Interupting the regularly scheduled APUSH-doing

To say that I took a 15 minute nap and bought the Glee: Season One CD. I'm listening to it as I'm working and it's pretty much wonderful.

Sleeping in my contacts was a mistake, though. My eyes feel disgusting.

It Can't Rain All the Time

So I joined NaBloPoMo in an attempt to re-start blogging. Huh. Let's see how it turns out.

Lately, we've been having some genuinely nasty weather. A nice handful of people believed that Halloween would be rained out, and when it turned out not to, the lines at Wal*Mart and Target were insane with people trying to buy last-minute bags of trick or treat candy.

As it has for the last four years, though, the weather on Halloween Night was fairly decent, not as cold as it could be. This year, I chose my costume a la Brandon Lee from The Crow:



If you understand the title, you'll get the costume and vice versa. For those of you know aren't familiar with the movie, here it is on IMDB.

And here is the song:

Fireflies

I've been trying to figure out how to post about Wizard of Oz Strike from Sunday night for about a day now. On a totally unrelated note, I also sign onto iTunes every week and download the free Single of the Week, usually without listening to it. It's free, to why not?

Last week was "Fireflies" by Owl City. I listened to it on the pilates today, and I immediately knew that it would be the perfect basis for a post. Naturally, I've listened to it about twenty times now.



"You would not believe your eyes
if ten million fireflies
lit up the world as I fell asleep.
Cause they fill the open air
and leave teardrops everywhere."

One thing that was true at this Strike as well as the one for Beauty and the Beast was that the Marsee's yard, which is where we have the Strike Party (The Marsees are the presidents of YTHC) is filled with fireflies during the summer. Seriously---there's tons of them, and when it becomes dark and hugging circle starts, people sometimes try and catch them. It'll be completely dark and then, suddenly, a spark of light will briefly appear before fading to black again. Fireflies always remind me of Youth Theatre.

"Cause I'd get a thousand hugs
from ten-thousand lightening bugs
as they try to teach me how to dance."

Hugging circle. With fireflies. And I can't really dance, thanks to my turned-in ankles. Add one and two together and we'll come up with song meaning.

"To ten million fireflies
I'm weird cause I hate goodbyes.
I got misty eyes
as they said farewell."

The end of Strike was, as expected, fairly traumatic, since it does mark the end of that particular season of YTHC. The seniors will move onto college, people will move, and new people come in, but no particular season will be exactly like the one before it or the one afterward. This seems to be the case with most people, though, so I doubt that I'm "weird cause I hate goodbyes." This particular year was hard, having not been in the show and therefore not only not being able to meet some of the new seniors (and non-seniors!) but also not seeing some of my best friends every day like last summer.

It was raining after giving out the Nerd awards, so several people (particularly newbies) went up to the center of the tent we were all sitting under and gave their sort of "Thank the Academy" speeches. I actually went up myself, explaining to the people who didn't know why I had to duck out why I did and thanking everyone for keeping me as part of the YTHC family despite my absence onstage. And yes, I was half-crying at that point.

I'm trying not to look at this as the end of Season 38, but rather the beginning of Season 39 (much as our director would say). It sounds like this will be my last year at Fort Knox and Kentucky, so I'm hoping to make this year the best out of any of what will be the five here. I plan on joining SALUTE!, which is YTHC's touring group during the school year, start taking dance lessons, survive AP, become more social, finish my book, among other things. It's kind of inspired by Chris Crutcher's Deadline, which I haven't read but know the plot of. Look it up---it's a fairly long explanation.

Just to wrap things up, I'd like to say a final thank you to YTHC and everyone involved in it. I love you all so much!

Contacts and braces

What this post was supposed to be about, but my mom already mentioned those. She didn't say, though, that the world through contacts is kind of like HD TV except its the entire world. I'm still getting used to them, and they're quite strange...and the braces just plain hurt.

However, I suppose now I should say that, as everyone seems to know, today was not a good day in Celebrity World. To think that Farra Fawcett and Michael Jackson are dead is just completely unreal. I mean, one of the originals on Charlie's Angels and the King of Pop? They're like Steve Irwin, supposed to stay alive because tabloids can't stop posting about them.

I do realize that Jackson got himself into several...precarious situations, but it bugs me immensly when people talk about how the world is a "better place" without such a "terrible person". He was an American Icon with more talent than almost anyone on the music scene today, and was also among the first to really raise awareness of problems such as AIDS and famine in countries like Ethiopia ("We Are the World", anyone?) There were actual reasons behind the change in his skin color and his nose.

We're leaving for Florida/Fort Benning tomorrow and I really do hope a lot of the "celebration" has died down. Until then, I'll probably be taking Motrin and drinking milkshakes in the car.

Blog365?

One might notice that I've kind of given up on that idea. Therefore, when there is something to blog (like today), I will. If I blog it and it turns out to be 1:32, I'll just publish it with that time, probably. Maybe not. It'll all just depend on what I feel like.

I spent the large majority of today in the basement, where Maya and I recorded three lovely songs:

The Confrontation



Angel of Music



Macavity



It took the better part of the afternoon, and in the evening we (meaning Mom, Dad, and me, with Mike staying at home) headed over to a neighbor's house for a going away party. I was able to talk to/get to know some people who I've known for about a year, though never really "knew knew". Apparently, we have a lot in common, from Addams Family to musicals to Little Miss Sunshine. I went over to her house and we watched Edward Scissorhands (a favorite of both of us) until elven.

Though it sounds totally stupid, I'd like to point the sudden changes to Yes Man, which we watched the other day. I've sort of tried to start my own YES program for myself to open myself up to the neighborhood and make the most out of the last year at Fort Knox.

Orthodontics

I disapprove of it.

I'm getting braces in a week, and to prepare myself for such a daunting endeavor, I got spacers put in. Two, actually, one on each side my mouth, bottom set of teeth. They hurt like nobody's business, and I'm having non-fond recollections of when I had my oral surgery. However, with the surgery they gave me Amazing Happy Drugs (that were NOT crack before anyone gets ideas) that made the world seem a lot better. The most they suggested here was Motrin.

I took Motrin a couple hours ago, and it helped about as much as eating a stack of paper would. Reread that a few times if it doesn't make sense, because it isn't supposed to.

On a better note, Mom and I went to the (new and larger!) music store next to the Indian restaurant where we had lunch, and I found the piano sheet music to selections of the first to Lord of the Rings movies. I haven't really gotten into the second one, but so far I have four songs played through in Fellowship: "In Dreams", "Lament for Gandalf", "Many Meetings", and "May It Be". I want to get into "Isengard Unleashed" (or at least the selection for "Haldir's Lament" for reasons I'm sure many of you are aware of) in the second one, but I'm taking it a song at a time. It's nice to have some new sightreading and sheet music, though.

Vitamin String Quartet

Is officially my new favorite group.

Bask in their epicness:

Lazy Friday

The Internet went out today, but nothing else exciting or note-worthy happened. Oh, and earlier tonight I was singing at the piano and getting out of my comfort zone note-wise (AKA singing Christine's parts in Phantom). I couldn't go back to being an alto right away and was freaked out that I had ruined my voice for forever. Apparently not.

Feeling artistic

As today was rather dull, cold, and rainy, I decided to get Mike's MIDI keyboard and hook it up to GarageBand. I got fairly well into two projects: a cover of "Sally's Song" from Nightmare Before Christmas:



And "Falling Slowly" from Once:



No vocals yet, but I'm about halfway through everything else on "Falling Slowly". "Sally's Song" is going to be a lot more difficult, since it's a lot of arranging. Luckily, I have the sheet music.

Accomplished

I got up at about 7:40 this morning so as to leave the house by 8:30. There was a post-Ice Storm yard cleanup for the Marsee's, who have been the presidents for Youth Theatre for thirty-some odd years. Since they've done so much for the theatre, some of us decided to go over and help out with the yard work. There was a lot accomplished, and halfway through we celebrated with drinks and brownies, courtesy of Mrs. Marsee.

Ginger had to go to the bet today for some sort of renewal of a shot or vaccination. She was not the most thrilled to be there, but aside from trying to refuse to go into the back office, she was rather cooperative.

Mom and I were both insanely tired when we got home, so she went to sleep and I MEANT to...but rather watched Road to El Dorado on YouTube. Not DreamWorks' best but it woke me up.

And now I just finished my playlist for a fanfiction I'm writing. Things were accomplished today.

The cake is a lie!

No, I'm not sure what that means. But apparently it has something to do with Portal, which is the game this song is from:



I just found the sheet music for it, and I want to record it sometime.

Missions accomplished

Tonight I found my glasses (with Mom's help...thanks for suggesting I look on the side of the bed) and transposed the opening section of "This Is Halloween" for electric bass of request of my friend Ian.

The shows went well, and there's not much else to say besides that I need to print out said transposed music in the morning. It's almost 10 and I want to go to bed.

Ice Dance

Did not turn out well.

At all.

Even if people claim it did.

Piano crunch

That's what tomorrow will be. Apparently, I have to have my talent show piece memorized, and the performance is Thursday night, sooo...

I have a plan of attack. I'm going to study the music tonight before I got to bed so as to possibly infuse it into my mind. In the morning, if I have time, I'm going to play it before I get on the bus. The music is coming to school with me, and I'm going to ask my band director if she'll let me have one day to work on it with her keyboard (I'll bring headphones). She's really excited about the competition and hopes that I get first or something, so I'm really hoping she'll channel that (along with the "I already know all your music") into giving me the day.

When I get home, you know what's going to happen before and after Musical Theatre? You guessed it: piano. Apply the "study" factor tomorrow night, and play through it several times on Thursday.

Presto, instant piano cramming.