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

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.

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.

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.

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?)

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...

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

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.