U.S. Figure Skating: !!!!!

I. LOVE. FIGURE. SKATING.

And pairs skating, and ice dancing.

And I got to watch a ton of it all yesterday and today!!! *SQUEE!!!*

I just LOVE watching all those crazy athletic men and women go out there and do something I would NEVER be able to do: Make art, and tell a story through movement.

Crazy, crazy awesome.

I have extraordinarily fond memories of figure skating when I was little.

We rooted for Sarah Hughes.

We loved Sasha Cohen.

And now there are all new people to scream and shout for, hoping they'll make it to the Olympics and win gold! YIPPEE!!!

When I was little, I wanted to do that. SO. MUCH.

My dad would take my sisters and I to the public indoor skating rink, and I would go around and around and around the rink, falling, squealing, and gazing enviously at the people who could skate backwards.

I wanted to be a figure skater.

Needless to say, it never happened. My parents didn't foster my dream (which is probably a good thing haha), entirely because I was a flake, and we didn't have enough money.

But that didn't take my love of the sport away. I sat for a full hour and a half today, watching Alissa Czisny take her victory and wanting so, SO badly for Ryan Bradley to win, because he was just AWESOME.

AND HE DID!!!! Yeehaw!

As you may have guessed, I am a little bit in love with this sport.

But, what can I say?

Its beautiful, its epic, and its inspiring! If you have never watched some guy land a quad before, may I please assure you it is NOT to be missed.

I love it. Being a fan of the sport is part of who I am, and I will never get tired of it : )

I Name Stuff

I don't think I'm ALONE in this stupid, ridiculous phenomena of NAMING STUFF.

I know I'm not.

I know of someone who named their STOMACH.

Anyway...up yonder is a picture of the back of my MP3 player. My friend gave Herb to me about a year ago after she got The Brick (so named because of its sheer SIZE). He's a refurb, so i think he must have had a fairly hard life before he came to my friend, and was than passed on to me. I love Refurb Herb's guts, and realized a few days ago he didn't have a name! Neither did my camera, my lamp, or my alarm clock.

This HAD to be rectified.

My camera, the cheap, epic little red Polaroid of my affections, is now Sam The Camera (i considered PAM, but its definitely a dude camera).

My lamp, the vibrantly green goose neck my mother bought me, far less ugly than the OTHER green goose neck lamp it replaced (that thing was never worthy of naming), is now Kermit. He knows it ain't easy being green.

My ancient, atrocious, horrendous, EVIL alarm clock is named Horvath, after the evil Maxim Horvath from The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

A waste of time?

Undoubtedly.

But I have alarming amounts of time TO waste.

RANDOM: My purse has its own title that came on its tag...The Hippie Hobo. It's so epic, why bother to change it?

My desk, my bed, my chair, and other items i find particularly dear to my heart are still waiting to be named.

We'll keep you posted.

I hate when this happens.....

I discovered a song I absolutely LOVE before the rest of the world even knows about it yet.

Why does the radio station have to PLAY a song (but of course, only 3 times and than never again) when the lyrics aren't even avaliable online yet!?

The album doesn't even come out until April!!!

So...my suffering for this song is rather severe. I'll have to WAIT. Blech.

However, someone else loved this song as much as I, and recorded it. The sound quality leaves much to be desired, but the song is still epic.

Please note, this is all thanks to the modern miracles of Google and Youtube.

So, here you go, blog readers! Listen, enjoy...and when its available in April, you know I'll be one of the first people to buy it! : )

Last Train Home, FM Static

Inspiration

I am a person who learns the hard way.

Like...for instance:

DO NOT THROW AWAY/PERMANENTLY DELETE ANYTHING YOU WRITE!!!

I learned this the hard way....looking back, some of that stuff I trashed could have been halfway decent if I had plastered a band aid on all its scrapes, gave it a lollipop, and patted its head.

To prevent this from happening again, I started writing stuff down in notebooks.

They became known as 'Notebooks of Inspiration'.

Oh yeah.

And so far, I have roughly SIX of them. I say roughly because I ripped out all the pages of one (or...two?) and stuck them in a file folder for easier storage.

Anyway, allow me to introduce my good friends:

Notebook of Inspiration #1~

Notebook of Inspiration #2~

Notebook of Inspiration #3~

Notebook of Inspiration #4~

Notebook of Inspiration #5~





Random File Folder of Inspiration~

And last but CERTAINLY not least...

Notebook of Inspiration #6~

This is my favorite one so far because of the sheer SIZE of it, and its cool. Only one thing I don't love... the cover is all shiny, so, despite using permanent marker, my cool 'Burning Heart' thingy will rub off if I touch it. Very annoying, but hey.

In these 6 notebooks, 1 file, and countless other little random computer documents and scraps of paper, are where I store my inspiration. I write down EVERYTHING. You never know...something awesome might sprout from the mediocrity.

I love my notebooks. I love looking back over my ideas and smiling, wincing, laughing, and crying.

When the muse grabs ya, you gotta write it down SOMEWHERE.

This is where I write it : ).

HOW MUCH CAN ONE POSSIBLE LEARN.....

....ABOUT JULIUS CAESAR!?!?!?!?

I now know just about everything short of this guys hair and eye color.

I HAVE READ MORE ABOUT THIS ONE DEAD ROMAN THAN ANYONE NEEDS TO EVER READ!!!

*breathes deeply*

I'm ALMOST certain there's a reason my school plan calls for 7 differant perspectives of the life and times of Julius Caesar....


....but I just haven't discovered what it is yet.

He was interesting in the form of Shakespeare.

He was boring as a cornfield when described by Plutarch.

He's been dead over 2000 years.

Yippee.

Driving Through the Snow

Today I had some driving practice with my dad.

Needless to say, I found the prospect of this both thrilling and horrifying.

I'm not a HORRIBLE driver, but I'm certainly not a CONFIDENT or EXPERIENCED driver.

(My younger sister will disagree with me and assure me that its really just that I'm a HORRIBLE driver. I only swerved purposefully ONCE!!!)

So.

I got into The Monstrous Green Thing (also known as The Family Suburban).

I was so proud of myself that I actually BROUGHT my permit with me! Now, if I did anything terribly stupid and got pulled over, I could AT LEAST smugly assure the officer I was indeed driving legally.

Fired the beast up.

AND I DID IT!!! I drove a (ok....ALMOST) flawless practice run!!

In my defence, my dad had me drive places I have never been before (which is ridiculous because our town is like, one of the smaller towns in the state...I doubt even I could get hopelessly lost in there and never find my way out), and I hadn't driven in a while.

But WOW!

I had no idea practice really paid off that well! I could actually turn into the CORRECT LANE!!! How exhilarating!

All my friends and siblings are at this point rolling their eyes, laughing hysterically, yawning and scrolling down to see if I've posted anything more interesting, or all of the above.

What I Totally Love About Being An Author....

Well, there a lot of things I totally love about it, but here's a BIG one!

When you have an idea that you TOTALLY love, but it suddenly fizzles out (both the story and your enthusiasm for it) and you abandon it.

HOPEFULLY, like me, simply because you HAD the darned idea in the first place, you wrote it down in the heat of the moment.

Flash forward hours, days, months, maybe even years---

BAM!!!

You are flipping through Notebook Of Inspiration #5 (or is it #6?), and you come across this idea again! There it is...your awesome title (in this case, Dancing Bears), your characters who you even bothered to draw and color in (gosh they look awful, but with improvement...), and the basic plot line...FILLED WITH THE DREADED PLOT HOLES!!!!

*Dramatic horror movie music*

And than.....

It comes to you.

The missing pieces just suddenly FALL OUT OF THE HEAVENS!!!

You start to get all hyped up again!

You change the premise a bit!

You decide to set it on a differant planet!

The light it starting to shine!!!!

And...

You hit another plot hole.

Oh, gosh.

Fortunately for me, my fire for this story was very thouroughly reignited.

I am trying to think my way out of the puzzling plot holes.

I'm striving to peer around the corners and see what these characters will do, since I love it when they take on a life of their own.

Maybe someday I will actually get all the plot holes filled in.

My characters will be unique, lovable, and relatable (and funny. ALWAYS funny!)

And maybe, just maybe, I will actually write a book called Dancing Bears.

Meanwhile, I'm sorry, Anna, I still can't tell you what its about yet, simply because even I don't know!

A Roll In The Flour

It's interesting to be called downstairs while writing the last paragraph of your composition paper to take pictures of........

Oh, look. How cute! The twinzies, Curious Geroge and Winnie the Pooh, decided to dump out about fifteen pounds of flour and play in it.

For some reason, Winnie the Pooh found raw flour simply delicious.

Flour angels!

And how was your day?

Everything is breaking.

Its true.

Everything in this house seems to be falling apart.

The toaster.

The crock pot.

The mop.

The VCR.

The WALL.

The septic system.

The relationships.

BOTH ovens.

The tweezers (not really broken but G R O S S!!).

Cookie cutters.

THE FLAT TIRE OUT ON THE CAR.

And that was just RECENTLY.

And yet, today was not ENTIRELY miserable.

Not entirely.

Good things happened.

At midnight this morning I was having a pleasant chat with my sisters.

I got to talk to one of my best friends.

I know I am loved.

So....not EVERYTHING is breaking.

The most important things are fully intact.

Grave Dissapointment.

Have you ever experienced this GRAVE DISSAPOINTMENT I speak of?

If you had, you know how it feels.

Major, awesome plans!

Everything perfect!

The sun is shining!

Its hopeful!
Its EPIC!!!

And suddenly...

BAM!!!

All those plans, GONE.

That happened to me yesterday...and today...and will happen tomorrow.

I learned yesterday that, because of a wave of the stomach bug going around, I can't go do something I'd been looking forward too all last month and this month.

Today, I had to tell a friend I wouldn't be there.

Tomorrow, I'll know that I'm NOT THERE.

*Sigh*

Such is life.

Stuff will fill the gap.

I painted Rapunzel from the movie Tangled today! It turned out pretty good...though Rapunzel looks more like our friend Liz than RAPUNZEL....but hey.

Tonight I'll babysit three little kids, make some money, harrah harrah and all that jazz.

Tomorrow....

Well, hopefully tomorrow I can call some friends, live my life, be awesome...

And go on despite the Grave Dissapointment.

Ignore the Deep Regret.

If you suffer, or have suffered Grave Dissapointment, know I feel your pain.

Eat some ice cream (just not too much, or you'll end up with a stomach ache, like myself).

Do something you LOVE!

Call all your friends till SOMEBODY answers and you can just talk about nothing till you feel better.

And smile.

Life is gravely dissapointing, but its also sweet. : ).

The Princess and the Frog: Eh...

Truthfully, this movie confused me. I might be the only person who found it confusing, but...I did.

As I do not believe in spoiling movies for people who have never seen them (even though this movie came out a while ago and I'm just the type who waits till its on DVD at the library in most cases), I won't give away the ending or any super important plot points, just so you know.

Tiana was fine. She was...spunky. And cute. Beautiful (ALL Disney princesses are beautiful, so that's a given). I liked her voice. She has a lot of heart and loyalty. She was almost TOO gritty for me. Totally self-sufficient in every respect. That gets annoying after a while.

Naveen is not a winning name, but I liked him. He had a great accent, he was funny, he was romantic. So basically he was your average 'too perfect to be true' prince with some attitude problems.

The villain was SO incredibly creepy. He scared ME, sitting in my living room with my mom and sisters!!! I actually grabbed Meg's arm a couple times. It was freaky.

The songs were good, there was an epic death of a lovable main character, the aligator was amusing.

I think I counted four or five totally stupid and pointless scenes.

On a scale of 1-10, we could only give it a 4...maybe 5.

It was cute.

Alas, the best it can do is 'Eh....OKAY' when it comes to overall movie. I enjoyed it, and yes, TOTALLY LOVED some parts (the attempted proposal scene...total win), but still, overall....the bad guy took a lot of awesomeness out of that movie by making us all scream and shudder.

Picture credit: http://www.filmofilia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/the_frog_princess_1.jpg

Today: Should I Laugh Or Cry??

I have no idea.

I woke up in time to say goodbye to my big sister and my NET big sister, which I had really REALLY wanted to do but was convinced I wouldn't.

Laugh or cry?

Both.

School started back up and I did NOT bomb history OR French!

Laugh or cry?

Well, since its over....laugh.

I sort of kind of (IT WASN'T MY FAULT!!!) broke the faucet....the thingy just FELL OUT of the spout!!!!

Laugh or cry?

Neither. Casually saunter past and pretend you don't know what happened.

(I...didn't really do that. I fetched my younger brother and unloaded the responsibility on him because he actually knows how to fix a sink, unlike myself)

My hair looks dreadful!

Laugh or cry?

Well.....laugh? Cry? I don't know. Its not HORRENDOUS....I just hope I can make it look decent before leaving the house.

And the worst blow of all......

They have animated the Kratt brothers. BECAUSE THEY'RE OLD NOW!!!!!! *SOB*

Laugh or cry?

Cry. Especially after I saw Chris's hair! It was horrifying. They can't be OLD! But alas...they are.

So, that was my day so far.

Laugh or cry?

Laugh. Life is good. : )