mysteriously disappear, or, ahem, fail to appear in the first place. I'll be so crazy busy doing Art when I'm an English major while reading for all my English classes.

Real smooth.

~Currently listening to:

the sound of my computer whirring...

I'm sick...again!

So you know that cold I kicked to the curb before school started? That nasty, obnoxious fellow who followed me around all Christmas break and tried to get chummy?

Yeah, him.

Well, he left for a little bit only to come back with all sorts of rude intentions.

No I don't want a stuffed up nose.

No, I don't want sinus pressure and plugged ears.

No, I don't want drowsy headaches.

No, I don't want to blow my nose every five minutes.

Argh, I am so annoyed.

~song I've heard on the radio and gotten excited about every time:

Hillstreet Blues by Maj

School is back in session...

And that means I am even more booked up than ever. I can't believe it is already day 3 and I have a nice stack of homework. What are they trying to do? Kill me?

So...I'm in an art class....which I'll probably fail...because I've never taken are before...and I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing...why did I sign up for this? Oh yeah, Photography Minor. Hm....

But I'm rereading the complete works of Jane Austen for my Jane Austen class - booyah (and I don't even use that word). Northanger Abbey is cracking me up man, Jane is so clever at inserting witty banter and ironic statements that I'm smiling throughout my entire reading of this novel. Tongue and cheek to the max. She's great.

So...I probably shouldn't be on her blithely typing away a blog entry when I have 1 creative writing assignment to write and 17 more sketches for that killer art class. I'm off to loose my mind in circles and black and white.

Excitement!

It's the first day back at school! So many new faces, so many warm and familiar ones. I'm getting to see my friends who I haven't seen in so long.

I just printed off my schedule. It's funny, I'm usually pretty paranoid, but I didn't even look to see where any of my classes were. Haha, I just knew which ones I was taking.

Now that I kind of know where I'm going I can relax a little. It's kind of funny though, out of my six classes, four are in the same two rooms! My bible classes on two different days are in the same exact room. And two of my english classes are in the same exact room with the same exact professor.

This semester looks pretty crazy, but I'm thinking it will be a good kind of crazy.

How is this even possible?

So I felt really carsick today. But I wasn't in a car.

Yeah? How does that happen?

Weeellll...it's kind of a long story, but I'll make it short. My computer started acting really weird and shutting down programs and I couldn't figure out what its problem was. Then I got these little messages that were telling me my "startup disk was full" and I realized I had no more memory!

I didn't really see how this was possible, except that I have a macbook and half the memory is stored on the windows side which I hate and never use. Another thing I realized was that I had over 5000 photos and videos on my iPhoto library. Hm.

I then realized what I needed was a portable hard drive. In the horrible and terrifying event that my computer crashed and all my photos and documents self-combusted, I would probably pull my hair out.

So I bought a portable hard drive and have since then been in the process of saving all my files to that and uploading all my crazy amounts of photographs. And today, I did that for a full 2 hour stretch and got up to realize I was feeling sick.

I guess that is what happens when you've been staring at the computer screen too long and concentrating. Oh man.

~Currently listening to:

'Til We See The Shore by Seabird

I'm surrounded by weirdos...

I had just closed the blinds because the sunlight was hitting me directly in the face and blinding my vision.

I got up from my comfortable position on the nook couch to go blow my nose.

When I came back into the room I found my father gleefully pulling up the blinds and saying, "Let the sunshine in!"

I told him, "I just put those blinds up because the sun was in my face!"

His answer was silence and with the quiet essence of a smile, he walked proudly out of the room.

Sometimes, I just don't know what to do with my family.

Poetry inspired by a kitchen accident

Slip

Shattered glass

Misplaced hands

Droplets of blood

Making a trail on the hardwood floors

Bathroom mirror crowded with faces

New Year's Resolutions for 2010

1. Eat 365 apples this year. An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Plan of action: My goal is 365 by the end of the year. If I accidently forget to eat 1 some day then I can still make up by eating 2 apples the next day or another time. To keep track of my progress I will keep a calendar next to my bed and I’ll post a sticker on the day I eat an apple and multiple stickers if I eat more than one. (I’m completely motivated by stickers, surprisingly.)

2. Write 365 blog posts this year.

It doesn’t matter how many I do per day, if I skip a day, I just need to have a tally of 365 by the end of the year. And I’m not going to be picky about my blog posts either, if I just write a couple sentences complaining of a cold, that’s fine. Or if I write 10 entries in one day, that’s perfectly acceptable as well. My thought is to just get in the habit of writing every day and become a better writer.

3. Work out regularly.

I want to be healthy and in shape, I want my immune system to fight off colds better, so if I start exercising more regularly I think that will help. My plan is to go to the gym a couple times a week and on the days I can’t go to the gym I’ll do the Pilates DVD I got for Christmas.

4. Do 100 crunches everyday.

This kind of ties in with the above resolution, but I figure if I am so completely exhausted from my crazy school/work schedule and come home to find I haven’t done anything this will be my handy dandy backup plan. I’ll write it down on my calendar when I do the crunches.

5. Don’t eat any food after 8pm each night.

This is just to be healthy. I’ve read that you aren’t supposed to eat late at night because your body doesn’t digest it and it becomes unwanted fat. So I’m going to try this for a year and see how it works out. I’ve done it for the past week and I already feel better.

6. Get completely caught up on my book reviews blog.

I have a really bad habit of writing partial reviews and then getting distracted and leaving the book review in my drafts folder instead of editing and publishing it. I don’t want to get so behind this year like I did last year.

7. Listen to and rate 25 CDs this year.

There are so many good CDs in my iTunes library that have not gotten their fair share of listening to, so I’m going to commit to listening to more music this year.

8. Write 365 pages in my journal this year.

I really need to journal so I can remember what my life was like, plus maybe my life is so thoroughly amusing I’ll publish it when I’m older? (haha, probably not.)

9. Get my Etsy shop in better shape.

I kind of want to sell some stuff.

10. Get a book published.

This has been on my New Year’s Resolution list for years and year…I’m hoping that with hard work and persistence this one will finally come true, if not this year, some year in the future.

11. Read 1 chapter from the bible each night.

I will pick up my bible and randomly flip it open and read 1 chapter before I go to bed. Or I can read what I’ve been recommended or what is on my mind.

12. Eat breakfast.

This is healthy and lately I haven’t been doing it at all. Even something as simple as an apple, a fried egg, and a glass of chocolate milk will suffice.

13. Get a minimum of 7-8 hours (preferably 8) of sleep every night.

This will boost my immune system and I’ll be able to retain more of what I am learning in college. Plus I kind of can’t function when I don’t have enough sleep and I act like a freak. Funny that.

So that is my plan. We'll see how well I did at the end of the year, Haha.

~Song currently playing on my iTunes:
Candlelight by Relient K

Sickly me...

Why do I still have a cold? I can't breathe and my ears are plugged. I don't want to be sick when school starts. I'm taking medication. Come on cold, go away.

~Song that keeps annoyingly popping into my head:

Fly on the Wall by Miley Cyrus

Sigh...the third book is so far away.

Thinking about Catching Fire makes me nostalgic for my nonexistent relationship with a fictious boy from a fantasy world.

August 24, 2010 cannot come soon enough.

Lately...

I've been receiving so many textbooks in the mail. I love getting packages. I looked up what books I would need for next semester online and then I searched around for the best deal, now they are coming in from all over the place. Today I got three packages, one form New Jersey, another from New York, and the last one was from Washington!

What is slightly irksome is the one I'm supposed to have read by the first week of class is not here. Thanks Northanger Abbey, thanks a lot.

~CD currently on repeat:

'Til We See The Shore by Seabird

It's all in the wording...

We ate breakfast at a hotel today. On the phone they had promised us a hot breakfast as well as the usual continental breakfast most hotels offered. Well, it sure sounded nice over the phone, bacon and scrambled eggs one day and omelets every other day.

Of course, once you get there, you realize what you imagined is not precisely what they said. Sure they had omelets, but they didn't tell you that the omelets were pre-cooked, pre-packaged, mass distributed concoctions that tasted like artificial goo.

The omelets looked perfectly fine sitting on the little platter under the heat lamp. If I hadn't been so preoccupied with how hungry I was and instead looked more closely at the surroundings I probably would have seen the early warning signs. When I cut a piece off the omelet I knew something was wrong, the cheese inside did not act like any sort of cheese I had ever met before, it oozed out in a orange trail and tried to mingle with my cinnamon roll.

I took two bites and then decided it was grotesque and completely not worth eating. But the biggest disappoint was they had no bacon. They had sausage instead. I don't like sausage.

So, today, I knew they would have to have scrambled eggs and bacon. I decided that I would get up early and eat a whole bunch of bacon before it was gone to make up for yesterday's lackluster and disappointing breakfast. But when I went downstairs, I found they did have bacon, but it didn't smell like regular bacon. It didn't taste like regular bacon either. I figured that it was just my brain playing tricks on me and I just needed to get used to it a little bit and stop comparing it to other bacon I had eaten before.

So I ate a couple slices. It still wasn't tasting better, so I buttered up some toast and ate the rest of my bacon in a sandwich. My dad told me to try some of the scrambled eggs. I picked up a small forkful and deposited it on my plate. It wiggled like congealed jelly and then slowly started to separate into various gruesome forms. I only had to take one small bite to realize these was not the eggs I knew and loved, but some sort of alien dish.

When I heard omelets and bacon, I thought of the homemade omelets I make for myself with extra sharp cheddar cheese and onions and fresh garlic. What I actually got was that conglomerate rip-off.

I guess the moral of the story is don't get your hopes up, or maybe it's don't eat eggs that resemble uncooked chicken fat.

~Song currently being played on my iPod:

Fading by Decyfer Down

Yesterday we stopped by an out of town Wal*Mart.

It is by far one of the scariest Wal*Mart's I have been to in a long time. I don't mean that quite literally, but as in there were so many different types of people it was amazing. The diversity of people and ages and clothing styles was phenomenal.

Now, I've consider myself a slightly paranoid person. I felt like everybody I walked by was secretly staring at me and wondering what I was doing in their Wal*Mart. So I basically tried to make eye-contact with no one.

As much as I love cheap prices and a store that has seemingly everything, there are some times when I would rather go to Target.

Music Stats 2009

The Top Played CDs of 2009
(according to my iPod)

These are the CDs that I played over and over again. The CDs that I could tell you the first line of the next song because I had listened to them so many times. As you can see, 2009 was the year of Relient K with three CDs I was maniacal about. Family Force 5 also had two CDs I listened to a lot. But what is actually surprising is the newcomers And Then There Were None who totally dominated my Top Played Playlist this year, kicking Family Force 5 out of the top 25.
Here are my top played CDs in alphabetical order by title:

“The Birds And The Bee Sides” by Relient K
“Dance Or Die” by Family Force 5
“The End Is Not The End” by House Of Heroes
“Family Force 5’s Christmas Pageant” by Family Force 5
“Forget And Not Slow Down” by Relient K
“Galactic Conquest” by Eleventyseven
“Let It Snow Baby, Let It Reindeer” by Relient K
“Make Some Noise” by Krystal Meyers
“Ordinary Dreamers” by Group 1 Crew
“The Seattle Sessions” by The Classic Crime
“Who Speaks For Planet Earth” by And Then There Were None

Top 25 Most Played
(to even get on this list you have to have a play count of 57 or higher).
1. Backstabber – Jonezetta – Popularity
2. Crazy Daisy – Neon Horse – Neon Horse
3. LCM – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
4. Action Is The Anecdote – And Then There Were None – Who Speaks For Planet Earth
5. Murmurs Of… - And Then There Were None - Who Speaks For Planet Earth
6. John Orr The Arsonist – And Then There Were None - Who Speaks For Planet Earth
7. All My Balloons – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
8. Reinventing Robert Cohn – And Then There Were None – Who Speaks For Planet Earth
9. Homemade Valentine – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
10. The Hospital – And Then There Were None – Who Speaks For Planet Earth
11. The Atmosphere – And Then There Were None – Who Speaks For Planet Earth
12. Cloak And Dagger – And Then There Were None – Who Speaks For Planet Earth
13. You Know We’re All So Fond Of Dying – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
14. Right Here Waiting – And Then There Were None – Who Speaks For Planet Earth
15. Time And Wasted Bullets – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
16. Even Sleeping – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
17. The City – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
18. Bed Of Nails – And Then There Were None – Who Speaks For Planet Earth
19. Search Warrant – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
20. Thank The Watchmaker – And Then There Were None – Who Speaks For Planet Earth
21. The Alamo – And Then There Were None – Who Speaks For Planet Earth
22. Ditches – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
23. A Chance To Say Goodbye – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
24. Samantha – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3
25. Mock The Music – Children 18:3 – Children 18:3

The Best Books of 2009

The Best Books of 2009

This year I read over 400 books, and I've kept track of my books on goodreads. I thought it would be a cool idea to list all the books I gave 5 stars this year. I also decided to categorize them by genre. So...bold = juvenile books; italics = children’s books; normal = young adult; and underline = adult books.

The Best Books (in order of when I read them):
1. Kamishibai Man by Allen Say
2. Knitting Never Felt Better by Nickey Epstein
3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
4. Panda Whispers by Mary Beth Owens
5. The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
6. The Dirt on Sex by Justin Lookadoo
7. The Dirt on Drugs by Justin Lookadoo
8. Knitting Beyond the Edge by Nicky Epstein
9. Savvy by Ingrid Law
10. I Like Myself! By Karen Beaumont
11. Good Babies: A Tale of Trolls, Humans, a Witch and a Switch by Tim Myers
12. Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines by Kay Gardiner
13. Nicky Epstein’s Knitting on Top of the World by Nicky Epstein
14. Ask Me Anything by J. Budziszewski
15. Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner
16. The Amaranth Enchantment by Julie Berry
17. Skippyjon Jones in the Doghouse by Judy Schachner
18. Skippyjon Jones and the Big Bones by Judy Schachner
19. Skippyjon Jones in Mummy Trouble by Judy Schachner
20. Old Bear by Kevin Henkes
21. Watch Me Throw the Ball by Mo Willems
22. Forest Born by Shannon Hale
23. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
24. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
25. Sexy Girls: How Hot is Too Hot? By Hayley DiMarco
26. Skippyjon Jones, Lost in Spice by Judy Schachner

Happy New Year!

So, it is officially twenty-ten. It's crazy, man. I have been looking forward to this year and all the things that I am imagining I'll get accomplished. But then, when it finally arrived, I felt nostalgic for 2009. What's up with that?

Here's a problem of mine: I think about the things I have to get done, mentally calculate how much time each task takes, plan out a schedule and then say, "oh, I've got time to do that later," and I get completely distracted and then nothing gets accomplished. The whole reason I'm telling you this is because I haven't thought-out my New Year's Resolutions. Drat.

But here's what I've got so far:

1. Eat 365 apples this year. An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
2. Eat 365 bananas this year. I'm still iffy about this one since I've already got the apples.
3. Write 365 blog posts this year. (Are you seeing a theme here? Haha)
4. Work out at least 3 hours a week this year.
5. Don't eat any food after 7 or 8pm each day.
6. Get completely caught up on my book reviews blog
7. Listen to and rate at least 25 CDs this year.
8. Write 365 journal pages this year. (This might get nixed or slimmed down.)

This is a mighty chunk of things. Looking at it actually makes me a little leery. But here's my thought, I won't make it so I have to eat 1 apple each and every day or I fail, but I just have to eat 365 before 2011 rolls around. If I miss a day, no big deal, just eat two apples some day in the future. This puts some of the pressure off me and makes me more likely to not get discouraged.

Well, I've got to pack because we're heading out in the morning, but I'll probably post a couple Best Of 2009s later as well, before I go to bed.

~Song I heard on the radio that intrigued me:

Dez Moines by The Devil Wears Prada