Ah sweet mystery of... SEPTEMBER?!?!

I can't BELIEVE it's September already. That means I have a mere six days (counting today) of freedom from school. I still have to finish my AP summer work, even if it turns out I didn't get into the AP class. If I didn't do the work and got into the class, I would die at the hands of several people (namely my mom). If I don't do the work and don't get into the class, then all is well. But if I do the work and don't get into the class... that would just be annoying.
So what am I doing with the last six days of freedom, you may ask? I'll tell you: Preparing for school. I'm not kidding. I still have to get some notebooks and stuff (I already have enough pencils), and I still have to get all the new clothes that my mom will force me to buy, but the main thing I'm doing is prep for my gold award and SAT prep. I know the month between now and the test will probably fly by, but still... does having to do SAT prep in August seem like overkill to anybody else?
Honestly, I don't know what to think of junior year, aside from this: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I'M A JUNIOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!















































*runs and hides behind something large*

more college!

Well, I went on my first two official college tours today. I feel really old. And I'm still a teenager. It'll suck when I'm sixty. Anyway, so far, college has seemed less daunting. Note the key word, "LESS." It's still VERY daunting. I have the SATs still to conquer. Well, first I have to actually start 11th grade. Then I have to start doing the SAT stuff. Not that I haven't already started studying, or anything. I'm going to be SO glad when all of this is over.

But on a much happier note, my seeds are doing really well. And I know that's completely irrelevant to college. But I don't care. Two bean plants have sprouted and two more are making their way above the surface, and about six radishes have sprouted. I'm extremely excited. I can't wait for the day when I can eat them. Maybe there's a scholarship for bean-and-radish growing. Or a scholarship for growing a cantaloupe. Granted, I think you'll have to provide a photo of said cantaloupe. And prove that that five-year-old in the photo is actually you.

Speaking of photos (this follows a train of thought, I swear!) Family Camp is coming up! And that means I'm going to be taking a BUNCH of photos and videos and stuff, and hopefully figuring out how to upload videos onto here. Maybe.

Anyhoo, as it's kind of late, I'm going to go to sleep now. Night!

Oh, college...

Well, I'm going to go visit my brother at UVA today with my mom. I don't know what to expect except that we're going to be there with food. And that tomorrow we're going to be touring other colleges. The prospect of touring COLLEGE, and the fact that I'LL HAVE TO BE THERE FOR REAL IN TWO YEARS, is fairly daunting. Why? Not because I don't want to get out of the house and survive without my mother (I REALLY want to leave the house and survive without my mother, trust me) but it's due to the fact that I have to actually motivate myself to study as if I have musical rehearsal every day. This is fairly easy when I actually DO have musical rehearsal every day. But when I don't have musical rehearsal every day, I tend to just watch TV and write and not do homework until 6 pm. Self-motivation is also fairly easy to do when you have two free blocks a day and the self-motivation only has to last for two months at a time, usually during the winter, when you get home and it's already dark and you really don't want to do homework because you're tired and it's all depressing outside. But when I do NOT have rehearsal, in college... I don't want to think about what I'd end up doing and how badly I'd flunk.
Okay, will post later. Hopefully.

goodbye and hello

Well, as of yesterday, my friend M has departed for his new college, where I'm SURE he will be amazing (and if you're reading this, M, and you're NOT being amazing... then... START CRANKING THE AMAZING!). Anyhoo, good luck to M, and hopefully he'll be back for Christmas.
Anyway, I've just returned to working on the story that includes my 3 FAVORITE characters EVER: Shyasha Rinkari, Telsiel, and Sparraben. HOORAY! I don't know WHY I haven't written them for most of the summer. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that it's summer and everyone forgets to do stuff during the summer. Or maybe it's the fact that... wow... school starts in 9 days. NINE! AAAHHH!
This isn't going to be pretty... I mean, I'm excited that I get to do AP classes and see my friends and meet the two freshmen who are apparently joining our lunch group and for Fall Formal and the musical and the music trip and all, and yet... next time I blog about how freaked out I am that there are 9 days left of summer, it'll be because I'm going to be a senior. I've watched the junior-senior rivalry go down for five years, and now I'm going to be one of the ones who will have to chant "JUNIORS!" when the seniors make fun of us in the senior play. And I'm going to be storming the stage on the last day of school, and I'm going to be doing the SAT and looking at colleges and apparently getting a lot more homework this year... EEEKKK!!!
Great. I feel old.
I mean, I still remember my first day at my current school (we're sixth grade through 12th). I was absolutely TERRIFIED because I couldn't find my TA room. And because it was a brand new school with seniors who made out in the halls and were twice my size when standing. Now I'm the tall one (but I SWEAR it's because the sixth graders are PUNY! Honestly, some of them aren't even five feet tall!!), and..... wow. It's craziness, I tell you! CRAZINESS!

STAR WARS!

Well, I just finished a Star Wars Original Trilogy marathon with one of my best friends, who, until yesterday, had never seen any of them. You know, although watching Star Wars back-to-back-to-back is kind of wearing, it's also sort of interesting - you can see the character development that has gone on between episode 4 and 5 and then from 5 to 6. It's also really fun to stop 'return of the Jedi' partway through and go to sleep, wake up, make pancakes, and then watch Ewoks kick some serious empire BUTT. What's also awesome was the fact that the Ewoks are basically little walking teddy bears (which is why it is so much FUN to watch them kick empire butt.). So far, her favorite character is either Chewbacca or Princess Leia. Personally, I like Leia and Han Solo and Darth Vader. (DARTH VADER IS AWESOME!)

So now we've stopped for a while - she's gone home and I'm here. Soon she'll return (her parents are taking her sister to college, which is a two-day endeavor for them), and we'll continue our movie marathon with the 'Shrek' series. We saw Shrek 1 yesterday, since she wanted to watch Shrek and I wanted to see Star Wars, so we decided we'd alternate between the two. That obviously didn't happen, mostly because Star Wars is not the type of series you alternate views with Shrek. We're doing Shrek 2 and Shrek 3 today, when she comes back.

HOORAY!

radishes, beans, and boredom, oh my!

So far, all I've done today is:
1. learned to drive.
2. driven.
3. Walked to piano.
4. Sat at the piano and played.
5. Walked home.
6. went crazy about radishes and beans.
I may not have said this earlier, but on Monday, I bought some seeds. YAY! I got radish seeds and bean seeds, because those are the most common and I don't want some crazy plant growing all over the dining room window in the middle of the school year, or worse, in the middle of musical season. So I got radishes and beans instead of catnip. Yes, they actually had catnip. But I've never grown catnip. All I've grown is pumpkins, sunflowers, cantaloupe, and beans. I don't actually remember when we grew cantaloupes, but I do remember that we grew them.
I over-watered the seeds that I'd put in cups with soil on Monday, but today I found that the seeds I'd put in the wet paper towel had germinated and that the seeds in the cups had probably died, so I went around crazy, and ended up re-planting the germinated seeds and putting in some new seeds into proper pots with soil that was NOT from the leafiest part of my back yard. Hopefully I'll actually be able to EAT something this time. Last time I had to grow anything, it was for a science project in 7th grade, and since it was for a science project, that somehow jinxed all 16 plants' credibility for consumption, even though all I was doing was playing Disney music for them and not watering them with vinegar or anything.
So that's my story for today. Hooray!

and a random line

I found a flair on facebook that I really enjoyed and I want to put into a story somewhere... "Sometimes your knight in shining armor is just an idiot in tinfoil." I want to put it in something at some point. Just sharing!

a poem :D

For some reason, I've been writing a lot of poetry lately. I'm not entirely sure why. But here is another poem. It's about flying, sort of. And jumping over those really big kicking pads like we did in tae kwon do yesterday. So here it is.

Ever since I was seven
I’ve known how to fly
I couldn’t go far then
I could barely clear the bottom of the target

Now I can fly farther
Faster
Longer

I am a white-clad bird
With a black stripe at my waist

The gap widens.

I sprint
One
Two
Three
Four
Five

On the sixth step, I launch
And for a moment
I am a bird
Four feet above the ground, I soar

My foot slaps through a board;
My momentum carries me to the wall.

I fly again.

driving for adventure...

Well, I went driving outside my actual neighborhood for the first time today. I'm still slightly traumatized by it. But this afternoon, I'm going to be driving with the actual driving instructor, not my mom, and even the THEORY of that is slightly traumatizing. At least I'm finally capable (sort of) of going more than ten miles an hour without freaking out. Now my limit is 25 miles an hour for extreme freak-out, and 20 for a minor panic attack. The good thing is that the speed limit is 25 miles an hour in this area. The bad thing is that we have a lot of hills, so it is really hard to go down hills, not wear out the breaks, and not have a panic attack all at the same time. Suggestions, anyone?
Anyway, in other news, I have nothing to say. It's kind of depressing, really. For some reason, I cann't think of anything to write, fiction-wise. I'm rather stumped. Again, suggestions, anyone? I mean, I've had a TON of adventures this summer, but it all seems like it's stuff I can't work into a story, because I write too much fantasy and I'm physically incapable of not including magic somehow.
Well, I'll think of something. Will post again with a story... later.

NOO!

Well, today was the Youth Minister's last day, and I swear I nearly cried. But I didn't. It's like with my brother - it's barely been a day, and I miss him already. See, this is the last time I'm going to see him from now until Christmas, maybe even longer. *runs off bawling like a little girl* I think the one consilation with my brother is the fact that I'm going to go visit him (bringing food, of course) on Saturday, and with M (FYI, I'm not doing names because I don't want some creeper reading this and finding someone out and stalking them) it's going to be almost SIX MONTHS until I see him again, which I'm NOT cool with. I mean, he's going to have LOADS of adventures, of course, and for that I'm happy. But that won't stop me from missing him, at least for now. I did take photos, and I gave him about 60,000 hugs (HUGS SOLVE EVERYTHING!) and ran down from the balcony along with about 4 other people to put my hand on someone's shoulder like they do when you get confirmed, except it was a send-off for M, and the people whose spirit was going into him were the youth, the adults who worked with youth, and all the people there who had been through seminary.

Well, goodbye, M, and good luck. All the best!

fireflies are fallen stars

it's a poem I wrote. hope you like it. :D

Fireflies are fallen stars
Fallen from the sky
Bits and pieces here and there
That sprout some wings and fly

The fireflies know the magic
Of a summer night
It’s the ideal time, you see,
For a star’s earthly flight.

The stars can see all that you do
When you’re out on summer break
They make sure you’re safe from above
And flit around in your wake

The fireflies are the magic
In those warm summer nights
Although we catch them in bell jars
Chasing them down, trying hard
The magic still lies above

UVA, Lenhok'sin buds, and M's last day...

Well, after many long weeks of anticipation and things like, "HOLY COW MY BROTHER IS LEAVING FOR COLLEGE IN 4 WEEKS/ DAYS/ HOURS!", my brother has finally and successfully been moved into his dorm room at UVA, and seems to be doing well, in the seven hours that it's been since we've seen each other, and from the one phone call I've had from him thus far, which was an accidental call, apparently. Anyhoo, it seems like a really nice campus, albeit a rather HUGE one. There was also this street marching band that was mostly saxophones and trumpets and a piccolo and some drums and they did a really cool version - I kid you not - of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance. I would post a video, but I don't know how to do that yet. Still working on that. And there's also the potential copyright issues involved if I do that, so can you just take my word for it? Thanks.
Another cool thing that's happened since last I wrote is that I friended a lot of the staffers that we met at Lenhok'sin earlier in the summer, and I had a nice conversation with one of the staffers at the Civil War outpost earlier this evening. :D
Anyhoo, it's my youth minister's LAST DAY TOMORROW!!! :( :( :(
I'll miss you, M.S., if you're reading this! (which you probably aren't, but whatever...).

All right, well... goodbye for now!

Oh, and I went on a LONGER amount of driving yesterday with my mom. Although I did reach speeds above ten miles an hour, I'm still not sure whether I'm psychologically prepared to go above 20 miles, even though in some areas I can probably get a ticket for going too slowly (aka going 15 (WHICH IS REASONABLE!) in a 25 mile zone or something). Still got to work on that...