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.