Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Relief at Last

A lot of you know about the heat around here. Mostly? It sucked. But then, last night, it rained. And the people celebrated. It didn't feel like being fried when I walked outside this morning.

And all God's people said? Amen!

Well, last night was certainly a kicker when it came to the ol' schedule. The first half of the day was pretty much nothing, except for the average laundry day. But then came 5:45 in the evening, when it was time to head over to voice lessons, where songs I'll be singing for a wedding next month were practiced and generally hit pretty hard. At seven: dinner. Pork kabobs, yum. 7:35, changing into my uniform and heading over to my tae-kwan-do lesson, in which I think I strained a nerve in my right foot since the side of it's a little sensitive. No matter. 9:15: Shower really quick, since there was a quite a bit of lightning and I'm a little paranoid about getting electrocuted. So yeah, busy times.

But tomorrow through Sunday, that's what's going to be a real pain. Why? Well, let's just say that getting up at five in the morning really isn't my kind of thing (especially when it's cool outside and the blankets are nice and warm). Then it's an hour's drive across the river to do a dog show to earn money for the Bible Bowl team. Staffing it this time has been really interesting, since CIY and every single band camp in the state has decided that this week would be a great time to do their events. (And I don't even get the point of band camp. You'd think one could practice marching formations and songs during the regular school year.) So we don't get as much as we could've, but it's better than nothing. But whatever, not my problem.

Current Mood: Passive

Random Useless Fact of the Day: My genetics really don't allow for much hip flexability, which makes executing inside/outside/axe kicks kind of difficult. Which sucks.

Friday, July 22, 2005

Be Vewwy Vewwy Quiet

...Because my baby cousin is sleeping and if you wake him up and make him start yowling again I will hurt you. Seriously. I found one thing Ibuprofen does not fix headaches from... But yeah, my two youngest cousins are spending the day at my house, since my aunt, uncle, and other cousin are at a golf tournament. Why they voluntarily are working outside when it's like a bajillion degrees is beyond me.

On a better note, I finally started up karate classes. Results? It is freakin' awesome. So what if the tops of my feet hurt after a bunch of roundhouse kicks? I can deal. I have really good feeling about this class, I really do. The uniform's a lot heavier than one would think...

It is really really hot around here. It's too hot to go swimming, almost. I think now would be a great time to sightseeing in Alaska. Or perhaps Siberia. Or maybe somewhere down south, like the Shetland islands, maybe New Zealand, or perhaps Antarctica.

On the drama front, I managed to swing the lead in a certain sketch that I think we're performing for the teen worship service at church. My part? A troubled teenage girl with a deadbeat father and a cheating crackhead boyfriend! (Believe me, if any boyfriend of mine decided to do either one of those, he wouldn't be living.)

Current Mood: Hot and Tired

Random Useless Fact of the Day: Ninjas were actually quite ineffective as assassins. Not to say they haven't tried, though; one general nearly got his head blown off with a cannon but the ninjas firing it missed.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

After the Book

Yes, I have successfully finished reading the sixth installment of the Harry Potter series. My thoughts? It's probably the best of the books so far, in my opinion. The fifth book was just a little, I don't know, unsatisfying. Yeah, that's it. The sixth was a lot more action-packed. It had more funny moments than the last book. Most of all (and this doesn't happen very often, mind you; I didn't shed any tears when Sirius Black bit it), it made me cry. Yes, I admit it, I cried during the funeral of... Ha! You thought I was going to say who dies, didn't you? Don't worry, I'm merciful and won't reveal that particular fact, since I'm aware that a lot of people don't stay up until 1:30 in the morning to finish a book. (Yeah... I felt the effects of no sleep today. Oops.) And who was the Half-blood Prince? The result neither surprised nor shocked me, but it did kinda raise my eyebrows. And then there were the romance parts. Boy howdy, that was funny. For those that would moan and cry about any little fact they haven't heard about until the read the book, close your eyes now, because I'm about to reveal something! The name "Won-won" (*snerk*) had me laughing. That was just plain hilarious. I mean, geez. Talk about your unfortunate nicknames.

In all? Very good book. I'll probably start re-reading it soon.

Oh yeah. And another thing: I love my mother. Why, you ask? Well, aside from the obvious reasons, Mom had the foresight to buy two copies of the book. See, my sister's reading speed is much higher than mine, and she tends to steal the book before I really get into it. She gets done fast, yes, but I'd rather read it straight through without someone else snitching it. It's the principle of the thing, you know? So yeah, in order to prevent a fistfight from brewing, Mom got two copies to pacify both Amy and me. And good times ensued.

Started hi-lighting my Bible Bowl text today. Got the first seven chapters done, and boy are my pages colorful now! :D Plus, a friend of the family found a buzzer board hidden in the back of his closet, and asked my mom if our team could use it. Heck yes! That saves the team $425! The thing may be ancient, but it's a buzzer and we needed another one badly. Why? Three teams this year. That means we need at least two buzzer boards. Which means that costs more money, which is tight because my church is in a cash crunch and the budget was small in the first place. So, great stroke of luck there.

Current Mood: Passive

Random Useless Fact of the Day: The results from my little poll question last entry are in. Pwn is prounounced "pown", at least in the minds of many people. Thanks for the help in improving my knowledge of the outside world; I don't get it very often and so I'm doomed wander around looking like a moron.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Saturday

And here it comes, that momentous occasion that millions around the world are waiting anxiously for... What is this moment, you ask?

The release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Yessir, Mom's preordered my copy, and for the duration of the weekend I'll be quite busy waiting for the mail to get here (kinda feel sorry for those poor postal workers...), and actually reading the book. Don't expect me to answer the phone if it rings, don't expect me to talk, don't expect me to be very responsive to any outside stimuli aside from the book. Just warning you...

Since Bible Bowl has ended, I have been taking full advantage of my (belated) sumemr vacation. Just this morning I didn't summon up the energy to drag my lazy carcass out of bed until 9:15. This may not sound like a lot compared to other teenagers, but it's the best I can do with my internal clock, okay?! A lot of reading's been getting done; I managed to read a couple of books in the span of a day. My iPod now has a couple new albums on its little hard drive (Both by Mannheim Steamroller, ha), sticking my song total up to 784.

Bad thing about iTunes: Whilst I was updating my iPod, the computer recognized the disk I was attempting to upload, but iTunes didn't. And of course, version 4.9 was out! This meant that I couldn't do squat until iTunes was updated. Darn those turds at Apple! But hey. Everything is working merrily now so I'm not going to complain.

Current Mood: Hungry

Random Useless Fact of the Day: I am still attempting to figure out if 'pwn' is pronounced 'pawn' or 'pown'. Any opinions?

Friday, July 08, 2005

I'm Ba-aa-ck...

Finally, the Bible Bowl National Tourney is over and done with for this year. The trip was long, excruciatingly mind-boggling, and really really fun. For instance: We made Steven, one of my teammates with a sort of afro, cut his hair. This scared the crap out of his mom upon our return. We (the entire team) swam a lot in the hotel pool and hot tub. Card games ran amok, and I discovered that I'm pretty good at "Spoons". (NO, there is nothing weird about this game, for those of you that don't know. The object is to grab something like a piece of candy or a drink coaster off of the table before everyone else does.) We played against teams that were actually of our own caliber during the Round Robin, resulting in a victorious five games. Rawkin'. We broke a hundred points against a team that I expected to show us absolutely no mercy whatsoever. I didn't get to bed until 1:30 this morning. (Yes, I do mean this morning.) The team has decided that I am either going to marry Joel or Ethan, two of the boys. I am neither confirming nor denying this; I'll figure that out later. Like, in ten years.

The organization in the hotel should've been a lot better. We weren't able to get into our rooms until, like, seven on Sunday night because they screwed up our reservations, resulting in utter chaos. In one room, the boys had their refrigerator stolen, with their food and stuff inside. Sucked to be them. They hotel also charged for use of the exercise machines, which was outrageous. Not to mention that every day for just about every meal we had to walk no less than six blocks to get to food. So yeah, we're hoping for better accomodations next year. I'm sure there will be; Mom's put in for suites in Louisville next year. w00t!

And as for the actual competition... We didn't do so well. We had a 5-6 record in the Round Robin, so we were put up against teams that were a lot stronger than ourselves. Ah, well. We didn't care much; losing just meant that we had more free time to go swimming, watch movies and play cards. So yeah.

The team also experienced a Random Act of Kindness. This one lady from the Pampered Chef convention walks up to us as we're playing cards (yet again) and asks us if we wanted an entire pizza that her group didn't want. Now, keep in mind that this was Chicago deep dish pizza. You don't find that stuff often around here, I don't think. So of course my team leaped at the oppertunity to score free food, and, thanking the lady profusely, we all gnawed happily on pizza. (But so you know, I still prefer St. Louis-style-provelone-and-ketchup-on-a-cracker pizza.)

So yeah, my week was quite interesting. I had a blast, and I'm really glad to be home.

Current Mood: Tired

Random Useless Fact of the Day: Also got new music and art supplies! w00t!!

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Dude, This is Awesome...

Sauron in space!!!

If a buncha Nazgul show up, I am not here. I don't know anything about a mysterious ring. *insert innocent whistle here*