The Many Thoughts of Stephanie

Crying Guilt

2012-02-01T22:25:00.000-08:00

I'm a pretty emotional person, but I used to be way worse. If you've read any of my blog entries from about the first year and a half of blogging, a pretty common phrase was probably, "and then I cried." Middle school sucked and it was one of those horrible times where a lot of bad things happen at once and I was also, you know, a hormonal pre-teen, so I didn't exactly have my emotions in check.

Going into high school I decided I was going to stop crying in public. Six out of thirteen of my middle school teachers had seen my cry, which is under 50% but some of them saw my cry more than once. Anyway, it was still six too many. I didn't want my high school reputation to be that I cried a lot, and for the first semester of high school I didn't cry at school once. Second semester I did, but it was one of those days where every little thing just goes wrong and even though each individual thing only sucks a little bit, all of the little things together just creates this colossal pile of suck you have to deal with. And then you cry.

Since then I've cried on campus a few more times. I haven't counted or anything absurd like that. However, since then I've also developed this strange feeling of guilt whenever I cry. I don't know if high school has given me some profound sense that my problems don't matter, but whenever I'm crying and my problems aren't quite big enough to take over my brain, I always think that I don't deserve to cry. I have, overall, a pretty good life. I have it harder than some and I've had to grow up faster than most kids my age (I can't believe I just said that) but compared to the vast majority of individuals I have a very, very easy life.

So then I'm struck by this crippling guilt that I'm crying about a bad grade or a bad audition or a fight with a friend or my mom yelling at me when there are people that are sick or hungry or homeless or friendless or even worse unimaginable things and they might not even be crying.

And then I sit in my bed and listen to "I Don't Want to Live on the Moon" from Sesame Street over and over again.

Happy birthday to Clark Gable, Langston Hughes, Jerry Spinelli, Meg Cabot, and Heather Morris.

I misplaced my poetry anthology and I really want to find it. Like Hazel Grace Lancaster, I prefer reading poetry to writing it.

I Was Going to Title This New Semester Resolutions But Apparently I've Done That Before

2012-01-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

I am officially over the halfway mark of junior year! *does a happy dance in the corner*

First semester finals were Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (except I didn't have any on Friday) and I ended the semester with the best GPA I've ever had (I don't like to brag, and I won't cause I don't have too). But, there is always room for improvement and so that means it's time for New Semester's Resolutions. I think I will have one for each class. I just decided this now. Here we go...

English: Actually read and annotate all assigned readings.

Chemistry: Try, just try, to pay attention. Maybe take notes?

Choir: Practice music at home, don't text during sectionals.

Theatre: Be more enthusiastic about working, even when I hate what I'm working on.

History: DO THE READING IN ADVANCE AND TAKE NOTES. This is my most important resolution.

Math: Do the HW when it's assigned, go to math tutoring more often.

Psychology: Do the reading and take notes during class.

Hebrew: Be less grumpy.

I think these are good resolutions. I don't have much time to write because I'm going to bed very soon. I'd just like to inform you that I've gotten very good at sticking to resolutions. For example, Monday-Thursday I do not social network or watch TV. It helps me so much, I actually do my homework and go to bed on time. It's really awesome. There are three resolutions I can never keep, and those are the following:

1. Not procrastinating. Even with the lack of social networking in my life, I still don't do any assignments unless they're do tomorrow. I try to stop, but I can't. I thrive under pressure anyway.

2. Keeping my room clean. When I get home from rehearsals/Hebrew/community service I'm so tired. I just flop onto bed, do my homework, through my books on the floor, through my clothes on the floor, put on my pajamas (fresh from the floor) and go into my warm unmade bed. Sometimes I clean on the weekends but I'm a busy girl. It's just not a priority.

3. Exercising. Mainly because I hate it with a fiery passion. It just brings me no pleasure or sense of achievement. I don't buy that bullshit about running releasing endorphins- it just isn't true. The only thing my body releases during exercise is sweat and low self-esteem.

So those are my goals and not goals for this semester. If I achieve my school goals I'll move on to the three Impossible Goals as they will now be referred to (the capital letters are important). Oh! I also want to write more. This blog post is apart of that. I'm also considering entering a short story contest... if I decide to I'll tell you about that.

Happy birthday to Sir Francis Bacon, Grigori Rasputin, D.W. Griffith, George Balanchine, and Balthazar Getty.

Well, I'm going to sleep. I went swimming tonight (it's January and I live in Southern California, so it's not weird) and I am freaking tired.

The Best Things That Happened to Me in 2011

2011-12-31T19:06:00.000-08:00

Overall, I have to say 2011 was pretty successful. Here's why:

I became friends with nineteen other theatregoistic teens through Center Theatre Group's Student Advisory Committee, and in the process learned so much and had an amazing time.
I became incredibly close to the best English class and teacher ever. No class will ever live up to English II Honors Period 3, 2010-2011.
I made a tumblr, which ended up being way too much fun.
Sammy and I went to the gym to try Zumba.... once.
I saw Avenue Q with my dad and two of my best friends, and it was the funniest musical I've ever seen.
Along with three of my best friends, I sang in front of about 600 people in the final round of a group musical theatre competition, and I had an AMAZING time.
Daniel Radcliffe sang and dance on Broadway. I know, not technically me, but still important.
I spent an amazing weekend at the beach with some of my oldest and closest friends. Oldest as in we've been friends for a long time, not as in literally old.
Tina Fey and Emily Deschanel both had babies. Also not me, but still awesome.
I became a nerdfighter and was welcomed into a community that would literally change my life and the way I think about the world.
I got a four on my AP Euro test. A FOUR!
I got into mixed choir.
I was elected treasurer of drama club.
The book Paper Towns changed my outlook in everything.
I taught myself how to be amazing at Tetris.
I got my learner's permit and learned how to drive.
I spent another amazing weekend at the beach and learned so much from my amazing Hebrew High friends and one of the greatest teachers I've ever head, and later that year I cried (four times in one evening) the last time I saw her before she moved to Brazil.
I failed to pull an all-nighter, but still had a great time, at Relay for Life.
Daniel Radcliffe presented a Tony Award to Sutton Foster. It made my life.
My friends and I choreographed a dance to a medley of songs from Hercules. It was needless to say pretty awesome.
Anne Brashares came out with a fifth Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book.
I became Pottermore beta... which was ultimately a huge disappointment, but was momentarily awesome.
I pre-ordered The Fault in Our Stars.
I cried many, many times over the ending of the Harry Potter series, but was thrilled with how amazing the film turned out and made so many great memories to go with it.
I had another great summer at the Friendship Circle camp.
I went to the beach on Nicki's birthday and laughed so much in one day it was ridiculous.
I spent the most magical week of my life at Walt Disney World with my family.
Between sophomore and junior year I got to be educated by the best English, history, and math teachers I've ever had.
I got onto the Comedy Sportz team with the best newbies ever.
I had a non-cursed sweet sixteen.
I was on the best scavenger hunt team ever, the Flaming Spaniards.
I had the time of my life with my best friends at Faux-coming.
I went to a simply fantastic tea party.
I read The Hunger Games series and absolutely LOVED all three books.
I had the biggest and most challenging role I've ever had in the best show I've ever performed in, All My Sons.
I saw my best friend dance the lead in The Nutcracker and was with her when one of the greatest dancers of our generation signed her pointe shoes.
I found out I'm going to meet John and Hank Green on January 26.
I got to help a musical come together in three weeks.

But the absolute best thing that happened to me in 2011 was that I made friends in the most unexpected of ways and I'm now so close to people I would never have ever thought I'd even be friends with. Here's to another great year in 2012.

An Open Letter to the Cast of All My Sons

2011-12-10T23:47:00.000-08:00

Dear Alexandra, Evan, CiCi, Hunter, Kathy, Kyle, Matt, Max, Melanie, Nitzan, Ryan, Sammy, Sarah, Shaq, Sydney, Tyler, and the crew (there are too many crew members to name),

I know I was always the first person to complain when it came to All My Sons. Honestly, at first I didn't even want to audition, but I am so glad that I did. I'm not even exaggerating when I say that I've never had more fun with a cast- I've had a great time with each and every one of you over this nearly three month process.

As you guys saw in my paper plate award tonight, this show hasn't been the easiest for me. Rehearsals have been tough but having all of you there is more than I can ever ask for. As corny as it is, this cast is a family and I know I'm not the only one that felt that. So many people went through so much during the long three months where we spent nearly every single day after school together, and without the show we wouldn't necessarily have had each other to help.

There were people in this show that I barely knew before we were cast that I'm now best friends with. I don't think it's humanly possible for me to love a cast more and I couldn't be prouder of all of you. We worked really hard and it paid off.

To those of you who I'm working on Spelling Bee with, I'll see you on Monday. And to the rest of you, I sincerely hope this won't be our last show together. You're all amazing.

Love,

Stephanie

P.S. I guess All My Sons is cancelled this year!

Worried

2011-12-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

I'm sensitive. Anyone that knows me know that. And by that I don't mean that I cry when people offend me, if that was true I wouldn't have any friends. I'm sensitive to other people's thoughts and feelings. This causes me to worry. A lot.

I mean, I worry about myself too. My friend Julie and I spent probably 45 minutes yesterday talking about something we're worried about... that's in February. But what I'm talking about is how I worry about other people, whether I know them or not. Today I found out my empath quotient, which is graded on a scale of 1 to 80. The average woman gets about a 47. I got 62, which is somewhere on the border of above average and unusually high.

Being an empath has often put me in the situation where I'm the friend that people can go to for anything, which in turn puts me in the situation of knowing things I can't tell anyone. And although I don't really mind being that person and I love that my friends can trust me, but I do bear a constant emotional weight on my shoulders. I'm not complaining, exactly. I've just had an emotionally exhaustive week. Let's just say, on Wednesday night alone I cried four times because my old teacher got married and is moving to Brazil.

My friends tease me for being emotional, but it used to be so much worse. When I went to high school I made a resolution to stop crying in front of people, and I didn't until January of that school year. Now I do so sparingly, which is still probably more than most people. Oh, well. Better out than in as I always say (name that movie quote).

The fact that I'm so open with my emotions has probably greatly contributed to the fact that two of my favorite things are writing and acting. Go figure.

This is getting increasingly ramble-y and I don't really remember what I intended to write about. I titled this entry "Worried." Probably because I am.

Happy birthday to Jeff Bridges, Fred Armisen, Tyra Banks, and Orlando Brown.

I have too much to do.

November 9

2011-11-12T21:52:00.000-08:00

I've come to the conclusion that it's impossible not to like history. People say they don't like history because it's boring or unimportant or whatever stupid reason they come up with, but it's impossible to genuinely hate everything about history. Here's why.

Everything is history. Everything has history and everything is slowly fading into history as we say it or write it or do it. This blog in some contexts can be considered a historical document. It's a primary source depicting how a very odd sixteen year old female felt about things in the year 2011. Is it reliable? Well, you found it on the internet, so it must be trustworthy.

Anyway, I was thinking about how through studying history you study everything else too. Not necessarily to your fullest ability, but to understand any given time period we don't just try to understand their politicians and their wars, but we need to understand their literature and art, their discoveries and scientific advancements... we basically need to understand as much as we can. There is no facet of any given culture that isn't touched by current events and doesn't have an effect on it's world, everything is important. Because I have this knowledge it really bothers me how little I know. Even though I act like I do, I don't know everything. I learn knew things every day. Today I learned about comedia del arte at Elizabeth's show. Yesterday I learned that at the end of "I Got Life" from Hair, they're saying, "Amen," and not "Gay men."

Anyway, as a student and lover of history I noticed something interesting about Wednesday's date: November 9. I'm not one to deliberately memorize dates, but sometimes they tend to stick out in my mind (i.e. July 14 is Bastille Day, November 11 is Armistice Day, August 24 is John Green's birthday, etc.). Two dates corresponded to November 9: Kristallnacht and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Kristallnacht took place on November 9-10, 1938 and was the deliberate alienation of Jews in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. The Nazi's used the evening as an opportunity to place more targets on the backs of the innocent and to wrangle support from fearful and desperate followers. Hitler used it just as he used all his other political moves, as a means to get one step closer to total imperialism.

51 years later, on November 9-10, 1989, the Berlin Wall that was put in place post World War II to keep the political ideas of the East and the West from mixing , inspiring new thought, and allowing freedom. The wall's fall in 1989 symbolized the end of the Cold War, with freedom winning.

That's one of the many things I love about history. Odd coincidences. I love 'em. I love them and I love random facts and the great people and the unexplained occurrences. I love when people do things that no one saw coming. I love when a few small things effected the entire world. Because nothing's small.

I think maybe another reason people don't like history is because it's scary. There's really nothing scarier then what man can do. A possible exception being the bubonic plague. That shit's horrifying. But anyway, when we look back and see how much destruction and pain man has caused, it's actually terrifying. People do horrible things for horrible reasons. But that fear is the problem. We can't view the past as a series of mistakes that cause trepidation towards the future and prevent us from moving on. We should look at the past because within it are our answers. We can see all the mistakes that we should never make again and all of the tried and true solutions that can be applied to modern situations. They say that history repeats itself, but the phrase always has such a negative connotation when, if only we could repeat the positive things, it could mean great things.

And this is the part of the blog that's going to sound absurdly naive and hopeful and optimistic, but I feel like at least the good guys always win. And I know that the winners get to write history, but I find that it would be pretty hard to spin the story so that the Axis winning World War II would be good or that the Confederacy winning the Civil War would be good or that it would be great if everyone was still colonies of a few countries thousands of miles away. You know?

So, that's my corny view on history. I love it. It's beautiful. It's really important to me that I remember the past. After all, we are only a product of our memories.

Happy birthday to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Karl Marx, Grace Kelly, Megan Mullally, Neal Shusterman, Tonya Harding, Ryan Gosling, Anne Hathaway, and one of my best friends in the entire world, Sophie.

This blog. What am I gonna do?

I'm gonna go watch HP7p2 and cry.

It's Been a Long Couple of Weeks

2011-11-05T16:46:00.001-07:00

I miss this blog. I don't see you enough.

As the title implies, my weeks have been long recently. Stressful and scary and sad and altogether not good. This is going to be mostly a bit of reflection on my part, and definitely more depressing then what I usually choose to write about, but here it goes.

On Monday after fourth period, already thoroughly depressed by a movie I watched about the slave trade, I walked out of class to find out that my friend's boyfriend took his own life.

The shock I felt upon hearing the news was indescribable, and I can't even imagine how his parents and close friends felt. I hadn't known him personally, we went to Hebrew School together when we were little. I know him best as that guy I had to pretend to be married too for a Hebrew School play. It was very embarrassing for my approximately 10 year old self.

However, I still felt the pang of a loss. It was a loss to the community and a loss to my friend. The feeling is completely indescribable.

The following evening a candlelight memorial was held in the main quad at my school. The same event was used to honor two other students, one died of an accidental alcohol-related incident and another committed suicide a few weeks earlier. The memorial was one of the most painful events I've ever attended. Hearing the cries of a mother whose son is no longer with us is something that no one should ever have to experience. I felt guilty for sobbing over bad grades and fights with my parents. Those weren't real tears. The tears of the boys' mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, girlfriends, friends, classmates, and teachers were.

It's hard to think about the things people said. The speeches given by loved ones were emotionally stirring and hard to listen too. Wax from the candle I was holding melted all over my shoes, and I can't bring myself to clean them. It's a reminder of the things I heard.

If one positive thing can come from these horrible tragedies, it is that we can learn that every action we choose to take affects someone else. The harsh words we say, sometimes jokingly, mean something, but so do the kind ones. Words of kindness and friendship are the best things we can offer to anyone. Sometimes people put on a brave face and act like they're okay, but oftentimes the bravest ones are those who are the most sad. Be there for them. Let them know that they aren't alone. And if you have any suspicion that they might hurt themselves, or even take their own life, tell an adult.

That's pretty much all I have to say right now. I have to go make people laugh, which is probably one of the best things I can do right now. Just.... love everybody. That's what I'm trying to do.

I was born on October 11, and YOU were born on October 11!

2011-10-11T23:17:00.000-07:00

I wasn't actually born on October 11. As previously discussed, I was born on October 9. But in the movie The Parent Trap starring Lindsay Lohan as twins separated at birth, Hallie and Annie, they were born on October 11. I just needed a creative title.

Speaking of dates with significance, my history teacher told us about this historian who took his family on vacations by traveling the path that Lewis and Clark took across the West while reading Merriwether Lewis's journals on the corresponding dates in which they were written. That sentence exemplifies proper grammar.... Anyway, although I suppress my amazement in my history class due to the fact that I am usually about to fall asleep, I am genuinely really impressed by this historian's family vacation. When I was younger I loved reading these books from a series called Dear, America. These books were all historical fiction diaries from the point of view of girls in various periods of America's past, and I always wanted to read them on the corresponding dates in which they were written. However, since they were library books, I didn't want to keep checking them out over and over again. Also, sometimes the character would go a while without writing, and I would get impatient and want to keep reading. So even though in theory I would have liked to read along with the writing, if you will, logistically it wasn't going to work out.

Another interesting thing about history is that things happened more slowly. For example, the farther back we go in history our dates get less specific, which can be attributed to a lack of accurate information, but it can also be attributed to the fact that information didn't travel fast in that time. People didn't find out about current events (that would later become historical events) until well after they happened, and nowadays we can communicate so quickly people know when things happen in real time.

I shall now go off on a tangent. Actually, I'm going off on a sine divided by cosine. I may have learned identities today in pre-calculus. My math teacher may have laughed maniacally before he told us what we were learning today.

Anyway, I love sweater weather. I really, really, really love it, and my birthday weekend was perfect because of it, and last week it rained which was very nice. But tomorrow it is going to be 100 degrees. And people wonder why I hate California weather. Yeah, all two and a half of our seasons are nice (season one: really hot, season two: that amazing weather where you can decide whether or not you feel like putting a cardigan on over your tank top, and the half season: chilly on California standards), but they are so unpredictable and sporadic. Thus is the state of the world these days.

I really want to live somewhere with four seasons. Leaves ample for jumping into (while wearing sweaters) in the fall, a perfect blanket of powdery white snow in the winter, a plethora of fresh flowers with the occasional fall of rain in the spring, and a dry, hot, perfect for swimming summer. Is that too much to ask?

You know what is especially perfect about my perfect weather systems? Each one of them has a different place for me to read a book. In the fall I can read on my porch or indoors in a big comfy chairs, in the winter there is nothing better than curling up with a down comforter and hot chocolate, in the spring I can read on the window seat while I wait for the rain to stop, and in the summer I can read underneath the perfect shady tree.

Three of those four locations don't exist in my house. I don't have a porch, a window seat, or a large shady tree. I do have a down comforter, but I don't have winter. Sometimes I pretend I do, though. I just miss reading. I love reading. Books books books books books.

Happy birthday to Emily Davison (look her up on Wikipedia if you don't know who she is), Eleanor Roosevelt, Jerome Robbins, Daryl Hall, Joan Cusack, Jane Krakowski, Emily Deschanel, and Michelle Trachtenberg.

Just go back and read that sentence again. I think it's necessary to your existence.

I want to go on a trip and read a book.

How to be Sixteen

2011-10-10T00:20:00.000-07:00

Now that I have completed my first official day of being sixteen, I think it would be appropriate to compile a list of things I did today (well, technically yesterday). So, here are my suggestions of some things to do when you are sixteen, loosely based on things I have done in the time since I have stopped being fifteen:

Watch Breakfast at Tiffany's
Sleep
Eat chocolate chip pancakes
Watch the Travel Channel compulsively
Bathe
Cry. Only once though.
Be visited by Elizabeth
Go to the mall
At the mall, buy clothing, Toms, and a chocolate croissant
Wait while Mom buys a coffee maker
Clean room
Well, start cleaning room....
Spend time with my Friendship Circle buddy
Go to one of those cool Japanese restaurants where they cook the food on the table
Have cake
Receive wonderfully sweet and well thought out gifts from friends and family members
Obsessively respond to birthday greeting wall posts on Facebook
Watch random episodes of iCarly
Avoid homework at all costs
Write in a blog

So, if you're sixteen and can't think of anything to do, I hope that the list I compiled has some worthwhile suggestions. It made for a pretty decent birthday, if I do say so myself.

Happy birthday on October 9 to Joseph Friedman, John Lennon, Sharon Osborne, Tony Shalhoub, Steven Burns, and Sean Lennon, and on October 10 to Helen Hayes, Jodi Benson, and Mario Lopez.

Last week I had a dream that junior year was over. You can imagine my disappointment when I woke up..

I'm Cheating on Drama Club

2011-10-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

So you know how I'm the treasurer of drama club? Oh, you didn't? I could have sworn I told you... I'm 99% sure I did. Well, I am. I love drama club with all my heart and I've been putting so much into it. But, like over 11% of married relationships, my monogamous relationship with drama club doesn't fulfill all of my needs, and I recently decided to look elsewhere. English Honors Society.

Allow me to explain. One of the traits that I possess that most of the other drama club members do not is that I'm a complete and total nerd. Don't get me wrong, I love theatre and I'm a total drama geek, but I've became an English nerd no less than a year after I fell in love with musicals. To quote Thomas Jefferson, one of the nerdiest of all our English nerd presidents, "I could not live without books." In English on Friday we had to do a quick write on what life would be like if we couldn't read, and I determined that I would be an unhappy person. So much of my joy in life comes from reading and writing and I couldn't imagine not having experienced Hogwarts, Narnia, Frell, or any of the other places books have transported me, whether they be real or not. Books have taught me about myself and about other people and have quite literally changed my life.

As a member of EHS I hope to share that joy with like-minded others and also with the students I will tutor through the program. I signed up to tutor for kids in my sophomore English teacher's class (because I miss my sophomore English teacher, A LOT) and I am beyond excited. I really feel passionately that being able to read and write well can open so many doors for people, and if I can help people who aren't strong in those areas then that would make me very happy.

Another reason I was motivated to join EHS is because I didn't know it existed. Our school's Math Honors Society is HUGE and has many, many tutors who have helped me study for many, many math tests. I didn't know there was an English Honors Society, and obviously I didn't know that they tutored. I ran for office in the club because I think it's important that people know our school has a resource where they can be tutored in English for free and by a peer. I interviewed for the position of historian (and I'm not 100% sure what that means...) and I got it! Tomorrow morning I'm going in to talk to the co-presidents about it and I'm really excited.

As busy as my life is, most of the things that are making it busy are really exciting. For example, today I went driving again! And for the first time since my horrendous first lesson, I drove over 40 miles per hour. And I didn't kill anyone or hit any other cars!

OH MY GOSH I JUST THOUGHT OF A BRILLIANT ANALOGY. SORRY THE CAR TALK IS OVER NOW.

There are three organizations that I'm really passionate about. Those are drama club, English Honors Society, and the Friendship Circle (which, in case I don't talk about it enough, is an organization where I volunteer with special needs kids and teens). I've assumed leadership positions in all of those organizations (well, I applied for one at Friendship Circle, and I haven't heard back yet, but knowing my track record with FC... well, we'll see) and I think I can pinpoint how each of them affect me.

English Honors Society feeds my brain. It allows me to use my own intelligence to help others and to challenge myself to work harder and live up to the expectations set by being an officer of the club. Drama club is for my heart. Theatre is what I love more than almost anything and being able to perform and create opportunities for others to perform, tech, or support theatre arts makes me beyond happy. The friendship circle elevates my soul. By putting others before myself and truly throwing myself into the mitzvah, I am a part of something bigger than myself.

The pure cheese and corn of that last paragraph is making me smile. I really love what I do. As stressed out as I am, at least I have these things that make me happy and at the same time allow me to become a better person.

Happy birthday to Mahatma Gandhi, Groucho Marx, Donna Karan, Annie Liebovitz, Sting, Kelly Ripa, and Camilla Belle.

Speaking of birthdays, a week from today is my sweet sixteen. Is it weird that all I really want from that day is a new pair of Toms? The ones I got for my birthday last year got ruined after wearing them to Walt Disney World for a week.

Feeling Sentimental

2011-09-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

Guess what guys? Okay, you aren't going to guess so I'll just tell you.

I got cast in a show! I'm not going to go into great detail about the circumstances behind the audition, because it's pretty complicated, but I am going to play Sue Bayliss in Arthur Miller's All My Sons. I guess it will be fun.

I auditioned for All My Sons on September 13, 2011. This date doesn't have any real significance (except that it's Bella Swan's birthday in Twilight [the fact that I remember that scares me], except that it is exactly two years and six months after March 13, 2009. And March 13, 2009 was the day The Music Man closed, and The Music Man was the last show I have performed in. The day the All My Sons process began was exactly two years and six months after The Music Man ended.

Going into high school I didn't plan on being involved in theatre at all. I wanted to focus on my grades and I felt the theatre program at my high school was too competitive; I didn't feel like I would be talented enough to get into anything. So freshman year I didn't try out for a single show (I tried out for the improv team, but that didn't work out). I still took theatre class and sang in choir but I was too scared to audition for anything- I didn't even consider it an option. And I hated it. I hated not being in shows more than anything. So sophomore year I decided I would start auditioning for things again.... and let's just say it didn't go well. I didn't get into the advanced choir, I didn't get into my school's improv team, and I didn't get into the fall play. I wasn't able to try out for the murder mystery (I was out of town for a big chunk of the rehearsal process) and I couldn't be in the musical (the show closed three days before the AP Euro test). My self esteem took a trip down the toilet and I missed performing more than anything. I was slightly bitter and immature. So, where did these two years of doing nothing get me?

Well, I'm now a junior. I'm the treasurer of drama club, I'm in the advanced theatre class and the advanced choir. I just got cast in the fall play and I got onto the improv team. Although I'm stressed beyond belief about school but I've never had more fun in high school than I'm having now. I love being a theatre person and being a part of this community.

And this is going to sound extremely dorky but I made a chart on my computer so that at the end of the school year I can figure out how many hours I've spent doing theatre related activities (excluding classes, drama club, drama board meetings, and practicing on my own). It's just one of those things I want to do. And to make it slightly less embarrassing, I only did it because I was making a chart to track my community service hours, and the idea struck me. And in case you wondering, here's how I'm doing so far:

Community service hours: 3

Theatre hours: 13

It will even out! My community service program only started about a week ago, so those hours will add up. Ultimately, I'll probably have a bucket load more of theatre.

So... yeah. That's pretty much it. I was just in a reflective mood and I felt like writing. I'll post something else later. I'm in the mood to talk about books.

Happy birthday to Anne Bancroft, Ken Kesey, Bobby Lee, Constantine Maroulis, and a very special one-day late happy birthday to one of my best friends, Elizabeth. I'm still allowed to say happy birthday because we're celebrating tonight. It's fine.

And to top it off, we're going The Cheesecake Factory, otherwise known as the most unhealthy restaurant in America. YUM.

This Thursday Thing Isn't Going to Work Out

2011-09-16T00:16:00.000-07:00

[see title]

It's already Friday and I just don't have time to deal with this.

I Almost Forgot Thursday is Blogging Day

2011-09-08T21:19:00.001-07:00

Keyword: almost.

Due to my near forgetfulness, I really have nothing to talk about. I'm sick of complaining about how busy I am on this blog. It's getting old fast.

Inspiration.... inspiration.... inspiration.... I'm listening to Judy Garland sing right now. That never fails to make me feel unworthy. She's just one of the most talented human beings that has ever existed.

You know what's something I haven't done in a long time? I'll tell you- obsess over college. I've been so focused on high school that I'm more unsure of where I want to go afterwards than I was even as a freshman. But considering I'm a junior and the choices I make now have a significant affect on what college I get into, I should probably start being obsessive again.

I have too many thoughts running around my brain right now. I really need to pick one thing and write about it rather than jump from topic to topic like this. I'm probably annoying all two people reading this right now. Okay. I'm just going to pick a topic and run with it. Um. This is hard.

One of the lenses popped out of my sunglasses and I can't figure out how to fix it. That sucked.

I could literally watch Judy Garland sing for hours upon hours. And her and Barbara Streisand working together is the closest thing I've ever witnessed to world peace. Yes, I acknowledge how little sense that sentence made.

Due to the failure that is this blog entry, I think I'm going to blog tomorrow. I'm way to ADHD right now to write anything coherent. I'm so sorry. Plus, I just thought of a good topic that will be more relevant tomorrow than it is today.I think that made sense.

Happy birthday to Sid Caeser, Patsy Cline, and Pink. Today's birthdays aren't even conversation worthy.

I really need to start outlining blogs before I write them.

Thursday is Now Blogging Day

2011-09-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

Happy first day of Hogwarts! Unfortunately, it is my seventh day of junior year. And in case you are unaware of what makes junior different than the rest of high school, let me fill you in.

It is basically the most stressful year it is possible to experience before you become a real grown-up. I know that it is really stressful in different ways for everyone, but super quickly I will fill you in on why it will be particularly stressful for me.

I am taking seven courses after school. Five of those are academic, three of those academic courses are AP or IB, and my other two courses are advanced performing arts classes. Starting next week it's back to Hebrew High after school twice a week and a week from Sunday is the volunteer orientation for the organization I volunteer for. I'm also the treasurer of my school's drama club, which means I'm basically required to be as involved in theatre as possible. I know for a fact I am going to be in at least two (out of a possible five) shows this school year in addition to playing on my school's improv team.

And then there's homework. And eating. And sleeping. And maybe having a social life. And learning how to drive.

I'm not looking for sympathy from you lovely readers, but I think it's important that you guys know that I'm not going to be popping in for random blogs. I am designating Thursday as blogging day because today is Thursday and I am blogging, so it might as well become a regular thing. I always feel guilty when I don't blog often, even though I know that absolutely no one is reading this.

So.... what to talk about now? I mean, I can tell you all of the embarrassing things that have happened to me thus far this year, but that's no fun for me. I could talk about my teachers, but that's probably a bad idea in the long run.

OH DISCUSSION IDEA. It's been suggested to me by a variety of people in a variety of situations that I should try my hand at vlogging. I actually have an idea for a pretty funny vlog, I'm just really bad at the actual video making process. So, should I try it? If anyone bothers to comment on this, I promise I'll consider it.

Happy birthday to Engelbert Humperdinck (who wins at life simply because of his name), Engelbert Zaschka (who comes in second), Lily Tomlin, Gloria Estefan, Joseph Williams, Shoshana Bean, and a very special happy birthday to my friend Alexandra, who I hope is having a wonderful time in New York. I hope my jealousy isn't too thinly veiled.

Okay guys, see you next Thursday. I have to go attempt at being productive.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words

2011-08-11T00:02:00.000-07:00

I've always been mildly offensive by the phrase, "A picture is worth a thousand words." Speaking as someone who has absolutely no visual artistic capabilities and as someone who is confident enough in her writing abilities to publish them on this website, I've always felt like writers don't get enough credit because of this statement. Personally, I could tell a whole lot more by writing a thousand words (which in actuality isn't really that much) then I could by drawing a picture.

For example, if I wanted to do an a thousand word character sketch, I could tell you so much more about a person than I could by drawing him. Obviously this isn't the same for some people, but the saying is so famous and is treated like the ultimate truth.

So, I had an idea for an experiment. I would like to find an artist of the visual variety, and I think it would be really interesting if we tried to get the same message across, except I would have a limit of exactly 1,000 words and the artist would have to use 0 and just.... draw or something. It would be really interesting to see how we each interpret the subject and what other people get out of it. I don't know. I've been really ADD recently. It's hard to put my thoughts into words. (My brain right now: awtegrhtgrerghnggrfergtgbrfebg)

I'm sorry, I just felt like doing a spur of the moment post and this was on my mind and then this post happened. AGH.

No famous happy birthdays today, but I would like to say happy birthday to two very good friends. Today is both Vanni's (my friend who lives in Germany and I miss her very much) birthday and Nicki's (my friend who lives in the same city and I am going to see later) birthday. If either of you are reading this, I love you both VERY much and have wonderful, memorable birthdays.

I'll post something more coherent later. I haven't even proofread this.

Journaling

2011-07-27T15:20:00.000-07:00

I am a sporadic journal keeper. I've always loved the idea of a journal; some of my favorite books have been in the style of a diary. Pretty much for as long as I can remember I have had a journal in some form, I just am so inconsistent about writing in them. I've been working on my AP English summer assignment (yay for not completely procrastinating!) and today I read an essay about keeping a notebook.

In this essay ("On Keeping a Notebook" by Joan Didion) a differentiation was made between having a notebook and a diary. Most of my journals would fit under her description of a diary, but I do have a little tiny book that would fit under her description of a notebook. Ok, this probably makes no sense. Let me explain in more depth.

I have one journal that I haven't written in for months. This is a book where I go over the events of the day and how I feel and stuff like that. This would fit under Didion's definition of a diary. I also have a little tiny purse sized notebook where I write down dreams primarily. I just jot down things that I know I will forget later and might want to remember. This falls into Didion's notebook category, which according to her is more for just putting thoughts and musings about anything and not describing everyday life.

After reading this essay I was prompted to look through my current journal and my past ones. I realized a couple things about my writing. One is that I write a lot more when I'm depressed, which should tell you a lot about the person I am right there. When I'm upset I go through and list all the things that are upsetting me and who I'm mad at and why I'm stressed and how awful I feel. Really, if a stranger read anything I write they'd think that I'm a very depressed person. However, if I ever choose to write when I'm happy, the entry is usually like, "Today was a very good day because I spent time with my friends, I'll write more about it later." Except I never do write about it later, and looking back I usually have no idea why I was so happy. And this realization reminded me of a quote by Hank Green:

"We often just accept the things we like and complain a lot about the things we don't like. But if we could, like intensely dwell on the really great things in life the way we intensely dwell on the negative things in life, I think that would be fantastic."

I wish the human psyche worked like this. This summer complaining has become one of my absolute worst pet peeves. Yes, I realize this is hypocritical but they say that when something about another person bothers you it reflects a bad trait that you have, and I realize this. I think I've started complaining less. And if I haven't I will try harder. It just really makes me angry when people complain about things that either (a) they got themselves into and ultimately has a good outcome [i.e. going to summer school, which is completely optional and allows for an easier school year] or (b) have absolutely no solution, so there's no point in complaining [i.e. the fact that summer school starts really early in the morning]. And I totally realize that I have been known to do both of these things, but I am going to firmly decide to make myself stop. Which reminds me, I am so glad that summer school ended for me three weeks ago.

And here is the second thing that reflecting on old writings has taught me about my writing style- I write in second person way more than I should. When I entered that fiction contest I told you guys about (update: I didn't get accepted, but the person who reviewed mine told me that I'm a very talented writer but my piece wasn't exactly what they were looking for. Oh, well.) I kept directly addressing my audience. I guess it was a stylistic choice, but it's something I do a lot. Weird, huh?

Happy birthday to Alexandre Dumas and Maya Rudolph. And I'm pretty sure it's also Nicki's sister Ili's birthday. So happy birthday to all of you!

I think I'm going to go read some of my middle school journals. Those one's are the funniest.

Writing Fiction

2011-07-17T00:33:00.000-07:00

The Spark Notes blog is holding a fiction contest, and the deadline is Monday morning. I decided to write a short story. It's really, really hard.

The only criteria is that the story has to be funny. It can be any type of humor "from subtle sarcasm to fart jokes." I'm going for subtle sarcasm, but I don't know if it's working. I'm not going to tell you guys what it's about, because it isn't a plot heavy story. They asked for stories to be around 1000 words, and I've already written around 600. I don't like the first 400 that much though. Agh this is really hard.

I think the problem is I started writing without an idea. I had a character in mind, and then I ran with it and started building a story and other characters. I'm not writing because I had a character and a story that I just needed to write down- I need to write something down so I just made up a character and a story.

Plus, I'm currently enduring the pandemic that is Post-Potter-Depression. Really, I look like a total mess right now. I can't function properly. I haven't even tried to distract myself, because everything is Harry Potter and everything hurts. My life is truly all down hill from here.

Ok, this isn't working. I'm not going to finish writing tonight anyway. I need to sleep or something.

Happy birthday to James Cagney, Phyllis Diller, and David Hasselhoff.

I'll try to post a more coherent post sometime soon. Chances are it will revolve around Harry Potter or the story I'm attempting at writing. More than likely Harry Potter.

Abandonment

2011-07-10T22:35:00.000-07:00

I feel really bad about my tendency towards abandonment when it comes to this blog. I don't know why, but my motivation to continuously update is kind of on the low side, especially considering my lack of followers. However, in recent weeks I can say a contributing factor is the total consumption of my mind by one topic- Harry Potter. I don't want to get all sentimental and make myself cry for the millionth time, but I wrote this little paragraph for a contest, and my friend said it was beautiful, so I'll share it here. Until after the film, these are my feelings about being a part of the Harry Potter universe:

Harry Potter means being accepted into a community that is bigger than anything I have ever been apart of. Through the stories and adventures we have all shared with Harry, Hermione, Ron, and all the other characters who have touched our hearts millions of people from dozens of countries are connected. I have learned valuable lessons that aren't taught in school- Harry taught me to be brave even when it seems like all odds are against me, Ron showed me that loyalty, friendship, and family are more valuable than galleons, and Hermione made it clear that books and cleverness, although exceedingly useful, are all the more important when paired with friendship and bravery. Jo created a world that brought her out of a dark depression, but unknowingly she created a safe haven that would welcome millions of wanderers home. I am eternally grateful to Jo and to everyone who has made the Harry Potter series possible. The seven books are something like the seven horcruxes- the each encompass a small part of my soul.

So, yeah. That's a brief summary of how I feel right now.

Happy birthday to John Calvin, Jerry Herman, Fiona Shaw, Sofia Vergara, Adrian Grenier, and Jessica Simpson.

I'll try to blog more often, who ever's reading this. I have things to say.

Honesty

2011-06-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

I'm not a liar. I don't try to convince people that I'm good at sports, a natural blonde, or that I'm a prodigious clarinet player. However, I have had a problem with bending the truth.

This isn't a habit I'm proud of or I do intentionally, but I usually use it when something bad happens to ease the pain for myself. And probably I subconsciously want other people to view me a certain way, but at least in my conscious mind it seems like I tell little half truths to avoid facing the magnitude of the truth.

For example, right now I'm taking three weeks of an Algebra II class at summer school. I didn't flunk out or anything, but I took a really hard IB math course first semester (moral of this story: the IB program is not my thing) and that resulted in me getting a C and switching into Algebra II. I did pretty well in the second semester Algebra II class, but I have to get a B in summer school or they won't let me into Pre-Calculus, and I'll have to take finite mathematics, which frankly is a stupid person math class.

That, right there, was the truth. However, when people ask me why I'm in the class I don't mention the grades or the impending doom of finite math, I just kind of shrug and say it's to get the credits for college. Which is also true, it's just not the main reason. This leads me to two questions:

1. Is it necessary that other people know the truth about my faults?

2. Is it necessary for my own personal improvement that I tell other people about my faults?

So far I feel that the answer to question one is no, but the answer to question two might be yes. When it comes to talking to people I don't know very well or am uncomfortable with, it's often easier to give the shorter, half-true answer. But I don't know if it's good for me to go on like that, especially with people I feel like I could be close friends with. For example (I need to think of another phrase that means 'for example'), earlier last year I was walking with my friend Clair at school when we saw a poster for the fall play. She casually asked me if I had auditioned, and I said no. But I had auditioned, I just hadn't gotten in.

Was I harming anyone with that little white lie? No. It didn't effect anyone or anything. But if I can't own up to my own little slip-ups to my friends, then what's going to happen when I have a BIG slip-up? Because I do mess up a lot of things. I poked myself in the eye with a straw today. If that can happen I can probably mess up a lot of things. And I think it's important that I can acknowledge my own downfalls, and until I'm at a place where I can do that securely and not beat myself up and spiral downhill into a pit of low self-esteem. Until then, I just need to be honest. Not necessarily to complete strangers, but always to my friends.

Take today, for example (darn you stupid phrase). After summer school I walked to lunch with my friends Tyler and Haley, and although I've known them for a while (I've actually known Haley since I was about six or seven), we haven't spent much time just us. And we were at lunch for a really long time, thankfully we were three of the only people in the restaurant, and we just rambled on from subject to subject and I was able to be really honest with them. We just talked about our experiences with theatre and other random things and I didn't lie or stretch the truth or eliminate facts. And it was all very good and lovely and nothing bad happened, and I hope I can be like that in the future. I would continue boring you with musings on my innermost qualities, but I have to catch a bus at 6:45 tomorrow morning and force a grumpy bus driver to make change for a ten, so I'm going to go to sleep.

Happy birthday to Joseph Papp, Kris Kristofferson, Meryl Streep, Cyndi Lauper, Erin Brockovich, and Dan Brown. Ok, that sentence was so filled with awesome, I can't even.... just go back and read that sentence again.

6:45 tomorrow.... I can't do this.

Part Two: Summer... It's Still Back

2011-06-20T16:20:00.000-07:00

It seems like yesterday I left off talking about an appropriate workout mindset, and it seems I have on because I totally completed my first day of workout-ing today. I actually ended up doing an hour and a half more of aerobics then I planned on, but that's a story for another day.

I feel the workout was successful. I worked up a quite the sweat and I felt the burn in the intended muscles. Sophie was making fun of me because of the silly exercises in Seventeen, but I am frankly not close to being as in shape as she is, and these did the trick for my quote of training today. And the regimen was written by a really important celebrity fitness trainer named Harley. I trust him. And honestly, if I can't trust Lady Gaga's personal trainer, who can I trust?

I think the motivation thing might actually work out this year, basically because if I don't work out I'm not allowed to watch a movie or read for pleasure (I have to read for school every day regardless). Today, since I worked out, I get to read for pleasure for an hour (I JUST GOT THE NEW ANN BRASHARES BOOK!!!!!! WHO'S JEALOUS?), then I'm going to watch a movie, and then as a cool down before bed I'm going to read from my psych textbook. It's kind of... not the most difficult course I'm taking next year. And anyway, after the whirlwind day I've had, I really need a break. (No, I'm not going into details about my adventure. Maybe tomorrow.)

Happy birthday to Lionel Richie, Nicole Kidman, and my wonderful best friend, Arielle, who was kidnapped today, out of love, by Sophie and I.

NOW I GET TO READ. BECAUSE IT'S SUMMER. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH.

Summer... It's Back

2011-06-19T16:01:00.001-07:00

This is the fourth consecutive summer I have had this blog. And many of you faithful readers have probably noticed a trend about my relationship with the dry season... that relationship being not the best.

I'm not a summer person. Although I'm completely Californian, I'm not into the heat nor the beach, I don't like always having to look skinny and perfectly shaven (summer clothing does not do much for my body) and I never really do anything. When I was little I went to camp, which was wonderful and I am so grateful for. But now that I'm older, and on top of that I only have my learner's permit, there isn't much to do. My family is going on vacation in August, and I'm extremely excited, but until then, what do I do? I have to go to summer school for twelve days and I have a pile of summer assignments and reading on my desk, but aside from those my schedule is open. SO, I have come up with a plan.

I have to do something productive every single day. I know, productive is an extremely vague word. But for example, on Friday I cleaned and organized and decorated my room. Yesterday I was not home between the hours of 11 A.M. and 12 A.M. so nothing productive got done. Today I went on an adventure with Sophie and we bought Arielle's birthday present. That's productive. But overall I want to productivity to fall under two categories- either working out or working on school. Preferably both. But every summer Seventeen magazine publishes a workout schedule, and I sort of followed it last summer. It's extremely doable. But this summer I intend on completing the entire five week schedule. It's Monday-Friday, so I have no weekend commitments to training. However, I will have to avoid sweets. My friend Gabby and her friend made a deal with each other to only have on dessert every two days (or something like that) and the first person to break the diet owed the other $300. I don't have $300, nor a person to give that money too, but hopefully the mindset thing will help.

Ok, so I have to stop blogging now because my family expects me to drop everything whenever I'm doing something to fit their schedule, so expect a part two this evening. Bye for now.

Pity

2011-06-07T00:13:00.000-07:00

No one makes you feel anything. I believe that to be true. For example, people say, "She made me feel guilty." Well, no. You already felt guilty, this person just pointed it out. If you didn't actually feel bad, then someone saying those things wouldn't have made you feel any differently. However, I do think that there is one particular feeling that can evoke strong emotions through another person, and that emotion is pity.

Personally, whenever I'm sad or upset or angry or anything to that affect, it isn't real until someone feels bad for me. Until someone says, "I'm sorry," or gives me a hug and sympathetic smile I can't let the feeling out. Of course it depends on the situation, but I am currently being very broad. Everything hurts more when someone else feels you are worthy of their sympathy. This is probably just because it is a reminder of the painful emotions, but it still sucks.

That's why I hate pity so much. Sometimes I need to talk to people about something. If so, I let someone know I want to talk to them. But otherwise I think it's just best if life goes on as normal. Wait, now I'm being an internal hypocrite. Sometimes when I'm upset I prefer if my friends notice and don't wait for me to tell them, and then I get irritated when they don't ask. That's usually when I'm PMSing though, and PMS doesn't count.

In case you were wondering, this wasn't prompted by anything. Yes, I did get rejected at an audition, but I was in a really good mindset for that so I'm literally fine. I haven't even cried or anything, which is weird for me. It just got me thinking about other times when I have been legitimately upset.

It's technically June 7. The only reason I'm up this late is because I'm avoiding doing extra credit. And I need extra credit. I'm just avoiding it. We're getting our yearbooks today. Once you get your yearbooks, that's it, school's over. Even though senioritis has kicked in for everyone (it's not just for seniors anymore!) once the yearbooks go around, it's serious. And that's not really good, because finals haven't happened yet. Oh, well. I love yearbooks. They're probably up there in my favorite kinds of books.

Happy birthday to Liam Neeson, Prince, and Bear Grylls.

*dramatic sigh*.............. homework.................

I Feel Awesome

2011-05-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

If any of you know me or have been following this blog for pretty much any amount of time, you would know that I am technologically inept. I don't know how to use most devices invented in my lifetime, or before it for that matter, and the one's I do know how to use I have a tendency to break. This facet of my life (the facet where I break things and don't know how to use the one's I don't break) recently came into a conflict with my dance life (the life where I dance for P.E. credits because running scares me). For our dance final, we were basically told to get into groups and choreograph a dance using one of the styles we had studied this year. My group is thankfully comprised entirely of people I'm friends with, and being the huge Disney nerds that we are we chose to do a jazz dance to a medley of songs from the movie Hercules.

However, being the huge Disney nerds we are does not mean any of us know how to cut music, and considering we wanted to squish the three most dance-able song from Hercules into approximately two minutes, music cutting was necessary. But being the person that I am, I stepped up and said that I would take it upon myself to cut the music.

This is the part where you should all be going *headdesk headdesk headdesk.* Why didn't my friends try to stop me? Well, voice inside my head, I don't know either. But my friends fell for me fake confidence and told me that cutting the music was a responsibility I was perfectly capable of taking on. Are you shaking your head in despair yet?

The music for the dance is due tomorrow, and this afternoon I sat down at my computer and decided I should probably make that happen. And by that I mean I sat down at my computer having absolutely no idea what to do. Please try not to laugh at me as I explain the various methods and attempts I used.

PLAN A

The first thought that came into my head was that I would video tape the YouTube videos of the songs I wanted, upload those videos to Windows Movie Maker, and smash them all together and make a video montage, except that the video part wouldn't be important. However, when you video tape a video, the sound quality gets really, really bad. Also, I couldn't figure out how to get all three files into one place, because I would upload one video to movie maker, and then when I uploaded the second video the first one would disappear. So that plan went out the window.

PLAN B

I miraculously found an option on Windows LIVE Movie Maker (keyword: live, previously I had been using plan old Movie Maker) to upload audio only. At this point, I decided to stop being cheap, get onto my desktop (where I have iTunes installed) and actually pay for the music I wanted. So, after going through all the annoying processes that iTunes makes you go through before you buy one simple .99 cent song, I was kind of stuck. I started by trying to upload the iTunes audio files to movie maker, which took way longer then it should have. Before I could even figure out how to cut the music, I was told that the music cannot be played until I have enough images to take up the time of the song. I went to Windows Help, because I had no idea what they meant, and there I found a sneaky way to get around this little rule, which is that you fix the image to stay on the screen the entire time the music played. I was excited at this prospect, but it didn't work. Don't ask me what went wrong, I have no freaking clue.

PLAN C

I was getting pretty desperate at this point. I tried calling a couple friends who I was aware were more technologically savvy then I am (i.e. everybody), and I was eventually able to reach Jack (a.k.a Shaq). Shaq and I were able to use our combined knowledge of iTunes to figure out how to cut the music to the desired length (while still retaining the original file and not loosing forever the parts of the song that are not in our dance) and make these songs into a seamless CD. And here's the kicker:

IT WORKED. Everything worked! I was able to cut the music, which took a while because I was being so OCD and anal retentive about the transitions, and download the whole thing on a CD, and then play the CD with no problems!

I have to say, my self-esteem went through the roof. For the first time in my life I have been able to do something mildly technologically advanced with a minimal amount of help and no face-to-face human interaction. Future possibilities are endless- who knows what weird tech savvy stuff I'll be doing next.

Now I'm debating whether or not I will tell the girls in my dance class about my minor fails. Do the ends justify the means? In this case, I definitely think so. Needless to say, I've been listening to me CD pretty much non-stop since I realized it worked perfectly. Hercules is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of my life.

Happy birthday to Mel Blanc, Wynonna Judd, and Cee-Lo Green. I love birthdays.

I think now I'm going to call Sydney and relay this information to her. Partially just because I need to stop listening to my CD over and over again.

No, My Luck Has Not Changed

2011-05-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

Everything is back to normal. The universe has righted itself. My luck has not changed for good.

This morning I dropped my lunch box. I drop things all the time, but today happened to be the day when I dropped my lunch box while there was a glass bottle filled with coffee inside it. So, when I picked it up all I had was a lunch box filled with coffee and glass shards. I didn't eat lunch today.

Aside from that my day was just generally unlucky. I made mistakes in math and Hebrew (two classes where I usually don't make mistakes) and it was just.... Monday. In the words of my dad, it was a very Monday Monday.

On the bright side, thanks to the tumblah I have found myself a website where I can download a bunch of OBC recording absolutely free of charge. My life just got a whole lot better. On the down side, I have a ton of lines that should be memorized right now... and aren't. Well, there goes my night.

This post got boring way to quickly. You'd think listening to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Avenue Q soundtracks would make me more witty. Oh, well.

Happy birthday to Drew Carey..... screw it I don't care about these people.

The universe has aligned itself once more.

Has My Luck Finally Changed?

2011-05-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

Usually I resort to blogging about my personal life when things aren't exactly going my way, which I have to admit is very often. I'm not the luckiest person in the world. Wait, let me rephrase that. I don't believe in luck. I believe in hard work and determination. However, even with the factors of hard work and determination, I have had the misfortune of wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time syndrome and people around me making stupid decisions that affect me adversely. But recently, some pretty good things have been happening to me. And it's kind of weird.

Just a week ago, if any of my friends could have attested to the fact that I wasn't in the greatest mood. Things, like usual, weren't really working out as I expected. School was getting extremely difficult and my social life was suffering (will, my social life is never not suffering), and I was generally not happy about certain aspects of my life. Then Thursday and Friday happened.

Thursday is drama club day, as any of my fellow thespians could tell you. But this Thursday wasn't just any drama club day, it was ELECTION DAY. I worked hard on my speech, (In case you were running, my entire speech rhymed. Thank goodness for rhymezone.com), dressed really nicely, and was just generally ready to go. However, I had promised my friend formerly known as Jack that I would impress him with my physical prowess by doing a cartwheel in my speech. Unfortunately, while I was practicing my speech at home I hit my foot on a chair and fell out of the cartwheel. Yeah, I know, I'm brilliant. So, last minute I needed to resort to the one other physically impressive thing I could do: the splits. Fortunately, my dash of flexibility mixed in with my incredible rhyme-filled story telling capability and persuasiveness, I secured Shaquille's (that would be the friend formerly known as Jack) vote, and apparently a lot of other people's too- I got elected to board! Not only did I get elected, but so did the other six people who comprised the "dream team" of students that my friends and I hoped would make the board. Yes, my sentence structure is in fact flawless.

The next good thing that happened to me occurred on Friday morning when I passed my permit test. Yay! However, this doesn't really mean anything yet since I can't legally get behind the wheel until after my first hour of instruction, and even then I can only drive in daylight hours with a licensed driver over the age of 25 in the vehicle. Additionally, my picture is disgusting. But I'm six months closer to freedom!

The third good thing that happened to me was that I got into link crew, but everyone who shows up to their interview gets in, so I don't really count that one.

Now for the fourth fortuitous event, which also proves itself to by the most surprising and confusing. On Wednesday I auditioned for mixed choir, which is the more advanced of the two choirs at my school. I practiced a lot, with the help of some of my more musically gifted friends, and I had an appropriate level of nervousness before the audition. It wasn't until I stood up there in front of the judges that it actually hit me. I was physically shaking, and I couldn't stop no matter how hard I tried. When I started singing the sound that came out of my mouth surprised me, my face most have looked ridiculous due to the shock I felt at how bad I sounded. In my mind it was one of my worst performances of that song I had done, and the pity hug I got from Elizabeth when I was done with the audition didn't help. The teacher told the group of auditioning girls that he was looking for 14 boys and 17 girls.

On Friday, some of the boys in band overheard the two music teacher discussing the mixed choir list, and they told a few of my friends that they had made it. At this point I wasn't too nervous, because there were still remaining spots for female singers, and it didn't seem like that many girls auditioned.

That afternoon in choir, the girls who got into mixed were congratulated by our teacher, myself included! I was so happy and proud of all my friends who had gotten in, and it really seemed like next year was going to be in our year. However, something was off- the grand total of singers amounted to 17 guys and 13 girls, a complete reverse of what was expected. With this announcement, a thought was planted in my mind, and as anyone who has seen Inception can tell you, once a thought enters your mind, it doesn't leave.

My thought stewed inside me but I didn't dare mention it in front of the other girls, because once it is spoken then it's real. But yesterday, one of my friends mentioned a rumor she had heard that basically confirmed my thought- not enough girls auditioned for mixed choir, so everyone who had auditioned got in.

Although I am glad I got in, I didn't want to get in this way. Now I am only going to doubt myself. Did I get in because I deserved it, or simply because they needed voices? I'd like to think our school's music department had enough integrity that they would reject musicians who can't pull their own weight, no matter what the need.

In summation, I basically don't know what to think right now. I don't know whether to be happy I got in, or upset because I didn't really deserve it. It also gives me just another reason to distrust my singing capabilities.

In the coming days I have two more auditions, one in two days and one in two weeks. Until then, I will try to be happy with the outcomes I already know about, even though I am not sure if I should be or not.

Happy birthday to Mary Cassatt (that woman is legitimately my favorite artist), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Laurence Olivier, Harvey Milk, Naomi Campbell, Ginnifer Goodwin, and, most importantly, my baby sister Abby, who turns 14 today. Additionally, happy anniversary to my parents, without whom I obviously would not be here today. That is all.

Oh, yeah, happy Lag B'Omer to all my fellow Jews! Go start a fire.

It's Time For...... A RANT

2011-05-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

Two rants for today, starting with.... A FASHION RANT:

Last night I went to my school's fashion show, and fortunately the two lines I voted for (my friend Stephanie's Getty/Black Swan inspired line and Nicki's Lady Gaga line) took first and second place respectively. Yes, that would be me correctly predicting popular opinion! Anyway, I really enjoyed the fashion show, especially considering that after the less-than-great day I had yesterday, I really didn't want to go. But I put down my pride and decided it was necessary for me to be there to support my friends, sucked it up, and went to the fashion show.

Something that was really interesting about this... display was the wide variety of types of lines. Some of the girls, to put it simply, designed things with little to no originality that reminded me of things girls wore all the time and probably bought at Forever 21. Thankfully, these girls didn't win. Others designed more costume-y pieces, there was even on completely Halloween themed line. Stephanie and Nicki both designed very high fashion. Stephanie's line I could envision very clearly on celebrities walking the read carpet-all of her gowns were absolutely gorgeous. Not necessarily sensible for the mainstream audience, but gorgeous. Nicki's line was very clear an art display. It was Lady Gaga inspired, but it wasn't a direct imitation. I.E. she didn't make a dress out of meat... but one outfit did feature some candy. One of the things that made me so impressed with Nicki's line in particular was that I know Nicki, and as a person she is very conservative. She dresses nicely but modestly and is soft-spoken and polite. None of those adjectives could have described this line. Just so show you what I mean, when my friend Sophie came on the runway modeling a dress Nicki made that was completely hand painted and gorgeous and strange, I yelled, "OH MY GAWD!" causing Sophie to laugh and break her model-concentration-face. Yeah, my self-control is fabulous.

Anyway, so we had Stephanie and Nicki's awesome designer-status lines and then we had some pretty crappy and clearly not well made Forever 21 like lines, but there wasn't very much in between. The closest thing I saw to anything that was original but mainstream enough that I could see myself wearing it in public was my friend Jody's Peter Pan inspired line. She made really nice, quality clothing that I would definitely wear. And Jody, if you are reading this since I know you follow my blog, I am not saying this to make you happy. I'm saying this because it's true.

Well, this evening of fashion as represented by people at my school who are interested in fashion, brought me to think about the types of fashion that I am exposed to on a daily basis at my school. You see, my school has a reputation for being indie. So, we get our fair share of people who dress like this. Then, on the opposite extreme, my school has a reputation for being kind of slutty and low class. For that, we have the girls who dress like this. Then there are average girls and girls who find it socially acceptable to wear pajamas to school. Now, I like to think of myself as a girl who dresses... nicely? I've had people accuse me of being unbelievably indie, but my personal favorite is the word that Sydney invented specifically in order to describe my fashion sense: chosh. It's a combination of chic and posh. Essentially, I like to look presentable. An average outfit for me would be a floral dress with a cardigan and oxfords or (if I haven't shaved my legs) skinny jeans, a nice blouse, a statement belt, and TOMS or Converse. However, I generally prefer to wear dresses or skirts. Pants or for cold weather (otherwise known as no shave weather). So, I just like to be presentable. But then again, my outlook on clothes is entirely different than that on hair and makeup. In the morning, I take putting on clothes very seriously. However, I don't wear a drop of makeup and the most effort I'll put into my hair is a sloppy bun or a headband. I'm not too great with cosmetics.

So this brings me to my point. Why can't people just dress nicely? It really doesn't take that much effort to put on a pair of nice, dark wash jeans (I prefer dark wash to light wash), a simple, V-neck tee, shoes that aren't falling apart, and freshly brushed hair. A couple accessories and you're good to go. Something like this doesn't take any effort and all and looks casual, but clean and put together. Come on, people. Look nice.

Seriously, when I oversleep and don't look my best at school, I don't feel good. For me, clothes are all about self-confidence, and if you don't feel good in your clothes there's no point. Yet at the same time, there is a level of social acceptability that is necessary to maintain. Like with Jody's line, it has to be original yet slightly mainstream. It's a difficult balance, but I find by watching any given episode of What Not to Wear, Stacy and Clinton give enough useful advice to last a lifetime. I can't even hold a candle to their fashion knowledge.

Okay, the second rant will have to wait. Monster's Inc. is on, and I'm just not quite in the mood to write anymore.

Happy birthday to George Lucas, Cate Blanchett, Sofia Coppola, Amber Tamblyn, Mark Zuckerberg, and Miranda Cosgrove. Fun, fun, fun.

Although amazing, macaroni and cheese leaves an awful after taste.

I Planned on Posting Yesterday... Blogger was Down

2011-05-13T21:35:00.000-07:00

As you hopefully discerned from the title, I planned on posting yesterday, but the evil menace that is the internet did not allow me to do so. This unfortunately means that three ideas for three separate blog entries that don't really mesh well together are all currently living together inside my brain and I don't know which one I feel like writing about. I have to discuss the Deep Thoughts Per Second Ratio Formula, My Evolution Through Shoes, and be teenage angsty. This can't all happen at once. What to do, what to do?

This blog is officially a fail. I guess this has turned into a teaser blog for the three posts I intend upon posting sometime in the near future. Ahhh so much writing! Well, a writer's gotta do what a writer's gotta do.

Happy birthday to HRE Maria Theresa (I guess the AP Euro thing isn't totally out of my system yet), Daphne du Maurier, Beatrice Arthur, Stevie Wonder, Stephen Colbert, Robert Pattinson, and Hunter Parrish.

I am now off to make an account on goodreads.com. My internet ADHD is out of control.

2011-05-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I've been so inactive in my blogging. I know all ten (double digits!) of my beautiful followers have probably been wondering what has been going on that has kept me away. Well, in order to relieve you of your suspense... I had the AP Euro test on Friday. So, the time between April 30 (my last post) and May 6 (AP Euro exam) it is pretty likely that I was off in a corner studying the going-ons in Europe from the Renaissance to the Cold War, shirking my responsibilities in all other areas, and procrastinating on something in some way. Since May 6.... I don't know I've just been busy doing nothing interesting. But I'm back in the blogosphere and blogging is now happening. Yes.

Which brings me to the the next order of business, the explaining of why I probably won't be around much in the next couple weeks. It's audition season, which is practically worse then exam season. Here is a brief overview of my schedule just so you get the gist of what's going on in my life when I'm not blogging:

Audition season kicks of on May 17 with my audition for one of the advanced choirs at my school. There are two of them, my schedule only allows me enough time to do one, if I get into one and not the other I will do that one, if I get into both I will pick the one that is taught by the teacher I don't currently have for non-advanced choir in order to have a different experience. If I get into neither, which ideally won't happen, I am not going to take choir again because I am sick of Choir I and am going to take a film or creative writing class, depending on what fits into my crazy-packed schedule.

Sometime between May 17 and 19 I will be called in to interview for Link Crew, a program at my school for getting new freshman acclimated to high school life. If you've been reading this blog for a little while you would know that. They told me that the interview is super casual and takes literally about ten minutes, and there isn't really anything for me to prepare, so I'm not exactly worried about that. Plus, I think my application was definitely good.

On what was supposed to be May 26 but was pushed up to May 19 I am running for drama board! I haven't written my speech yet, but I know what to say and how I want to say it, so hopefully that won't be a big deal. Just so you know, it's going to be pretty freakin awesome. That is the only detail allowed for now.

May 24 is the day I have to audition for Theatre III (that would be the highest level available at my school) via a monologue of my choosing. Too bad I haven't chosen a monologue yet, nor do I really know what direction I want to go with that. Dramatic? Comedic? Controversial? Awesome? Aaaaaggggghhhhh I need to get a monologue AQAP (as quickly as possible).

And, finally, the last audition I have to face until next fall, I am auditioning for a show that I hope to be in this summer. This show is called Chicago, which obviously has a lot of female characters in it, so I have hope for getting into the ensemble. However, the production company is very elite and I was considering auditioning with another elite company (they are doing The Sound of Music, and I've always wanted to play one of the kids) for security, but those auditions kind of already happened. So, that leaves Chicago, which I would really like to be apart of, however... I'm really, really scared. I had a nightmare about it last night, that's how scared I am. I haven't officially signed up for the audition either. I just feel like I'm not even close to good enough for the company and I already embarrass myself on a regular basis, so adding one more audition-related embarrassments to the list (current total: 6) is not something I want to happen any time soon. AH I'm such a coward.

So, that's basically what's going on with me. I apologize for the horrible vocabulary in this entry, I don't know why it sucked so much.

Happy birthday to one of the most awesomely named people ever, Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen, who on top of all that is classified as an adventurer. I don't know who you are, but you seem fabulous. More happy birthdays go to Irving Berlin, Martha Graham, Salvador Dali, Natasha Richardson, and Cory Monteith.

I'm so happy I have STAR testing tomorrow. State mandated testing is the best, it makes me feel so adequate.

Love According to Me and the Kids I Babysit

2011-04-30T22:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Friday, and as any normal teenager does, I spent the afternoon watching a documentary on Joseph Stalin and babysitting for three hours. The documentary was fun, but let's talk about babysitting.

I really love babysitting. I believe I've mentioned before that I was born with this thing, and it's called a maternal instinct. And this thing causes me to spend my time willingly (for pay) teaching kids how to do flips on the monkey bars and playing airplane on a trampoline while belting "Poker Face" at the top of my lungs. Emma and Sophia (the two girls I was babysitting yesterday) love Lady Gaga. When we took a break from being slightly crazy and from me explaining over and over again what I would do if Emma broke her leg, we sat inside around a bag of Baked Lays. Their dog Angel was following me around, and this conversation ensued.

Emma: Why does Angel follow you around? Is it because she loves you?

Stephanie: Yes, I think so.

E: Why?

S: Because when you love someone you want to be with them all the time.

E: All the time? Not all the time.

S: You're right. Just most of the time.

These kinds of conversations are what make kids so special. They don't have to analyze anything, they see a dog following around a fifteen-year-old girl and it turns into a conversation about love. I wish everyone could be that simple and unashamed about their thoughts. Emma asks a lot of questions (and by a lot, I really do mean A LOT), and even though it can be annoying as hell pretty much all the time, if more people really did explore their curiosities, don't you think they would be some what more happy? I just wrote more happier and had to delete it. My brain is on vacation. Sorry. Anyway, if adults were as active in their pursuit of knowledge as kids are, maybe we would have a smarter and more satisfied population. I don't know, just speculating.

Happy birthday Cloris Leachman, Willie Nelson, Johnny Galecki, Kirsten Dunst, and Dianna Agron.

Sorry this post was so quick and only mildly intellectual. I'm slightly frazzled.

Today I Went to a Swim Meet

2011-04-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

So, according to the title of this blog I went to a swim meet today. Let's run with that.

I have this friend and this friend has a boyfriend. Their names are respectively Elizabeth and James. Does this remind you of British monarchy? It should. Anyway, they've been dating for quite sometime now, and until today I had NEVER, not once met James.

Well, once we were trying to group chat on Skype and his camera was on but mine wasn't yet, and I could see him but he couldn't see me, and I don't think my mic was on because I kept yelling, "AAAAHHHH IT'S A PUPPY!!!!" because he was holding a puppy, and his face remained blank the entire time. I later found out he was holding a cat.

BACK ON TOPIC. So, today I had the opportunity to meet James in person because his school was coming to a swim meet at Elizabeth and mine school. Was that proper grammar? I don't care. But unfortunately, in order to get to the part where I actually get to speak to James, I had to watch people, clad in basically nothing, swim. This event caused me to be reminded once more why I really dislike organized sports.

People yell at kids. And it's really inappropriate and it's kind of like child abuse and I really don't like it. First there are the coaches, who yell at the kid currently in first place to, "SWIM FASTER!!!!" Get off their backs, they're in first place and are about to win. Jesus. Then, after the kid who was in first place get's first place, they go run over to the kid in last place and go, "GO GO GO GO GO!! YOU GOT THIS GURLFRAND." Speaking as someone who was almost always in last place in every race I ever partook in, it doesn't help when people start yelling at you. When I was in elementary school and we would run the mile, and everyone in my class had finished ten minutes ago and I was holding everyone up because I wasn't done yet, and all my friends would start cheering for me and spurring me onward, most of the time I just started crying because I knew they just felt bad for me and everyone was watching me get all sweaty and gross while running slowly. I was a sensitive child.

Then, after the coaches, it's the parents. I cannot stand sports parents. They sit in the stupid bleachers on their stupid cushions and yell at their stupid kids because they aren't stupid fast enough. I'm sorry for my lack of thesaurus usage in the last sentence, but as you can see this really bothers me. Parents are supposed to be encouraging, not demeaning. And there's a big difference between constructive criticism and yelling, because I have nothing against calmly discussing what can be improved upon. Yelling is the problem. And the absolute worst part is when the parents start yelling at other people's kids. It's completely inappropriate and disgusting.

Elizabeth pointed out that often through out the meet, I would go, "Hmm," really quietly. Honestly, it's because I was making a mental anthropological study of this subculture of society that I really don't understand. And I wasn't watching anyone in the pool, because I decided that the best part is when they all dive in and go a little bit deep and everything's quiet for a couple milliseconds before everyone starts frantically swimming and such. I was watching all the swimmers waiting for everyone, they were so funny. It really is quite humorous to observe the behavior of athletic and often attractive teenagers as they walk around in barely nothing. And by that, I do partially mean it was nice to see all the really hot guys. But it was also funny to see how they act.

So, basically, I still don't understand the sport thing. I don't understand the players, parents, coaches, or any of that. It's just not my thing. And the funny part is when I'm rehearsing, my theatre teacher will yell at me. I totally don't mind it. It's supposed to help me improve. But obviously, she would never do that to me during a show. This analogy would imply that I think it's acceptable for coaches to yell at their players during practice, but not at a game or meet when other people are around.

AGH I JUST HATE SPORTS.

By the way, in case any of you were wondering, I found James to be a perfectly acceptable human being for my best friend to have a romantic relationship with, and on the plus side, he is more attractive in person and I applaud Elizabeth for finding such a nice-looking boyfriend. Well done.

(He also possesses many other nice character traits that make him good for Elizabeth.)

Happy birthday to Mary Wollstonetcraft (yay, AP EURO IMPORTANCE), Samuel F.B. Morse, Ulysses S. Grant, Coretta Scott King, and William Moseley.

This blog post about swim team totally reminded me of something. Seeing as I go to a public school with little to no boundaries, at every pep rally during the season sports team parade thing, at least one sports team does a strip tease. It always happens, it's inevitable. This year at the fall pep rally, the football team stripped at the absolute horror of the audience. It was completely uncomfortable and awkward for the football team to be wearing boxer shorts and wife beaters. At the winter pep rally, the water polo team stripped down to their Speedos, and probably every single girl in that gym was drooling and it was wonderful. I don't know what happened at the spring pep rally because I was at a theatre festival. Well, that's life.

Attempting to Blog Daily

2011-04-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

I've been blogging pretty consistently for a couple days now, and I would really like to blog every day... but I don't really have anything to talk about right now.

Oh crap I have to fill out my link crew application tonight. I'm so done after last nights essay writing fiasco and my mental 12:40 mental breakdown that resulted in a half an hour of Tetris playing even thought I really really suck at Tetris and it just made me more mad at things I'm not good at.

I just want to read. Is that too much to ask? I just want to lie in bed all day every day and read books that no one is forcing me to read. However, I am currently being forced to read 1984, which I feel won't be bad at all compared to other books I have been forced to read (i.e. Cold Sassy Tree). But I feel that even if I wasn't being forced to read 1984, I would have gotten to it eventually and I wouldn't have to stop reading other books I am currently getting through (i.e. Water for Elephants, Paper Towns, The Fellowship of the Ring) in order to maintain my grades.

I am too tired right now. It's painful. And there's a little voice inside my head telling me I need to play Tetris in order to embrace my inner nerd and stop sucking at it. But I need sleep, I really do.

Happy birthday to Carol Burnett, Jason Earles, and Channing Tatum. And unfortunately no one who stood out in my mind as being relevant to AP Euro.

In order for you to fully understand how tired I am, instead of going to Wikipedia to find birthdays, I went to Aeries, which is my school's online grade book. I need sleep.

The Bad News Is, I Have a Problem

2011-04-25T16:26:00.000-07:00

But the good news is, I have a solution.

For a very long time, the website known as SparkNotes has been helping high school students around the galaxy not fail at English. Wait, first you need to know that I do not endorse the practice known as 'not reading the book.' ALWAYS READ THE BOOK. But one time in freshman year, we read this really, really horrendous book, and with the help of SparkNotes I still got an A on the test. SparkNotes is incredibly useful when it comes to review and things like that, and they also have this wonderful place called the SparkLife Blog.

In this blog, things are written about. I really don't know how to explain this, it's just a blog. People blog about books, music, movies, life, advice, etc. Really what ever they want. SparkNotes has resident staffers who are paid to write things, but "Sparklers" are allowed to become contributors who write about... pretty much whatever they want. And this is something I really would like to do. I've kind of always wanted to, but I never really have important things to say. However, the fact that I have a constant need to write in this blog should alert you all to the fact that, at least subconsciously, I have something to say.

(that was the problem, in case you didn't discern that much already)

SO, I found the Sparkitors (editors) email address! And by found, I mean I noticed that there is a link on the side of the dashboard that says "Email the Editors." Powers of observation, yeah!

Which leads me to the solution to the problem. Tonight, after I finish and perfect my term paper on biblical allegory in Lord of the Flies, I am going to email the Spark Notes editors and inquire about how to start writing for them. And, if all goes as planned, I will have some great idea and the Sparkitors will go, "OH EM GEE, you should write that down and send it to us. Yeah!" And then I will be a published writer. Well, that's not true, technically I already am a published writer. Not only do I have this blog, in addition to other online written forums, but I've also been published in a magazine before. It's kind of embarrassing, so let's not get into that.

Happy birthday to Oliver Cromwell (BAM more AP Euro relevant birthdays), Ella Fitzgerald, Meadowlark Lemon (this is another example of a person who has an awesome name but has an existence I was unaware of), Al Pacino, Bjorn Ulvaeus, Ron Clements, and Renee Zellweger.

AGH I'm so freakin' hungry.

I've Got Gadgets and Gizmos Aplenty

2011-04-24T22:51:00.000-07:00

I don't really like technology. I break it a lot and I have trouble figuring out how to use it. However, it has occurred to me that my self-proclaimed status as a 20th century girl and a hater of technological innovation keeps becoming, well... not accurate. Even though I still don't really know how to use anything, I keep coming into the ownership of technologically advanced things.

First of all, a couple weeks ago my mom literally forced me to stop using my perfectly acceptable LG Vu that I had been using for two and a half years. It did everything I needed it to, it called people, it texted people, I could take pictures, etc. However, occasionally it didn't like turning on. So my mom dragged me into the Verizon Wireless store, and I reluctantly decided to get a Droid. And a Droid is basically an iPhone, but different, so people have to ask me what kind of phone I have instead of just grabbing it and saying, "LOOK! iPhone! I play with it now!" However, I don't use many of the smart phone features of it. I go on the internet in absolute emergencies (example: argument with my dad over whether Alan Menken or Marc Shaiman arranged the music for Sister Act [answer: Shaiman arranged the movie, Menken arranged the Broadway show]) , and I do enjoy the app Words with Friends. I did LOVE Angry Birds, but I got stuck on level fifteen of part three in the first world (Poached Eggs) and I got sick of the game. So now I just call and text people and take pictures. The only difference between my Droid and my Vu is that I play Words with Friends. Oh well.

Then I have all my other devices that do things my brand new Droid can do but in a different fashion that I like better. I have my 2007 Project(red) 8 GB iPod nano. Julia got it for me for my bat mitzvah (which took place...three and a half years ago) and has about .8 GB left. But, all my music is in one little red box and my whole music library is on my family's desktop because I can't figure out how to move audio files onto an iTunes account on a different computer (my laptop, which I have had for nearly two years now). Additionally, I have my digital camera. I don't really remember when I got that, considering how many I've gone through, but I could probably find a blog entry where I talk about it. I think I'm going to go scan my blog for that. Okay, I'm done with that. I think I got it about two and a half years ago. Ish. So, I have a cell phone that is capable of surfing the internet, playing music, and taking pictures, but I still manage to find reasons to use my laptop, iPod, and digital camera.

But it gets better. Last night (technically this morning) after I passed my Driver's Ed final exam (YES! LEARNER'S PERMIT, HERE I COME!), I decided I was in the mood for an impulse buy. A couple months ago, I came into some money. And I still had some of that money left. So, after finding out that Flip Camera had decided to self-terminate due to the fact that people have video cameras on their cellphones and they don't want a separate device for taking videos, I thought to myself, "Omigosh, I have a cellphone but I LOVE having separate devices for doing things my cellphone is perfectly capable of." So I kind of bought, for a really good price, one of the last Flip cameras left. So, in three to five business days, I will have four electronic devices that do things that my cellphone does.

TO CONCLUDE, my non-tech savvy self is the owner of four, soon to be five, electronic devices (six if you count my TV that doesn't have cable) and an active user of eight websites (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Blogger, SparkNotes, AIM, Skype), and I have not finished my term paper. Not even close.

AND if you are worried about my website usage, Facebook is usually open in case one of my friends comes online. Usually it is just there, on my computer screen, unused. The same goes for Twitter, Tumblr, AIM, and Skype. The problem only occurs when my friends are online, but since they all have more important things to do then talk to me, it isn't usually a problem. UNLESS we are all procrastinating on the same assignment. Then it's a problem. SparkNotes and Blogger I check, deal with, and then sign off from. So even though I actively participate in all seven of those websites, it really isn't that time consuming. Currently, YouTube is the worst because the vlogbrothers have over 800 videos, and I haven't seen all of them yet. BUT due to the fact that I am a woman and can multi-task, I usually just have YouTube on in the background while I do something else mildly important. I rarely focus on YouTube. Netflix, however, is something I give my undivided attention too.

And then there's reading. And although reading recreationally isn't always the best use of my time, I don't feel bad about it because reading is good for you, and more people should try it.

Happy birthday to William I of Orange (who says I haven't been studying for Euro? This guy and his wife took over England after Cromwell got executed. And I'm pretty sure he was Dutch. Yeah?), Shirley MacLaine, Barbara Streisand (*bows down in a similar fashion I did to Shakespeare*), Jean-Paul Gaultier, Cedric the Entertainer, and Kelly Clarkson. I hope your days were more productive then mine.

P.S. I have school in exactly nine hours. *HEADDESK*

P.P.S. The answer to yesterday's joke: "Out, out, brief candle." LAWLZ IT'S SO FUNNEH!

An Average Day in the Life (otherwise known as an average day in the past week of my life)

2011-04-23T23:06:00.000-07:00

Spring break has always been a trying time in my existence, for it is a time that tests the extremities of how bored I can be and to what extremes I will go to entertain myself. If you have been reading this blog since the beginning, you will know that I really dislike spring break, because generally I lie at home by myself while all my friends go gallivanting around the globe and have fabulous adventures. So, I am going to do a spring break recap for all of you, just so you can see how perfectly average my life is. Or is it?

On Saturday I finally convinced my mom (after weeks and weeks of trying) that it would be a wise usage of her time to drive me to Culver City, which is approximately 45 minutes away from the location of my home, so I can see some of my friends (that I have not seen in quite some time) from the program I participated in at Center Theatre Group. HOWEVER, unbeknown to us when I Google-mapped my friend Emily's home, there was a shit load of construction of the freeway exit to get there. It took my mom over an hour and a half to get me to Emily's house, and when I got there not only was I 45 minutes late, but I was the first person to arrive. To give you an idea of the extremity of the situation, my friend Garrison who lives about 15 minutes away from the locale of this party drove himself there, and when he arrived over an hour after he left his home, he was practically shaking due to the traumatic experience of driving through road construction.

But anyway, the party turned out to be pretty fun. Out of the twenty possible invited guests, only five were there (including the host), and two had to leave rather quickly. So I just spent the evening with Emily and Garrison, and we had a jolly good time.

On Sunday my family and I embarked on an adventure... to the glorious city of Palm Desert. Because, my friends, this is where my mother's parental units reside and we intended to spend at least part of the Jewish celebration of Passover with my mom's side of the family. And I have to say, it definitely wasn't as bad as it could have been. I mean, I was kind of bored which gave me time to finish reading John Green's An Abundance of Katherines, which was quite enjoyable and I highly recommend it, and it also allowed me to realize that I really, really need to study for the impending doom that is my AP Euro exam (less than two weeks. holy crap.) But, my family members were pleasant to be around for the majority of the Sunday and Monday I spent with them, which is definitely more than I can say for other visits to the grand-parental residence.

Tuesday was a semi-eventful day. As I was laying (lying?) on my couch watching a recording of Jeopardy, I received a phone call from Nicki, who alerted me to the fact that she was at the park across the street from my house. I quickly pulled on non-pajamic articles of clothing and hurried over to the park. There I had a picnic with Nicki and various members of her immediate and extended family. This picnic consisted of matzah. Great.

From the park I was picked up by Julia, in all her learner's-permitted glory, and we picked up some Nutella in order to properly spend the day together leading up to the second Seder. We had a fun day of friendship and awesome, and at the Seder I got to play with a really cute baby. And in case you didn't know, playing with really cute babies is one of my many joys in life.

After the Seder ended, Sophie decided to invite herself over to my house because her television failed and forgot to record Glee. Needless to say, Sophie ended up crashing at my pad. In the morning, Arielle came over to wake us up and then we walked over to Sophie's house for a day of nerdfighting. If you don't know what that is, I highly recommend heading over to www.youtube.com/vlogbrothers and figure it out. This day included making the most amazingly epic shirts I have ever had the pleasure to participate in making. I will consider posting a picture of mine eventually, but for now I will just describe it. Across the front it bares the initial-ism DFTBA. It is NOT an acronym, because an acronym implies that you can pronounce it, as in you do not say every individual letter, but read it like a word. Example: NATO. Literally, that was the first thing that popped into my mind. In the bottom left hand corner of the shirt, there is a cartoon giraffe. On the right sleeve, there is an elephant with a fractal inside while the left sleeve contains a mustache. Across the upper back we each wrote our code names for each other, and underneath the symbol for the deathly hallows. I know, you can't contain yourself with so much epic, but you will just have to deal.

That night Arielle slept over, we watched the hit Disney Channel original movie Lemonade Mouth, among other activities, and in the morning she went home. The rest of the weekend is pretty much down hill from there. Considering that afternoon I went to a funeral. And needless to say it really, really sucked, so I don't want to get into that. But it wasn't a good time.

Yesterday and toady have been... lazy. Basically, the last 48 hours have been painfully boring. Yesterday I was so bored I fail to put in words how bored I was. I started calling people who I knew wouldn't pick up the phone just so I can leave them voice-mails, which allowed me to effectively talk to myself without actually talking to myself, and thus not being clinically insane. However, this experience has caused me to discern that bored dialing is practically synonymous with drunk dialing. I do not advise it.

So, in these 48+ hours of utter boredom, what have I achieved? Well, I have not furthered progress on my essay I complained about a week or two ago, nor have I crammed anymore European history into my already packed mind. But let's not dwell on that. Let's dwell on the fact that I am now less than a chapter and a half from completing my driver's education (yay!) and I have now watched every single YouTube video ever posted to the channel charlieissocoollike (yay?). It was totally worth the waste of time, considering Charlie McDonnell is beautiful and British and funny and nerdy and wonderful. And his videos fill me with joy, as do the vlogbrothers videos I am currently watching now that I have seen every charlieissocoollike video. I love the vlogbrothers too, for they are freakin hilarious.

I can't believe I have to go back to school in less than 36 hours. Shit. Shit shit shit.

Happy birthday to the amazing, never-to-be-matched, genius man that was William Shakespeare. *bows down* And also, it is the day of birth of James Buchanan (that's pronounced like byoo-can-in, not buck-ah-nan), Johann Karl Friedrich Rosenkratz (I don't know who you are, but that name is completely phenomenal), Shirley Temple, Michael Moore, Valerie Bertinelli, George Lopez, Kal Penn, and Dev Patel.

P.S. Currently I have 8 tabs open on my computer. It is not necessary that you know what they are, just that you know that they are there, and that I, as a woman, am capable of concentrating on all 8 of these tabs, even though shortly 2 will be closed, and 2 I don't have actively pay attention to, so really, I am only concentrating on 4 tabs. Also, I watched The Wizard of Oz today, which never fails to amaze me in it's amazingness. I love it.

P.P.S. What does Shakespeare say when he blows out the candles on his birthday cake? Answer will be in next blog.

Yes, I am turning into one of those horrible people who does everything. Nice to meet you.

2011-04-22T13:18:00.001-07:00

My entire life I've been jealous of the people who seemingly have it all. They're in all honors classes, play varsity sports, have some form of artistic capability, and can eat as much junk food as the want without gaining any weight. I am not one of these people. I only take the honors classes I care about (i.e. everything except math and science, because as much as I find the two subjects interesting, I can never really understand them), I have absolutely none of the hand-eye coordination or general coordination required to play a sport, I have a limited artistic capability that allows me to participate sparingly in theatre and choir related activities, and no, I cannot eat junk food without gaining weight.

However, I realize that my packed junior year schedule may give some the mindset that I am turning into one of these people. Everyday it seems I add another prospective activity to my list of things that I want to do next year. I am already signed up for eight courses (a 'normal' student takes six, I am taking a zero period before school [oy vey] and I take Hebrew at my temple twice a week after school [another oy vey]), three of which are honors/AP/IB and five of which contribute to my academic GPA, two of which are math and science (which as previously stated, I kind of am not-too-great at), and the other two are advanced level performing arts classes.

I'm realizing this sounds a lot like bragging. Screw it, it's a stress release to sort out my priorities.

Additionally, I am running for Drama Board, which is basically a group of seven theatre kids who control drama club and all the student run theatre activities. If I get onto that, that would be great. I'm planning a really kickass speech. Plus, I am applying and interviewing to be in my schools Link Crew, which is a group that helps freshman become more acclimated to the campus and such. My Link Leaders really sucked, so I am going to try and be the awesomest link leader ever to make up for their failures. ALSO, I plan on becoming re-involved in the Jewish Student Union (I wasn't this year because I kind of forgot it existed) and tracking down the English Honors Society, because I heard that existed and I would really like to be a part of it.

I also will continue to spend at least one hour a week volunteering at the Friendship Circle, if not more, because that is an organization that I have been involved in for many years and it is extremely important to me. In case you didn't know, the Friendship Circle is an organization that gives special needs children an outlet to make friends in a variety of different fashions, and I have been involved since the chapter in my area was formed in 2002. Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

And as previously stated, I have Hebrew twice a week after school. I was going to apply for jobs, but I've decided that's not important. Oh, I almost forgot! I take my SATs and ACTs next year! Joy of joys!

So, with all that going on, let's decide what sacrifices I am going to make. Next year I will NOT:

sleep
eat
watch TV (except Bones, I can give up everything except Bones)
read for pleasure (sobs rack through my body)
use social networking websites during the school week (I am going to try, really!)
have a social life

However, I feel like not having a social life won't be that big of a deal due to all the activities I am involving myself in. I will constantly be with friends, so it doesn't really matter that we won't be spending that much time together in an unplanned, pressure free situation. Right?

Happy Earth Day (I'm currently typing this with all the lights in my room off, no joke!) and happy birthday to Vladmir Lenin AND Alexander Kerensky (OMG I HAVE TO TELL MY EURO TEACHER THEY SHARE A BIRTHDAY) and J. Robert Oppenheimer. It's funny, because we just finished learning about the Russian Revolution and now we are moving on to World War II. Oh, how I love ironically appropriate historical birthday buddies.

P.S. I am very loosely considering auditioning for my school's improv team. I've auditioned before and have been (sadly) denied, and I know they always encourage people to retry.... I just don't know. Advice?

P.P.S. I sure used a lot of parentheses in this post.

THIS IS MY JAM

2011-04-14T22:12:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite feelings in the entire world is when you're listening to music, possibly in a public location, and a certain song comes one. This song just invades you and reaches your inner dancing freak, your head start to nod, your feet start to move, and you hear yourself saying, "This. Is. My. Jam."

I actually have quite a few jams, partially due to my random and eclectic taste in music. However, my four main jams have gotten me through so much. Besides the ability to bring out that crazy dancer side of me (See: Standing in the Corner, Sipping my V8), these songs can get me through anything. When I'm in a bad mood or stressed out, I just go to the YouTube, listen to one of these songs, and let it all out until I feel better. I will now brief you on my jams:

1. "F*** You" by Cee Lo Green: I know what you're all thinking. 'So overplayed! Totally mainstream! We thought you were indie!' Well, newsflash guys: I'm not. I kind of just do whatever I think is fun. And this song is amazing. It's just SO catchy and it doesn't sound like it's from 2010. It has an older feel, and I heard from someone it's a remake, but I don't think that's true. I just like the song, ok!

2. "Single Ladies" by Beyonce: I'm just digging my mainstream hole deeper and deeper aren't I? Anyway, Beyonce is phenomenal. I think that when I'm all old and decrepit and I befriend some youngin' who think they're really cool by listening to music that was cool a million years ago, they will be listening to Lady Gaga and Beyonce. And this song in particular is practically and anthem for all us 'single ladies' out there (ding ding ding, we have a winner for the most cliché sentence I have ever written). Even though Beyonce's married, I appreciate the sentiment.

3. "You're Making My Dreams Come True" by Hall and Oates: I will admit that I am not a true Hall and Oates fan and I just know this song from (500) Days of Summer. But that doesn't make it less of an amazing song. I'm realizing know how hard it is to describe the music I like... it's just bouncy and carefree and awesome and I love it. That's all I have to say on the subject.

AND NOW, FOR THE ULTIMATE JAM

4. "Wannabe" by The Spice Girls: Do I even have to explain? This girl power jam of the '90s is enough to make every teenage girl in a five mile radius start jumping and reciting all the lyrics. And they're British, which makes everything better.

I just needed to get that out of my system. I'm under a lot of stress right now.

Happy birthday to Anthony Michael Hall, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Graham Phillips, and Abigail Breslin.

Funny, just yesterday I was listening to 13: The Musical for the first time in AGES. In case you didn't know, that show starred Graham Phillips, who I kind of love. Just a little bit.

Green Apples

2011-04-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

For pretty much my entire life, as long as I can remember, my favorite fruit has been strawberries. I still LOVE strawberries, but right now, I think green apples are encroaching on them in favoritism. Here's why:

Strawberries are very inconsistent in quality. It is far too easy to stumble upon a bad strawberry. They can be too mushy or too hard or too cold or too small.... there is just so much margin for era. Green apples, if not bruised, are almost always perfect. It probably helps that I pick them out myself at the grocery store, but green apples are so perfectly crunchy and tangy and wonderful. I just love 'em. I don't even like red apples at all. Sometimes I like the red and yellow ones, I never like yellow ones, but green ones are always amazing. Except the ones from Costco. But otherwise they are always amazing.

Sometimes it feels like green apples are the one consistent aspect of my life. When every day brings new challenges and situation, it feels really good to be able to take out my lunch after a long, stressful morning and pull at a green apple. Which reminds me, I am very obsessive compulsive about how I eat my lunch. I always eat my sandwich, fruit, salty snack, and then sweet snack. I never eat them out of order and I never start eating one and then stop to eat something else. It just doesn't work that way.

That's pretty much my whole shpiel on green apples and lunch-eating. Yes, I acknowledge that I am not normal.

Happy birthday to Thomas Jefferson (a personal favorite as far as the presidents go), and Lanford Wilson (I actually just saw his play Burn This on Sunday, and I really liked it).

Pretty much all my music department friends are going to Chicago tomorrow for a competition. Needless to say, I'm ditching choir.

Issues

2011-04-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

So I have this issue. Actually, I have many issues, but that is currently beside the point. I have this issue, and I need to talk about it and so I will write about. Duh. What ever. Ok. I'll get on with it now.

I have found that I am incapable of doing anything for myself. That makes me sound like a horribly selfless person, which I'm not. What I mean is, I am not afraid of disappointing myself, so I just do. I'm afraid of disappointing other people, because I'm scared of other people and I want them to like me. However, as I have learned in recent times, I am not a scary person. Every time I try to act scary I come off as a cross between a sad puppy and an angry five year old. And since I unfortunately see myself as that, I'm not afraid of myself because I know that I won't punish myself, so I don't do anything myself wants me to do. Get it? Good, because I don't really either. Let me offer an example.

Yesterday was my half birthday. Yes, half birthdays are completley stupid and have no significance, but yesterday was my fifteen and a half birthday. I turned FIFTEEN POINT FIVE. Which, if you were unaware, means I am now old enough to have a learner's permit in the state of California, which happens to be where I currently reside. I'm younger than most of my friends, so I am currently one of the few who doesn't know how to drive. I had promised myself that on my half birthday I would be ready to take the permit test. I haven't even started driver's ed.

I'm not able to push myself. I'm supposed to have a large portion of my term paper finished tomorrow (in rough draft form) but right now that's total shit. COMPLETE and total shit. And I'm good at writing, right? I like to believe this blog is mildly enjoyable. But my term paper on Lord of the Flies, a book I actually enjoyed, unlike last semester's The Canterbury Tales currently stinks like a steaming pile of giraffe shit. I took artistic license for that last sentence and assumed that giraffe shit smells bed when it steams. Because my essay sure does.

See, but that disappointment scares me because I don't want to disappoint my English teacher, and thus get a bad grade, and thus not get into college. But you see, there's a little voice in the back of my head saying, "It's just a rough draft! She probably won't even check it! Bullshit something!" But I can't. I mean, I can.

I wish I could just read books all the time. I don't like these stupid allegorical analyses of Lord of the Flies. I don't really care. I liked the book, okay? Why do I have to go and over complicate it?

I'm kind of having a neurotic freak out session right now. Just a little bit. Agh.

Happy birthday to Commodore Matthew Perry (NOT the Friends actor), Joseph Pulitzer, Mandy Moore, Haley Joel Osment, Amanda Michalka, and other people who might be considered important in some cultures.

Today is the anniversary of the Titanic setting sail on it's doomed voyage. That's how I feel with this frikken essay.

Type A Personality

2011-03-27T22:56:00.000-07:00

"The theory describes a Type A individual as ambitious, aggressive, business-like, controlling, highly competitive, impatient, preoccupied with his or her status, time-conscious, and tightly-wounded. People with Type A personalities are often high-achieving 'workaholics' who multi-task, push themselves with deadlines, and hate both delays and ambivalence."

This is the Wikipedia definition of my personality. I have to say it fits quite well. However, lately this affliction has been causing me great frustration. Like usual, things haven't been going exactly my way, and the little Type A voice inside my head has been angry. Recently I have encountered an assortment of external obstacles that have made me so internally crazy... ugh. I'll just name a few, so you know what I mean.

I keep losing things. I prefer winning.
My grades haven't been up to par, and not even because I don't understand, just because I haven't been doing as well on tests as I usually do.
Other people keep being faced with problems I don't know how to solve, and usually I'm good at solving other peoples problems.
My entire schedule keeps getting shifted due to changes of plans.
I have to make a decision regarding two important events happening at the same time.
I got a new cell phone and I miss my old cell phone.
There are probably a lot of other things I can't think of right now.

So needless to say I've been irritated. All week I've been in a less than great mood, and I don't know if the impending doom of another school week will do anything to make it better. It's just so irritating to be out of control of my environment. Yes, I am somewhat a control freak. I am extremely OCD. What I could really use right now is more controls and more scheduling. If I was busier and always occupied, I would have less time to think, and then I wouldn't have time to dwell on anything, so I'd probably be in a better mood right now. Oh, well.

Happy birthday to Gloria Swanson, Charles Lang, Quentin Tarantino, Fergie, and Brenda Song. Additionally, I have to send birthday wishes to my second favorite fictional father, James Potter.

Sorry this post was so short, but I really do have English homework to be avoiding.

Twitter

2011-03-26T00:21:00.001-07:00

As you may or may not know, I do have an account on Twitter. I rarely use it, mainly because I have nothing to say to all six of my followers, but I do like to find out what my favorite celebrities are up too. However, my favorite part of my "timeline," which in case you don't know is the equivalent of a Facebook news feed, is the role players.

My account was made for me by my friend Brian, and being aware of my obsession with the Harry Potter universe he followed a bunch of Harry Potter "RPers" for me. I ended up deleting most of them because they were really stupid, but there are three who I absolutely love. One is @Lord_Voldemort7 simply due to his hysterical interpretation of Voldemort's personality. My other two favorites are @RonTheAuror and @TheMione.

These two Ron and Hermione RPers are obsessive. Voldemort tweets every once in a while, and they are usually just witticisms- he doesn't really interact with other characters. Ron and Hermione, on the other hand, are involved on a full on story line. Currently, Ron and Hermione are in Azkaban because Hermione accidentally incendio-ed their house in a fit of range and suffered minor burns. At the hospital, Ron was accused of attempted murder and was blamed for starting the fire. Hermione left the hospital and got help from someone in the Ministry so she could talk to Ron, and now she's stuck for at least two days, and both of them under the influence of the happiness-sucking dementors.

HOW DO THESE PEOPLE DO THIS? I simply do not understand. I know that they're students, and if they value their studies they shouldn't have time to do this. Also, these plots are so intricate and seem improvised. Additionally, they move the story along 140 characters at a time. It's like those camp games where everyone sits in a circle and tells one word of a story, except different.

Another interesting aspect of these peoples cyber lives is when they tweet "OOC," or out of character. Ron almost never tweets out of character, but Hermione, who I have discerned is actually named Kennedy, tweets as herself all the time. It's hysterical, because she is also friends with all the other people on Twitter who pretend to be Hermione. She communicates with them and tells them how much she loves them, even though none of them have ever met in person. It really takes a different kind of individual to be more emotionally attached to her relationships through Twitter than the people she lives and goes to school with.

My favorite moment in this RPing universe happened a little bit over a year ago, when Kennedy got really, really upset about something. It was unclear what was going on, except that it was drama and someone she trusted had betrayed her. Her tweets quickly took a turn for the depressing, she sounded semi-suicidal, and before I knew it she had deleted her account. I was genuinely scared for her life and I was thoroughly convinced she had committed suicide. All of her "friends" were freaking out, and since they don't actually know her they couldn't do anything about it.

A little bit under 48 hours later, she reactivated her account and was back in the Harry Potter role playing and tweeting universe. My timeline was filled with exclamations of love and sentiments, and Kennedy made sure everybody knew that cancelling her account was the worst decision she ever made and her two days without Twitter were the most depressing and horrible days of her life.

Are. You. Kidding. Me.

I feel like a horrible person for getting perverse pleasure out of this girl, who clearly isn't emotionally well off. But honestly, if I was a psychoanalyst I could probably do a full one study of this girl just based on how she presents herself online. Which reminds me, I'm taking a psychology class next year and I'm really excited. Anyway, I just feel like the internet let's people get away with... a lot.

I'm about to sound like an insensitive bitch. Trust me, I'm not. You would be surprised how many emotionally unstable people I deal with on a daily basis, one of them being myself. But my opinion is that the internet has created a world where everyone thinks they deserve attention. And yes, everyone deserves some attention. But with all the social networking websites and blogs (yes, I realize how hypocritical this currently sounds) people think that they are really important. When truthfully, not everyone is. That was cold. But, to quote The Incredibles, saying everyone is special is just another way of saying no one is.

Saying these things makes me feel horrible, but let me give a more concrete example. My pet peeve is when people try to elicit sympathy through an ambiguous and passive aggressive Facebook status. We all have friends that do that. Truthfully, it doesn't make me feel bad for them. It makes me mentally say, "attention whore," and then keep scrolling through my news feed.

I'm a real bitch.

Happy birthday to Tennessee Williams, Sandra Day O'Connor, Leonard Nimoy, Alan Arkin, Nancy Pelosi, Diana Ross, Steven Tyler, Kenny Chesney, Keira Knightley, and Jonathon Groff.

Can I just say that I love Jonathon Groff? Last year when I saw Glee in concert, the entire time I was complaining about how Jonathon Groff should be there. Towards the end of the performance, Lea Michele brought him on stage as a surprise. I almost peed in my pants.

Why I Watch Sister Wives

2011-03-13T23:55:00.000-07:00

Recently, TV lovers such as myself have been blessed with what should be considered the best reality TV show ever, Sister Wives. Sister Wives documents the life of Kody Brown and his four wives- Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn, and their 16 children.

I love this show. I genuinely find it interesting and entertaining, and it really bugs me that they've been getting all this crap from the law. They've been accused of bigamy. But even though Kody is married according to his church to four women, legally he is only married to one, so he isn't breaking any laws. It's like walking into a gay couples house and saying their breaking the law by living together. They aren't evading the law or tricking anyone, they're just living their lives.

And I think their lives are pretty damn interesting. Because I was thinking about it, and there are way worse things people can do then polygamy. This family isn't a cult, they aren't marrying off their daughters the second they turn 12- they aren't even forcing their children into the lifestyle. Obviously, it takes a certain kind of person to be in a plural marriage. Any psychologist worth their degree would have a field day with this family. But who cares? Nothing their doing has a direct effect on my life, except for entertainment. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

I guess that was my rant for the day. I'm trying to write everyday again. This was the best I could do. I could talk about shopping, but that's kind of boring. Not for me, but for you guys.

Happy birthday to Neil Sedaka, William H. Macy, Dana Delany, and a very happy birthday to L. Ron Hubbard, otherwise known as the man the world has to thank for Scientology. Thank you for providing me, and pretty much any other individual who has ever tried to be funny with endless hours of material.

My room smells like cookies and I don't know why. I wish I had a cookie.

The Power of a Quote

2011-03-12T22:55:00.001-08:00

Words are magical. I know that sounds cliche and stupid and stupid and cliche, but as an amateur writer I like to think I really notice these things. And some of my favorite works of word magic are quotes.

I love quotes. When people have the ability to say something so powerful or funny, yet so concise and so meaningful that someone will remember it, I think that is a gift. Anyone can write a nine page essay on some boring topic, but when someone really makes a statement in no more than a sentence or two, that is true talent. Think of the inaugural speeches we remember. No one remembers the ridiculously long and boring ones. People remember JFK's, which I believe was the shortest one in history. "Ask not what your country can do for you- ask what you can do for your country." I would like to believe that all Americans know that sentence, up there with "Four score and seven years ago..." which isn't nearly as important in retrospect. Obviously, the Gettysburg Address is important, but why anyone remember the first line is beyond me. It's like how most famous poems are recognized by their first line (i.e. "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day...") except for "The Walrus and the Carpenter." The first stanza of that poem is:

The sun was shining on the sea

shining with all it's might

it did it's very best to make

the billows smooth and bright

and this is odd because it was

the middle of the night

But no one remembers that stanza, everyone remembers:

The time has come, my little friends

to talk of other things

of shoes and ships and ceiling wax

and cabbages and kings

and why the sea is boiling hot

and whether pigs have wings

That stanza really has little value to the meat of the poem, the plot. But it's so Lewis Carroll-y that people can't help but remember it. It's beautiful. It's nonsensical and random and wonderful. Well, that was Lewis Carroll in one sentence.

I just wish more people understood words. People see a pretty picture and know that it's pretty. Obviously more people need to appreciate things that aren't pretty; Leonardo da Vinci (random note: I wrote di Caprio and then had to erase it...oops) did this whole study and analysis and filled sketchbooks upon sketchbooks of drawings of ugly people. But that's a story for another day. Anyway, I wish more people read things and saw the beauty in a well crafted sentence. We live in a world where teenagers have developed a habit of reducing words to the minimum amount of letters possible and their idea of deep is liking a Facebook page with the quote, "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift- that's why we call it the present." Ugh, teenagers.

I like to think I'm quotable. Having other people quote me is probably one of my favorite things ever. Especially when it's their Facebook status and everyone knows I'm funny.

... I didn't mean that. You know that right?

Happy birthday to Julia Lennon, Jack Kerouac, Edward Albee and Liza Minelli. Isn't it funny that I went on my quote rant today, the birthday of two of the world's most influential writers? And two other really awesome people? Yeah.

Today was the last day of Student Advisory Committee. Endings are sad.

Beware the Ides of March

2011-03-01T23:53:00.000-08:00

The title has nothing to do with what I'm going to talk about. I just thought it was appropriate considering, you know, it's March.

And speaking of March, March and May are probably my two busiest months ever. I'm not 100% sure of this year's May schedule yet, so instead I will tell you about my March schedule. No, you do not have a choice. Just listen/read.

March 1- I took the Jeopardy Teen Tournament qualifying test (more on that later)

March 5- second to last Center Theatre Group Student Advisory Committee meeting

March 6- volunteering in the morning and Avenue Q in the evening

March 9- choir clinic

March 12- last ever CTG SAC meeting (super depressing) and possible after party

March 17- CHOIR CONCERT

March 18 and 19- THEATRE FESTIVAL (that I am not prepared for in any way shape or form)

March 22- CHOIR CONCERT (at the middle school, so it doesn't really count)

March 26- CHOIR FESTIVAL

March 27- Walk-a-Thon for Friendship Circle (www.friendshipwalk.org)

That's it for now. But I can almost guarantee you there will be more. I will update you on future events as they come, but for now, let's discuss the Jeopardy situation.

So, I was really excited to take the Jeopardy test. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm really good at Jeopardy. Yes, I am one of those people that screams at the screen. Naturally, I decided to take the online qualifying test to be in next year's teen tournament. I was so excited and was practically counting down the days until today, when the test would be online and ready to be taken. I signed on half an hour early, even though Alex Trebek (or who ever runs the website) only recommended twenty minutes. I took the test, and I made a couple more mistakes than I would have liked, but no regrets, right? When the test was over, I read the after test tutorial, which basically told me the following:

You can be notified anytime within the next YEAR. Your test are being sent straight to scorers, but due to the large amount of qualifiers taking this test, random selection will be used for part of the process.

Basically, Jeopardy contestants are picked randomly. Now I actually have to find a realistic way to pay for college. FML.

Today is a big day in birthdays- Happy birthday to Frederic Chopin, Lana Wood, Alan Thicke, Ron Howard, Javier Bardem, Ke$ha, Justin Beiber, and the amazing beyond belief Ron Weasley. That is a group of people I would have never guessed had something in common...

T Pain (I don't know who he is, but apparently he's famous?) was at my school today to shoot a commercial for a microphone that automatically auto-tunes your voice. I can sing the song "California Gurls" with little to no irony.

My Life is a Sitcom

2011-02-20T23:19:00.000-08:00

There have been various times in my life where certain situations have felt so unrealistic and just plain stupid that they would only be possible in a sitcom. Truthfully, I would probably make a decent sitcom character. I fall all the time, I'm slightly neurotic, I associate myself with the weirdest people, and I have no profitable traits. But sometimes, things happen that are so sitcom-y that I just have to internally groan.

For example, on Wednesday night I was at a going away party for my friend who left for a semester abroad in Israel. We were sitting at the table, all was well, until I had to reach over to get my wallet out of my bag. I leaned over to my left, in a perfectly normal way, and the back of my chair snapped off and I fell backwards out of my seat. It didn't really hurt that bad and even I was laughing, but seriously? These things only happen to me.

The all-star sitcom moment of my week occurred on Thursday night. Sammy and I decided to try Zumba. For those of you have been hiding under a rock and don't know about this craze that has been sweeping the nation, Zumba is, to put it simply, a dance workout. So, dying to try out this exercise trend, Sammy and I donned are most stylin' sweat pants and t-shirts, ready to bust a move. However, the severity of our situation was unforeseeable until we arrived at the gym where we would be taking our course.

All the women there, most of whom were older, but there was a good variety of age range, had broken out their most intense Zumba-themed workout gear. They had towels and water bottles and sweat-proof watches- everything was so high-tech. In addition, about 80% of the class, including the teacher, were Israeli. Hardly an English word was heard the entire time I was there. And I know I take Hebrew, but as many of you know there is a big different between the way people speak a language in a classroom then how the natives speak it.

In addition to the fashion and language difference between Sammy and me and our classmates, there was also the issue of the workout itself. It was hard! And intense! Well, I might just be ridiculously out of shape... yeah, that is pretty likely. But anyway, I was practically afraid to look into the mirror because every time I caught a glance at myself it was like seeing a scared puppy try to ice-skate. No, I do not know how I came up with that analogy. So yeah. My life has turned into one big fat situation comedy.

Now I shall complain.

You know what sucks? The fact that I have such a lack of social life and obligations that every time one of my friends does something that they want me to be there for or needs me to do something, I can. But, the one time I do something impressive that I would love for all my friends to show up for, they are all too busy and none of them are gonna come. It really sucks. Just saying. I guess that answers the question about trees falling in the forest.

Happy birthday to Ansel Adams, Sidney Poitier, Cindy Crawford, Kurt Cobain, and Rihanna.

What do Vulcans wear when they read? SPOCKtacles.

Writing About Writing

2011-02-14T22:39:00.000-08:00

"A writer writes, not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others."- Leo Rosten

That, my friends, is what my interest teacher calls an ICD, or Interest Creating Device. Hopefully, I just got all you non-existent readers interested in whatever I have to say about writing. And when I call you all non-existent, I mean that you exist the way my homework exists. In my mind and in my mind only. At least tomorrow is a late start day...

So, now I will write about writing, as the title implies. Writing is probably one of my favorite things to do. I write about lots of different things in a lot of different formats. For example, on this blog I do long-form blogging and on tumblr I do short-form blogging. I don't know if that's what you call it but I heard someone saw short-form blogging once and it sounded smart. Then there's Facebook, where I type witty statuses and comments with the intention to make my friends laugh, and Twitter, where I exercise writing in 140 characters or less. I also have a journal for journaling, a dream journal, and an idea journal. I always forget about those though, they're drastically underused. I also create To-Do lists on my mirror every morning and I take notes in three different spirals for history, English, and math. I'm supposed to take theatre notes but that doesn't always happen. Spiral notebooks are so awesome. I love them so much. And I love writing in them. And I love writing.

I had a long (well, not for my standards, but I guess sort of long) conversation with Sydney about writing. Because I kind of want to be a writer. Isn't it word that there's no feminine form of the word writer? A female actor is an actress but a female writer is still a writer. Anyway, back on topic. For a long time people have told me I should be a psychologist. I thought I should be a psychologist. I'm good at understanding other people, and I do think psychology is really interesting. But I know myself, and I know that if I end up being a psychologist I will feel like I gave up. What happened to that little girl who wanted to be on Broadway? I'm not that little girl anymore, and I don't really want to perform on Broadway. In theory, I would love to, but in practice it's not going to happen. I guess what I mean to say, is I still feel the need to do something creative. I like to do things that make other people smile or laugh or think. And I guess writing is the way to do that. I usually do that through talking, but I don't think being a professional talker will work out for me. Once again, this is something that seems awesome in theory, but not so much in practice.

Honestly, can I just be professional person-who-does-whatever-she-wants? Because that seems like the kind of life for me. Or a travel host, because Samantha Brown has the best job in the world. She gets paid to go on vacations that are paid for by her network. She just has to be filmed while it happens. Lucky.

If I don't start my homework now, I will fall asleep while I'm reading Lord of the Flies, and it's not that that book is boring, I just get tired. And if I fall asleep while reading LOTF again, I'll have to read it really quickly before school, and I'll get a bad grade on the quiz again. I hate bad grades.

Happy birthday to Frederick Douglass, Florence Henderson, Tiffany Thornton, Freddie Highmore, and Paul Butcher Jr. It is also the birthday of other people who I may or may not have heard of.

Happy anniversary of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre!

The Clock Dilemma

2011-02-08T16:24:00.000-08:00

Clocks are difficult. For you see, no clock can be perfect for both form and function. It's impossible. Why, you ask? Well, let's examine the pros and cons of analog and digital clocks.

Analog clocks are obviously prettier and more old-fashioned. And contrary to popular belief, easy to read. One time in my English class, we had a brief discussion about how none of us would befriend someone who couldn't read an analog clock. That will give you an idea of the kind of people in my English class. Anyway, the only problem with analog clocks (and it's a huge problem) is they tick. I can't sleep in the same room as an analog clock. Once I tried to take the batteries out of one, but I accidentally broke it. So I just took to moving all the alarm clocks out of my earshot, but I would have to wake up in morning to move them back to where they belonged so my mom wouldn't get mad at me.

In my room I have on digital clock. Well actually, I think I broke it because I can't figure out how to fix it, but in theory, I have on digital, clock radio, iHome. And I love it. It's easy to set and it plays my music. And it doesn't tick. However, it's ugly. I mean, it's not an eyesore but it isn't pretty like analog clocks are. Clocks suck. Nowadays everyone just uses their cellphone anyway.

Which brings me to my next point- watches. I love watches. I have to wear one everyday or I feel practically naked. And I always wear it on my left wrist, because I am right-handed and if I wear a watch on my right hand then my wrist will hurt when I'm writing. I can't tolerate more then small bracelets on my right hand. And I can wear analog watches because they're so small that you can only hear the ticking if you hold it up to your ear.

So, to conclude, clocks are stupid and watches are awesome. And clocks in classrooms are usually wrong. Well, the one's at my high school aren't too bad but the middle school clocks were simply disastrous. As they always say, "It's five o'clock somewhere!"

Happy birthday to Daniel Bernoulli (Bernoulli's principle is one of the only things I remember from 8th grade Physics... that and Newton's laws), Jules Verne, Dmitri Mendeleev, Jack Lemmon, James Dean, John Williams, Nick Nolte, Gary Coleman, Seth Green, and Bethany Hamilton.

I really need to finish (and by that I mean start) reading Anatomy of a Revolution. The historian who wrote it is named Crane Brinton. Honestly, if you name you son Crane he is destined to be a boring old fart.

My Cultural Assimilation Into the Interweb is Complete

2011-02-06T23:35:00.000-08:00

Today I made an account on Tumblr due to peer pressure. Yesterday I started using the Twitter account my friend Brian made me for my birthday. I forgot I had it until now... I also have active Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, Skype, and Google accounts, in addition to an extremely frequent use of Wikipedia. Oh yeah, and this thing.

Honestly, as a person who feels uncomfortable being identified with the 21st century, this is all very strange. I'm an old person on the inside. I like to read books (NOT ebooks), write by hand, and watch movies that came out before I was born. Now I suddenly have these websites and all this stuff that didn't even exist when I was in elementary school!

It's so funny when I watch movies that take place in what is now the near future (i.e. Back to the Future Part II) and I see all the far things they came up with for us to have, like hoverboards, but they couldn't even anticipate personal computers.

*non-sequitur*

Last night I watched the wonderful film When Harry Met Sally. I kind of want to watch it again tonight. It's one of those movies that gives you this warm and fuzzy feeling on the inside, and on top of that it's not stupid. However, it is tragically unrealistic. And according to my research, Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner were aware of the improbable ending, but hey, it's a movie. We pay for the improbabilities. Who wants to see a movie where what happens is like real life? I mean, all good movies have elements that are real. If a character is completely unbelievable the audience can't relate and thus it is not going to be a good movie. But placing believable characters into unbelievable plots often makes for a great film. It's just how it works.

*non-sequitur number two*

I'm avoiding editing my English essay. It's about how the underlying theme in Jamie Lee Curtis's children's books is about her battle with drugs and alcohol. Oy very.

Happy birthday to Babe Ruth, Ronald Reagan, Tom Brokaw, Bob Marley, Natalie Cole, Kathy Najimy, and Rick Astley. I really want to Rick Roll someone now.

Well, while I'm at it, if you really want to, follow me on Twitter: @BrianMadeThis and on Tumblr: somethingwittybystephanie.tumblr.com

I don't expect any of you to follow me.

Standing in the Corner, Sipping my V8

2011-01-30T23:23:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-25T22:23:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-09T21:26:00.001-08:00

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

2011-01-08T22:37:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-04T22:31:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-03T23:34:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-02T18:02:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-01T23:22:00.000-08:00

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.

Prioritizing My Future Finances

2010-12-20T22:03:00.000-08:00

Once I was at Barnes and Noble, and I saw a tote for sale. On this tote, there was a quote (that rhyme was completley unintentional) that said something along the lines of, "I spend the little money I earn on books first, and then the rest on food and clothing." But obviously the quote was in more sophisticated language. Anyway, I've always associated myself wait that quote. Considering I prefer to buy books over going to libraries, I expect to accumulate many volumes over my lifetime, and eventually I will have quite a bit of money spent on books. I bet I currently have a least $2000 worth of books in my room, probably more than $2500. Basically, buying new books is more important than buying things like new clothes (don't get me wrong, I LOVE new clothes) or health food or gas or things like that.

But the thing is, it's not just books. Let's say, hypothetically, I'm living in New York as a young adult. I assume my job wouldn't be the best paying, and rent would be killer in addition to starting to pay off student loans. Oh, and food. But besides my weekly trips to Barnes and Noble, I'll also have access to the nearly fifty Broadway theatres, countless off and off-off Broadway shows, concerts, ballets, operas, symphonies, museums, and all the other amazing things the city has to offer. How will I be able to resist spending an insane amount of money appreciating these things and contributing to feeding the mouths of struggling artists? Obviously I will take advantage of the many wonderful free displays of art, and I'll enter the lottos for Broadway shows, but I just don't see myself getting around being an avid patron of the arts when living in a city like New York or LA or anywhere along those lines.

If you're wondering what brought this one, I have three reasons.
1: Seeing Arielle and Lyla dance in The Nutcracker with my sister; I have a great appreciation for ballet, among other forms of dance.
2: Spending time at the Music Center Plaze, due to my new position on the Center Theatre Group's Student Advisory Committee. I'll give you more details on that later, but I'm spending a lot of time around other artists and performance centers and it's all just great. And CULTURED.
3. The lack of culture in a certain city in a certain Midwestern sate I am currently staying in. No offense to my best friend Jordan, but she has a lack of understanding of the arts. I love the girl like no other, but I need my theatre kids. Or at least my kids with an appreciation of theatre.

The only reason I'm even awake right now is because there's supposed to be a lunar eclipse tonight. Everyone else went to bed and set their alarms. Come on? Don't people know how to stay up late anymore?

Happy birthday on December 21 to Thomas Becket (we literally just turned in our Canterbury Tales essays in English...), Jane Fonda (I'm helping CTG promote a play she's in), Samuel Jackson (I'm running out of things worthy of being put in parentheses), Jeffery Katzenberg, Ray Romano, Kiefer Sutherland, and Jackson Rathbone.

Please ignore any spelling or grammatical errors in this post. I hate writing on other peoples computers, so I have no desire to go back and check anything over. Thanks!

My Favorite Pen

2010-12-18T23:28:00.000-08:00

I have this pen. I've had it forever, at least two years. It's one of those twist-y pens but it looks like there's a cap stuck on the end. It's green and has the logo of the musical Wicked all over it. It's the best pen ever. And today I thought about what would happen if it ran out of ink. I don't know what I'd do with myself. Maybe I could find a picture to get you to understand...

Isn't it beautiful? I've never posted a picture on my blog. I should do it more often.

Okay, back on topic. I hate pencils and pens that don't write smoothly suck. This pen is perfect. It doesn't give my hand cramps and it isn't too dark or too light. I use it for everything. So I decided, if it ever runs out of ink I will have to either buy a new one, or if that isn't possible find one just as awesome. But hopefully it just never runs out of ink.

*NON-SEQUITUR*

I get to visit my best friend Jordan tomorrow. She lives in the Midwest, but was born in California. I don't understand the motive behind that one either. But anyway, she lives there now and we only see each other about once a year. So I am one excited girl. I'm all jumpy and I've been dancing around all day.

DANCING. That reminds me, I saw two of my best friends, Arielle and Lyla, perform in The Nutcracker ballet. They were both amazing, and I feel like you people of the interweb should know that.

I'm too frazzled to write comprehensively. I just needed to get at least a couple of my thoughts into words. Trust me, if you found this blog post confusing and irrelevant, imagine what having my brain feels like.

Before I go into birthdays, I'd like to let you know that as I was researching people born today, I came across the name Charles Wesley. I thought it said Charles Weasley and I got really excited. It didn't say Charles Weasley.... okay then.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO Franz Ferdinand, Joseph Stalin, Gladys Cooper, Betty Grable, Keith Richards, Steven Speilberg, Leonard Maltin, Brad Pitt, Rachel Griffiths, Katie Holmes, Christina Aguilera, and Bridget Mendler.

And always remember, communism is funny. Happy holidays everyone!

A Jewish Girl's View on Christmas

2010-12-07T23:05:00.000-08:00

Through the years, my thoughts on the annual celebration of Jesus's birth have varied. I've never been in the kind of family that celebrated Christmas in a secular manner in order to prevent me from feeling left out. And yes, those families sadly exist. But not mine. Chanukah is very important to my entire extended family and many traditions are followed consistently.

And Christmas was always just that holiday some of my friends celebrated. I knew from a young age that Santa Claus wasn't real, but that wasn't something I could ever bring up to my Christian friends. So I didn't. However, once I did witness a friend finding out from her step-mom that Santa was in fact fictional. It was slightly awkward for my nine-year-old-self. Especially since at that age my thoughts on the holiday were slightly bitter.

My main issue with Christmas wasn't that it got too much attention, but simply that Chanukah didn't get any. Especially since I live in a very Jewish community, you would think Chanukah would be represented by more then just an electric menorah over-shadowed by a giant, completely decorated Christmas tree. The concept of Judaism as a minority religion didn't really make sense to me, considering that obviously my family and a good majority of my friends were of the same religion. Not for any discriminatory reasons, but simply because I do live in a very Jewish area, and between Hebrew School, Jewish summer camp, and activities at temple, I do encounter a lot of Jews. SO, the fact that Christmas was such a huge deal blew my mind.

The worst of my anti-Christmas cheer was always experienced at Disneyland. I go to Disneyland almost every single year on Christmas Day, and to put it plainly, it looks like Santa Claus threw up all over the happiest freakin' place on Earth. I love Disneyland, more than almost anywhere, but Chanukah is important and deserves recognition.

So you see, my early relationship with Christmas wasn't the best. Another reason I think I lacked a good mood around the holidays was due to the absence of white Christmases in Los Angeles. In New York, I've heard from eye witnesses that people actually change over the holidays, like in the movies. In LA nothing is different. And if it is I want to know where.

I assure you, however, that my present day view on Christmas is much more mature. I have come to accept the holiday as extremely secularized, and the thousands of advertisements and decorations are in no way attempts for me to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, but to get me to buy stuff. Oh, and Jesus was born in the spring, the holiday was moved to December 25th to coincide with Winter Solstice and avoid persecution from Pagans.

Due to this mature outlook on the holiday season, I have been able to pin point my favorite thing about Christmas: the resulting fiction! Every year I cry during It's a Wonderful Life, some of the greatest scenes in Harry Potter are over Christmas, so many romantic comedies come out in December, and I totally got teary-eyed during tonight's episode of Glee when Santa made Artie able to walk! I also love Christmas music, especially considering "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting...)" and "White Christmas" were both written by Jews. And even Barbra Streisand has come out with a Christmas CD. It's understandable, not that many people would be a Barbra Streisand Chanukah CD. My favorite Christmas songs, however, are the non-denominational classics "Let It Snow" and "Walking in a Winter Wonderland." Nothing like some good non-religious winter cheer.

Happy birthday to Theodor Schwann, Louis Prima, Eli Wallach, Ted Knight, Sara Bareilles, Jennifer Carpenter, Aaron Carter, and Emily Browning.

On a final note, this blog is in honor of the victims on the attack of Pearl Harbor and my dog Shayna, who died today four years ago. She was the best dog ever.

The Woes of Money in the Holiday Season

2010-12-06T21:03:00.001-08:00

I have a lot of friends. A lot of friends who buy me presents and I buy presents for in return. This is a problem when my debit card gets declined thanks to the fact that someone (that means you, Dad) has been neglecting to keep up with my weekly transactions and I couldn't afford to buy a month late birthday present for Sammy. And this present (which I won't mention in case she reads this) was really cool and took me FOREVER to custom make. But my card got declined. Thanks, Dad.

My money problems don't stop here. Usually what I do for presents is go to Cost Plus and buy tons of different tzotchkes on tiny things and come home and put them in bags with candy or something cute. But when you're buying for 15 to 20 people, even more sometimes, it all adds up.

I have a steady income from babysitting, but I've been haven't had a job in a couple weeks and I need more cash. And I'm a great babysitter too! Kids love me! Hire me! Please! But I'm not desperate or anything.

I just realized House was on tonight. I need to go watch that and then continue watching Bones Season 5 on Netflix. So much TV, so little time.

I won't do birthdays because I did December 6th birthdays this morning which was sort of last night since I hadn't gone to bed yet. So everyone I said happy birthday to, happy birthday again!

Scratch what I said two paragraphs ago... House isn't back until January. More Bones for me then. I love this show so much. I watched nine episode in a 36 hour time frame.

I have no life.

I need to post more often.

2010-12-05T23:56:00.000-08:00

Being in a contemplative state isn't healthy. In the immortal words of Gaston, "Lefou, you know I've been thinking. [A dangerous pastime] I know."

Thinking, albeit important and necessary to live a valuable existence, only leads to problems. When ever I think to much I either sink into a tearful depression or get really pissed off about something. And any of my friends would testify to the fact that I over think and over analyze absolutely everything. But hey, that's what a five year and running career in the English Honors world will do to a girl. That, and watching one to many chick flicks.

In case you were wondering, the topic I have been thinking too much about is college. And I know that isn't unusual, but it's extremely stressful. I don't exactly know what I want to major in (or for that matter what I want to do with my life), so I have been trying to plan my high school career accordingly by taking as many challenging courses as possible (except in the science and math areas), and this is causing many scheduling conflicts in the future. Next year I might even take a zero period, which means getting to school a full hour and forty minutes before the rest of the student body. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm running out of options if I want to get nine classes out of the way next year. Most students take six in a year, but I'm planning on taking one over the summer, one after school, and one before school.

I'm going to die. That's it. If the Mayans are correct I'm not making it past winter vacation of my senior year anyway. What's the point in trying?

Oh yeah. I don't believe anything the Mayans said.

It's funny how belief and disbelief are both used in the same manner. (WARNING: You are entering a random tangent zone.) I mean, don't people use religion and lack thereof to accomplish the same thing, justification? When something bad happens, a religious person says, "Well, God must have a plan," when a non-religious person would say, "Well, there is no plan." That didn't make as much sense as it did in my head. And in case you didn't know, I'm Jewish.

Religion is another thing that thinking too much about can end destructively. That sounded bad too. I'm all for the questioning of one's faith, I've been encouraged to do so as far as Judaism goes, but I feel like people, especially my age, get so worked up about things. People get so angry at each other and speak without thinking and say things that are really offensive. My opinion is that if you're religion makes you happy and you aren't hurting anyone, go for it. But I've heard some pretty hurtful things said over this topic. Friends telling friends they're going to burn in hell, making fun of a culture, denying someone's sexuality, and all sorts of other things that were just completely out of line. High school is not a place to preach. It is a place to discuss, and maybe even argue, but one of my biggest pet peeves is having a belief forced on me. I never bring up religion in a secular setting, but I try to speak politely and with tact when other's do. I don't really understand why religious and non-religious people don't do the same.

Rant over. I honestly don't know what brought that on. That's just how my brain works, I jump subjects much quicker then most people. It's really funny actually, sometimes I have to explain to people how I got on a topic. We could be talking about what to eat for dinner, and then I think about food, and then I think about Italian food, and then I think about this cute little Italian restaurant I went to in New York, and then I think about the creepy guy with a video camera who was acting suspiciously by their bathroom, and then I think about suspicious behavior in general, which reminds me of creepy things, which reminds of the trailer I saw for The Black Swan, which reminds me of ballet, which reminds me of my friend Arielle who is currently in rehearsals for The Nutcracker, which causes me to inquire whether we have purchased tickets or not. Except this all happens in less then one second. And in my brain. So I get weird stares a lot. I started talking about Tina Fey once during a Socratic seminar on women in The Renaissance. I'm a strange person sometimes. Or all the time. What ever.

Happy birthday to Ira Gershwin, Judd Apatow, and quite a few other people. It is also my cousin Yoav's birthday, whom I miss very much due to his current residency in Israel and the fact that I haven't seen him in almost a year. And Happy fifth day of Chanukah. I hope you've all been enjoying the holiday. Shalom Aleichem.

It is past midnight. I've done all my homework that I can't do tomorrow at lunch. I'm tired.

2010-11-08T00:08:00.000-08:00

I am so tired. Last night was homecoming. And I don't really want to get into the details about the dance and the before and after parties. I just want to let you all know that I had a ton of fun and I'm mad that we didn't go to In-N-Out, but overall the night was extremely fun, I'm glad I went, and now I'm tired as hell due to the fact that I got 5 or 6 hours of sleep last night after an evening of partying. And then today I went to Sunday Circle, a program I volunteer for, and I am very tired.

I've spent a large portion of my day venting to at least... six different confidantes about different areas of my life. My consensus is I am having a repeat of freshman year, in all the worst possible ways. Everything that was supposed to make 10th grade better than 9th didn't end up happening, and now I (and everyone else) am extremely disappointed. I won't get into details about why.

So I talked to Sydney about it and we decided that we are going to cleanse our body of toxins (not really). We each changed the other's Facebook password so neither of use will be ever to access our accounts until next Sunday evening. We are going to communicate with people via phone in case of an emergency. Otherwise we are just going to take time to work on ourselves and our school work (and our super awesome video blog that was started working on; I'll tell you more about it when we finish our first episode).

Then, we are going to spend the weekend at Syd's grandmother's home in order to have some time away from the stresses of reality. How horrible is that? That two 15-year-old girls need to have a weekend away from it all? The world is out to get me, for real.

In other news, tomorrow... well technically today, but whatever... we are going to start reading Macbeth in my English class. I. Am. So. Excited.

Let me begin by telling you that my English class (period 3, English II Honors) is one of the most amazing groups of people I have ever met. We all are total nerds and we laugh at each other's grammar and vocabulary related jokes. We relate Latin roots to biology, discuss incorrect adverb usage in street signs, ridicule those who cannot read analog clocks, and have intense Socratic seminars. So now that I get to read AND THUS ACT OUT William Shakespeare's Macbeth, I am filled to the brim with joy. I can't wait for our teacher (who is a total theatre geek, which makes me happy) to make casting decisions, and considering my role as Juliet in my freshman Honors English course, I think it is only appropriate that I play Lady Macbeth this year. But remember, there are no small parts, only small actors. I will be happy with which ever role I get (ha ha, right....).

So that's what I have to look forward to in my life. Sunday Circle every other weekend, reading Macbeth in English, and going to visit Sydney's grandmother. Hopefully things will start to look up soon. I mean, they haven't yet, but without hope, what's the point, right? So maybe soon, sophomore year will change for the better. Maybe. Hopefully.

Happy birthday to Edmond Halley, Milton Bradley, Bram Stoker, Margaret Mitchell, June Havoc, Bonnie Raitt, Mary Hart, John Musker, and Matthew Rhys. But most importantly, I would like to wish a very special birthday to one of my best friends in the entire world, Sammy. I love you so much!

Go listen to the song "Brand New Key" by Melanie. It fills me with a happiness I cannot express in words. Buh bye now.

Sydney and I are making a Vlog. That's right, a Vlog.

2010-11-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

I know I have expressed interest in creating a video-blog, commonly known as a vlog, before. But this time, it's going to happen.

But before I get into that, I need to back track a bit to catch you all up. The other day I decided to make a list of movies. Movies from all different genres and walks of life, the criteria was that they made one of AFI's top 100 lists. You know how the American Film Institute has all these lists of the best movies in any given genre? Well, they do. So I combined all their lists into one giant list (483 movies, to be precise), put them in order by the year the premiered, and then color coated them by genre. Yes, I am that OCD.

But to make an already long story slightly shorter, Sydney and I decided during dance today to watch all of these movies and film our responses in a spectacular video blog of wonderful. It's going to take a long time, but it will be worth it. Seeing as Sydney and I both have intense interests in film for a possible career and just in general, we want to be well versed in the subject. This way, we can talk about movies in snobby-I-am-so-much-smarter-than-you kind of way and actually mean it.

Happy birthday to Roseanne Barr and many other people I haven't actually heard of.

So.... that's all I really have to update you on today. I got my handwriting analyzed on Monday. That was cool. I'm not done with my homework yet. That's not cool.

So that's pretty much all I had to update you on today.

Be a Belle, not an Ariel.

2010-10-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

I just took a quiz on Facebook entitled, "What Disney Princess are You?"

Anyone that knows me could tell you I'm Belle. Let us reference her character description, as found on Wikipedia, to support my claim:

"A bookish young woman who falls in love with the Beast and finds the kind-hearted human inside him. In their effort to enhance the character from the original story, the filmmakers felt that Belle should be 'unaware' of her own beauty and made her 'a little eccentric'."

Well, I think you can see that we're practically the same person. I'm bookish, I read all the time. I haven't exactly fallen in love with a Beast yet, but I'm not out-ruling the possibility. I am COMPLETELY unaware of my own beauty. And I'm eccentric. Ask anyone in my choir.

So you see, that any quiz designed by someone with an ounce of intelligence would have realized that I'm Belle. Or maybe Meg from Hercules. I would settle for Meg, even though she's technically not a princess.

But this quiz had the audacity to tell me that I am like.... Ariel. I cannot stand Ariel. Let us reference her character description:

As depicted in the 1989 film, Ariel is the youngest of King Triton's seven daughters. She is shown as being adventurous and curious about the world of humans, a fascination which angers her father as merfolk are forbidden from making contact with the human world. [. . .] Ariel salvages human items and keeps them in a secret grotto as part of her collection. Unfortunately for her, most of her knowledge of humans is through her collection, and her information regarding these names and functions of the items she has is almost wholly inaccurate thanks to her well meaning but thoroughly misinformed friend Scuttle, a seagull she visits on the surface from time to time when she finds new human "artifacts." Her confusion regarding human objects works to win her the friendship and favor of the humans she later comes in contact with during the film, as they find her antics amusing."

First things first, I am the oldest of three children, not the youngest of seven. And, although I guess I do have an adventurous and curious spirit somewhere in me, I am in no way an ungrateful little brat like Ariel is. This girl can't just understand that her father gives her everything she needs, and that going to the shore is an unnecessary danger. She should be content where she is. And I would never use a lack of intelligence as a flirting device, I want to be admired for my brains, not the fact that I showed up on a beach naked and couldn't figure out how to use a fork.

So CLEARLY, I am nothing like this princess. All she wants to do is go and be with the humans, because her own family isn't good enough for her-

Oh no. We have something in common. She's not happy at home. And I can't wait to go to college.

But that's completely different. College is going to be an educational, parent-sanctioned adventure. Ariel becoming a human involved her going to see Ursula the sea-witch, who then preceded to take away her voice, the only thing that makes her unique and sets her aside from the other mermaids, just so she can impress some guy. She is a horrible role model for young girls everywhere.

So be a Belle. Not an Ariel.

Happy birthday to Bill Gates, Julia Roberts, Brad Paisley, Joaquin Phoenix, and my friends Michael, Nitzan, and Skye. I hope you've all enjoyed your day.

Once I took a quiz about my "flirting style" and it told me I was a slut and that no one should be my friend. Can't quizzes get anything right these days?

I'm a teenager and nobody understands me. And I don't like Halloween.

2010-10-25T21:20:00.000-07:00

Adolescence is awful. It really is. And adults don't understand. They really don't.

Was that not the most stereotypical thing you've ever read? Well it's a stereotype because it's true. Teenagers today have it SO much harder then teenagers ten years ago and exponentially harder than our parents! Getting into college is more difficult then it ever was and with the added social pressures and need to succeed in absolutely everything, how is anyone supposed to handle it?

The night before last I was crying, I was nauseous, and I kept getting headaches because I was so stressed out. Between history, English, and math I had so much homework there was no way I could finish. I was up until 1:00 AM doing history and then I woke up at 5:30 to do my English. I ended up coming home from school at lunch crying because I hadn't done my math homework and I was too scared to go to class. School shouldn't be like this! Teachers have no right to pile on so much work outside of class that students can't even have the weekend to enjoy themselves.

And parents are just as bad. One of my best friends just got grounded for grades that aren't up to par, and it would not be the first time. Even professional psychologists say that punishment does not work. Incentives work.
EXAMPLE:
Wrong: If you get bad grades, you will be grounded.
Right: If you get good grades, I will take you out to dinner.
I'm not saying people should get bribed into working hard, but people should be working hard because they want something, not to avoid pain and punishment. And parents need to be there for their kids when things get hard.

I hate people. And I hate when people try to inflict their opinions on others.
EXAMPLE:
I dislike Halloween. I guess dressing up is fun, but I don't really like being scared and I don't like walking around in the dark asking strangers for candy. Even though I live in a suburb. ANYWAY, I am surrounded by people who love this holiday and want to celebrate with me. When I tell them I am reluctant to trick-or-treat, people get all insulted and treat me like I can't be a child-at-heart and that I'm stuck up and obnoxious. But I am a child-at-heart (even though I never really had a childhood, but that's a story for another day), I love Disneyland and princesses and blankets and everything like that. I just don't really like Halloween, and I didn't when I was little. And feeling stressed like this just makes everything worse, because every little issue becomes a big issue in my head, and then I decide that no one understands me and what I say isn't worth talking to my friends about, even they tell me their problems all the time. I'm just messed up.

Happy birthday to Pablo Picasso, Adam Pascal, and Katy Perry.

My friend's Facebook status was "Stressed is just dessert spelled backwards." I admire her optimism.

Movies Make Me Happy (that alliteration was awesome until I had to put in an indirect object... is that even the correct part of speech?)

2010-10-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

I love to be entertained. I know everyone loves to be entertained, and to entertain for that matter, which I also love to do. (<- sentence structure at it's best) But I really love quality entertainment. Movies, television, theatre, sometimes concerts, and reading, and anything else really.

I always say my two favorite things are reading and watching (movies, tv, shows, etc.). But the thing is, books have been around for thousands of years and movies have only been around for 100 or so. It's much easier for me to cover my bases and see all the best movies then it is to read all the best books. I have read a lot of great books and I plan to read many more, but with films it's just easier to find a reliable source to tell you which ones are the important ones to see.

For example, go to the American Film Institute's website and they have lists upon lists of the best American movies. I know there are good movies in other countries too, but if we are being honest here, when it comes to film, we Americans know what we're doing... it's actually one of the few areas where we know what we are doing.

And then there's literature. And I love books more than almost anything, but they've been around for thousands of years and some of the best of them are written in languages I can't and never will understand. Life's short, and even though I've spent and will in the future spend a great deal of time reading, I'm never going to have read nearly as many books as I need to in order to be well versed in literature. Movies on the other hand, I already know much more about them than most people my own age. And due to websites like Netflix my knowledge is only growing and I continue to watch more and more good movies.

I've been debating on my approach on how to watch movies though. I've just been random up until now, watching what I want when I want to. But if I really want to understand what I'm seeing, I really should watch things more chronologically. I was thinking of looking at AFI's 100 years, 100 movies list and starting from 100 and working my way up to one, but that's in order of quality, deemed by the voters, so I don't think it's really appropriate. Then I was thinking of just going through Academy Award winners, but then you miss the first ten or twenty years of really good movies. This is all so confusing.

So up to this point I've been going through a lot of phases. I'll obsess over a particular actor, decade, genre, or whatever. And I'm enjoying myself. That's why on this lovely, foggy, freezing Saturday, (after taking the extremely easy PSAT that I probably aced [I hope]) I have been lying at home watching movies. While all my friends are out having fun and being teenager-y I've been home. Partially because I wasn't invited to go out with any of them, but on the other hand, I'm enjoying myself. Maybe tonight I'll do some of my homework. Maybe I won't. I should. But that doesn't mean much.

I don't need friends to have fun. As long as I have my Netflix subscription and my personal library of 300+ books, I can be entertained in my own room for hours upon end. Facebook helps too.

Happy birthday to Oscar Wilde, Eugene O'Neill, Angela Lansbury, Suzanne Somers, Tim Robbins, and John Mayer.

A surprise party, a funeral, and a Ron Weasley cardboard cutout later...

2010-10-11T00:01:00.001-07:00

So I bet you all have been waiting on the edge of your seats to find out how my birthday went, and I have to say the day itself was pretty successful. Even though three days prior, my grandmother passed away (this day was also her 83rd birthday, and it was raining), the day itself wasn't bad in the least.

OK, I realize how awful that sounds, but know that my grandma was really sick and it wasn't surprising. I'm just glad she's no longer in pain. Obviously the whole event was horrible and everyone was crying. I've never been to a funeral before and it was a lot worse then I thought it would be. Just knowing the fact that my grandmother was in a simple pine box unmoving a few feet away from me was a little bit too much for me. And I watch Bones, so that's saying something.

Moving on from the sad, my birthday was wonderful. Nicki slept over at my house on Friday night and we had a great Shabbat dinner and stayed up late being completely crazy and hyper and deciding that Draco likes Hugh Laurie and the Silk Road. And then we went to sleep and Nicki sleep walked and sprayed Febreze all over my blankets. I don't really like the smell of Febreze, but I didn't mind because the fact that Nicki sprayed it around in her sleep made me laugh.

Anyway, later that day, as I was sitting on the couch watching Back to the Future with my sister, one of my friends came from behind me and blindfolded me for a kidnapping. (NOTE: I knew I was getting a kidnapping/surprise party for two weeks before hand. No one can hide anything from me.) I suddenly heard Sammy, Ashley, and Sydney yelling at me in British accents and saying things like, "Get on the broom, Neville!" and, "It's time to go to Diagon Alley!" It was all very overwhelming, especially when they threw branches at me and said it was the Whomping Willow. When we got to Diagon Alley (Costco) we got off the broom (car) while I was still blindfolded and went to pick up the cake. They ran me through Diagon Alley and spun me around and made total fools of themselves. I kept hearing people making comments about how there were crazy people dressed as Harry Potter running around.

Next, we went to the Forbidden Forest (the park). At the Forest they took off my blindfold, where I finally saw Sammy, Sydney, and Ashley dressed as Harry, Ron, and Hermione, respectively, wigs and all. They told me I had to find the clue that would help me find the final horcrux. The clue was a note from Voldemort telling me to find the horcrux at his favorite restaurant and to get him some guacamole. So we were off to find some horcruxes and Mexican cuisine, and at the restaurant all my friends were waiting with their arms open. It was a wonderful party. Honestly, I couldn't have asked for anything better. And I got a pair of Toms shoes. Be jealous.

After the party, Sophie, Julia, Sarah and I drove all the way to Santa Barbara to drop off Nicki and her sister, Iliana, at their dad's house. The drive was long, and we got lost many times, but their house was SO COOL. The outside looked very 70s, with round windows and the burnt orange paint, and the inside was gorgeous and open with a view of the mountains and the ocean. And their backyard was huge and had all these secret areas... basically I am going to be spending as much time there as possible from now on. End of story.

The car ride home was spent bonding over deep Miley Cyrus songs. Enough said.

After I came home and packed, I was "kidnapped" again for a sleepover with Sydney and Ashley and Sammy at Sammy's house. There they gave me their gifts, including my new Ron Weasley cutout, which were all amazing and so well thought out and original. We had a great sleepover and today I was exhausted as I babysat for 8 hours and then came home and did most of my homework. I have to wake up early to do the little I have left. I feel like I'll never be well rested again. Especially with the impending doom of the school week, who knows when I'll ever get more than five hours of sleep in a night. And I mean, five hours is a lot for me. It's just not sufficient for the hours I'm supposed to be working.

Happy birthday to Eleanor Roosevelt, Jerome Robbins, Daryl Hall, Joan Cusack, Jane Krakowski, Emily Deschanel, Matthew Bomer, Michelle Trachtenberg, and the fictional twins from The Parent Trap ("I was born on October 11th, and YOU were born on October 11th!) It's a good day in historical/pop-cultural births.

I apologize for the lack of insight in this post. My best insight is when I'm complaining, and I've been complaining about the state mandated educational system all day, and I'm simply too tired to put it all into writing.

The First Blog with a Creative Title

2010-09-28T23:28:00.000-07:00

Today I stayed home sick from school. I am sick physically (runny nose, sore throat, cough, the whole nine yards), mentally, emotionally, anyway you slice it, I just needed to stay home. The day without public school education made me decide I want to blog again. That and the fact that my friend Carlie asked me to in English yesterday. And then my friend Charlie made fun of me. And then I noticed that Charlie sits behind Carlie in English class. Weird, huh?

I guess I'm kind of different since the last time I wrote. I'm a sophomore now. And rather then the super-awesome-beautiful-at-least-better-than-freshman-year I had hoped for, my (approximately) four weeks spent in this grade haven't been the best. That's an understatement. They've been horrible.

The interesting thing is this year I LOVE three of my teachers. That's 50%. The other three aren't even horrible, just annoying. Last year I disliked all of my teachers at least once over the course of the year. But this year, I guess things haven't been going my way. I've become a B student. In honors classes, but that makes it all the more frustrating. Every endeavour in the performing arts (grand total-4) has resulted in nothing, and therefore a horrible depression and low self-esteem complex (I know it's hard for you to believe my insecurity issues could reach new lows, but they can). I don't really get along with anyone anymore. And everyday it seems like life decides to kick me in the ass one more time.

Have I managed to thoroughly depress you yet? My pet peeve is when people use Facebook to elicit pity from others. And now I realize I'm using my blog to do the same thing. Facebook is a narcissistic institution. And so is this blog. I don't write about anything besides myself. My triumphs, my problems, my obsessions. But you can't write what you can't know, and what do I know more about then myself? And I guess I write this blog on the hair-brained notion that someone else out there wants to know about me too and know what I have to say.

I think it was Thomas Edison or someone who said something about how an idiot is someone who tries the same things over and over again and expects different results. But isn't that what I'm doing? I procrastinate on all my assignments and I still don't always understand why my grades aren't up to par. I go on all these auditions and I can't fathom why no one wants me. And I write in this blog and think people will read it.

When I get in one of these moods (otherwise known as every night around this time) I listen to music, usually Keep Breathing by Ingrid Michaelson over and over again, and I try to establish something to look forward to. My birthday is in less then two weeks, but that's going to be a total bomb. I'm not having a party. And that also happens to be the night of my school's improv team's first show. I didn't make the improv team. A good deal of my friends are on it.

So my birthday isn't really important to me this year. Did I mention my birthday is cursed? Here is a list of prior events that have occurred in my fourteen birthdays celebrated thus far:

I moved
my mom got pneumonia
Yom Kippur (everyone's favorite fast day)
my brother was sent to a hospital

And this year I will be painfully reminded of my lack of talent. That makes five of fifteen birthdays being shitty. One third. That's a lot. I'm like Chandler from Friends. He always has horrible Thanksgivings, I always have horrible birthdays.

So basically, I really hope things start looking up. I mean, they haven't since the end of 8th grade. Two things made the end of 8th grade great. One was that I did the culmination speech. I was the center of attention. Good stuff. Two was that I was leaving 8th grade, the biggest hell-hole of a year I had ever experienced. I had this idea that high school would be better. I needed a change.

I need a change now too. I need something really great to happen to outweigh the bad. I need to fast-forward to December when I can hop on a plane to Cincinnati and be with my best friend and go hang out in Chicago and do what ever we want. Until then I have school. Ugh.

Happy birthday to Confucius, Nicolas Flamel, Ed Sullivan, Brigette Bardot, Maria Canals Barerra, Naomi Watts, Hilary Duff, and Frankie Jonas.

That is an extremely eclectic group of people. I hope Ashley appreciates it.

Post-script: I'm sorry I'm not myself. Hopefully I will return to my usual witticisms in a blog or two. Thanks for reading all the way through.

8/13/10

2010-08-13T23:07:00.000-07:00

I have never been this tired in my life.

Or since that one time in biology when the entire class pulled all nighters finishing our micro-organism lab.

Anyway, the reason I am so drained of energy is because I spent the entire week volunteering at a camp for special needs children. I've been involved with the organization, the Friendship Circle, since I was about eight years old, but I have to say this summer camp was one of the most rewarding experiences I've had with them.

My friend Sarah and I were paired with an adorable eight-year-old named Emma. Every day we had so many activities; arts-and-crafts, music, swimming, field trips, and everything else we did was such a blast.

Besides playing with all the adorable kids (and releasing my inner child in the process, I mean seriously, who can resist making sock puppets?), I really enjoyed spending time with the other volunteers. In a strange way it gave me hope for the future generation. Everyone there was so mature and was completely engaged with the kids, no one gave a have-stitch effort.

I really hope that attempt at a colloquialism was correct.

So like I said, all the teenagers there were mature and responsible, but also completely crazy, as was exhibited in an extremely competitive game of lazar-tag after camp on Wednesday. This lazar-tagging session was followed by a bus ride home which included a football game. Now stop and think for a second. A football game, in a moving vehicle, with the windows open. Can this end well? For the football, it didn't.

Oh wow I just got really distracted for a good 15 minutes.

Happy birthday to Annie Oakley and Alfred Hitchock.

Awesome.

8/6/10

2010-08-06T22:25:00.000-07:00

Well. Tomorrow, Sammy and Ashley are leaving for New York. On Sunday, Sydney and Shannon are leaving for performing arts camp. On Wednesday, Bret is going to San Francisco. Arielle is currently in Hawaii. Sophie is somewhere in Northern California. All my other friends have done something or other somewhere else this summer.

I would estimate that 95% of my summer has been spent in my bedroom. I know I have so much to be grateful for. Even though money's tight right now so many people have it worse. I understand how truly lucky I am. But that doesn't mean I don't wish I was somewhere else. I watch the Travel Channel constantly. Just the other day I went to William Shakespeare's childhood home and a floating village in Vietnam in the same day. But meanwhile my friends are having experiences. Real ones. And I'm really, really jealous. And I miss my friends. I miss talking to them every single day. When they're on vacation they aren't very quick to reply to my text messages or Facebook wall posts. They all have better things to do. And I guess I would be the same way if I wasn't stuck here.

And just yesterday I was thinking how lucky I was to live in a nice area. And I am lucky to live in a nice area. It would just be luckier if I had the option to leave whenever I wanted. In Arkansas you can get your learners permit at age 14. If only California were that awesome.

But I do have to say our state has gotten slightly more awesome since the repeal of proposition 8. Weddings have been a favorite topic of mine since I was a little girl, and I am so glad that now everyone in my state will be able to have one of their own.

Anyway. I just needed to do some complaining. Happy birthday to Alfred Lord Tennyson, Edith Roosevelt, Lucille Ball [the amazing and hysterical], and M. Night Shyamalan.

Reading a good book would help me relax right now bad. Too bad I'm going to go read my AP Euro text book.

7/31/10

2010-07-31T15:11:00.001-07:00

Many of you know that I am soon going to enter my sophomore year of high school. It has recently come to the attention of my friends and I that there is little to nothing important that happens sophomore year. Freshman year is exciting and awkward; you're at a new school with new friends and new teachers and a lot of other new stuff. Junior year is a big deal because everyone is turning sixteen and learning how to drive and getting jobs and thinking about college (if you aren't already). And senior year is important for obvious reasons.

So this realization has given me a brilliant idea. I am going to make a documentary called Sophisticated Morons in order to chronicle the events of an average suburban high school's 10th grade. And then I realized that I am not that great with film, so I might as well change the concept from documentary to weekly updated YouTube series. I don't know if anyone will watch it, but I think it's a good idea.

This just reminded me of the Suckumentary from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Tibby makes a documentary about losers and people with lame lives and things like that. But my "film" isn't a tribute to losers. My friends and I aren't losers... all of the time. My "documentary" isn't a tribute to school or high school or sophomore year. It's more an ode to the students and everything we have to put up with. Especially nowadays, with our entire public school system falling apart around us.

Well. I think this is a good idea. I don't know how it will work out, but we'll see. OH I HAVE A FUNNY STORY I FORGOT TO TELL.

Last night I saw a production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It was an absolutely amazing show and a fabulous production. My best friend Ashley was the pianist in their orchestra, and she is absolutely phenomenal. Everyone involved in the show was so talented and I would give anything to be in a production of that caliber. After the show Ashley's sister Sheila picked us up and we decided we wanted frozen yogurt, but the frozen yogurt place was closed. So then we decided we wanted gelato, but that store was closed too. We ended up going through the drive through at Jack in the Box to get shakes and smoothies. We didn't know what we wanted and there was no one behind us in line, so the guy that worked there told us to take our time. Sheila said something along the lines of, "You know they can see us right? I wonder where the cameras are," as she stuck her head out the window and began to look around. The drive through guy, who we did not know was listening, piped in by saying, "There are no cameras. But I can see you nonetheless." We laughed so hard it was ridiculous. Best drive through experience ever? I think so.

Happy birthday to the amazing, fantastic, best-person-to-have-ever-lived, I don't have words to express how much this person matters to me, J.K. Rowling. The Harry Potter series has brought me so much joy since it first became a part of my life in the 2nd grade; and to this day whenever something is wrong I can open any of the seven books or pop any of the DVDs into the TV and I will instantly feel relieved. I can honestly say that my life would be different without this series, and your existence is the primary factor in its existence. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and once again, happy birthday.

In addition, today is the birthday of two of the most important fictional characters in history. Happy birthday to Harry James Potter and Juliet Capulet. And Neville Longbottom. So make that three of the most important fictional characters.

I used more semi-colons then usual in this post.

7/17/10

2010-07-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

Do you ever have such a good day that you bask in the glory of said day for as long as you possibly can? Well, I had a day like that Thursday.

My mom woke me up around 11:30 since I had a make up piano lesson at 12:15. The lesson itself was nothing special, but my teacher and I talked about Harry Potter for a few minutes, which put me in a good mood for what I was about to accomplish.

After my lesson I went to pick up Sydney from her house so that she could help me face my fears. I had decided to get my ears pierced.

Some of you may recall that I am deathly afraid of needles. That's my only explanation for why I waited until I was 14 and 3/4 to get my ears pierced, which really didn't hurt at all. I'm glad I did it, because not only can I wear earrings now, but because I proved to myself that I can control my phobias. It is kind of strange to have two little heavy (well, not really heavy) things in my ears. I can feel their presence but I can't see them without looking in a mirror. Like my nose. It's so weird.

After I returned from getting holes punctured through my earlobes, I quickly changed into nicer clothes and went to pick up my friend Shannon so we could drive into Hollywood and see the 2008 Tony award winning musical, In the Heights. Well, our seats were fantastic, the show was fantastic, and I really loved everything about it. There is nothing I would have changed or fixed at all. Everyone should see this show while it's on national tour, it has something for everyone to enjoy.

And because this is Los Angeles and I was seeing a critically acclaimed show, there were bound to be a few curious celebrities. Directly before the show started I saw Jason Alexander from Seinfeld, among other things, enter the theatre. He was being approached by fans nonstop and I chose not to go up to him. Then intermission happened.

Fortunately, I did not have to go to the bathroom during intermission so I was able to people watch as hundreds of patrons filed out of the theatre. One person in particular caught my mind. Apparently, TJ Thyne, who plays Dr. Jack Hodgins on my favorite TV show Bones, had decided to see In the Heights also. I was in too much shock to approach him as he walked out of the theatre (ask Shannon, I was practically having a panic attack), but I decided I would politely bombard him on his way back. And I did. And I got his autograph. He was very nice. I appreciated it greatly. As you can see, I'm still kind of in shock.

After the show I made the traditional stop by the stage door where I got autographs and pictures from almost the entire cast, including Lin Manuel-Miranda, who wrote the music and lyrics, created the original concept, and starred in the show. The entire cast was so gracious and kind. And I have to say actors in New York are very to the point, sign the playbill and leave kind of people. In LA they stop and have a chat, pose for all the pictures you want, the whole nine yards. Even though I love New York, I am grateful at times for the laid back Californian attitude. But only at times.

Yesterday and today have not lived up to the magnificence that was Thursday. Maybe tomorrow will, since I am heading to the Hollywood Bowl to see She & Him in concert. And considering the "she" is Zooey Deschanel, sister to Emily (who plays the title character in Bones), maybe I'll have a run in with a few more of my favorite actors.

7/11/10

2010-07-11T01:19:00.001-07:00

One of the worst feelings in the world is forgetting something you really should know. For example, earlier this afternoon, as I was sitting with a few friends in a jacuzzi surrounded by bees, I forgot who wrote Three Theban Plays. I knew his name ended in "es," but that's the majority of Greek playwrights for you.

One of the best feelings in the world is remembering something you had previously forgotten. For example, earlier this evening, as I was listening to music, I recalled that Sophocles wrote Three Theban Plays.

*awkward transition to next topic*

Considering how many summer assignments I've been avoiding recently, I have had many opportunities to watch movies. And I've watched quite a few. But my two of my new favorites are Pretty in Pink and (500) Days of Summer.

Many of you probably already know that Pretty in Pink is the 1986 John Hughes classic starring Molly Ringwald, Jon Cryer, Andrew McCarthy, you know, the standard brat pack assortment. All of whom are fantastic. Even though Pretty in Pink was not my favorite 1980's coming of age hit, it's still a 1980's coming of age hit. The perms, vintage clothing, spontaneous dancing, and usage of bicycles are among my favorite quirks in this genre of film.

Then there's (500) Days of Summer. This movie was not like any other movie I have ever seen in my life. I rented it due to the fact that I am seeing She & Him (lead singer-Zooey Deschanel, one of the stars of (500) Days)) in concert, and because I had watched a Travel Channel special on Sundance, so I was in the mood for an independent film. Anyway, I am genuinely glad I chose to watch this movie. It was ridiculously funny and intelligent and unique and if I wasn't in the mood for a Judy Garland movie I wouldn't return it to Netflix right now. In short, this movie was really good. Go watch it.

Well, I guess I should be getting to sleep. I'm going to see fireworks tomorrow night because my city is a week behind the rest of the United States. It's a Pacific Standard Time thing.

7/8/10

2010-07-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

Today many of my friends and I received the scores from our AP biology exams in the mail. Some of my extremely smart and brilliant friends got rather high scores. And then there's people like me that didn't do well at all. And then there's people whose parents are unhappy with their scores. I have a message to all of those kind of parents out there:

I don't understand what's wrong with failure. If your kid isn't trying, that's a problem. But when your son or daughter is taking a hard course, or a course that's challenging to them personally, what's wrong with doing their absolute best? Even if it isn't up to par to your standards. Some people just don't have an aptitude for science or English, or what ever subject it is. As long as your kid is trying their best, they should get praise, not punishment because they didn't get an 105% on what ever it is.

Students today are under more pressure then ever to be the best. Not everyone is going to get into Harvard or Stanford. Some kids are just happy getting their GED. So here is my mission for all you parents out there.

Embrace failure. It's just a part of learning isn't it? What I learned from taking honors biology is that I'm never going to be a doctor or a scientist and that I need a break from science to focus on aspects of my life that I can actually make a living out of. And I bet every other student in that course learned something about themselves, whether they got an A+ or an F- (if that grade even exists). I just want parents to realize that everything is a learning experience, and the grade is simply not an appropriate measure of intelligence.

This is going to sound cliche, but what if Thomas Edison's parents had told him he was a failure after his first light bulb design didn't work? Maybe they did, but clearly he didn't listen. Because if Thomas Edison, or Alexander Graham Bell, or anyone else that did something important had considered their first screw up a failure, where would we be? Because in truth, it wasn't a failure, it was just something they could improve. When Walt Disney was kicked out of art school, he didn't say, "Well, I guess I'm never going to be an artist now." He just realized that that institution wasn't the place for him, and he could go and be important somewhere else.

So biology was just my first screw up. Scratch that, Algebra I was my first screw up. But that doesn't mean I listen to the people pulling the disappointed card on me. Because I'm not disappointed in myself. That class was the hardest class I've ever taken and I know it was for many of my friends. I know I didn't do as well as I could have. I'm just happy I didn't go crazy and shoot someone. And everybody else should just be proud of themselves too. And so should their parents. Because I know how upset my friends are, when they have no reason to be!

In the scope of it all, 9th grade bio is just a minuscule part of my life. And in twenty years when I'm hopefully settled in doing what ever I've decided to do with my life, I'm not going to think to myself, "I wish I had done better on my AP bio exam." Because essentially, it doesn't matter. There are some tests that do matter, for certain things. And I have the potential of putting a really bad metaphor about how high school is just a drop of water in the ocean that is life, but I think it would be better if I didn't at this moment.

So, I hope this has put somethings into perspective for you. And I apologize if it's jumbled and ramble-y, but I really had to speak my mind. Thanks for reading.

6/28/10

2010-06-28T18:39:00.000-07:00

For some reason, everything I have recently become obsessed with has started with the letter. It was suggested by my friend that I have a subconscious connection to the letter. I just think it's interesting.

There are three main things I've obsessed over: The Battery's Down, Bones,and Ray Bradbury's Fahreinheit 451The Battery's down is a musical-comedy web series on YouTube about the life of Broadway actor, Jake Wilson, struggling to make it big. Wow, that sounded oddly official and review-esque. Anyway, The Battery's Down is hysterical, and all together just a very good show. It is starring and written by Jake Wilson, along with many of his talented, also young actor, friends. The musical numbers are composed by a variety of talented musicians and the series is directed and choreographed by Connor Gallagher. And I'm not talking stupid but funny choreography like in A Very Potter Musical, I'm actual choreography.

What I also love about The Battery's Down is their menagerie (new favorite word) of guest stars. So many prominent players in musical theatre have been in this show! Some of my favorites included Sutton Foster, Alice Ripley, Jonathon Groff, John Gallagher Jr., Susan Blackwell, Allison Janney, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Shoshana Bean, the cast of 13, Bernie Telsey, Tituss Burgess, Matthew Morrison, Whoopi Goldberg, Nikki Snelson, Deidre Goodwin, Perez Hilton, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Caissie Levy, Kyle Dean Massey, Andrea McArdle, Kelli O'Hara, and Annelise van der Pol. As I typed that I felt like I was the announcer that lists the performers in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But anyways, that's not even everyone they've gotten on the show. Some of them are portraying characters, others play exaggerated] versions of themselves, and some make quick cameo appearances. And I am rambling on about this topic. On to the next obsession.

Bones. For years a few of my closest friends have been utterly obsessed with this show. Being in their presence has required me to watch a few episodes here and there, and when I found out that the entire series was available on NetflixInstant I decided to watch from the beginning. I'm hooked. Completely 100% hooked. And after doing some researching/stalking, I discovered that the majority of the principal cast has a training or background in musical theatre. This kind of made my life.

What I really like about Bones is that it is an extremely intelligent show. And I like the characters a lot. But the show is like a cross between a doctor show and a cop show, so it takes all the adventurous aspects of a murder mystery and pairs them with the science of a show like House. I love House also but I don't have to get into that now. Anyway, I love Bones so much and I'm bothering everyone because I talk about it so much

My last "B" oriented obsession is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury starts with a B, in case you didn't catch that. So basically, I can't explain many of the principles of the book, because my words will not do Mr. Bradbury's any justice. But I just felt so weird after I finished the book, because when I went to put it back on my shelf I realized that this extremely small (only 189 pages in my edition) book was surrounded by a lot of books of a significantly greater size. But this difference is, this book is so much larger in meaning. And that was my tacky philosophical like bit for today.

Happy birthday to the fantastic, multi-Tony-Award-winner, Mr. Richard Rogers, the equally as fantastic but more hilarious Mel Brooks, the wonderful Kathy Bates, the amazing John Cusack, and the adorable Kellie Pickler. I'm into adjectives today.

I hope you've enjoyed reading about my obsessions as much as I enjoyed writing about them. You probably didn't, but then again they're my obsessions.

6/22/10

2010-06-23T00:02:00.001-07:00

Today, for the first time this year, it felt like summer.And I hate to say it, but the only reason is because I was taking pleasure in the misfortunes of my friends.
I know that sounds bad. But the only reason this is true is because today, for the second time this summer, I went to the beach. However, this time I went with my friend Lyla while the majority of my other close friends were sitting in a class room enjoying their first day of summer school. No, my friends aren't stupid, they're taking summer courses. I was planning on taking one with them but there was a change of plans. So, due to this twist of fate, I was lying on the beach completely relaxed while my friends were diligently studying, or something along those lines.

And the weird part is, I don't really like the beach. I don't like sand. Or salt water. Or the sun. Or unnecessary human interaction.

Just kidding, unnecessary human interaction isn't a problem. But I do like school. I like books and I like learning about things I care about (a.k.a. not science). I like good teachers (a.k.a. not my science teacher) and I like having something to do every single day. Short term goals are the best!

But it took a whole week of summer vacation for me to realize these things. I will admit that in freshman year I kind of failed at the whole self motivation thing. I was satisfied by a solid B, and once I got there I stopped trying because I knew my grade wouldn't move. But I feel like I can really work harder next year. I'm taking a break from science and I can really focus on the areas that hold my interest, English and history. And I have to do math, but math isn't really that bad. At least it makes sense.

In addition I also have all my performing stuff, Hebrew High, and Friendship Circle. So maybe next year will be better. Just by detracting one negative aspect of my life I could change a lot. And I like that idea.

But for now I don't want to think about going back. Even though right now I kind of want too (especially since my school district postponed the first day of school to September 1, the same day Hogwarts starts school), I know that once I get there I'll live for breaks. Once the school year starts, I'll try to remember the feeling I have right now.

Today I wish to honor a very special man. Today is Joseph Papp's birthday. I can honestly say if Joe Papp hadn't revolutionized the Broadway stage, I would probably be really depressed. Considering I wouldn't have my A Chorus Line and HAIR soundtracks to listen (and belt) to on a day to day basis, my life would be empty. When I first got my ACL soundtrack I listened to it six times straight. I recall doing the same with HAIR. Sorry about my obsessive rant.

In addition, it is Meryl Streep's birthday. Otherwise known as the greatest actress who ever lived. Enough said.

Cyndi Lauper was also born today. She's pretty cool.

And Freddie Prinze. He was in the live action Scooby-Doo movies.

Oh, Erin Brocovich was born today too. I saw the movie of her life once.

There's also Dan Brown. I see his books on the shelves of Barnes and Nobles.

Now it's time for bed. It's been nice chatting with you!

6/18/10

2010-06-18T22:52:00.000-07:00

It's been over a month since I've last written. Fortunately, now school is out for summer. I wish I could say school was out forever (tacky song reference). But unfortunately, I have three more years in the corrupt public school system.

So far summer has been exactly as summer should be. I've been to the beach, had a sleepover on a week night, been to the movies, and used grammatically incorrect sentence structure in every day conversation. But there is a storm cloud drifting over my bright summer days. The looming presence of the dreaded summer assignments.

See, I'm taking three honors classes next year. I was going to take an additional regular class but due to lack of monetary income in the family I had to re-prioritize. So I guess dropping science is a new way of saving money. Well technically I didn't have to drop a science. I could have dropped a performing arts class. But honestly, I would much rather develop my right brained, performing aspects and become an all together happier and more confident individual then take a chemistry class with a bunch of juniors and learn about elements and that stuff.

So for the rest of the summer I am pretty much planless except for summer homework and working diligently with Sammy and Sydney on the musical. Considering the majority of my friends are abandoning me in suburbia for vacations to far off lands, I'll probably write a lot. I'll take the opportunity to comment on everything trivial in a quite cynical manner. I'm excited.

Happy birthday to Roger Ebert and SIR Paul McCartney.

P.S. Toy Story 3 was absolutely brilliant. I cried twice. Go see it now. Drop everything, get off your butt, and see this movie. That is all.

5/17/10

2010-05-17T20:26:00.000-07:00

Today, STAR testing came to it's unfortunate but inevitable end. Tomorrow it's back to the old grind, staying at school until 3:00 each day and going to all my regular classes... *dramatic sigh*

In addition it's going to rain tomorrow. In the middle of May in SoCal it is going to rain. And it was freezing today (yes 68 degrees is freezing), but in true Californian fashion I wore a skirt and my new sandals anyway. Maybe if I refuse to believe that the weather is taking a turn for the worst, it won't. Like fairies. If you don't believe in them, they die.

Currently, I have an urge to watch both Juno and Zoolander due to their respective incredibly catchy soundtracks. They're both really good movies too.

That was my short spaz for the day. Happy birthday to Howard Ashman, Bob Saget, Craig Ferguson, Tahj Mowry, Nikki Reed, Daniel Curtis Lee, and my friend Sierra! May is just chock full of birthdays isn't it?

Now go clap if you believe in fairies and enjoy an orange mocha frappuchino.

5/10/10

2010-05-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

Well today was my AP bio test. My father had to wake me up at 6:00 in the morning so I could get ready for my ride to pick me up at 7:00 so I could get to school and start taking my test at 7:30 and finish around 12:00. So when the test was over I called my mom and left school. I was done for the day.

Technically, I'm not supposed to discuss the multiple choice portion of the test with anyone at any time for any reason. Ha ha, right. And I'm not supposed to discuss the essays for at least 48 hours. Once again: ha ha, right. Just so you know, I wrote the best essay ever written. And by best I mean wittiest. And by wittiest I mean... well, you'll see in 48 hours. I'm afraid if someone reads this and I've written my answer and a person from the test finds out I will have "compromised my test score."

All in all, I'm just really glad this test is over and I'm one day closer to spring break the sequel/summer. This test was the cause of so much stress and multiple mental breakdowns. And now I'm almost completely worry free. Starting Thursday I have STAR tests (they're these stupid standardized tests mandated by the state 2nd-11th graders in California have to take) which are SO easy, plus I get to get out of school early.

OH I FORGOT TO TELL YOU GUYS!

I'm getting inducted into the International Thespian Society. I'm so excited it's ridiculous. At my school they make a really big deal about the inductions and it's all top secret, but all my friends who are already part of the troupe keep saying weird things like, "You need to let us know if you're allergic to any animal hair or foods," and, "Unless you're extremely comfortable with your body, I suggest you wear a bathing suit under your clothes," and, "Make sure to get a haircut afterwards." So I'm scared, but I'm really excited to. It's a right of passage.

Because today's almost over, May is going to be a really good month. Every year May is extremely busy and somewhat stressful, but now that the stress is over I just get to do all sorts of fun activities.

Happy birthday to Fred Astaire, Bono, Kenan Thompson, and last but most definitely not least, my daddy!

OK now I have to go to Hebrew High. BYE.

5/5/10

2010-05-05T23:05:00.001-07:00

There come's a point in every school year where it is no longer about learning, but about torture.

Yes my friends, testing season has begun. Tomorrow is my geometry final, even though school isn't over for over a month. I also have a biology test tomorrow. Monday is my AP biology exam. And then there's STAR testing. The tests just continue from there.

I have seven questions left to practice with for my geometry final. I'm in a much sorrier state for my biology tests, but I'm always in a sorry state for my biology tests. At least I have an 85% in the class and my AP exam doesn't count towards anything. (nonetheless my stress level is exceedingly high)

Fortunatley, I still have Friends. I also have friends, but they don't help me stay awake at night while I study my brains out. Speaking of staying awake, people (namely my parental guardians) have expressed their feelings towards my sleep habits, mostly using the word "unhealthy" to describe them. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do. If I sleep, when will I get anything done? And trust me, I enjoy sleeping. But everyone has to make sacrifices. We're in a recession.

Speaking of a recession, I'm probably alive in the worst generation to be a teenager ever. We're being completley cheated in our education. And everything costs a lot of money. And I like stuff that costs money. Haha... I'm really spoiled. But that's ok. At least I don't think I'm deprived like I did when I was little. I do get a weekly allowance that I spend on things.

I just wish I babysat more often. No one hires me for anything anymore. And chances are when someone asks I'm busy. But I'm a really GOOD babysitter. I'm not registered or anything but I'm not stupid. I can deal with a couple kids for a few hours. Plus kids just really like me.

This post is making no sense whatsoever. I'm really tired and I have a ton of work to do. This, my friends, is called procrastination.

I'd like to learn how to ride a bike. That was just one of those things I never got to in my childhood, and I don't have a care, so I would really like it if I could have a mode of transportation that's not only good excersize but also good for the environment.

DUDE I just had to restart this computer because it randomly turned itself off. The warnatee on this better be valid because it keeps acting stupid.

By the way, I'm kind of addicted to WebMD.com. BEST WEBSITE EVER.

Happy birthday Nellie Bly and Adele. Yeah.

4/26/10

2010-04-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

It's 11:56 P.M. and I'm supposed to be finishing my thematic essay on Cold Sassy Tree. A book I never read. But I'm about 25% of the way done and having trouble finding the quote I want to analyze, even though I know it's in this 391 page book of stupidity somewhere. Well, according to SparkNotes. I didn't exactly read the book.

And I always read the book! I've read some pretty awful books in my time, but this book is in a league of it's own in terrible. So don't judge. Anyways, I was hoping to get my creative juices flowing by writing in this completely rule free world known as my blog. And my dad told me I should write more often. So on to my muse of the day.

I have this habit of comparing things to works of fiction I enjoy. It's just how I make sense of things. I don't think this is going to make any sense unless I can think of a good example,without pulling one from my personal life. But you see, this year I've had so many eerie parallels with a certain book series about a wizard who defeats the Dark Lord as a baby. The problem is when certain people and events just don't fit, and my brain has no where to go. What I realized today, is that different facets of my life parallel different books. Not everyone lives in the same novel.

It's like a birthday card my friend K.C. made me! Oh, it was so clever. It had all these different references to fiction and how they fit into my dream life. Why didn't I think of that before? It would have made the realization about the multiple different books occur so much earlier.

Onto a new topic. Today a young woman came to my biology class and did a presentation on butterfly conservation. I almost cried. I can't stand butterflies. They're hideous creatures masked by the illusion of beautifully patterned wings. It's all a lie, I tell you!

I think if any psychologist were to read over this blog entry they would think there was something seriously wrong with me. I'm rather scatterbrained right now. Analytic essays do that to me. This kind of writing is much better for me.

I just thought of Guys and Dolls because I somehow made it from scatterbrained to that musical in a matter of seconds. Point proven.

So this entry has been a peak into my frazzled mind as I attempt at structured writing.

Happy day of baptism to a favorite playwright of mine, William Shakespeare. You get your own paragraph cause you're that awesome.

Happy BIRTHday to Carol Burnett, Channing Tatum, and a couple other people I'm not sure if I've heard of or not.

Today is also possibly Muhammed's birthday. Yes, THAT Muhammed.

4/21/10

2010-04-21T22:37:00.000-07:00

I noticed that I eat all my foods right to left. But I brush my teeth left to right.

Anyways my point is I'm giving up my Sunday rule. I'm just going to blog when ever I want because sometimes I don't want to blog on a Sunday and then I wait until next Sunday and it's just too confusing.

I have a feeling this post is going to be completely random and nonsensical because I don't have much to talk about. Prepare for a ramble!

I feel like this blog has no point anymore and no longer has a universal appeal. It used to be random thoughts that occurred to me and now it's me droning on and on about stuff that happens to me. That's why I started this post with a random tidbit, because I feel I lack some of that old spark. I know it's there... somewhere. (cue dramatic montage and search for spark)

Oh by the way... I went to New York two weeks ago. It was kind of the most amazing trip of my life. I kept having weird interactions with people though. In Greenwich I saw a guy hand feeding squirrels. I mean, if you didn't love the city already that has to give you a reason right there.

My friends and I had such an amazing time on this trip and I don't want to go into all the details and bore you guys like I would have on my previous posts. But to keep it simple, I went all over the Manhattan and saw four amazing shows (Next to Normal, Hair, Billy Elliot, and Lend Me a Tenor) and I just felt so at home. I want to go back. Now. Right now. Yeah.

Maybe I'll do another post later on a more in depth look into my New York experience. Yeah I think I'll do that.

For lack of a better conversation piece, I miss spring break. And guess what! Due to the sorry state of the California public school system, I get another one in the end of May! My school can't afford, well, anything, so to save money we are cutting an entire week out of the year. And losing a week of valued education. Believe me, I'm excited for a well deserved break, but I know it is really unnecessary and it's not going to help me pass my finals. Yes, I am that kind of student.

Sorry to end on a negative note, but I'm tired.

Happy birthday Jack Nicholson, John Waters, and Eric Mabius. By the way, it was Gavin Creel's birthday on Sunday. Celebrate. NOW.

3/21/10

2010-03-21T23:14:00.000-07:00

So I had another amazing weekend. I've found the week is terrible and Sunday nights through Friday afternoons are absolutely miserable and school just makes me go into a bought of depression and just want my life in high school to be over. But weekends have the good stuff.

Friday was... dun duh duh duh.... K.C.'s BIRTHDAY!!!!!! K.C. is one of my closest friends and her birthday was definitely a cause for celebration. We had a fantastic time being absolutely crazy and commemorating the anniversary of K.C.'s birth.

In addition, Friday was the spring pep rally where I exhibited no pep and rather chose to read a book. The best part of the pep rally was when they introduced the spring season's sport teams and they each did a little routine. Some were just stupid dancing but a select few teams got really creative. My two favorites were the lacrosse and track and field teams. The lacrosse team came out to the Harry Potter theme song ("Hedwig's Theme") with their lacrosse sticks in between their legs like brooms. I know, that's about a cool as it gets, but the track team I think beat them. They ran out to the Rocky theme song and started sword fighting with their batons until only one player was standing. As he celebrated a team member ran in with the pole vaulting stick thing and stabbed him and won. It was pretty hysterical.

Another random event of Friday was a little game Sophie and I decided to play where we thought of as many phrases as possible where the first word started with p and the second started with r. Some of my favorite phrases include platonic relationships, purity rings, purchasing remembralls, portraying Remus Lupin, placating rascals, picking roses, puking raspberries, among others.

Saturday night was my school's vice versa dance. I was going with my friends Sydney, Sammy, and CiCi so I headed to Sydney's house to get ready around six. I put my dress on and asked my friends to help zip me up. Long story short, the zipper ripped and it was nothing my mom could fix, so I had to drive back to my house and get a new selection of already worn dresses to wear. It was really disappointing because the new dress I bought was really pretty. I liked it a lot. And because of the mishap we didn't have time to go out to dinner and ended up ordering a pizza.

My comments on the dance are simply that it was way better then homecoming. If you want to know my opinion on that, I have written about it in a prevous blog entry. It was just a more low key, less crowded, better dance. And 10X less awkward, that's for sure!

After the dance we headed to Sammy's where we watched The Lovely Bones, which Sammy slept through, CiCi loved, and Sydney and I thought was not very good. It wasn't very good, it wasn't even that creepy. It had moments though, it wasn't an all together terrible movie. I just didn't really like it. I might have liked it better if Sydney and I weren't making fun of every word that came out of the actors' mouths and referring to the villain Mr. Harvey as Stanley Tucci (who did deserve his Osca nom for the part, he's amazing). But it was fun. Afterwards CiCi fell asleep and Sydney and I watched Every Little Step (my 3rd time seeing it) and it was amazing, as always.

This morning we went to this adorable restaurant right on the beach and had a delicious breakfast and took gorgeous pictures. I felt so Californian, eating breakfast on the beach in the middle of March. I'm not a beach person, but I've come to appreciate it. I still hate the ocean and won't go in it, but I love the fact that I can say that I have the beach and I can go there often. It's better then being land locked. And I always have fun at the beach, just not in the ocean. It's the ocean that's the problem.

After breakfast I went to a walk-a-thon that raised money for special needs children and it was pretty cool. There was an African acrobats show, and I came to the conclusion that Chinese acrobats are a lot more impressive then African acrobats. Sorry, guys, but I'd rather see a contortionist balance candles and other delicate items on every surface of her skin available and twist into unrecognizable positions than see six men jump rope, limbo, and do gymnastics. Just saying.

After this fun fundraiser I was forced against my will to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid which was a terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE movie. I mean, it was Canadian, and although most Canadian things are awesome, their movies are far from it. But even I, a 14 year old girl who although is extremely interested in film and loves movies to death, but none the less is still a 14 year old girl, was sitting there mentally noting the terrible camera angles used, the on-the-nose costumes, and poorly delivered lines. The best performance was by Chloe Grace Moretz as Angie, the 7th grade girl with unique views on middle school life. Otherwise the movie was just not enjoyable whatsoever.

Happy birthday on March 21st to Johann Sebastian Bach, Florenz Ziegfeld, Sabrina Le Beauf, Gary Oldman, Rosie O'Donnell, and my very dear friend NATALIE!

Time to face the week ahead of my and seven more inevitable nights of insomnia. So long my friends!

3/14/10

2010-03-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

So I never posted anything for last Sunday. What ever.

In other news, I have kind of had one of those really amazing weekends. I didn't have any homework for some reason (which means I'm going to have a mountain of it next weekend from every single class) so I've been pretty stress free and able to do basically what ever I've wanted to.

Friday after school I went to Sydney's house with Sammy and Ashley in order to work on our musical. We walked over to a Mexican restaurants and a Starbucks where we made a lot of decisions on our plot. I'm not going to give away any spoilers though, so you will just all have to come and see it. After our outings we went back to Syd's and had a wonderful Shabbat dinner. And then (as all real Jews do) we got our eyebrows waxed. All in all, a very fun day.

On Saturday I had to wake up bright and early to go to an all day choir festival that was being held at a local Christian private school. I felt a little but awkward surrounded by various crosses, quotes from the New Testament, and pictures of Jesus, but otherwise it was a very fun day. In the morning we had two clinics with very energetic and helpful clinicians and then a sight singing workshop that was indeed very helpful. After that we had lunch and then changed into our choir outfits (grim reaper gowns with short sleeves and inseams) so that we would look presentable for our afternoon concert, where we performed for all the other schools there and they performed for us. Then we heard an adult (very good) choir perform and their director taught everyone there two songs that all the high school choirs and the adult choir performed together and then we went home.

When I came home my mommy took me to see Alice in Wonderland which really wasn't a very good movie when you get right down to it. It was Narnia with different characters. Weirder characters with poor development. I did think it was visually beautiful with excellent costumes and sets though. I really just wanted to play dress up with the costumes. They were so pretty. SO when I came home I was talking to Arielle and we decided to use Paint to make a collages of fashion inspiration, and I decided mine was going to be all in black and white. I put in pictures of Coco Chanel, Audrey Hepburn, saddle shoes, high-button shoes, '40s bathing suits, Tiffany & Co stuff, and Rita Hayworth. It was pretty poorly made though considering I have no artistic ability.

Now on to today, Sunday, March 14th, PI DAY! The day kicked off with a Pi Day Pie Party at the park across the street from my house with Nicki, Sarah, Ethan, and Etta. The party consisted of us eating pie and throwing it in each other's faces. I had to take a shower to get all the pie off my face and out of my hair. But it was SO worth it. After that I was with Sammy, Sydney, and Ashley again as we all dressed in our nicest black and white clothes before we went to see our friend Michael in Seussical the Musical, the most successful Broadway flop ever.

The fact is, Seussical is not a good show, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

*24 HOURS LATER*

So anyways after we saw Seussical, Sammy, Sydney, Ashley, Michael, my new friend Alex and I went out to dinner at Islands. I haven't been to Islands for eight years because my sister and I got food poisoning there. But I went back and I'm glad I did because the six of us had quite a lot of fun.

*MORE THEN 24 HOURS AFTER THAT*

I'm done trying to make this make sense. I hope you had fun reading.

3/7/10

2010-03-08T00:36:00.001-08:00

I wrote a post for today, but in the end I decided it was too personal. I'll write a more humorous piece and post it later this week.

For now, happy birthday to Michael Eisner and Wanda Sykes.