Blog365: Day 120

Whoot! My stupid freakin' cold is finally over, and I'm going back to school tomorrow. I thought it was very cool that my social studies teacher trusted me enough to take my big 2-chapter test at home. (In case you're reading this, Mr. Mullins, thanks! I didn't cheat.)

I was able to finish most of my Photoshop project, and have written the rough draft of the dreaded free-verse poem for Language Arts. Usually, I'd raise a little chaos to be allowed to turn in a rhyming one, but my free verse isn't half bad, so I'll just let it be.

Blog365: Day 119

All right, so I didn't suck it through today. I wound up feeling like uber-crap about halfway through frist period, and had to call home. I'm not 100% sure if I'm going tomorrow, but I do know I'm going Thursday. It's my band concert, and I really need to practice with the band at least once before.

Blog365: Day 118

I was home sick today, and you know what that means? (What?) I'm going to have to make up THREE tests tomorrow, along with a lot of other stuff! I'm still not feeling that great, but I'm probably going to force myself to go unless I get a sudden case of hypothermia in the middle of the night.

I spent most of the day doing geek-related things I enjoy: watching Lord of the Rings, spending way too much time on the computer, and writing a bit. All right, so writing isn't geeky, but it sounds better than "Mostly geeky things with one non-geek activity".

I finished chapter one of my book, and so far, I've got about 2700 words written, give or take a few. I also have the prologue done, which isn't nearly as long as the chapters will be/are. Because it's short enough and I have nothing else, I'll post it:

People must have thought I was crazy.

In fact, I probably was. What would a “properly raised” Jewish girl from Russia like myself want to do with someone as harsh, cold, and possibly dangerous as him? Him refers to the street boy who lived about five blocks from my tenement. He had mysterious scars running up and down his arms, untamed and wild brown hair, and gray eyes that were both shallow and deep---for separate reasons, of course. Chances that he was Jewish himself were slim, yet chances that he followed any religion were slimmer.

Yet, despite all that, there was a simple answer to my madness: jealousy. He had everything I had ever wanted. He had freedom, independence, and seemed fearless. He had no rules to follow, nor did he have anyone to obey. He was simply controlled by himself, a power I had wanted for as long as I could remember.

To think that all those predictions turned out to be incredibly wrong. Mama always said that I was quick to make assumptions, and I guess she was right. I, Temira Degan, was completely wrong about the person I had figured lived perfectly. During one agonizing year, I learned about his scars. He turned out to not have all the luxuries I figured living alone brought. In fact, he didn’t even live on his own. I learned that along with many other incredible and horrid truths in the year of 1916. Some of those truths weren’t even about the boy (Who’s name I also discovered: Mikhail Melor, Mischa for short), but were simply about human life.

I learned that neither the Tsar nor the Romanov line would last forever, and would one day fall. On the other hand, I saw that when something falls, something else must take its place. The Soviet Union, lead by a mix of Marxists and Communists, sprang up in the place of my beloved Russia.

Most importantly, I discovered that life goes on, whether you’re ready or not. That’s just part of growing up: facing the world no matter what.

(It's in its awkward early phase, and I really need to do some historical accuracy-checking. Otherwise, I don't think it's that bad.)

Sick Sunday

I've been sick all day, and will probably be so tomorrow. I took it easy today, mostly spending it on the computer (As usual).

However, I also finished another character piece. I present to you Kiara, Gal's girlfriend:

Blog365: Day 116

Today was rather average: cleaning the house, walking the dog, getting sick, etc.

Seriously: I think I inhaled too many chemicals while cleaning the bathroom, because I feel like absolute crap. I've spent the majority of the day either drawing or on the computer, as there hasn't been much of anything else to do. I did some more Youtube surfing, and that's about it. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a bit more interesting.

Christmas in April

I was bored today, so I wound up searching Youtube. Neil Cicierega has always been one of my favorite video directors (As the creator of Potter Puppet Pals), so I decided to check out some of his non-Harry Potter movies.

They were all funny, but one that really caught me was "Neil Saves Christmas". It's by far the funniest Christmas video I've ever seen, and I think it might even overpower Frosty the Snowman:

Part one:



Part two:

Mike Todd

As you know, Mike dressed up as Beethoven the other day. Here's one of the pictures:



Although he does look an awful lot like dear old Ludwig Van, I thought that with a bit of tweaking, he could look like Johnny Depp's Sweeney Todd:



Boredom and curiousity set in, and soon I found myself in Photoshop. Today, my masterpiece was finished. Presenting Mike Todd, the Demon Barber of Fort Knox:

Bassooning Beethoven

Two-meaning title.

Part one: Something I typically never do; spend the entire afternoon bassooning! I printed out the music to "Sorcerer's Apprentice" and have been all over that. I've also been looking at my two pieces of concert music and plan on asking my band teacher for the other two tomorrow. We're doing a concert a Six flags later in May, and although I can't play bassoon in the school concert (Which is six pieces to learn on seven days) I might be able to to KY Kingdom. That's about three weeks away, and I only have four pieces to learn, two of which I'm working on. Not to mention the fact that I will have a few bassoon lessons between now and then.

Part two: What can I say? Mike is Beethoven:



Sadly, not all things went well for him. Here he is having Composer's Angst:

Bassoon Lessoon

Today was yet another bassoon lesson (Commonly referred to as the 'bassoon lessoon'). We did our usual stuff: did a bit in the method book, mostly worked on tone quality and getting the certain notes out. Towards the end, I asked my teacher what 9-8 time even was, as it was coming up on the next page. He explained rather well, and came up with an example: "The Sorcerer's Apprentice":



As he hummed a few measures, I was sort of in shock: THAT'S the song I heard in fifth grade. I had gone all this time thinking it was "The Heffalump Song", when in reality, it wasn't. He assured that "Sorcerer's Apprentice" is a very common bassoon song, so that probably is what I heard.

Now I know the actual title for the song that I want to play. On to 8 Notes!

Not a place-holder

I've noticed that sometimes, I have to post things that hardly even count as posts. Look at January alone:

Real-posts-tomorrow's: 2
Youtube videos: 10

Well, there are fewer than I thought in January, and some of those videos actually have content. Then again, most of those videos are also not working anymore...

I think that I might go back and actually add something to those posts. I hardly think that "Real post tomorrow" should count as a post...even if I AM guilty of writing them.

I think I might have a lot of LOLcats, too, come to think of it...

Blog365: Day 110

My weekend has been filled with odds and ends. How about yours?

Take yesterday for example. I was talking with Ally on the phone, and we decided we wanted to three-way with Maya. I called Maya on the other line, but alas, she wasn't there. I left a message, went back over to the other line, and continued the conversation.

Imagine my shock when Maya calls back an hour later, saying stuff that Ally and I talked about in our conversation that Maya missed. I told her how deja vu she was being when she broke the news: her answering machine had RECORDED our entire call! She listened to the whole thing! (Thankfully, nobody said anything mean or anything, so it was just a harmless lesson learned: hang up, and then re-call.)

Readers of my mom's blog might know how she's obsessed with the robin nest on our back porch. In fact, she's apparently turned so obsessed, she's gone out and bought a WEB CAM to set up in the backyard to WATCH THE BIRDS 24/7.

Keep in mind that she won't let me use a web cam. Oh, no, I would IM someone weird and then they would be able to track down my address and kill me. She also has signs on the door on both sides requesting, "Please don't disturb the bird!" However, she uses a web cam to SPY on the birds, and if it doesn't work, plans to RETURN THE EQUIPMENT. Therefore, I am very jealous and slightly annoyed that she wants to create the next Pigeon-Kam.

Happy National Orlando Bloom Day!

Ally has decided that we are in need of yet ANOTHER holiday this month, so she and her cousin came up with National Orlando Bloom Day. I suppose it's celebrated about the same way National Johnny Depp Day is: watching Orlando Bloom movies. I've been itching to watch the third Lord of the Rings for some time now, so I'm probably going to be doing that tonight.



Happy Orlando Bloom Day, people...



...but Johnny Depp is still cooler.

Blog365: Day 108

This morning sort of sucked. First, my brother keeps his alarm clock on the heavy metal channel. He also sets it for 5 AM. Imagine my luck as I hear "Job for a Cowboy" or one of those screamo bands he likes blaring in my ear. His door was
OPEN, and apparently he liked the song it was playing. It took several minutes to get it to shut up.

Fast forward 30 minutes. 5:33-ish, I start feeling this weird rattling feeling. First, I think it's my dad sicking Ginger on me. I pulled the covers over my head, mad about the cruel joke. I slowly came to my senses when I realized that my 13-pound dog can't shake the house, so it couldn't be her.

Turns out, it was a 5.4 earthquake: first in Kentucky since 1968! When I told Maya, she was flipping out, asking how scary it was. I told her it wasn't. I was mainly ticked off that I was robbed of 20 minutes of sleep.

Besides that, my day has sort of been like a snowball. It's taken and left good and bad, but right now, I'm just really tired. My day ended on a rather sour note (Long story made short, after and audition, I usually feel really ticked off and consider pulling the plug on the whole theatre deal), so I'll just save my enlightening post about how great the weekend is for tomorrow.

This may become a record...

Today we STILL didn't have homework. Seriously. I've never had no homework this long, but I love it. Of course, I'm going to have to bring home my social studies book tomorrow so I can do my map, but I do that just about every weekend. As long as I don't have anything in literature, science, math, language arts (Then again, there probably will be. My class is SO behind in Animal Farm), I won't have anything besides a map of central Africa.

My mural was turned in today. I found out that colored pencils go on basically every surface, so I wound up coloring about half the surfboard I had to make. It was about sentences and punctuation, to be exact. I wound up using my inner tattoo-artist and coming up with a funky design including stripes, spikes, and flames. The title I gave it? "Punk-tuation".

I had my first day of website-working-on in Computer Aps today. I would have probably gotten more done if my friend Kathy wasn't staring over my shoulder at the marvelous HTML code as I edited pages. However, I got about half a page finished, and it was a LONG page! I think at this rate, I'll be able to finish my site by the end of May. Hooray!

Mini-Wave!

I don't know, but for some reason, this is the third consecutive day that I haven't had homework. I'm not complaining at all, no. It's just weird: before this week, I think I've had about 6 days this year of no homework. Weird, but cool.

Considering my lack of homework (And the lack of Internet---it came back on around 6 or so), I decided to work on my website a bit. I actually got a fair bit accomplished: 18 pages text edited, 6 more. Then I just need to put everything in one order, make sure all the picture/poll choices are right, fill in page anchor links, and give it one last look over.

The purpose of it is still a secret, even though I'm sure half the people who read my blog know what it is. I'm hoping to put it up by the end of May, nevertheless. I don't need to do any more reformatting (I think---maybe just making sure all the div alignments are the same), and besides that, it's really just simple HTML.

Best yet, my Computer Aps teacher is letting me work on it if I have free time. (We usually have about a week to finish assignments, more or less. I tend to finish mine by Tuesday, Wednsday, or Thursday. Then I resort to playing/losing Solitare at the end of the day.)

Whoot whoot!

RIP Gal

On my roleplay site, I've recently been playing a messed-up, perverted gang leader named Gallagher. He usually went by Gal, as it was easier to type and didn't sound as Boarding-School-Preppy as Gallagher did. He was a ton of fun to type, and it was fun to read all the comments about him, most of them simply saying, "Oh, no he didn't!" (Gal was rather unpredictable)

However, all "good" (or at least fun) things must come to an end. Yesterday, to complete a scene, I gave Ally permission to sort of "do Gal in". It was a rather good scene in the end, and it wouldn't be the same if Gal lived.



So long, Gal. Gross and perverted as you were, we're all going to miss you at least a little bit.

Blog365: Day 104

Who DOESN'T feel like this on a Monday morning?

I certainly do. I couldn't get to sleep last night, so I probably got a total of 6 hours. Not to mention that I have a science test and 2 things after school today...and bassoon practice for my lesson tomorrow. (I was half tempted to write "lessoon".)

But anyway, hopefully I'll get my "8 hours" tonight. Hopefully.

Blog365: Day 103

First of all: holy crap, I've survived over 100 days of Blog365?

Second of all: 150th post! This is really picking up from the 40-something posts I had before I joined this insanity...

But otherwise, National Johnny Depp Day turned out well. I wasn't able to participate much, but the day before I watched Edward Scissorhands, and tonight I might watch Sweeney Todd. Johnny Depp is cool enough to be celebrated any time of the year.

But for my actual post, let me get one thing straight: I usually don't like stereotypical 'boy bands'. That doesn't include bands like Green Day, Good Charlotte, and Fall Out Boy, in which all members are guys. I mean more like bands/people like Jesse McCartney, Backstreet Boys, and *Shudder* Jonas Brothers.

Recently, though, I've found an exception for that rule. There's a new, rising band in Orlando called "Heartbeat Boys". Karen told me about them, and when I heard the title, I sort of groaned. Still, I went along with her rants and raves about how awesome they were.

Finally, she convinced me to listen to some of their music. I decided that, yes, this definitely IS a boy band that writes a lot of preppy teen romance songs, but they were GOOD preppy teen romance songs. I officially became a fan when I looked at some of their pictures and decided that Emile is downright HOT. He's the one wearing the black hat on the far left:



If only I were still in Florida, I'd be able to see them this coming Saturday...

I was IMing Karen today, and we would up creating a storm with Sweeney Todd parodies about Emile and I (Fellow fangirls know what this is like). We both 'remade' "Johanna", I did "Poor Thing", but she did the real jewel: "Kiss Me".

Remodeling

I've spent the afternoon sprucing up my computer. I started with clearing out some of the junk folders that haven't been opened in who knows how long, which seems to be speeding things up a bit. Once that was done (Or at least as done as I could make it on my own), I decided to change the physical look.

I changed the account name from "Bonnie" to "Alicebelle" (Long story. New nickname given to me by Maya) to start. Then, I changed the icon from a boring chess piece to this:



Still, something seemed to be missing. I figured it was the background, as it hadn't been changed since Summer 2006. I thought this gave it a newer, fresher look:

Mark Your Calendars!

Ally and I have decided that tomorrow is unofficially National Johnny Depp Day! We've recently become Johnny Depp/Tim Burton geeks, so we wanted some day to honor the awesome that is Johnny.

Chances are, festivites include watching movies and not doing much of anything else. Sounds like a good enough holiday for me.

However, I'm doing most of my Depp watching tonight. I have Sweeney Todd and Edward Scissorhands lined up for watching, and chances are I'll be up until midnight or later. I'll keep it quiet.

Slightly off schedule...

...but tomorrow's Friday, so who cares?

I accidently left my science homework at Kari's house (Oops!), and unless she brings it tomorrow, I'm going to have to ask for another copy of the packet to finished between homeroom and 4th period. Of course, I also have recess...but still. Kari, if you're reading this, please bring my science packet to school!

Besides that, I had 1 math problem to do, as well as a little bit of a map. I wasn't able to hit the math problem, but it'll take me about 1 minute at max with a calculator in homeroom, so that's not a problem. I know my 5 vocabulary words, so I'll be good on the test. Other than that, there was no other homework. Whoot!

I was also able to bring out the unicycle for about 10 minutes tonight. It had a flat tire, so it didn't work very well, but it was nice to get back on. It'll probably work better with some air.

I just got off the phone with Maya, telling me yet another memoir-worthy story about what happened in her school. The way she voices everyone and gets every detail perfect, you'd think it was Meg Cabot telling about her middle school career.

However, that was my boring day. I am a bit off schedule (To bed at 10 again), but tomorrow is Friday. It'll be a lot easier to suck it out for 8 hours knowing I won't be going back for at least 42 hours. (In my world, money doesn't make the world go around----weekends do.)

Mini-Wave in celebration of me!

I actually got my homework done before 9! Heck, I actually STARTED my homework before 9, which is a vast improvement. I also didn't just do homework all day. I did a lot of other stuff, too: role playing, drawing, guitaring, piano-ing, watching Anastasia, and, now, blogging!

Now that I think about it, I still do have to practice oboe. Still, it's only 8:15, so I can practice 15 minutes, get my bag packed, clean my room, and still be in bed by 9:15 at latest. SCORE!

Feeling Artsy

I've recently been interested in drawing. I've started with some basic drawings, characters from the wolf roleplay I'm on. Here's a not-very-good drawing of my wolf, Hahnee, that I did without a guide (Bad mistake):



I did one of Maya's characters with a guide. It turned out a bit better:



Finally, we had to do oil pastels of an animal in art. I found the perfect picture for a guide, and then drew my first character and yet another one of Maya's characters: Hahnee & Miakoda:



Once I was finished with wolves, I moved onto humans. With my 1900's roleplay, I have a lot of characters to choose from. To start with, I did a basic sketch of Mischa and Gwen, a character of mine and a character of Ally's:



Finally, last night I got serious. I recently joined as a new character, Gal. He's this really gross and *slightly* perverted guy who is actually a ton of fun to write. I had a very clear picture of dear Galhagger in my mind, and I think I portrayed him well on paper:



I think I'm improving. I want to be able to do pen sketches, but I don't think I'm ready for those yet. For now, I'll just work on shading and proportions. My next 'victim': Danika Elya, my very flirtatious (and slightly stubborn) character.

We're back!

We made it back to Fort Knox about 6:45 tonight, and it's incredible to think it's already 20 till 10. Time seems to go by so quickly now. ("Time goes quickly, see now its past!")

I'm running around trying to get ready to wake up at 6 tomorrow. I'm about to check my board and find my sheet music, pack my bag, then off to bed! I'll try and do a real post tomorrow.

Heading back to Fortress Knox

We're about to head out on our 16-hour, 2-day trip back to Kentucky. I'm the furthest thing from excited, but I hope we can come back in the summer.

Considering absolutely nothing exciting has happened or will happen, here's a video of a song that reminds me of a certain roleplay character:

Back from Karen Kastle

Well, today is our last day in Florida. At around 4, my mom picked me up from Karen's house. It was strange---3 days straight with each other, and we weren't sick of each other! We had a lot of fun hanging out together, and can't wait for summer to come.

We went to the mall on Friday afternoon. We had about an hour before lunch, and we were by ourselves, so we went out by ourselves. We only hit two stores, one for each of us. First, we hit Limited Too for Karen. She's the biggest Joe Jonas geek in the history of the universe, so she had to see if they had any new Jonas stuff. Me, the Jonas Neutral person, was deemed the stuff-holder. It was rather interesting: I was standing in the middle of a pink-and-purple Limited Too, wearing all black, holding all this pink Jonas Brothers gear as Karen rambled on and on about how hot Joe was. Definitely not your average LT customer. In the end, I helped her go from two wallets, five pins, a backpack, three shirts, and two posters to a shirt, backpack, and one poster. Whew!

The second store was of my choosing: Hot Topic. For some reason, my mom doesn't let me buy a lot of stuff from the Hot Topic in E-Town, so I got rebellious and went in. I took about 10 minutes, versus the 30 minutes that it took to sort through all the Jonas Junk. I found the Sweeney Todd shirts, took one of each in a small, and bought the one that my parents might not kill me if I got. (Actually, kill me twice---once for going in, once for getting the razor shirt. I saved four bucks AND one of the killings by choosing the shirt I did. Score!)

We got lost several times in the mall, but it was a lot of fun overall. Besides the mall, we watched Sweeney Todd, role played, listened to Good Charlotte a bit, and I played oboe a little. Karen took some video at about 1:30 AM last night, and I can't wait to see that and the pictures. All in all, I can't wait to (hopefully) come back this summer.

Still at Karen Kastle

We're having a lot of fun, and I'll do my real post tomorrow. Toodleloo!

Posting from Karen Kastle

I'm not really going to be posting today or tomorrow. As I have previously said, I'm at Karen's house, listening to Good Charlotte, watching Law & Order, and role playing. Hooray!

The rest of the week is going to be sort of hectic, but things will be normal again on Tuesday. stay tuned!

Sleepover

Basically what the title says. I'm sleeping over at my friend Karen's house tonight, and I can't wait! We're going to watch movies, listen to come really loud Good Charlotte, and I'm going to teach her to read music if it kills her!

I'm going to be blogging from her house tomorrow, but on Friday I'll probably have a better post. Hopefully. Saturday isn't going to be extravagant, and neither is Sunday, but I'll post. I'm not giving up now!

April Fools!

Funny thing is, although today is April Fool's Day, not many people I know have played pranks of jokes. Maybe that's the new trick: not tricking anyone, driving them mad wondering when someone is going to trick them.

Not a trick #1: My grandma's birthday was today
Not a trick #2: We had Italian food for dinner
Not a trick #3: Sweeney Todd came out on DVD, and it is AWESOME
Not a trick #4: I'm sleeping over at Karen's house tomorrow
Not a trick #5: There's a spider on your shirt

HA! Just because nobody else is tricking anyone doesn't mean I can't be fun.

Happy Tuesday!