Standing in the Corner, Sipping my V8

This weekend has been packed. Well, for a girl like me with little to no social life, this weekend was packed. Here's a quick (well, we'll see) recap:

FRIDAY:

I was supposed to go to the movies Friday night but I decided I didn't want to.

SATURDAY:

I had to get up bright and early to go to my awesome Student Advisory Committee meeting at Center Theatre Group in LA. This week I hit a milestone with my new friends, we started making fun of each other and not getting offended! Eric made fun of me when I complained about the location of the mayo in relationship to the bread and I made fun of Emily when she told me she takes AP Art. We must really be friends now, because only true friends can insult each other without feeling bad about it.

And aside from all that, we made a lot of progress and stuff with our project. I won't bore you with the details.

I made it home from the meeting with barely enough time to change and head over to my school's murder mystery- I had promised to help out. While there I hardly helped at all, since I spent all my time making up dances with Sydney's sister Jillian, who is really awesome and cool and cool and awesome. After the murder mystery, Sydney's mom pulled some strings for me and got me into the totally cool and elite cast party. And by that I mean Sydney's mom asked Shannon (director of the murder mystery, not to mention a close friend of mine) if I could come, and Shannon said yes.

Once at the party, the music was pumping and people were dancing like crazy. And when I say dancing, I don't mean like, homecoming, we're-having-sex-with-our-clothes-on dancing. I mean theatre kid dancing, which is basically let's-see-how-ridiculous-I-can-look-while-dancing-dancing. Theatre kids dance like maniacs. If someone walked into that party and didn't know that we are, according to the state, mentally healthy, they would probably think we all have serious problems. For the first song of the evening ("Barbara Streisand" by Duck Soup), I stood in the corner and had a V8 (which are surprisingly delicious) while I watched my friends dance their feet off in a ridiculous manner. I was laughing and smiling, but I didn't join them in dancing because I was afraid I would look stupid instead of funny. But when the second song came on, I thought, 'Screw it,' and I jumped on the dance floor acting just as crazy as everyone else. I had so much fun dancing all night to songs by a variety of artists, including Cee Lo Green, Britney Spears, and Alan Menken.

SUNDAY:

The next morning I volunteered at a gymnastics program for kids with special needs (I'm a do-gooder, what can I say?), which was extremely tiring, especially after a night that went into the morning, Upon my arrival home from gymnastics, I couldn't do anything except sleep. I remember thinking, while in my drowsy stupor, that I am tired too often, and I must have some weird disease where all I want to do is sleep. Now I look back and I realize that I was up until almost two in the morning, so being tired was a completely natural response. I'm funny when I'm tired.

Tonight I went to yet another party, this one a bat mitzvah. When I hit the dance floor there, I realized that I was not surrounded by my theatre friends, and I was the only one dancing like someone slipped something into my drink causing me to hallucinate that I was a cowboy with ants in pants. However, I once again thought, 'Screw it,' and continued dancing like the crazy person that I am. Much to my surprise, people started laughing WITH me, not AT me. All my friends thought my dancing was a complete riot and were quite taken by lack of inhibition. It feels good to make people laugh.

Happy birthday to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hal Prince, Gene Hackman, Vanessa Redgrave, Dick Cheney, and Phil Collins. Wow, some of those are my favorite people. Others, not so much. Interpret that as you wish.

New Semester Resolutions

If any of you out there have been faithfully reading my blog, you would know that I made some new year's resolutions. I followed them for about one week, and then my mom went to Israel and the stress of finals set in... I had to take a break from trying to improve myself while I was working on grades and, you know, surviving without my mommy.

So I reassessed my goals and decided to make New Semester Resolutions, and after the first two days of the new semester I can tell you that they aren't working out too great. At least my room is still pretty much clean, thanks to my lovely redesign, brought to you by Arielle, Sophie and my mommy. Wait, have I mentioned that before?

Anyway, the exercise thing didn't really happen. I bought a new pair of shoes and everything! The truth is, I've kind of lost the motivation. I'm not as smart as I thought I was, so I will be retaking a math course for a better score this summer and I will not get to go on the vacation I've been dreaming about. I want to lose weight and be self-motivated, but it doesn't work like that. I really need to find a way to do this that isn't forcing myself to run when I'm too tired to think. My body can't handle it. In dance today we had to run a mile, but since I lied to the state last year (shh, don't tell anyone) they think I'm physically fit, so I don't have to try this year and I walked a brilliant 18:19 mile. And the sad thing is, if I had put in an effort, I don't think I would have gotten to much faster. My best mile time EVER was approximately 11:00, and that was at a time where I had P.E. daily and actually tried. My body doesn't run. I'm flexible, I can do yoga and that random stuff, but I am not capable of running.

Every semester I hope things will magically get better, and it never does. The fact that I'm hideously sick right now doesn't help anything, especially not my morale. I'm congested and coughing my lungs out, my legs hurt, my lips are chapped, and I have two zits. Life kind of sucks right now.

My lack of motivation to do anything isn't going to benefit me. The only thing I care about right now is my English class, and my theatre stuff I do on Saturdays, even though I'm kind of behind on some of my work for that. I'm sick, damnit.

I need to quit while I'm ahead... I doubt this blog post makes any sense. Basically, here are the points I was trying to make:

• I totally haven't been exercising and I can't decide if I care enough to start again.
• I haven't been writing, and I think I do care enough to start again.
• I want to do better in school, but that never happens.
• I'm sick.
• I can't handle anything else right now.

Happy birthday to Virginia Woolf, Etta James, and Ana Ortiz. Awesome.

To conclude, I'd like to make a general shout-out to my period 3, English II Honors class. I love everyone in that class and my teacher and our bonding over communist rainbow fish. I know none of you are reading this, but to whoever is, that class is the only thing I really look forward to these days.

Facebook Narcissism

Facebook is a narcissistic institution. There is no way around that statement. However, I have an internal set of rules in my mind, collaborated from endless Facebook stalking, that have set limits in a way on what is a normal human want for attention and what is complete and utter self-involvement. And I broached one of my laws today. I posted more than one Facebook status.

I didn't mean too! I forgot about the one I posted earlier, and inspiration (and by inspiration, I mean one of my friends said something stupid) struck and I had to post. Now I can't delete either of them, because people liked them and stuff... I'll try not to do it again, I promise.

Aside from my status posting guideline, there are also guidelines on what to post as your status. The WORST thing you can possibly do are passive-aggressive statuses.

Example: beecuz of u i will nevr b the same

I have reason to believe that the person this status is directed at probably doesn't know, nor care, that it is about them. The only thing worse then this is passive-aggressive song lyric statuses.

Example: can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars? i could really use a wish right now...

Can I just say that I didn't know that was a song for a REALLY long time and I did not understand why everyone had the same status? I've only done song lyric statuses twice in my entire Facebook existence, and they were both from musicals and humorous, so I felt like I had a good excuse. But nowadays I know that there are no excuses for song lyric statuses, because they annoy the crap out of everyone who doesn't know what song they are from.

Another sure-fire sign of Facebook narcissism is too many profile pictures. I think that one is self-explanatory. I have about 40 profile pictures, and I think that's appropriate. I've seen people with close to 200, and I find that just completely self-involved and unnecessary. HOWEVER, the more profile pictures have the more fun the person is to stalk. Just saying.

I also get annoyed when people like too many things. And this blog entry just got really boring.

Happy birthday to Richard Nixon, Imelda Staunton, Chad Ochocinco, Kate Middleton, and Nina Dobrev. Ha, the order of nationalities in that sentence is American, British, American, British, Canadian... I'm amused.

The Bias of a Young Person

I would be the first person to tell anyone that I'm old-fashioned. I love history and old things, and even old people. But only nice old people; nice old people are honestly really cool. They have all this wisdom and stories to tell about the past. Unfortunately, in my experience, older people tend to be on the unhappy side. I'm not saying young people are all happy go-lucky, but I've met more than a few old people that are just generally grumpy individuals. This has led to a few unpleasant experiences with older teachers and retail workers.

This rant was brought one because I was just at Barnes and Noble with my friend, and I had one of my first bad experiences with an employee. The reason I said "one of the first" was because I've had bad experiences with their paranoid floor walkers before, but that's a story for another day. Me and my friend Galya had picked out maybe five or six books and were sitting looking through them together. We got up quickly to come to the bathroom and came back and the books were gone. One of the older women who worked there turned to us and in an irritated tone told us to not do that again because she had to put all the books back. We explained that we only left for a minute and that we planned to put them back later, to which she replied, "Just never do that again. One book at a time, girls."

The thing about old people is they think that teenagers are children. Younger people have a more recent memory of what being a teenager was like, and also lived in an era more similar to ours, and have a better understanding of us crazy youth. This year I am fortunate of to have quite the assortment of young teachers. My oldest teacher is my mom's exact age and, like my mom, has three kids. And my mom is not old. Out of my other five teachers, one is newly married, three are engaged, and one is single. I'd say they're all around their late 20s and early 30s, which is the best age for a high school teacher. They relate to us better and respect us more.

I think my ultimate goal in life is to be a happy old person. Just to be surrounded by a multi-generational family, eating delicious food, telling stories, and being experienced, that's what I want from my life. If I could be a more motherly version of Betty White my life would be complete. Even though I'll never be quite that funny, it's nice to dream. Because the truth is I'm not afraid of growing up, I'm afraid of not doing enough before it happens. I want to be the kind of old person where someone says something, and then I say, "That reminds me of the time I was staying in a floating village in Vietnam..." and then the person I'm talking to says, "You've stayed in a floating village in Vietnam?" And then I'll say, "Of course I have, haven't I told you that? Here have a cookie, you're too thin." The only reason the Vietnam thing popped into my head is because I was watching the Travel Channel earlier.

Happy birthday to Elvis Presley, Stephen Hawking, and David Bowie. That sentence contained so much amazing I think I might cry.

Speaking of crying, if every single attendant at my funeral doesn't cry I will be watching them and I will be SUPER pissed off.

30 Reasons Why I Love 30 Rock

As of now, I have seen the first 15 episodes of the comedy series 30 Rock, and I love it. Here is why:

30. They constantly make fun of NBC and show business in general.

29. The ridiculous product placement for Snapple.

28. Tina Fey inserting random bits of her political perspective.

27. The little musical theatre references, usually to Annie or Dreamgirls.

26. I've never liked Alec Baldwin until now.

25. That one actress who isn't Amy Poehler but is funny in a similar way plays a different character in every episode.

24. It was voted as one of the most politically incorrect shows on television.

23. It just isn't PC (which I just found out stands for politically correct).

22. Dr. Spacemen- pronounced Spe-che-min

21. I've been to 30 Rockefeller Plaza (it is plaza, right?) on my trip to New York last spring.

20. They made fun of the Hapsburg dynasty.

19. Tracy Jordan's two entourage members are named Grizz and DotCom.

18. Tina Fey plays herself. Like she does in everything else. But that's ok.

17. Josh Gerard's agent who likes to shorten words.

16. Phil. He's just a really great guy.

15. It's funny.

14. The characters have really funny last names, like Lemon, Maroney, and Donaghy.

13. Jenna Maroney's single "Muffin Top," which was a number one hit in Israel.

12. They call one of the writers Toofer because he's black and he went to Harvard.

11. Sometimes they tell 'yo mamma' jokes.

10. The cast's acceptance speeches at the Emmys are always really good.

9. My friends watch it and I felt left out of their conversations...

8. Conan O'Brien jokes are also funny.

7. The background music.

6. Frank's hats.

5. It gives me something to do besides homework.

4. It's a refreshing breather from every other show I watch (Bones, House, etc.)

3. Ace of Cakes made them a cake once.

2. Did I mention it's really funny?

1. Two syllables: Kenneth.

Now all of you should go watch 30 Rock. If you tell them I sent you you could get a discount at check out.

Happy birthday to Sir Isaac Newton (I watched a documentary about him yesterday!), Jacob Grimm, Louis Braille, Sterling Holloway, Lionel Newman, and Julia Ormond.

I miss the days where I could play with dolls and stuffed animals and it was completley age appropriate.

New Year's Resolutions

Every single year, like most of you out there, I resolve to do the same things: organize and exercise. Also one of these days I should learn how to spell exercise, because without spell check that word would be impossible.

This year I hope to be able to actually fulfill my resolutions. Thankfully, organization was fulfilled for me. While I was in the land of Ohio, my mom, Sophie, and Arielle, took it upon themselves to clean, organize, and redo my bedroom. They even got me a new closet, considering before I just didn't have a closet. I have never been more thankful for such a wonderful gift. I always read things in magazines about how a clean room leads to a clean mind, and I have to admit it's true. I never made the connection until it happened. My mind has officially been de-cluttered. Well, to an extent- there is only so much clutter that can be taken out of 15 years worth of it stored inside my mind.

Lucky for me, nobody is here to exercise (I spelled it correctly the first time!) for me, so I have taken it upon myself to wake up at six, every single morning, in order to take a quick jog around my neighborhood, about 1.3 miles total. Here's a recap of how the first morning went:

My alarm went off promptly at 6 A.M. to one of the most annoying songs on my iPod, "Sneakernight" by Vanessa Hudgens. It's one of those great pop songs where the lyrics are meaningless and it has a catchy enough beat to get me out of bed long enough to turn off the alarm. So, after being effectively awakened I realized that it was still dark outside, and was surprised by the fact that I was awake. I honestly do not remember the last time I woke up before the sun. The darkness intimidated me, in addition to the fact that it was raining. It wasn't pouring or anything, it was more like less than rain but more than a drizzle. So on California standards, it was raining. After stalling for fifteen minutes, I mustered up the courage to get on my brand new sports bra and Nike's and hit the cement. Due to the fact that I am way more out of shape than I thought I was, I ran to the end of the block, high-fived the stop sign, and turned around. This would mean that I ran 2/5 of a mile this morning. And I can't believe I just published that one the internet.

Well you know what? I can't let myself get discouraged. I am setting my alarm once more and I will do it all again tomorrow. Sooner or later, if I push myself, I will be able to run my route in less than 15 minutes, maybe closer to 10. I'm not fast and I'm not striving for perfection, just health.

Well, it also has something to do with the fact that I'll be flouncing around beaches in six months or so. But whatever.

Happy birthday to Cicero, Lucretia Mott, Josephine Hull, J.R.R. Tolkien, Anna May Wong, Victor Borge, Danica McKeller, and Eli Manning.

I had a sub in AP Euro today. She reminds me of Professor Umbridge, the book one, not the movie one.

Shopping at Victoria's Secret- A Personal History

When I first started wearing bras, Victoria's Secret was absolutely off limits in my mind. Just considering shopping at a store so frivolous repulsed my pre-teen mind, and all bras were bought at stores like Macy's at Target, where I could easily disguise that fact that I was buying bras by buying other things. I don't embarrass easily, but something about shopping for undergarments sets me on edge. I've even had bad dreams about people I know seeing me at the mall, shopping for bras.

But earlier this school, I decided to take the plunge and get a fitting and buy a few new bras at Victoria's Secret. The saleswoman measured me right in the middle of the store, which was kind of weird but it's not like there were that many people around, and after trying on different styles and colors, I walked out of the store with two new bras.

Today, in the midst of hoards of shopper eager for deals on after Christmas sales, I once more ventured into Victoria's Secret in order to buy a few necessities, and I noticed something weird. Not only were there two male employees, neither of which showed obvious signs of being gay, but a lot of the woman there were shopping with a significant other. And I'm not trying to judge, but why bring your boyfriend or husband bra shopping? Or any shopping for that matter. Does their opinion matter that much? Maybe it's that their credit card matters that much... I don't know. Some aspects of humanity never fail to surprise me...

Happy birthday to Christopher Durang, Cuba Gooding Jr., Eric Whitacre, Taye Diggs and Kate Bosworth.

And by the way... I still refuse to shop at PINK. I only own one pair of pants from there and I never plan on buying anything else there. I have my reputation to be concerned about.

Air Travel

Today I returned home from a lovely, albeit strange and full of random sicknesses, trip to Cincinnati, Ohio, where I visited my life-long best friend Jordan. I literally do not remember meeting here. Because I was four months old. Yeah.

So, to get home, I was required to take a plane. Well, technically I could have driven. Well, technically I couldn't. Wait... never mind. The point is, I took a plane home. And my opinions on air travel are mixed. I used to absolutely hate it for the following reasons:

(A) My ears pop at any altitude higher then about.... ten feet about sea level.

(B) I was five when 9/11 occurred. That kind of ruined my opinion about airline safety, even though every time you get in a car you are at least five times more likely to die then when you get in a plane.

(C) My young self was much too impatient to wait in lines at baggage and security, none the less sit on a plane for four hours.

They say fears from your youth scar you permanently. But I have to say I think I may have gotten over my hatred of flying. I still prefer being on the ground, though. So don't even go there. Mainly it's just because I am now mature enough to realize that the lines at security really aren't that long. Or at least not this time. But honestly, I wait two hours at Disneyland to get on Space Mountain for less than two minutes. I can wait fifteen minutes to get on a plane. And I'm also not as afraid of sitting next to strangers as I used to be. If you ask any of my friends they will probably say I'm sometimes too nice to strangers.

I just find that a lot of nice things happen in airports. Don't get me wrong, this is a major glass-half-full point of view. For example, on the way to Cincinnati, there were a lot of people from the army going home for Christmas. And that gave me a really nice feeling. It got me in the Christmas spirit. And also, most people hate babies on planes because they cry. But on the way home there was a really well behaved baby sitting diagonally to me, and she only cried two or three times, and even then her dad was really quick to calm her down. I was thoroughly entertained by that baby and her father interacting. I love how when adults are around babies they just act totally weird and crazy. It's really entertaining. More entertaining then The Social Network, which was the in-flight movie. Even though it was a good movie.

Which brings me to my main point: People watching makes travel. On the plane and in your destination, watching people from completely different walks of life from you in odd situations, like air travel, is endlessly entertaining. One day I just want to sit somewhere public and decently crowded and just write stories about the people walking by. I always think of stories, but I never write them down because I'm usually doing something. So I guess if my purpose in an outing isn't to write stories I won't do it.

Happy birthday to Paul Revere, Betsy Ross, J. Edgar Hoover, J.D. Salinger, and Max Azria.

Happy new year everyone! Try to make 2011 not suck.