To celebrate November, I shall do one of those meme things.

I got this from Naomi's blog because she's an amazing blogger and therefore does amazing memes. Instead of my iPod, I'm using my extended favorites playlist on Grooveshark because I don't feel like hunting for my iPod right now.

"Put your music player on shuffle;
Post the first 40 songs that come up. You can repeat artists if you want. If you have any repeats, skip to the next track."

1. PCC - Green River.
2. Rebel Girl - Bikini Kill.
3. Vulcan Ears - Milencolin.
4. Halo - Beyonce.
5. Ariel - Babes in Toyland.
6. Green Eyes - Husker Du.
7. Love Is Paranoid - The Distillers.
8. Heaven Is A Truck - Pavement.
9. Lurker II - Jawbreaker.
10. Stutter - Elastica.
11. Hot And Cold - Katy Perry.
12. Verse Chorus Verse - Nirvana.
13. Sweet Dreams - Eurythmics.
14. Hard On For War - Mudhoney.
15. Dig Me Out - Sleater Kinney.
16. More Than A Feeling - Sleater Kinney.
17. Kiss Kiss - Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
18. Hummer - Smashing Pumpkins.
19. Deceptacon - Le Tigre.
20. Black September - Dead Moon.
21. Heavy Metal Machine - Smashing Pumpkins.
22. She's Crushing My Mind - Team Dresch.
23. Air - Frente!
24. What's Wrong With You - Bratmobile.
25. New Tools - Seaweed.
26. Drain The Blood - The Distillers.
27. Horrible - Frente!
28. Lorna - 7 Year Bitch.
29. New Radio - Bikini Kill.
30. Mongoloid - Devo.
31. Buffy (Main Title Theme) - The Breeders.
32. Jesus Online - Bush.
33. American Society - L7.
34. Hollywood Ending - Sleater Kinney.
35. Big Mess - Devo.
36. Swallow My Pride - Green River.
37. Danger! Danger! - Towers of Hanoi.
38. Hot Topic - Le Tigre.
39. I Just Can't Be Happy Today - Love Battery.
40. Drama - L7.

1. Which song do you prefer, #1 or #40? Probably 40, but they're both great.

2. Have you ever listened to #12 continuously on repeat? Yes. Addictively, at times.

3. What album is #26 from? Coral Fang.

4. What do you think about the artist who did #15? Best riot girl band ever. Carrie Brownstein is my hero.

5. Is #19 one of your favorite songs? No, but it's pretty good.

6. Who does #38 remind you of? A Le Tigre music video I watched once where everything was an innuendo.

7. Does #20 have better lyrics or music? Probably music, but that's only because the music doesn't make much sense.

8. Do any of your friends like #3? Not to my knowledge.

9. Is #33 from a movie soundtrack? Don't think so.

10. Is #18 overplayed on the radio? Nope.

11. What does #21 remind you of? Axl Rose, writing over the summer, and bare feet.

12. Which song do you prefer, #5 or #22? Team Dresch, I think.

13. What album is #17 from? Haha, I haven't the slightest idea. I don't usually listen to them.

14. When did you first hear #39? About a month ago.

15. When did you first hear #7? I was listening to all of the tracks off Coral Fang a few months ago.

16. What genre is #8? Post grunge / post punk.

17. Do any of your friends like #14? I don't know, probably not.

18. What color does #4 remind you of? Glittery gold.

19. Have you ever blasted #11 on your stereo? Definitely, multiple times.

20. What genre is #37? Post - riot grrl, I guess.

21. Can you play #13 on any instrument? No.

22. What is your favorite lyric from #30? I don't have any clue what he's singing, don't even know what 'Mongoloid' means...

23. What is your favorite lyric from #23? Again, I don't pay attention to the lyrics.

24. Would you recommend #24 to your friends? Possibly, if they were asking about the specific genre.

25. Is #2 a good song to dance to? Not really.

26. Do you ever hear #16 on the radio? Haha, no. Because the radio station is stupid.

27. Is #32 more of a “nighttime” or “daytime” song? Night.

28. Does #36 have any special meaning to you? Not unless you count me making up multiple meanings for the title when there probably aren't any. Then again, it's Mark Arm. So it probably does have multiple meanings, so no.

29. Do any of your friends like #31? Not as far as I know.

30. Is #25 a fast or slow song? Fast.

31. Is #35 a happy or sad song? It's Devo. They're just... Devo. They don't really do normal human emotions.

32. What is one of your favorite lyrics from #9? The part about talking walls.

33. Is #34 better to listen to alone or with friends? On the bus, alone.

34. When did you first hear #27? About six months ago.

35. Name 3 other songs by the artist who did #29 Sugar, For Only, Strawberry Julius.

36. Do you know all the words to #6? Nope.

37. Does #28 have better lyrics or music? Music, I suppose.

38. What album is #10 from? Elastica - the self titled debut.

Well, that was a fun time waster. Off to youth group. Oh dear. Let the social anxiety ensue.

School year is movin' along.

It is. The year is almost an eighth of the way over, now! Interims and all that. I've already rambled to everyone about my unexplainably good grades, but I've been posting 'em since I barely bailed myself out of Algebra last spring, so I shall continue the tradition. I don't have numbers for these grades because our interims only say letters, but that's okay.

English - A.
History - A.
Journalism - A.
Geometry - A. (I happen to know that I have a 99 percent in there because my teacher sent home more detailed interims by way of email. Me. Math. Ninety nine. Makes no sense, but I love it.)
French - A.
Biology - A- (Seriously?! I hate my teacher. I hated her before this, but I hate her more now.)
Gym - A.

So. Basically everything is fine, my parents aren't giving me any worried looks or whining about me slacking off. Which makes sense because I've been spending about five hours a day studying, doing homework, that sort of thing. I desperately want A's so that I can go to school in Washington when I graduate. If I don't get A's, it shall not happen, so therefore, I must get A's. It's a conditional statement thing! Sorta. My biology grade should be an A too. It would be an A if my teacher weren't a bitter old hag who takes out her passive agressive fury on a bunch of innocent freshmen every day. She gave me a C on this science fair packet because I 'didn't put metric units'. Yeah, um, I was listing the plants I intended to use. Can't really put units on that. Oh well, at least I'm not failing, even though I might not have anything close to an A after the unit test we just took. I studied so much for it, but macromolecules and atoms - which I'm learning for the second time, they still don't go into my head - do not stick for me. I'm definitely not a science person.

Enough about that, though. I don't really want to cultivate extreme hatred against a teacher the way I did against my english teacher last year. Too much work.

Last week, my mother, of all people, dragged me into getting a Facebook. For a long, long time, I was vehemently opposed to even thinking about it, but the ten demands a day of, 'do you have a Facebook yet?!' finally made me crack, and when I was weakened by... well, tiredness and stayed home from school last Friday, my mother almost singlehandedly created an account for me and promptly added herself to my friends list. I sort of got addicted for a couple of days, but it got old when I figured out that my friends don't actually have anything to say but that they found a pink cow in Farmville or whatever, and that they're bored. So spending hours a day on there isn't worth it, unless I'm attempting to stalk someone, which makes me feel stalkerish, so I had to stop that too. I wasn't successful, by the way. Searching through lists of eight hundred people has no effect. I hate that profiles are hidden. Makes it so much harder to do any proper stalking. That and I never learn people's last names. So I can't find the friends who actually ask me to find them on there, let alone people I spend time searching for even though I'd never friend them, due to me being me.

My father is a closet The Birthday Massacre fanboy. Actually, he's not really the closet part. Ever since I forced him to listen to my copy of 'Violet', he's been obsessed. He even tuned his keyboard to play one of their songs. We've listened to Violet in the car at least five times now, and he cranks it up louder than anything else he plays. So I ordered the 'Looking Glass' EP for him because his birthday is soonish and I had spare cash and I'm pretty sure he'll lemme listen to it. I love it when I've managed to brainwash my father into something. It's amusing, his ranting and raving about how insanely murderous their lyrics are becomes a sort of manifesto to their greatness halfway through. I don't love that many industrial bands, but they are great, yes.

This is short, but that's okay. Don't have much else to report in life, really.

Music lately has been much Green River. I ordered their album last week, along with Love Battery's Dayglo. Oh my goodness, Dayglo is an extremely amazing album, go out and buy it right now. Sleater Kinney too, I'm really liking One Beat right now. A little bit of Metric, and a couple of other obscure indie groups that my friend is brainwashing me daily to like, Smashing Pumpkins during lunch, which annoys my friends to no end because I space out to it and stop talking, L7 on the bus, Veruca Salt, some 10 Minute Warning. Mostly Love Battery. My devotion to this band goes to insane degrees, or so it would seem. I want to write a fan letter to Ron Nine, begging him to drag his band over here so they can play a show for me and the seven other Love Battery fans who probably live in Virginia. It'd be worth it for them, right?

That's about all, night for now.

So much nothingness.

I'm insanely busy, but not with interesting things. Mostly, I'm just going to school. Coming home. Doing ten pounds of homework. Going to sleep. That's it. My life... gone. Not that I had much of one before, but what I did have got lost somewhere in the piles of geometry notes and french worksheets. I have a lot of homework this weekend. And when I say 'a lot', I mean a lot. I have to read a chapter from my biology textbook, answer the assessment questions, and make notecards to help me remember the vocabulary, and finish up the lab paperwork that I didn't have time to finish on Friday. Then I have to do three (yes, three) math assignments, make notecards to help me remember postulates and theorums and such, and study for the upcoming quiz. And then I have to get started on studying for my english test next week. And I have to make french notecards for chapter one, part two and study for the upcoming quiz on that. Basically, I'll be using a fair percentage of the world's stock of notecards this weekend. The only class I do not have homework in would be, surprisingly enough, history. History doesn't actually give much homework, but I end up doing a lot of homework for that class because I take ten pages of notes when everyone else takes about one and that takes some time. I learn by writing things down. Oh, and I have no journalism homework. I totally aced the test we had in there on Friday, fortunately for me, because my oh so intelligent project partners got us a B due to their inability to write a complete sentence and their overall giggliness. I hate working with people like that.

It's the weekend now, thank God. School isn't terrible, but it's very wearing. The only thing I'm doing after school right now is piano, on Tuesdays. Youth group is on Sundays this year. I'm still not 'getting involved', which I'm sure is going to maul my chances of getting into college, but that's okay. I'll figure something out later. Something that's not social or athletic or time consuming. The sad thing is, I love riding the bus. It's my favorite part of the school day. I've been using my father's old Walkman, bringing two or three discs a day, and it's working out swimmingly. 'Cept for when I have to change the CD in the middle of a bus ride. Mostly, I've been listening to L7's 'Hungry For Stink', which I bought along with Veruca Salt's 'Resolver' and Elastica's 'The Menace'. I think the L7 album is my favorite of the three. At first, I didn't love it, but it grew on me. 'Can I Run' is just about the best song in the world.

My thoughts aren't very cohesive today. It's raining outside and it's so, so pretty. Cloudy days are the best things ever.

I was going to go to some CD release show with a bunch of bands who's names I didn't know at all tonight, but then my friend got in trouble with her parents so now I'm not going, because my parents think I'll be murdered if I go anyplace alone. I'm, admittedly, not as sad as I would be because I knew who none of the bands were. The only reason I knew about the show was because this senior on my bus handed me a flier thingy, due to my tendancy to wear shirts with bands nobody knows on them. Well, she knew them. It surprised me that someone in my school knew who the Donnas were, but I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised. They're not underground or anything, and they're pretty poppy.

This is extremely short, but I don't know what else to say, and I sort of want to edit my novel, a little bit, today. It's already well past four, so I'd better get started. My mother's friend's mother is an author and my mother said she wants to see some of what I wrote because she read my little complaint letter... (which, by the way, the radio station has completely ignored. I'll be writing again soon.) So I think I should probably get some of the novel up to a level of decency.

Music lately has been a lot of Green River and some Mudhoney too, because I love Mark Arm and everything he does. A lot of Love Battery and Veruca Salt. During the school day, mostly L7. Some Smashing Pumpkins, I'm teaching myself 'Crestfallen' on piano so I'm listening to it again and again, Devo, The Distillers, a fair amount of Sleater Kinney, some Toadies. I totally forgot about them and was happy to remember. Nirvana, Babes In Toyland, The Go! Team, (I saw their first album at the record place last week and seriously thought about buying it, just because it was so cool that it was there). Chopin, I love all of the songs of his from Opus 28 that I've heard so far, The Birthday Massacre, a little bit of Lady Gaga, Moist, other scattered things.

That's it...

This weekend was amazing. :D

I'm only sad it's over and now summer is over too. But that's okay, because this post is going to not be about that, I don't think. Anyway, on Saturday, I went to the RevGen (Christian) music festival in New Jersey with my best friend. It was basically ten consecutive hours of hearing loud noises, getting to look at musicians and hanging out, which meant it was relentlessly fun. My father took me there, which was cool because according to... certain people I'm supposed to be hanging out with him more. Plus, he wasn't as loud or shrieky as my mother would have been. And he doesn't really care what I do most of the time, so he didn't try to make me stay with him constantly or anything. But I'm kinda rambling. So, anyway, we saw several bands. There were a couple that I didn't know that my father and I stood in the back for during the first hour of the festival, but they were pretty good. One was screamoish in nature, and the other was poppy rock, but if you asked me their names, I could certainly not tell you. I think the first thing we did pertaining to a band who's name I actually knew was this thing where we went inside a tent and listened to The Devil Wears Prada talk. I had never actually listened to this band, but I'm just going to take a second and mention that their keyboardist was exceedingly adorable, so that kept my attention while this old pastor person asked them questions for a while. Although I was somewhat disappointed there was no hugging involved with this little tent thing, it was fun to hear famous people talk and be in the same room as them. And then, I think - I could very well be forgetting something or putting things in the wrong order - we saw a band called Fireflight, who my mother apparently likes. I know she's not totally opposed to distortion or anything like that, she listens to Nickelback and the like, but this band was heavy so I'm sort of surprised she liked them. I actually recognized several of their songs from hearing them played in the car, or the house, or whereever she plays 'em. They were very good live. They sounded more metallic and much louder than on the CD, which I think made them sound better. Plus they had this synchronized headbanging thing going on that made them doubly entertaining to watch. Their singer was good live; she had lots of energy and was still... y'know, singing. And their guitarists were not only adorable, they appeared to be good at what they were doing. Which was guitar.

After that, we waited in line to get Fireflight's autographs which was cool 'cept for we were sort of worried they might want to know what our favorite songs were or something, which was not going to work out as we were not actually sure what the names to anything was. That got taken care of, though, and so we got to see the people up close and they touched stuff that we touched and all that. I don't know why, but the concept of being in the same realm as famous people is so insanely wonderful to me. And then we saw The Devil Wears Prada. I refused to go in the circles of people jumping around not actually slamming into each other because I am lame, which is unfortunate for Jill (the afore mentioned best friend), who probably would have, otherwise. And then my father thought I was going to die so he made me come stand further away, which I suppose might have been sad if I didn't partly have the same fear. I wanted to be near the front so I could see the band, but I didn't actually want to be in the middle of that. Aside from not having any clue what they were saying, ninety eight percent of the time, because they were, well, screaming, they were pretty good. I love their keyboardist. Which has almost nothing to do with the actual music, but I figure it's relevant enough to pass muster for this thing.

And then we ate food. And then we saw Flyleaf. Flyleaf was probably my favorite band of the day. They were incredible live, in my opinion. I was happy to find that I knew almost everything they played, with the exception of one or two new songs I don't think have been released yet. They played pretty much all of their best songs, besides 'Red Sam', which I don't think I even noticed the lack of while until just now. My favorite was definitely 'Breathe Today' - I used to be so addicted to that song, a year or two ago, and it was the coolest thing ever live. But 'Cassie' live was really good too. I actually liked it better when they played it than I did off the disc, I think. My only complaint was that I could barely hear Lacey's voice on some of the songs, maybe something was wrong with the sound system. We managed to be nearish the front but not in a pit of people, so that was good. Oh, and my father remembered his earplugs this time, so that meant he wasn't whining about being deaf after the show.

Lastly, we saw Switchfoot. My parents are both Switchfoot fans, so I know a couple of their songs, but I myself don't generally listen to them. Still, I enjoyed their show. Their singer was extremely good at the whole connecting to the audiance thing, and I recognized more than I thought. And he had beautiful hair. And eyes. And so that was entertaining too. He kept doing this thing where he was like, playing his guitar with his mouth which I'm sure sort of failed to impress whoever he was trying to impress but I thought it was a nice touch anyway. When the festival was over, we waited about an hour and a half 'til they decided we could leave the parking lot and then made the trek over to our hotel. By the time we got there, I was already half asleep. I think that's the most tired I've ever been before three in the morning and after nine in the morning. So that was the end of Saturday.

And then on Sunday, I went over to Jill's house and we watched 'Singles', which was a super amazing movie. I want to own it now. If it didn't have a sort of sex scene... Anyway. I think I should also make it be known that she had like, a heart attack over Pink Pop '92 videos of Pearl Jam. Mostly, Eddie Vedder. So if she ever tries to deny it, I shall have the evidence right here! I don't know what else to say about this besides that she has gorgeous posters up in her room.

This post is getting long due to my rambling tendancies and my lack of blogging as of late. I fear I might not be posting all that much in the months of September and October. School was the death of my last blog. By the second half of the year, time should be easier to find, but I'll have to work hard to keep posting. So, yeah.

Oh, and my shoes got here! They really are so ugly, they're pretty. Imagine bowling shoes faded from black to dark gray made of something between flannel and cotton, with scuffed up soles and oddly shaped tongues, and you have them. I love them. So much.

Music has been several things, mainly. I brainwashed my father to like Elastica during the car ride to NJ and back. I was surprised that he liked them, but I suppose I should just be happy because that means I can obessively play their album and he might not mind it. I've also been getting into the Distillers, a little bit. At first, I only listened to their hit, 'Drain The Blood,' but then I listened to all of Coral Fang and it's a great album. Pity it's got an explicit sticker and a naked girl decorating the cover. I'm especially addicted to 'Love Is Paranoid'. Best. Song. Ever. I hope I lose my addiction to it at some point, because I really don't think I can download it. I've also been listening to Green River, Smashing Pumpkins, and the Gothic - Industrial Tribute to SP that I have. Some stuff on there is brilliant, like Bella Morte's cover of 'Soma'. But some is crappy. Or at least, not to my personal liking. I was listening to a little bit of Flyleaf this morning. Oh, and I've been loving Devo. I need their first album.

That's about all.

Haven't blogged in a lot of days.

Yeah, so I went to New Hampshire. It was totally fun until my grandparents started snapping at everyone they could see and I was forced into more boring activities than I ever thought I'd have to do and I had to sleep on a cement floor with an oxygen tank sighing loudly at me all through the night and my brother snoring. Thank you for that, my darling brother. The rest of vacation was alright. I was thrown out of bed around eight every day. Which was unfortunate, since it screwed up my head, but the rest of the days were decent. The trip was devoid of hipsters, besides a couple at Hershey Park. Hershey Park was pretty, and it was probably pretty darn awesome if you didn't have a chronic fear of head trama that made you stay away from rides at all costs. Which I do, for the time being, anyway. I should get on a ride at some time in my life, but what if that happens to be a head trama inducing one?! I hate near death experiences. Two is enough for one life. First the bolting horse, then the drowning. Too much risk taking. If I cut that out, I can (maybe) count on a gentle death in my sleep when I'm old. That sounds better than being taken down by something that's scary, or something that hurts. For some reason, when I tell my father about this philosophy, he tells me not to committ suicide. Which is stupid, because suicide is the last thing I'd do, right now. Or ever. I'm sort of anti - causing myself any pain at all. I won't even rip off a bandaid.

But I'm rambling. I could say it's 'cause I'm tired, but I've had so much caffiene today, I don't even think tiredness is possible. I've had two Pepsis, one very large, and a mocha frappichino that made me unable to sit still for the better part of a day. Coffee is my favorite thing in the world. Today was boring. Eleven, almost twelve hours in the car with two and a half books does that. Suddenly, having seven hundred songs on my iPod feels like nothing. I don't even have Machina on there yet. I need Dayglo so darn bad. Oh, that reminds me of something I need to rant about after I finish talking about this. The first book I read was 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' but Oscar Wilde. Best. Book. Ever. Not only did the author's personal life hook me from the start, the novel was so entertaining and thought provoking. I read a lot of classics, but I have to confess that some of them are things I read because I know they're meant to be good, even if I don't adore them. Like 'Pride And Prejudice', which I recently re - read. This book was different. Wilde writes in a way that is easier to understand, since the book was more recent than the average classic, but something about the way he writes is so artistic and fascinating. That's the first novel, bar none, I've read in a long time where I found myself re - reading parts because they were so darn good. Nobody writes things like that anymore. I wish I hadn't already finished 'Tunnel', because then I could try writing more like the way he writes. Maybe it's just as well though, because I don't want to start ripping him off... Anywho. The second book I read was 'The Dave Grohl Story' which was okay. The first part about his upbringing and his first experiences with the DC hardcore scene were good reading, particularly for someone who lives where I do. The part about Nirvana was interesting, but it ended up leaving me more annoyed than anything else, because the author had it out for Kurt & Courtney, from the very start, it was all about Kurt trying to decimate the band and Courtney treating him as a puppet and alienating the whole world through her sheer Courtneyness. Don't get me wrong, I don't object to Courtney bashing in the least, I, like about ninety five percent of the world, doesn't like her at all, but Kurt? By most accounts, he was a sweet, sort of misunderstood person who tended towards being very quiet. Not a band decimater, at least, not on purpose. So that was frustrating to read. The Foo Fighters part was alright. Mostly, it idolized Dave and took shots at everyone else in the music industry. Which is always nice to read about. If one was a manic Foo Fighers fan, they might appreciate it a little more. I can't call myself that, not even owning one of their albums, so I had only passing interest in parts of it. The last half of a book was this Christian woman genericish novel my mother had. I read it because I had two hours left and my other books were done. I could have attempted 'Paradise Lost', but I was sick of weeding through annotations after 'The Taming Of The Shrew' and 'Pride and Prejudice'. Nothing better for light reading than a book intended for thirty somethings who like romance without any physical contact. Those books are generally full of cliches and impossiblities that would be profoundly annoying anywhere else, but are kind of funny there. This particular one was about some woman who works at a cancer clinic and then gets breast cancer and falls in love with the doctor who she works for. Dunno if the irony's meant to get it pegged as witty or smart, but it had a rather fourth grade reading level, so I mostly just read it to pass time. Never finished it, don't know if I will. My mother doesn't like me reading her books, which is understandable, because I wouldn't let her go near mine.

Oh. Yes. Love Battery is playing their first show in years for seven dollars at an all ages club. Guess what city it's in. Freemont, in, y'know, Seattle. I can't really complain that they're sticking to their roots, and with the economy or whatever, it's probably hard to fly out to DC, but... I need you to play here, Love Battery!! My devotion for this band has reached a manic obsessive level over the past few weeks induced by repeated plays of Straight Freak Ticket and a crush on Ron Nine. I want to write them a fan letter, preferably begging them to come to DC or Northern Virginia. My parents rejected my offer to be in debt for several years so I could fly myself and one of them there. I actually cried over it. Twice. I might be a stupid suburban kid who knows nothing of real suffering, but I want to see Love Battery. So bad. Ron Nine normally plays more with his new band anyway. I should check them out. Down With People, they're called. Oh well. I'll have to content myself with finding out how to burn my Between The Eyes cassette to iTunes and hunting down copies of Confusion Au Go Go and Dayglo. I'm actually drained of cash, for the time being, because I sold my darling old guitar and bought myself a new one.

It is a white Epiphone G - 310 SG, which is a long way of saying it's a pretty normal looking electric guitar that can do a lot and isn't too complicated or expensive. Well, actually, it does cost more than I'd like, but I had enough, so I figured I may as well live within my means. Oh, speaking of musical instruments, I can ramble about piano for a little while, right? I practiced on my grandparents piano, which was old and out of tune and felt all wrong to me. It screwed up my Prelude so darn much. Prelude is turning out to be one of my favorite songs. Not just to play, but to hear. Although, playing it is really exhilerating, in a way. The progression of notes that are part of the D minor (I think) chords in both hands is so fun. I don't even think about what my fingers are doing very much anymore, which is my favorite part of learning any song. I like playing classical ten times better than playing pop or rock. That said, I've cultivated an odd little aspiration to play piano in a riot girl or grunge band (that sounds more like one of the heavier, earlier ones). Something like Green River, only maybe even heavier. And with a piano. Mostly, this is because I'm incapable on the guitar and enjoy playing the same five power chords way too much to make something of myself, but also because the idea just appeals to me quite a lot. Can't imagine how I'll find multiple people willing to work with that, but that doesn't mean it'll never happen.

Oh, goodness, this entry was long and rambling and had almost no content worth actually reading. Music lately has been Love Battery. I swear, the only thing besides a couple of L7 songs I listened to the entire duration of my trip to New Hampshire was the two albums currently on my iPod. Drowning Sun is the best song in the world. What other artist can pull off the groovy thing?! Might have already mentioned that, but still... I've been listening to Nirvana and Mudhoney too. Also some Pavement, which makes me worry that I might turn into a hipster some day. Then there's Veruca Salt and Bratmobile and Lady Gaga. I really like 'Love Game'. No idea why. In fact, I don't think I want to know. I listened to more Devo, and then some Le Tigre. More of the same thing I always listen to, really. And always Love Battery. They catch me by surprise in the best ways. Thus why they're beating out Smashing Pumpkins for my second favorite band, at least, right now.

Life is... monochromatic.

My mother told me I use too many big words in my writing so I'm prone to hyperbole. I intend to never use small words when I could easily use bigger ones again, partly to spite her, but mostly because I think hyperbole makes everything better. If I spelled that word wrong in the title, you can pretend it's irony, but it's really just me being too lazy to use spell check. I showed her my submission for the anthology at writing camp today - a submission that's already been edited by several people and handed in - and mocked me for my use of words like 'relentless' and 'bleak'. Words that are not exactly SATish in nature. She's in a funny mood due to jet lag and God knows what else, but it was sort of degrading to be told that such words sound funny or awkward in my writing. I'd like to think it flows smoothly enough and tells the story. Maybe I'm just an egomaniac...

Enough rambling. I have some stressful things coming up, and that means I shall be writing panicky, ranty posts and staying up way too late and bothering everyone to death. Just a warning, if you happen to talk to me on a regular basis, like pretty much everyone who's liable to reading this does. Tomorrow, we're meeting an old friend of mine (we used to be best friends but that kind of changed) at the Metro station and she's hanging out here for a couple of hours. Under normal conditions, I'd think of it as a blessing, seeing someone who I used to be very close to that lives on the other side of the country, but things got complicated with her around sixth grade, and we never quite patched it up. So, as it is now, it just means I have to clean my room, clear my internet history so as to keep her from being exposed to the number of 'Blind Date' episodes I've watched and gossip blogs I've read. And Wikipedia pages. And then I have to change my background so that it doesn't reflect my new found love for the way Axl Rose looked in the 1980s. Not the man himself, you must understand, I think he's an idiot and is completely full of himself, but he was gorgeous in the eighties. And I have to make sure my hair looks fine and I'm not wearing anything particularly unusual tomorrow too, which just feels like undue stress.

Next week, I have a total of ten hours of my life dedicated to getting used to my high school. Not a single one of my friends will be attending the orientation, which I can deal with, but getting up at nine to be barked at and led around school corridors? I am not such a fan of that part of it. I'm extremely directionally challenged, so I hope and pray that they will not make us find our way around.

On a more optimistic note, writing camp has been moderately enjoyable. Almost everyone there is nice enough, and I'm not as uncomfortable as I used to be. The college campus is quite pretty, but college students are a self centered, over confident bunch who I hope I never become anything like. They're always rushing around in their artsy clothes with cell phones attached to their ears, giving little sideways glares to anyone who happens to consider being in their way. I've noticed a lack of students in classes, which must be a pleasent change from middle and high school, but kind of bothers me. Why are they there if they're not learning? I don't get it. Still, the camp itself doesn't give me much stress any longer. The only part I fret about is sharing - I fear that my group leader will force me to go up and read something, which I would not enjoy at all. The twelth graders intimidate me with their fancy metaphors and wise sounding comparisons, I'll freely admit that. It's not just that though, it's an almost instinctive fear of standing before a large group of people. Which reminds me. I accidently worked that line from 'Polly' in to something I wrote today, and didn't even notice until I was reading it.

My mother's return from her Seattle high school reunion was accompanied by a Love Battery tape - 'Between The Eyes'! I was going to go for the CD, but now I haven't any need and a Kurt Cobain shirt (my seventh Nirvana shirt. I know I'm too obsessed, but it's kind of fun) and this disc of various grunge songs. I took advantage of her high school's locale and made her buy me lotsa music stuff. Oh, how I miss that town. I was never old enough to appreciate while I had it. And now I live with lawyers and ex marines and other people who are not especially fun. My mother's friend's husband knew Stone Gossard in high school! Isn't that unbelieveable?!

I wanted to bake, but there is nothing in the house. Sadly.

My mother thinks that 'pwn' is a suggestive term.

Music as of late has been Love Battery, Nirvana, Elastica, Screaming Trees, Britney Spears and The Birthday Massacre. Nothing of interest. I only write this part for myself, though, so I can remember what I listened to. Steve Burns has a new album coming soon! I'm going to scrounge up a few dollars out of my meager new guitar fund and buy it. I love Steve, I need to support him in his music career. There might even be a concert at some point, if the opportunity comes up.

I think that's all I have to ramble about, for the time being.

Edit~ Oh, yeah, my Blogger icon is me now. From the front. I'm very brave; compromising my safety this way. I don't particularly like the picture, but my blazer's in it, so that makes it good. Note the weird aqua tinge of the front of my hair.

I'm too writing out'd to make up a title.

Writing camp is... different than I expected, I suppose. But it's not any fun. Yesterday was my first day, but the drama really started the night before. I was more panicked than I've ever been, to the point of tears. Apparently, stress makes me cry pretty frequently. First the algebra state testing. Now this. I stayed up until four thirty in the morning, talking to my friends online and then reading some more of 'Gone With The Wind' until I couldn't keep my eyes open and I gave up. Which meant I got three hours of sleep that night, which meant I was exhausted by the time I'd made it through the impossibly long car ride to George Mason University where the camp was being held. The first day is sort of a blur to me, thanks to the sleep deprivation, but I know that we wrote. A lot. I wrote a character sketch of David Bowie without using his name and then my group's leader made me read it out loud. I don't think anybody else in the room even knew who Bowie was enough to recognize him. But the leader told me it was nice anyway in a similar fashion to the way doctors talk to mental patients.

Today was a little better, 'cept for that we got rear ended this morning. The damage was minimal and neither my father nor I were hurt, as the other car had been going very slowly. It did make me twenty minutes late to camp, though. Today, we were assigned to wander around the campus in small groups and describe some of the people and objects we saw. I went with three or four other girls in the ninth / tenth grade split group I was put in and described a janitor who was sitting dejectedly on a bench a ways away. I think he noticed us staring about midway through our writing, because he started staring too, and it wasn't really a friendly stare. We're meant to write something by Friday that we can publish in the camp's anthology, so we worked on that for a while today too. I have no idea what I'm going to submit; I wrote about a homeless man fishing a book in a foreign language out of a dumpster today, making it totally clear to myself that I had no inspiration. I'm sure I'll find something. There are a great many subjects in this world.

So far, camp hasn't been devastatingly awful. Even if it's not great and it's very emotionally and physically draining. Most of the people there are moderately civil, though there are some that are remarkably crazy and sort of frighten me. It's sort of nice to hear large quantities of other people tossing around odd words and making comparisons to really irrelevent things in the middle of conversations, which is happening a lot there. I don't know if its because we're all kind of insane from writing too much or if it's merely a coincidence. Anywho. Tomorrow will be another stressful day, but I doubt the details of it will be anything of even slight interest.

Fortunately, I still have a little time to myself after returning home each day and eating. I spent most of this afternoon and evening trying to detangle 'Thru The Eyes of Ruby' - my all time favorite Smashing Pumpkins song - on piano by learning from guitar tabs. This had all sorts of lovely complications. For example, the first tabs website I went to neglected to tell me it was in half step down tuning, which is fine and good on guitar, just turn some pegs (I tried it and it sounded nice enough, the riffs for the verse and bridge are pretty easy) and you're done. On piano, I don't know if there's a better way, but I was playing nearly everything in flats, which means lots of annoying black keys instead of the flatter, easier white ones. Yes, I am aware this sounded racist but I didn't know how else to say it. I also faced trouble with the small matter of the riff, coupled with some chords I sorted out for myself sounding nothing like the song at all. Not sure why. Kind of irritated by this. But I can always try tomorrow. Thanks to some music off the internet, I can play the introduction, the only part with real piano, with ease, and it sounds awesome, even if its a pain to read the music.

My best friend convinced me that I need a bass by having a grand time with her's and telling me about it. Well, really, it's not her fault, I've sort of wanted to try playing for a while, but not enough that I actually thought to save up money for it. I'm waiting 'til I have enough to buy an amplifier, and then I'll get myself one and learn to play it! Well, try, at any rate. It's become increasingly clear that I actually have no musical talent, I just have to work really hard and practice a lot and get engaged enough with the music I play to keep going, and then I do all right. Which is sort of annoying, but oh well.

Music as of late has been the CD's I bought the last time my father took me to that lovely place. I got about ten of them, the most notable of which probably being Love Battery's 'Straight Freak Ticket' and Elastica's 'Elastica', which I liked better than I thought I would. I got a Tears For Fears album too, but not my favorite one, Moist's 'Silver', 10 Minute Warning's '10 Minute Warning' and some others. Sadly, there was no Frente. Not even one of their full length discs. Thus, my quest for Frente CDs continues. I've also been listening to some of my favorite artists, ones that I sort of started phasing out of, more - Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots, namely. I've been listening to quite a bit of L7, some Babes In Toyland, and... Britney Spears. 'Blackout' is awesome, I don't care how cracked up she sounds through the whole thing.

That's about all I have to say. I know I'm really boring lately, but this blog was never intended to be entertaining, only a public diary of sorts.

I'm fourteen now. :D

I have been since last night when I posted, but... I needed a title and nothing else was offering itself up to me. I'm not going to detail every single minute of yesterday 'cause frankly, it wasn't a very thrilling day. Which is just how I like it. No anxiety over getting friends sorted out and events planned, no pressure to seem exceedingly grateful in front of tons of people. I spent most of my birthday on the internet with friends. I love my internet friends so darn much, I've known most of them for over a year, and I'd much rather spend my birthday with them than with anyone I know at school, to be honest.

Aside from that, I also played piano like mad. Going on vacation for a week really set me back, and I couldn't get anything mastered at all. I could tell my teacher was disappointed, even though she knew I had an excuse. We spent most of the lesson playing Sonatina II together, me doing one hand and her the other, which was not how I wanted to spend the lesson. I only have to learn hands together for what we'd already covered, thankfully, it'll be nice to have a week where I'm not drowning in piano homework. My mother insists it's not homework; piano isn't a class in school, but I treat it as such. A fun class, yes, but a class none the less. When we played Psycho, she said I had the notes down but not the rhythm. This is because the rhythm makes no logical sense, the syncopation is the most confusing thing I've had to play yet. Of course, I've been playing for less than three months, so it's not as though I've encountered much. My teacher made me sing the first little chorus type thing with her, which I could be persuaded to do, since one couldn't really hear me very well along with the piano and her. But then she abruptly stopped singing, and made me carry on. Which was no fun. I don't sing in front of people I haven't known since... birth. I'll sing in front of my family. I'll even, occasionally, sing in front of my extended family. But anyone else? No way.

My mother claims she called me a joy to teach at the end of my sister's lesson, but it certainly didn't feel like it then. I was stressed out over piano all day, and to no avail. I'll have to practice more this week.

After eating dinner with my family, I opened the presents various relatives had sent me. I don't know that anyone wants to know or care the details of this, but I'll digress a little to say that Steve Burns' album is jawdroppingly amazing, and if you've ever even sort of liked one of his singles, the whole thing is worth getting. Plus, the album art is so whimsical and pretty. I also downloaded some stuff off of iTunes last night - why on earth do they not have Frente, of all bands?! They had Pond - and so now my iPod is considerably fuller. Which is always nice. My parents gave me cash and told me I could buy anything with it, so I want to go down to that record exchange. Stuff is cheap there. And, on top of that, they had a Love Battery album besides Dayglo, so that makes them worth visiting pretty much every day.

I've gotten about seven hours of sleep between last night and the night before because, for some reason, I keep waking myself up early. Summer is in full swing, and I love it. If only writing camp wasn't going to come. I'm really dreading writing camp. It's not so much that I'm anxious - although, of course, I am, I hate sharing work - I just don't want to devote my days to something I don't want to do. I don't like meeting large groups of people. I don't like meeting people much older than me. I need to get over it, since high school is kind the eppitome of that, but it's not easy for me.

I want to write some fanfiction, but I don't know what to write. Maybe I'll pick up one of my long term stories, the ones that I dropped to work on one shots and other dalliances.

This is really short, but I don't know what else to say. Better than nothing at all, I suppose.

Music as of late has been the CD's I got yesterday, and a bunch of other scattered things. Some Love Battery, as always. Quite a bit of Lily Allen. My love for Tears For Fears has increased with a slight addiction to the song 'Pale Shelter'. I was listening to Bikini Kill yesterday, but not for long. I simply wasn't in the mood. I wonder, if a riot girl folk band is possible. If one is ever invented, I'll polish my skill at something and join, 'cause it sounds like the coolest thing ever. I listened to Seaweed, Moist, and some Pond yesterday too. Basically, quite a few things, but nothing exceptionally notable. I want a Frente album now, but the one I really want - the one with Sweet and Same on it - has only three songs. The trouble with indie bands is that they release all kinds of odd stuff that is not a full length album. They have such a catchy folky pop sound though, they ought to have more publicity than they do, and they ought to make more full length albums.

I think that's about all I have to say, today.

It's my birthday, which means I can make a nonsense post.

It's only three in the morning, so technically, it's not really exactly my birthday, but that matters not, am I right?

I don't know what to say about today; it was boring. I played Zoo Tycoon with my brother, practiced piano, hung out on the internet and looked around in my parents' closet, but found nothing of interest.

So far, for my birthday, I've gotten Krist Novoselic and some surprise that nobody will tell me the answer to. Oh, yeah, and a headache from my headphones. Wearing them for four hours straight hurts.

I read a book tonight while I was talking with friends over the internet. It's an easy, short read, only about one hundred sixty pages. It's called 'House Of Stairs' and I rather liked it. It was eerie, and interesting, and sort of cheesy, but... good.

Sleater - Kinney is the best riot girl punk band ever. People who prefer Babes In Toyland are silly. And, Hole is not a grunge band. They're punk pop. Ugh. Why are people so stupid?!

My father is a fanboy of The Cure. What. On. Earth. I was listening to 'Just Like Heaven' tonight, and he comes in and starts saying how great they are. He didn't even have any old albums to offer me.

I want my dress, I don't know what my mother did with it. I don't know when I'll ever wear it. I'd wear it today, but I've got a piano lesson so I have to look sort of normal.

My hair is in these orderly, well mannered curls right now... and no one can see me. Why?! Maybe I'll pull out my phone and take a mirror picture or something.

'Bring The Light' is the best new Smashing Pumpkins song. It's smashing. Really. I don't know why Billy had to go all Axl Rose on the world, but at least he can still write a decent, if painfully generic rock song.

Moist is a really good band, even if their name is sort of unusual. Their singer sounds like something from the eighties, technopoppy, y'know? Only there's heavy grunge guitar. But it's backed, on occasion, with subtle piano. Very interesting. The post grunge bands of the mid nineties were so cool. So very, very cool.

Pond's singer is so hard to understand. Same with Seaweed.

I want to marry Blind Melon's new singer. He's completely gorgeous, and he can (surprise, surprise) sing.

Sleep deprivation is a gift from God, not a curse intended to paralyze the mind and cause partial Tourette's syndrome. I think. Time to get to bed, I'll probably post later today.

Sorry for the nonsense. Most of it musicial and boring. Whoops. It's three thirty now, I'd better sleep. Night.

School is out.

Yesterday was my last day of middle school... ever. Pretty cool, huh? Maybe not. I don't know what I am right now. I don't think I'm an official highschooler yet. I certainly don't feel like one. I don't know if I'm even allowed to be counted as a middle schooler, though. Perhaps I am just stuck in between for a while. We did almost nothing during the school day, as we had only twenty one minutes in each class. Some of the teachers made little speeches about how much they enjoyed the 'challenge' of teaching us this year, which basically means that we were a horrible class, but they somehow endured it, so they must drum up something nice to say. It was almost impossible to convince myself that waking up had been worth it, that morning, but I'm glad I did. I might have had a rather skeptical perspective when starting school last fall, and I was pretty confident I wouldn't make a single friend, but I was surprised yesterday how sad I was to leave behind some of the people I go to school with. Most of my friends are going to a different highschool than me, next year, so unless I make plans out of school with them, I'm never going to see them again. Going - even for three hours - on the last day to say goodbye to them was worth it. I'll always have my online friends, who I love dearly and would trade my school friends for in a second, but I've actually gotten rather attached to some of the people at school.

I'm rather proud of myself for the school thing, actually. I did better with the skewed grading system than I expected, especially after coming from a year of homeschooling where grades were pretty much an optional thing. And I made friends, which my parents kept insisting would happen, despite my vehement denials of it. I also kept up with my very best friends, which I worried wouldn't work out due to the chaos and business that comes with school. I'm glad to be done, don't get me wrong, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. There were some things I wanted to do, but never did... I can ignore that, though. Next year should be a little easier. My mother said I'm less 'angry' now than I was before. I don't know if that's true, in fact, I'm pretty sure it's not, but I suppose it's an improvement if anything. I've also made it more than six months now without my little 'habit' kicking in, which is longer than I've ever made it, since sixth grade. Apparently, once it starts, you're hooked for life, but there can be dormant periods, and those can last for years. Which, hopefully, this one will.

I spent yesterday afternoon on the internet, attempting to practice my new piano assignments (Sonatina Movement II and more of Psycho) and completely failing, and baking cupcakes. I had a grand time with the latter of these activities, I even decorated them with frosting and chocolate chips and coconut shavings and such. My mother was quite pleased that I had the motivation to bake something that took more than ten minutes to make. My family keeps me around only for my copious amounts of baked good production at times, I fear. I also went outside and hung out with my little brother, who turned out to be contracting some serious illness. He threw up five times today. That's why it probably wasn't a smart idea to hold him when he started crying because I yelled at him for locking my dog inside the spare room where we occasionally keep her when it's raining. The whole episode was kind of stupid, I just hope I don't catch whatever he has.

Today was a laidback day. This Sunday, we're leaving for The Outer Banks in NC, so needless to say, I won't be blogging for a while. Most of the day was spent preparing for this trip, and, of course, dealing with my brother's sickness. We were meant to go to the library, which is one of my favorite places ever to go, but we couldn't because my mother has a cough so bad she can't speak anymore, and nobody else felt like taking me. I hung around on the internet - I know, I have no life and that's all I ever do, I wouldn't have it any other way - most of the morning after showering and dressing, of course, and I tried playing piano and failed again this afternoon. I cannot handle the assignment she gave me: I am in so much trouble when piano rolls around the Tuesday after next.

Tonight my father let me tag along when he drove my brother to a birthday party, and then he took me to eat dinner! Spending time out of the house - alone - with my parents, especially my father, is sort of rare, since I have so many siblings. Well, only three. But it adds up. My sister's pretty darn good at commandeering most of my parents' attention, and even though my brothers are normally low matainence, they both have actual lives, which require some effort on my parents' part. I am definitely not a child who does whatever they're told and never puts up a fight about anything, but I don't tend to leave my room all that often. After we ate, he took me to this record exchange in Fairfax which made him all tense because apparently the area was kind of 'seedy' or something. But it was the best place ever. I was euphoric from just about the time we walked in. They had Skin Yard CD's! And records from thirty years ago! And, best of all, they had Love Battery's Far Gone!! Which is only one of the best and hardest to find grunge records ever. It was only three dollars, and my dad had already said he'd buy a CD for me, so I sprinted over to him and had a little 'squee' moment while he delivered the news that he'd buy something else for me since it was so cheap. I spent all of my cash on shirts, over the internet, and library fines, so I had no money, and would have just about killed myself to get that CD. I also bought Bush's Sixteen Stone, which my father let me get because Far Gone was so cheap. I wanted one of the Babes In Toyland albums they had there, and there were some of the rarer Smashing Pumpkins discs I sort of wanted too, but I don't regret my choice. I'm listening to Sixteen Stone right now, and it's much better than I thought. Alien and Comedown are the best, I think. Razorblade Suitcase is still much better, but this CD isn't a disappointment in the least.

So, now I'm eating a cupcake and listening to the first song off of Far Gone, since I just popped it in, which would be 'Searching For Rose'. Life is good.

Music today was... mostly Love Battery. I'm having a little bit of a band phase, I fear. I also listened to some Bella Morte and Seaweed, though. And The Donnas, and AFI, and Frente, and Lily Allen, and even Katy Perry. So maybe it's not as bad as I thought. I also love L7, who are somewhere in between riot girl and punk pop, and have one of the most agressive sounds I've heard in a long time. But it's somewhat melodic too, so it doesn't bother me the way bands like Rage Against The Machine generally do. I don't think I have anything else to say about music today, 'cept for, that I am in love with Far Gone, and anyone who has ever considered listening to anything put out in 1993 should buy it immediately.

That's all.

Last weekend of my eighth grade year.

Enormously thrilling, isn't it? I know nobody cares, but it's terribly liberating to know that next weekend, I won't have to bag a lunch or go to bed on time for school! I'll be free free free! I love summer.

As for my day, it was pretty boring. Saturdays are always low key for me, I like to use them to catch up on sleep and get all of the stress of the week out of my head. I woke about nine, and hung out on the internet waiting for my mother's friend to get out of my house. I don't normally go to all of the trouble of personally hating people, unless I've actually got something to hold against them, but something about this particular friend of her's really grinds my gears or however the saying goes. She's extremely outgoing, which means she contunally intrudes on my privacy, interrogating me about my life and filling me in on every single thing that happens in Cambodia. Yes, she lives there. You'd think it'd be interesting, but it's really not when you've spent the past eight years of your life hearing about it all of the time. I sound like a bad person, but that's honestly how I feel about the matter. When she left, I came downstairs and had some of the coffee she'd left. Apparently, drinking really strong coffee with a lot of creamer in it and not eating anything is not a smart idea, because I was jittery all day. I went upstairs and continued in my fruitless quest for a Love Battery shirt online, and then made myself some lunch around one and watched television for a while.

Later that afternoon, my parents had the grand idea to haul everyone out of the house and take them to see 'Up.' Which is a Pixar thing. It was okay, but it definitely wasn't worth my mother's random sob attacks throughout the film, and the torture of taking my sister in to the bathroom with me and hearing her narrate the whole experience for the benefit of everyone else in the bathroom. Having such a vivacious family makes me want to go all Charles Manson on them every once in a while, but they're better people than I portray them as. We came home, ate and then my brother opened presents. It's his birthday today, he's six now. Six is not a particularly good year for anyone, I don't think, but he'll live through it. I wish him luck, at any rate.

Now I find myself scouring the internet for shirts belonging to anyone I've been in to, as of late. Dead Moon has some cute shirts, but they're all skeletal, and my parents have this thing about that. They already rejected my Bikini Kill shirt because, as it would seem, having the word Kill on a shirt is quite offensive. There are no cheap Letters to Cleo or Veruca Salt shirts in the world, and Screaming Trees has no shirts left on the internet either. I already promised my mother I'd stop buying Nirvana shirts for a while, so that leaves me searching through everything I listen to, all for the sake of ridding myself of money. I think I have an impulsive spending addiction or something, because I cannot keep cash for more than a week.

On a sort of unrelated note, these online stores that tag Blind Melon as emo are insane. They're the furthest thing from that. I think. Why are all of their shirts black, though? I own too many black shirts. I want the Galaxie car one in white with a black logo, not reversed... Ha! I found a white one. And I also found a violet Dinosaur Jr shirt, adorned with an adorable cow. I haven't listened to them in forever, but that cow is enough to make me buy it regardless of band, plus it is only ten dollars and eighty two cents. Sold.

This is ridiculously short. I'll post something soon to make up for it...

I listened to everything from Garbage to Tad today. I also listened to Mudhoney and Love Battery, my ongoing addictions. I listened to a few string tributes, some piano covers, and that's about it. Oh, and rather a lot of Bikini Kill.

Out of the abyss.

For two days, anyway. This week was quite chaotic. I don't feel like summarizing every single day, so I'll opt out of that blogging style, and go for a much easier, less time consuming one. I'll merely state the significant events of the past week. Good, bad, confusing, all of them. I won't bother you with anything particularly boring. At least, I'll try not to. I suppose that's enough of an introduction to this, considering I normally don't even have an introduction. Should I be doing that? Other people do. I used to, when I used a different blog.

Good - I got one hundred on my service learning project in civics class and was praised profusely by my teacher. I'm pretty easy to flatter, if I feel that a compliment is honest, it can make my whole day better. Civics has been so boring, so forgettable as of late, I've been doubting its status as my favorite school subject. I suppose my faith was restored today. Oh, how I love getting (good) grades back.

Bad - My algebra state testing caused me a lot of stress this week. I literally broke down in tears over it on Monday or Tuesday, because I was so anxious. The test wasn't very difficult, but I finished very slowly, and I'm worried about my grade. What if I did everything wrong?! It makes me wonder.

Confusing - I finished my boxers in teen living, which ought to rank under good, because it sure took me long enough. I'm pretty happy with them, got them on over jeans right now. But I put it under confusing because I made a whole lot of mistakes on them. Crooked stitching, holes in my work, uneven cutting, and my teacher still gave me an eighty five percent. Seventeen out of twenty. Which is only a low B, but I'll take it. Why does she give me so much mercy?

Good - I found my new favorite song, to replace the little hole in my heart left behind by my short lived penchant for 'Not An Addict'. Love Battery's 'Between The Eyes' is my new best friend on the school bus. I downloaded it at random, never having heard it before. The comparison is weird, but I think it sounds kind of like White Stripes, during the chorus. The guitar part is so loud and distorted, you can hardly hear the vocals at some points. That used to bother me, but I'm listening to it now, and I don't mind. It's one of the most striking songs I've heard in a while. Funny how something as simple as a chord progression can make a huge difference.

Bad - My piano lesson was horrible last Tuesday. I was all out of it, making mistakes left and right. I made little to no progress on Karma Police, and was asked to repeat the part I'd played last week for this week. I forgot to practice today. I'll have to work extra, tomorrow. I'm trying to keep things moving with that song, I'm looking forward to the day I'll be able to play the whole thing through and have it sound, y'know, good. Sadly, that day will not be coming too soon in the future. Sonatina is going well enough, but I have to plug through that song with a level of determination I really have to work to muster up due to my constant exhustion, if I'm going to improve at it the way I should. I have to get everything working with both hands by next Tuesday and I'm unsure I'll make it.

Confusing - I went to therapy yesterday. It was, well, confusing. My therapist is sort of antagonistic towards my dad. I made some offhanded comment about him and now she's making a huge ordeal out of it. Yes, I feel uncomfortable talking freely around him. Yes, I tend to jump to conclusions and get defensive around him. But it's not worth dragging him into therapy with me for. I cannot even imagine him talking it over with her, can't begin to fathom it. My dad doesn't even want me in therapy anymore, since the hair thing is blown over. He'd really want me out if he knew our current topic of discussion. Despite this, I normally like going. I think, in all honesty, it sort of helps me.

Good - One more week of learning, assessments, expectations, anxiety, pressure, grading, and schooling in general, and then it's all over. Well, mostly. But what sane teacher is going to give any graded work on the last week of school? I don't want to get all nostalgic for something that hasn't happened yet, so I'll save the reflection and ponderings for the last day. I'm elated, I'll tell you that much. I cannot wait for my two months of freedom. The two months I shall supposedly grow up some before high school. Do I seem like a high schooler yet? Not at all, I think. Good thing I've got a little time.

Bad - I keep having a sharp, intense pain that feels almost like a sting in my upper stomach muscles. Ow. It's brutal. No idea why it's there, but it hurts badly.

Confusing - I'm not going to see any of my friends from school, with the exception of two of 'em and someone who is not quite a friend after the year is over. They'll all be attending different high schools. Being a recluse of sorts, I am not actually devastated about this. Half of them get on my nerves, anyways. But I don't know what to think, where to go from there. I don't know if I should try to keep in touch with them, or let it go. There are some that I don't want to talk to anymore, but others I sort of do. I feel uncomfortable being so forward about that, though.

That sums up what's goin' on with me, as of late.

As for music, I listened to quite a lot of Love Battery and Screaming Trees. Some Tad too. And a band called Seaweed who I'll have to learn more about, they seem interesting. I've been listening to an almost obsessive amount of Veruca Salt. 'Officially Dead' is awesome. As is 'Used To Know Her' and 'Only You Know'. Basically, all of Resolver. I was listening to some Jack Johnson, and a little bit of Dead Moon. And then there's Elastica, Garbage, and the Donnas. My girly punk - pop addiction will never recede, I fear. I was listening to a song by a band called Weird Little Boy who Wikipedia prompted me to discover, a few days ago. Noise rock is a genre I need to look into more.

Night!

Edit~ There are new lyrics up. Well, actually, they're the first lyrics up. I'll change them from time to time, whenever I get bored. Right now, they belong to Jack Johnson. 'People Watching' is a great song...

Edit Again~ Oh, I forgot to mention that the lyric thing is totally ripping off Camo's Blog. And a lot of others too, I suspect.

Is it too early to start counting down?

Seriously. Is it? I have no idea, but I'm going to count down at any rate. There is only fifteen more days of school, excluding weekends, as soon as this day is over. Fifteen! That's almost survivable. Unless, of course, I tank my finals and create all sorts of exceedingly horrid complications for myself. In the spirit of summer, and freedom, and all that, this post is going to be a series of random little blurbs concerning the present state of my life, but not necessarily how my day went. Don't fret, I won't be doing this on a regular basis. Just for today. I don't really remember much of what happened to me today, actually. Most of it was obscured by my english state testing and general sleepiness. I accidently set my first alarm for four thirty nine this morning, instead of five thirty nine. Ow.

I really do hate the spiteful nature of all of the test proctors at my school. My finger slips, I move ahead in the test before we're meant to, and I get this five minute cross examination about cheating and ill intentions. If it weren't for my meek, 'I'm terribly sorry' thing I'm able to do, I'd probably have been to the principal's office. Overreacting about every little thing under the sun seems to be a Northern VA speciality, nobody cared about state testing at all in Washington. Of course, they have this thing about everyone in the school passing, no one getting their test thrown out here, so I suppose it's sort of understandable. Wouldn't want to be the error in the system.

On a more musical note, I found another song I can get hopelessly addicted to. It's been a while since I've had a specific song addiction. I miss that. The title would be, 'Not An Addict' by Sally Anthony. Well, originally, it was by a band called K's Choice. Their version is nice, but something about the girl's voice is too... thick for my liking, I guess. I greatly prefer this version. Pandora radio, who I normally feel is the direct spawn of the devil himself, introduced me to the song a couple of weeks ago. I liked it, but not enough to go to the effort of taking down its title and looking it up, or bookmarking it. It played it increasingly more, just enough to get it to grow on me, but not enough that it got annoying, and now I find myself singing along while it plays for the fortith or so time on Youtube. That's another thing. I can actually sing this song. I can tell, because normally, my failure of a voice cannot match every note in a song, but now, it can. And I can hear it matching. And it gives me this odd little euphoria. I suppose that might contribute to the addiction. Oh, haha, I'm addicted to a song that explicitly mentions not being an addict...

I need a life. Speaking of that, Tears For Fears is (still) stalking me. It all started when some music recommendation thread or site or something like that, said I ought to listen to them. I didn't want to, because eighties synth pop isn't generally my thing. Note the generally thrown in there. Then Adam, one of my favorite people in this world, took on Mad World on American Idol. I fell in love with his version of the song, was a little surprised to hear that it was a Tears For Fears thing, didn't listen to the original. I think I was involved with some conflicting obsession at the time or something. A week or so later, I was listening to music with my parents in the car, and I heard a song I liked, so I asked who it was by. Turned out to be none other than Tears For Fears. The fourth incident happened when I was listening to Walking With Strangers, by the Birthday Massacre, and some comment mentioned that they'd ripped off Tears For Fears. Fifth incident happened last night when I was watching television and Shout was playing during one scene. I had a love at first listen thing with this song, went upstairs and listened to it, tried to ignore the fact that the world had successfully made me voluntarily listen to, and admit taking a liking to, them. Stupid Tears For Fears. Stupid eighties.

My hair has turned a nasty shade of green. Well, if one was being generous, they could call it aqua. But it's not very pretty.

The impossible has happened: I'm ahead of my friends in teen living! My sewing is coming along swimmingly. This is mostly due to the fact that the teacher instructed me to sit beside her so she could survey my feeble attempts at stringing velcro through the slots of the fabric of my boxers. Turns out, I was doing it totally wrong, and ripping out stitches while I was at it. I now have to stitch together the inside of the legs, trim off the jagged edges, and fill out my self evaluation within forty minutes tomorrow, but whatever. If I can handle elastic - stringin', I can handle anything. Nobody could even attempt to call me stupid today, exiled to the teacher's table or not. I'm beating them by quite a lot, and I even explained something to one of my friends.

Now it's time to take a turn in to the figurative twilight zone of my mind. When I was eating dinner tonight, my father made some comment about Popeye The Sailor. The cartoon. I'm sure you've seen it. That show was pretty much my childhood, along with some of the other stuff aired on Cartoon Network, and, of course, ponies. But that's not important. For some reason, when we lived in Cambodia, I used to have these really demented dreams. My mother blames it on the television I watched, along with all of the things I was exposed to. Landmines, starving orphans, that kind of thing. In retrospect, that can probably be used as blame for everything. However, I had this one recurring day dream, I guess it was, that hadn't much of anything to do with television. In it, a little girl wandered into a dark room, found her father drowned in ketchup, the television, which provided the only light in the room, was turned on to Popeye. When I say drowned in ketchup, I don't mean that it was making a swimming pool all over the room or anything. It was all over his face, strangling him. I have no idea what a psychologist would say about it, but it was sort of insane, I used to be almost fixated on it. Every time I was alone in the dark, I'd think of that. Somehow, everything about fascinated me. The drowning, the vague queerness of everything in the room, the way the television was turned to one precise part of one precise episode. I hadn't thought about this... thing for a while until tonight, when my father mentioned Popeye, and it all totally came back to me. Whether I'm disturbed, or totally normal, or just a little bit off my rocker, I don't know. Figured I'd just throw that out there so I'd quit thinking about it for a while.

I have to go practice piano, study for a science test that I'm probably going to fail, and pretend I completely forgot about algebra extra credit, because I no longer care about my potential future eating gum off the sidewalks. Which means I have to quit musing to myself on here.

Music today is easy to sum up: Not An Addict, Sally Anthony. Some Bella Morte on the bus, too. I thought about listening to Tears For Fears, but then mentally slapped myself and didn't do it. I want to listen to Sponge, perhaps I'll get around to it later. I need some Mudhoney on my iPod, they seem like the best bus music ever. Unfortunately, most of their songs are about sex. Actually, I'm pretty sure all of their songs are about sex. Some of them are more subtle than others, but most of the time, they're pretty dang blunt. 'Suck You Dry', for example. Love that song to death, but my mother would have an aneurysm if she saw it on my iPod or iTunes.

That's all for now. Thank you for humoring me through this crazy post, if you're reading.

School needs to end.

Seriously. It's pulling me down into the melodramatic little depression I had at the beginning of the year; only this time, I cannot skip school once every two weeks to help myself recover. Finals, state testing, and reviews in all classes. Even the civics one is beginning to seem a little intense, and that's my best subject by far. On top of the chaos that comes with finishing out the year in traditional Northern VA style, everything has just felt really stressful lately. Even little things, that shouldn't bother me. I've been a rather neurotic bundle of nerves, as of late, and the only cure is a two month block of time without any interruptions to my peace and quiet. Normally, that'd be summer. Which happens in almost exactly a month. But, it would be far too easy and convienient for my summer to actually provide this time. Instead, I shall be dragged to the far corners of the earth - well, technically, New York, but they're practically synonyms - to visit every family member in existence. If my mother's wishes become truth, and I am good enough of a writer to make it into the ten day long summer program that she signed me up for, that will kill some of my time too. Sounds like there will be only minimal time for staying up 'til four, sleeping in 'til twelve. Which is a pity, because that happens to be my life style of choice.

Ha, so that was my whiny ramble. Well, one of them. I almost forgot to rant about my english project. I don't know if I mentioned my mixed feelings about the assignment before this, but I'm sure I did say something about it. The man I'm researching is Josef Mengele, and he's not a very nice person. He's the opposite of one, really. So far, in my research, I have found that he killed over 400,000 Jews, gypsies, and other minorities. He also performed lethal experiments on infants, and toddlers, often going through surgery on their vital organs and completely extremely painful procedures while they were fully concious. He was, probably, one of the most screwed up people ever to live. I got to learn the gory details of all of his experiments, and see graphic images that belonged in an R rated movie, all for the sake of getting an A. My parents found out what I had to learn, after I complained passively about it to them, and now they want to send my english teacher a letter telling her to give me a new assignment. I don't mean to get all internet - acronymy - on you, but WTF? The whole thing has been nothing but trouble. At first, I was thrilled that the assignment wouldn't be dull. Oh, it's been anything but dull. But it hasn't been very good either. That brought my week down quite a bit, along with the additional stresses and frustrations of life.

In other news, more cheery news, certainly, the Bella Morte concert was on Friday, and I still smile and have an inward 'squee' moment just thinking about it. My father took me. We left around seven, drove the half of an hour or so it took to get to Jaxx Nightclub, where it took place, and cautiously entered with the waves of - as predicted by my mother, who has an annoying habit of being at least partially right about everything - goth people. Who sort of intimidated me at first, I won't lie. The inside of the place was rather dark, covered with stickers and posters and such, and very, very loud. My father is convinced he's gone deaf now. We waited through three bands, two of whom were pretty awful, and one of whom was halfway decent, but more screaming / metal than my style. Which is odd, since the club seemed more gravitated towards electronic music. My father and I hung out around this unused bar in the corner with some people who looked considerably closer to his age than mine, and were smoking weed the whole time, until the opening bands were done playing. We bought a t shirt from this little stand that was selling them, and it turned out the singer was selling them, and I didn't even know it was him. Yes, this is sad. But he had a haircut since I last saw a picture of him, so I didn't quite recongize him. He acted like... a regular person. Which was cool. I wish I could have asked him to autograph the shirt or something, though. Around eleven, Bella Morte finally came out, so we moved down to the floor in front of the stage. The crowd was tiny; there were probably less than one hundred people there, which I really do not understand. First of all, this band is incredible. They have everything a band should have, and they put on an unforgettable show. Yes, that sounds cliched and stupid, but I cannot help fangirling a little. Andy, the lead singer, was so energetic for that time of the night, it was insane. He'd apparently been drinking Red Bulls backstage for the past hour, and proceeded to drink two more during the show. He was dancing all over the place, flinging the microphone stand up into the air and leaning up on the metal rails that seperated the band from the crowd, interacting with a lot of people. The highlight of the whole thing was definitely the second he got all of six inches away from my face, put his hand of my shoulder (for like, five whole seconds!) and sang right to me. Sure, he did that with a couple of other people, but I felt loved anywho. They played most of my favorite songs. No Burn The Sky, which is my absolute favorite. But they played Find Forever Gone, An Enemy Without, On The Edge, Dust, and several others. The set was actually moderately short - only eleven or twelve songs, which is a pity. Is that short? I'm not sure. The Smashing Pumpkins set - that's the only other concert I've ever been to - was really long, around twenty songs including two encores. Ah, well. When it was over, I was in this state of insane giddiness brought on by anticipation, exhustion, and an overload of sudden elation. My father probably wanted to kill me by the time I got home, since I refused to quit talking. We got home around one, and I hung out on the internet for a few minutes, then went to bed. I was quite drowsy, smelled like cigerettes, and felt wonderful.

So, those are my rambles for today. Tomorrow, school starts again, and everything shall get more hectic. I have a science standardized test in the morning, and I'm a little bit nervous about that, but I'm sure I'll make it through. Today, nothing worth mentioning really happened. I stayed home from church because my father's ears weren't in good enough shape, or some nonsense like that. This afternoon, I spent the sixty some dollars I'd obtained from various babysitting jobs, on shirts. Off of Amazon, since everything else was so pricey, and Hot Topic keeps refusing to sell band tee shirts that are both affordable and feature a band that I actually listen to. I got a Nirvana one, a Mudhoney one, and an Alice in Chains one. They ought to be here in a couple of days; I'll obsess over them 'til they arrive. I always do that to myself when buying things online, which I do pretty frequently. I have some disorder that makes it impossible for me to save my money, I think. I always spend it within a day or two of getting it on something I don't exactly need, but want quite a lot.

Music this past week has been a pretty mixed bag. If I had to summarize it with one sentence, I'd say it's been louder and more angsty than some of the stuff I've previously had on. Some Smashing Pumpkins, Bella Morte, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney, that kind of thing. I've been trying out some of the lesser known grunge bands, as of late. Tad, Screaming Trees, Love Battery... they're almost better than the mainstream. And, of course, I've been loving my Nirvana. Every time I even begin to doubt my adoration for them, something happens and I'm hooked again. Scentless Apprentice is one of the best songs ever. As is Papercuts. And Radio Friendly Unit Shifter. They're all among the best, really. People who call Nirvana overrated are insane; they deserve every bit of cred they get. Oh, and before I forget to mention this and go off on some irrelvant rant about how much I love Nirvana, which I was sort of doing already, Mark Arm is mine. For real. I claim ownership.

That's all.

I want to skip to Friday now.

This week has been... less than enjoyable, for me. Monday was really rough, and today was sort of boring. I shall summarize Monday in one easy paragraph, since I missed out on it, but it was worth complaining about. Monday started off better than most. I didn't forget anything, I was on time, nobody made any annoying comments 'bout my hair. Then came algebra, and the world all came crashing down. Well, figuratively, of course. I got thirty percent on the last little test we took, and, as a result of this grade, I was forced to stay after school for support. I have never stayed after school for something of this nature in my life before, with the exception of once for french. But that was different because the after school programs were not installed yet, and so it was far easier to get myself where I needed to be. Now they've got a sign up form, and a bus schedule that is entirely different than the regular one, and all kinds of fancy nonsense that made me horribly nervous. Fortunately, a few of my friends noticed my panic and pointed me where to go, and hung out with me during the program. So it wasn't unbearable or anything. But it caused much stress, and I ended up arriving home at about four thirty, instead of three, like I usually do. Homework was light, the rest of the evening was fine enough, I even mastered the piano songs I needed to learn. However, at around nine I had to force myself to go study. You see, I had the very last major assessment of the school year in algebra today. My grade is literally hinged on this, and considering that it's somewhere in the area of being a D right now, I needed to do extremely well. So I did some extra review, studied with my parents, and hoped for the best. I did alright on today's quiz, but I didn't do wonderful, and that pretty much seals my fate. I'm going to have a C+ average for algebra, and, consequently, I'm going to live in a dumpster and eat chewed gum off the pavement as an adult.

Today was a little better. The test in algebra stressed me out, but my other classes were easy nothing. The french quiz today was the easiest one's ever been; I think I got over one hundred percent, which delights me, even though I don't really need it. I don't know why I've finally hit my stride or whatever one says, in french, but it sort of irritates me that I hit it at this point. I ended up letting my friend cheat off of me today, which is morally wrong and could get me suspended and all that, but she has a really low grade, and she forgot to study, which I've done quite a few times before. Teen Living might potentially be sort of fun, I've found. We're making boxers. Which, on the surface, is not appealing nor enjoyable in any way, and just causes undue stress for me. But I can probably make my way through this project by making my friends do half of it for me, like last time! Today we didn't do anything but find patterns and cut out sizes, and then we got to sit and talk.

Upon arriving home, I had my piano lesson. My teacher seemed far more thrilled at my progress than I expected, since I was still a little shaky on some things. I finished working out the song I've been playing, and she said we should begin working on some more contemporary music next week. I'm going to have to put some actual work into practicing, namely the notes. I forgot how to read the upper half of treble clef, and I'm still not fluent with bass clef. I hate reading music. If only there was some easier way to communicate which notes to play and when. Keys and all of that nonsense bother me too. There has to be a better way. There simply has to be. Oh, well. I actually really enjoy playing piano, I wish I hadn't quit before. I lost quite a bit of knowledge when I did so, which irks me.

I did some homework, and watched American Idol this evening. Sadly, Adam did not hug Slash, as I had hoped. It was going to make my week worthwhile. But, he did an incredible job with the Led Zeppelin song, and he was as gorgeous as ever. I hate that I have such a pathetically large fangirl crush on him. Normally, I don't take to American Idol contestants. I think. I thought Michael Johns was decent last year, and I liked David Cook for a while, but not the way I love Adam.

I listened to almost all string adaptions today. Of everything. Fall Out Boy, Led Zeppelin, White Stripes, Killers, Nirvana, you name it, I listened to it. Oddly enough, I've begun to develop a new Nirvana phase today. Stay Away and Lithium have got to be some of the most easy to replay songs ever. Normally, I prefer In Utero and unreleased material to Nevermind, but this phase appears to be an odd variety on the regular sort. I also listened to Bella Morte and Atreyu on the bus, because those are little phases that may, sadly, never go away. I'm going to the concert... the weekend from next, though! I need to try to learn all of Bella Morte's songs, but mostly the ones from their new album, since that's what they'll probably be performing. I already know quite a few. It's been a while since I listened to some of them, though. I'm rather proud of myself for not listening to complete garbage today, but then again, do string covers count as decent music? If not, I take that last statement back.

That's all for tonight. It's late.

I'm black and blue.

Not bruised. Ha. My hair is now dyed! Has been since about two this afternoon. It's mostly inky, blue - black, with strips of blue in the front. A little less than shoulder length. It seems pretty low matainance, which is ideal for me. I hate working with my hair, hate hair in general. It's so astronomically pointless, and causes nothing but drama. However, I am happy with it today. The job took about two or three hours total, mostly due to the fact that portions of my hair had to be bleached first, then that had to dry, then more dye had to be put on, then I had to sit and wait for a while, and then it had to be washed and cut and straightened. Took quite a long time, but it was worth it. I had to pay eighty dollars, but I had all of the cash I needed, after selling my darling old iPod, and even had about twenty left over. I intend to waste this on song downloads, since I have nothing worth saving for. Technically, I could be saving to buy a new phone, but I don't want to bother right now. My parents might actually pay completely for something for once and let me spend my money impulsively as is proper for my age. But only if I convince them that my safety is compromised without it.

That was an unusual little ramble. But, anyways, I woke around nine today, and spent the morning on the Internet, showering, and searching for my eyeliner sharpener, since I'm awfully bored of not wearing it. We left for the mall around eleven, and I spent quite a while there, due to my appointment. We picked up Vietnamese food on the way home, and then my parents left for a date, so I babysat again. Thus the extra money I had. Most of it went towards library fees, but I was able to keep some. My sister and brother behaved seamlessly, with the exception of my sister's melodramatic fit when they had to stop watching that cartoon about the speaking dinosaurs and go to bed. I don't see why the show is so terribly engaging to her. It didn't hold my attention for very long. Oh, note to any readers out there along with myself: never ever mix diet pepsi with caramel and mint ice cream. It's the worst taste in the world, and drinking a whole cup of it will probably kill you. I really need to stop stealing food from around my house when my parents are out; it doesn't pay. There are literally no benefits.

I practiced piano today, and I managed to get a little bit of cleaning done, but aside from that, I did almost nothing worth mentioning in the areas of being responsible and such today. There's not very much I can say about it, but it was quite chaotic. I'm tired now, yet oddly very lucid. I want to go outside, and walk down the road in the darkness, singing to myself. But that's probably a byproduct of me being exhusted, and confused, and dellusional. I'd better get some sleep before it grows any worse, and I actually put this plan into action.

As for music... I listened to quite a lot of Bella Morte and the Birthday Massacre today. Some Nirvana, and a few stringed covers of Nirvana. I had a phase concerning those, a while ago. I hope it doesn't return, since it was awfully inconvienient. A little bit of Letters to Cleo, and some Atreyu. Pretty much everything I've been phasing over for the past month or so. I need to find some new music, something new. Not new, specificially, new to me. Older music is far better, I've found. Well, I found that out about two years ago, but still. It is. Trust me. Speaking of such, I was listening to some eighties dance pop today too, by way of the radio, and I actually sort of... like it. It's all so cheesy, and almost every song sounds exactly the same, but it's going to become a guilty pleasure phase, I can sense it. Oh well. I've been through literally everything else.

That's all. It's short, because I'm tired.

Thursdays only exist to make me wait.

Thursdays are so boring. They are not even worth waking up for, I swear. It's all filler, but today was pretty good despite this. English, french, and science all fulfilled their average requirement of being mindnumbingly boring, with the exception of the brief moment of excitment when my english teacher almost caught me reading to the end of the novel I'm reading for that class, The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. I finished it on the bus today. It's tragically sad, and the narration is so beautiful. The ending almost made me cry, but the situation was really not ideal for such actions, so I didn't. But, back to english. I was on page... one hundred something of the book, and we're only supposed to read to sixty five. I do wish my class were paced a little faster. My teacher came over and asked me why I was so far ahead, to which I said something like, "I was looking for my bookmark." She frightens me. A very intimidating person, who doesn't understand the concept of mercy. Math was more of the same review work that is actually, in fact, presenting completely new concepts, as well as a lecture or two about us being, 'high school honors students who must be flawless in every way, show our work neatly in a seperate notebook, clear our calculators before use, and never, ever forget our units' I don't think it's dawned on my algebra teacher that we are not actually high school students, yet, and we're all simply unlucky enough to be placed here for the duration of the year. Civics was boring nonsense not worth the sixty minutes it took, and gym was only decent. Teen Living was great! I finished my pin cushion, and got a B+ on it despite the fact that I did all of my hand stitching wrong. I think my teacher feels sorry for me, because she complimented the symmetry of my design, which happened to be about three quarters to the right of the cushion, and crooked as can be. But that matters not. I'm so relieved that I passed within the allowed time.

Upon arriving home, I did a math review sheet without paying much attention to how accurate it actually was, feeling a little sick of that subject at that point. I'd better get my father to review it with me before the test of Tuesday, to avoid failing and all that. My math grade is devastatingly horrible right now. I hate getting failing grades back, it makes me feel as though I've disappointed everyone. And I need a B this quarter, or I'm going to have a C+ for the year in math, which apparently seals my fate for working at a fast food joint. I did some french homework, since I may as well rake in all of the points I can get; it's only a matter of time 'til I start failing things again. I practiced piano, and worked out everything I needed to. By the time next Tuesday rolls around, I should be completely prepared if I continue to work at this rate. I need to improve my fluency and speed and such, but I know all of the notes, and I remember how to read the bass clef now, for the most part. Clarinet ruined my knowledge of note - reading, on the bass clef. I'm really good at treble, but I cannot read bass for my life. Which is sort of needed for the piano.

My father had to work late tonight, so my mother was the only parent present at dinner, and this turned into a heap of unnecessary melodrama that made me say all sorts of things I didn't mean and call my mother a rather ...mature insult in french. Fortunately, she didn't understand it. She creates most of the angst or whatever in this household, and everyone knows it. After dinner, I took my dogs for a walk. Which was pleasent, since my favorite sort of weather was present today. Clouds, about fifty degrees, a little bit windy. Perfectly wonderful. I wasted the rest of the night on the Internet, and now I'm writing this.

I listened to quite a few things, today. I'm not in any phase at the moment, which is unusual for me. It's only a matter of time before I find some new band and obsess shamelessly over them for a couple of weeks. Lemme try to remember what I heard. About five versions of that 'Spin Me Round' song. Jessica Simpson, Marilyn Manson, and some other band all covered Dead or Alive. Plus Flo Rida, who's version still remains my favorite, pathetically enough. I also listened to quite a bit of Blind Melon, some Smashing Pumpkins, and a little bit of Soundgarden. Pretty Noose is one of the best songs ever, I think. I tried Lady GaGa today, and I really don't understand the hype. Her songs didn't have the catchy feel to them like most pop songs, and so I don't know how she's become so successful. Her fashions and such are very unconventional too, which I wouldn't think would earn her too many points with most people. They sort of scared me off for a while. Poker Face is alright, but her bigger hit, Just Dance made me bored within the first thirty seconds. I listened to 1989 by Mindless Self Indulgence several times, but had to shut it off because it was beginning to give me a headache. I'm in a very odd mood, this evening.

I cannot wait for the weekend. It's going to be grand.

The weekend has left me again.

Weekends are actually sort of nice, come to think of it. Why on earth was I wishing mine away on Saturday morning? Tomorrow is going to start another five exhusting days. But I can't say I mind school anymore. I mean, I used to hate it in the beginning of the year. Now I sort of like some of my classes. Others are still torment, like algebra. And Teen Living. I forgot to practice with my mother's sewing machine this weekend, so I still don't know how to thread a needle. On Monday, I have to start over with learning, and start on a new pin cushion, since my old one is about as messy as can be right now. Being an extremely finicky, mildly perfectionistic person, I cannot stand to turn it in. Also, I'm going to fail the class if I keep on making work like that. But this post is about Saturday and today, so I'm going to stop babbling about school now.

Saturday was a pretty busy day. The morning was relaxed; I slept 'til about eight thirty. Yes, that's abnormally early for me. I woke up with a vividly clear image of gigantic slugs in metal tubes crawling all over me, and every time I shut my eyes that's all I could see. I still get toddler nightmares sometimes, it's very odd. I sprung the idea of my parents going on a date that night on them as soon as they woke up, and they were all for it. Which resulted in me watching a series of really boring children's movies, having to give my brother a bath, which is the single most awkward task in history, and raking in twenty dollars. This made all of it totally worth while. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I spent most of the morning cleaning my room and hanging around on the Internet. I spent too much time on the computer, it's a fact. I'm going to lose my social skills and ability to see beyond two feet of me if this keeps up. Oh well. I can't help it. My life revolves around computer usage and people living several states away.

Saturday afternoon, I went to my sister's gymnastics meet with my family. The whole thing was a little bit pointless, since they all got ribbons and did not actually compete against each other in any way at all, but it was fun to watch, and she was overjoyed about getting something. My parents think she's some sort of gymnastics super - child, and they keep pushing for her to do more and more. They recently moved her to a new gym because they thought the other one wasn't challenging. I think they're beginning to become true Northern VA parents - pushy, egocentric, and living life vicariously through their children. Which saddens me, but at least they appear to have no expectations whatsoever for me. Anyways. I keep ranting about other things today. I might have to label this post as whiny if this keeps up. We arrived home around five, and I spent the rest of the night babysitting and wasting time until I went to bed around one. I didn't write anything. I apparently owe the world another 'mature content' chapter on this story I'm writing though, so maybe I'll be forced into writing tonight.

Today was a less eventful Sunday. I woke around eight, after being forced out of a rather nice dream. Nothing like the one yesterday. I went to church, which would have been sort of boring 'cept for that I got to hang out with my friends, and drink a cappaccino. It was the first time I've ever had one, and I'd like to inform any and all readers that they are the best things ever, and I intend to drink them whenever I am given a chance. After that, we went home, and I did homework for a while. My english teacher must be trying to kill me, because I can't think of any other reason why she'd assign so much directionless homework over the weekend when the year is nearly over and my mind is meant to be numb and useless. I tidied up my room and did some chores in return for sixteen dollars more. I'm almost halfway to having enough, I think. I want to go to a hair... place by next weekend. Which is a rather unreasonable goal, but oh well. I babysat my sister and brother, as well as this other little girl who comes along with her parents to the church small group at my house every weekend, free of charge, mostly due to feeling too lazy to ask for money.

So, tomorrow's school again. I'm not looking forward to almost anything there, but I'll live. After school, I'm getting sealents or whatever they're called on my teeth; I'm missing a few of them still. The bright side of all of this would be that I get to read trashy celebrity magazines, which my mother has an almost obsessive hate for, in the waiting room. They give me a strange rush of joy, for some reason.

I listened to a really wide variety of stuff today. Everything from Atreyu and Slipknot, which are starting to form a phase of sorts, all by themselves, to some Smashing Pumpkins. I also listened to Blind Melon, Sponge, Eve 6, Jane Wiedlin, The Birthday Massacre... all kinds of things. Even Pearl Jam, who I haven't heard in forever. I'm in the mood for far noisier music, as of late. It's odd. I wanted to download some stuff, but I have to save, so I cannot. Sadly. I think that's all I have to say regarding what I listened to, today. It's pretty boring, and not as obsessive as usual. There's only about twenty days 'til the concert!