progress!!!

Well, my gold award project (which, as of two weeks ago, was looking disasterous) is now very well straightened out (and scheduled for a date that is over a month from now, which is fine by me). So that's all well and good and awesome. However, that isn't the only thing that's well and good and awesome. I've FINALLY gotten the piece I'm working on in piano into a state where I wouldn't be horridly ashamed if I played it in public. Mind you, I would still be kind of embarassed, but I'd be far less embarassed than if you asked me to play last week. The piece is "River Flows In You," composed by a (really awesome) Korean composer named Yiruma. For all of you pop-junkies, it's also known as "Bella's Lullaby." Do NOT ask me, if I happen to be playing it in public, whether it's Bella's Lullaby, because I will say 'no, it isn't.' Just letting you know, I DO try and find the original sort of thing, instead of finding Bella's Lullaby online, I find River Flows in You. This is also partially because I heard River Flows in You first, and I didn't know it was also Bella's Lullaby until a lot later.

SUMMER!

I just came to terms with three things:
1. That my brother is going to COLLEGE on SATURDAY!!! (EEK! Not that he isn't really around anyway. It's just now he will be gone from Saturday to Thanksgiving, and never having to stop by at least once a week because he's going to be three hours away... AIEE!)
2. that my youth minister is leaving our church (NO! I will miss you, M.S., but good luck in Boston, if you are reading this!)
3. that I HAVE TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL IN 3 WEEKS! AAAHHH! Did I mention I was traumatized by number 3? Anyway, I don't really want summer to end, but at the same time, I'm ready to go back. I wish I could do what I was doing for the ENTIRE MONTH OF JULY for the rest of the year. (AKA helping people and hanging out with friends where it's not really awkward to believe in God).
Anyhoo, in retrospect, it has been a grand summer... and it's not done yet. I guess the next three weeks are really going to define the summer... maybe. I think July defined it. But I don't know. I'm confusing myself. I'm going to get un-confused and will come back later.

AP, Going Back, and Gold Award

I'm getting to that point where I really have nothing to say because there are no talking points. I don't want to discuss the latest gossip with whichever celebrity did whatever (because I wouldn't know about it) and I haven't done anything of consequence lately to merit someone hearing about it. I think I'm ready to go back to school, in all honesty - partially for the lessons, but also it's an excuse to have social interaction and get on someone's nerves whose name isn't the same as my mom's, brother's or dad's. I also will have a reason to get off my butt every 50 minutes to go to the next class. It's true that Junior year is supposed to be terrible, but I think I'm ready for it. I just wish I could take more APs. I'm not doing AP English because the teacher is SUPER hard, and if she was bad in 9th grade English, I DON'T want to think about what she'll do in AP English. I'm only taking one AP, which is my first, and probably one less than everyone else. So in senior year I'm going to take a lot of APs - English definitely, probably history too, and hopefully science (if it can fit right). I do NOT want to do AP math, no matter what anyone else says. And I might do AP music theory, just to have a lot of APs. The reason I feel so bad about it's because my brother took about 2 million AP classes (he's off to college next week) and a lot of my friends have done at least one already, and might be doing 2 next year (if they don't already have at least one credit). So I feel kind of left in the dust. So... yeah.
I think the reason I wasn't super psyched for summer at the end of last year was the fact that the Snopocalypse had vacationed me out by February. I mean, I had Winter break, then Winter break of the Snowmageddon, then Spring break... that's a total of about a third of my summer break right there. Enough for 2 mission projects and a backpacking trip. Wow.
ANYHOO, on to more interesting endeavors: doing the annual KnitterWriterBlogger's REASONS FOR GOING BACK TO SCHOOL!
By KnitterWriterBlogger.
1. APs!
2. Friends!
3. FALL FORMAL!
4. intellectual conversations!
5. I heard that we're going to have 2 new freshmen in my lunch group. YAY!
6. I love getting stuff for back to school. I admit it.
7. Chorus! (yes, I know, I didn't get into a good choir, and I know I'm going to shoot something if I do the same thing next year, but whatever)
8. the school musical! I have no idea what it is yet, but I WANT TO AUDITION! (I just really hope I don't get trumped by the soon-to-be sophomores who are in Chamber Singers... I probably will... but whatever)
9. Film class!
10. Creative Writing!
11. My Gold Award Project will be OVER AT LAST!

Oh, that's the turn of events that I didn't mention... or did I? The one about how, through an annoying turn of events, my gold award project has to be postponed?
In a way, I'm glad it worked out that way. I was SUPREMELY unprepared. So... I'm going to go now.

I also saw 'Despicable Me' last night. It was a REALLY good movie. :D

camp, contacts, and writing. :D

Well, after almost an entire MONTH of doing A TON of trips... watching TV, Facebook, knitting, SAT prep, and going to Driver's Ed is ALL I'M DOING. And I'm REALLY BORED.
My next trip isn't until Labor Day Weekend. It's Family Camp with my church. I'm SUPER psyched. I'm SO excited that I'm already planning the video that I'm doing for it... three weeks in advance... I just realized how little of a life I have... Anyhoo, I did a semi-documentary last year (the only reason it wasn't a FULL documentary's because it's only ten minutes long) and I want to do one again this year. What planning have I done? The opening title. "Hug A Ninja Productions." The end. HOORAY!!!
Okay, in other news, I've finally started up my piano and voice practice again (YAAY MUSIC!!!) and I started wearing contact lenses today. I'm doing those two-week disposable ones where you put them in daily and pitch them out at the end of two weeks. It's awesome. I'm not wearing them right now because the guy said that I should only wear them for two hours the first day, and sort of build until I get to a full day, just to get used to them. It's sort of the same thing with my glasses. I like my glasses a lot, though. It's just easier to have contacts because they're not getting in the way. But apparently, glasses look good on me. And I really like them. So... yeah. I guess what I'm most worried about (aside from poking my eye out when I'm putting the contacts in/ taking them out/ forgetting they're there) is... do I have to wear them for two weeks STRAIGHT, or is it a fourteen-time usage or something?
I've also been doing some writing - not a lot, but some. I will post when I have something decent to show. :D

okay, soo....

I was in Florida last week, and it was REALLY fun! It was an 11-day trip (for me and my mom) and from Sunday to Friday, we hung out with family. On Friday morning, my mom and I packed up and headed to DISNEY WORLD!!! First we went to the Magical Kingdom (that afternoon) and I met Pinocchio, Belle, Cinderella, and Aurora (sleeping beauty), and Sleeping Beauty asked if I'd met my Dream Prince yet, once I'd told her my age... still working on that, Aurora...
On Saturday, we went to the new Harry Potter World at Universal Studios, and I got Butterbeer and Sirius's wand! I also got picked to get a wand in Ollivander's - Hawthorne, 13.25 inches, slightly springy, with a phoenix tail feather core. He did it just like in the book, but that was the third wand I tried (instead of the 3 millionth, like in the book) and the first two made some (fairly realistic) mistakes, and the third one had the wind and the music and stuff. It was awesome. I'm just hoping that when I see the 7th movie, my wand doesn't end up being a replica of the tempramental hawthorne wand, because they did make replicas of character wands (like Sirius's and Harry's and Dumbledore's) and non-character wands (like the Hawthorne and the Elder Wand). So hopefully it won't be the annoying one because that would kind of suck.
Anyhoo, after Harry Potter, we went to check out the rest of Universal Studios. Sunday, we went to EPCOT, and I got one of those photos where they put your face on something that isn't your body. Like an Imperial Scout's uniform, like mine. (From Star Wars. Yes, I'm a girl.). On Monday, we spent the morning and early afternoon at Animal Kingdom, which was really fun!
The end!

The Most Recent Installment

As I haven't posted since before Raleigh, and I'm not allowed to be procrastinating, according to my mom, and I still have to do all of TWO chores (and the ONLY two chores I have all day), I'm going to tell you about what I've been doing for the last two weeks, because you've all missed me, right? (you can disagree if you want to. Just remember that I'm a black belt.).
Anyhoo, on July 25th, I left for Raleigh, NC, to do ANOTHER MISSION PROJECT! YAY! It was the first time we went on a trip with YouthWorks, but it was TOTALLY worth it. Maybe we can do TWO mission trips next summer as well, since both ASP and YouthWorks are REALLY awesome and if we do both, even MORE people will be helped and the world will be happier if we help out more people in a single summer! (hint hint, M.S. You know who you are. And you probably aren't reading this.) Anyway, back on topic.
So we went to Raleigh. And it was awesome. And our theme song was "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond. That was a specific request. (I was the Travel CD Person this time. I would know.). Anyhoo, since there were two different churches in our group of six youth and three adults, we had to spend the first hour of the trip getting to know each other with these books that M.S. had brought - those books of "have you ever" and "name your favorite." It was fun.
(a side note: you'll notice that I'm using people's initials. It's because I want to keep them in the post, but I don't want to mention names so creepers can't find them and stalk them and stuff.)
When we got to the center and found our rooms and stuff, we found that we were in even MORE cramped quarters than on ASP!! It also turned out that I picked the farthest sleeping spot from the only working door. The other would eventually be blocked by someone else's sleeping pad. There were a total of 4 churches there, counting our group as one. At dinner that night, we met H.M. (hooray!).

Over the course of the week, my crew did four things:
1. work with little kids in the area
2. organize at a goodwill-type place
3. organize at a different goodwill-type place
4. help out at a Christian-run warehouse where they give necessities away to people who need them.

And it was a LOT of fun!

Hooray!

hello!

I'm back again, here with the Monologue of the Day, which I've been wanting to post somewhere for ages.
It's from Pirates of the Caribbean 3, where all the pirates are discussing what to do about the East India Trading Company taking over the world and killing everyone.
And I don't own any of this, by the way.

Cuttlefish. Eh? Let us not, dear friends, forget our dear friends the cuttlefish. Flippin glorious little sausages. Pen em up together and they will devour each other without a second thought. Human nature, isn't it? Or... or fish nature. So yes, we could hole up here well provisioned and well armed and half of us would be dead within the month, which seems grim to me any way you slice it. Or, as my learned colleague so naively suggests, we can release Calypso, and we can pray that she will be merciful. I rather doubt it. Can we in fact pretend that she is anything other than a woman scorned, like which fury hell hath no? We cannot. Res ipso loquitur tabula in naufragio, we are left with but one option. I agree with, and I cannot believe the words are comin' out of me mouth, Captain Swann. We must fight.

I LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!!!

Word of the day:
Perscipacity: Good judgement!

a list of fun words to say (without the defenitions)

isothermobathic
untheistic
antineuralgic
unperfidious

um.....

hello! I'm bored. And I'm really bad at posting regularly. Go figure! But I'm just here with the word of the day:
unsanguineous - not like blood, not bloody, underconfident
unprognosticated - not predicted
hooray!

and by the way, it is prognosticated that I will be out for the next two weeks, starting on Sunday. hooray! or, boo..... :P

YAAAAY!!!!!

My super-awesome amiga, who's lived in Australia for the last two years, is FINALLY BACK! I got to talk to her this morning. I was extremely excited.
Although this is the one week where I have nothing planned, I still have to clean my room... sigh... It really sucks. I mean, I know it's good to be productive and stuff, but I really hate cleaning my room with a burning, firey passion. I also dislike doing SAT prep. SAT prep and room-cleaning can both go die.
For randomness' sake, I'm going to start doing the Word of the Day (NOT from the SAT prep, becase I already KNOW all of them, so I'm only going to use the SAT words if I actually LEARNED something.). So, word of the day for today is Wandle, which means Supple. It's crazy what you can find on the Scrabble website. You can enter letters and it'll combine them into different words for you. I guess it would be really helpful if you had a phone/ iPod with internet connection and a fat lot of bad letters while playing Scrabble. Mind you, it could also be considered cheating.
Okay, I'm going now... goodbye!

backpacking update

On Sunday, we went and got to Goshen at around three or four. We did a pack check, set up our tents, had dinner/ campfire, and went to bed. Monday, we set out to the first outpost and, on the way, got thoroughly lost and wound up in a Webelos (2nd grade ish) portion of the camp. We ate lunch with them and told them about backpacking and pirates. It was awesome. So after lunch, it started to rain, and when it let up slightly, we put on pack covers and ponchos and went off. We got thoroughly lost again and wound up in a different camp in Goshen, where a leader gave us a better map than the one we got at base camp. We set out again, got thoroughly lost AGAIN, and eventually called base camp for directions. By the way, it was still raining, and we were completely soaked to the bone, through the boots, through the socks, and was prunifying our toes. Anyway, we finally made it to our first outpost, Mountain Man. We threw tomohawks, darts, shot 50 caliber guns (or 45, if you wanted), and hung out at the trade-only camp store (for lack of a better term). I got half a handful of seed beads for a gimp that I had done.
The next day, we went off and got to the next outpost, Civil War, in good time (as in, we made it there in less than six hours, with minimal lost time). We arrived at noon, set our stuff down and made sure it was in a place where it would be able to become/ stay dry in case it rained again, and we went on a hike to a mountain called the Knobb. We were trying for the Trailbalzer Award, which requires at least 20 miles of hiking and doing 2 peaks, among other things. While we were hiking The Knob, guess what? IT RAINED AGAIN!! And guess what else? WE GOT LOST AGAIN!! YAY!! We finally made it to the top as it stopped raining, and the view felt like something out of Avatar, because it was all foggy and green and the view was sort of obstructed by a LOT of trees.
We passed through Mountain Man on the way back, who radioed back to Civil War that we were on our way. We were supposed to check in between one and five pm, and it was around six pm. When we arrived, the guy who was running Civil War (one of them, anyway) shot some blanks into the trees to startle us, and we all screamed. Literally. One of us went into the fetal position, one nearly jumped into the trees, and one of the adults yelled, "God bless Abe Lincoln!" It was HILARIOUS!
After that, it rained some more and when it let up, we 'signed up for the army' and did some training, attack formations, and learned how to charge. And I also pulled a tick off the back of my tentmate's neck during the training. We also learned about some artifacts from the civil war and other cool stuff.
The next day, we did some shooting, and I 'earned the Seargent's eternal respect' because I pulled off all of the (paper) tops of the little shot-sized powder bags off with my teeth. I also hit the target twice. After packing up, we set off for the Native American outpost. The hike, again, only lasted about an hour, probably less. There, half of us hiked to Swinging Bridge, and half (me included) built a dam in the stream as our service project (a requirement for trailblazer). Then the half that stayed behind did some shooting at a cookie target and then shot at animal-shaped targets. I hit the most of my half. I also overshot one into the trees. It has yet to be found, but we did find a different one that had been lost at another point in the summer.
After dinner, we went to Mountain Man for their campfire, as part of the Native American program. We also introduced the Boy Scouts to a couple of Girl Scout songs. It was fairly awesome.
Thursday morning, we hiked over to Kayaking, and decided to hike our second peak, Viewing Rock, that day, instead of on Friday. It was a steep hike, but it was also a 'Circle of Life' moment. You just HAD to sing it, because it was that sort of view.
When we returned to Kayaking, we kayaked (surprise!) and capsized on purpose. The boys, after dinner, also challenged us to a game of volleyball. The post leaders couldn't find the volleyball, but we did play a few games of Ninja and Don't Touch the Trash Can, a game that is very hard to explain.
Friday, we woke up early, and made it to another Webelos camp by nine or so. We hung out there and handled the snakes in the nature center (which was really awesome, by the way), and then we headed on our way. We made it back to base camp by eleven, and we all took our first official showers of the week, which felt really nice. We didn't even bother staying for lunch, but did final photos and headed home, eating lunch on the way.
The end!

ASP update

We left from our normal departure place at around 12. We spent the night in a church near the VA/ TN border and went to the church service there on Sunday morning. We also saw fireworks on Saturday for the 4th of July at a school near the church.
On Sunday, we continued our journey to Johnson City, TN. There, we set up our stuff and had dinner and stuff. Monday morning, we got to our worksite. We had to support the floor joists, demolish the wall and support the wall supports, and do new footers for the foundation. The hardest part was the footers. Why? Well, YOU try digging a 2 foot square hole while a multi-ton house is in the middle of it.
Anyway, Monday and Tuesday were mostly demolition. The family didn't actually live there, as half the floor had already been ripped up and the bathroom wall had been knocked down; the bathroom looked right into the ripped-up floor room where the wall had been demolished and a severe lack of hallway by the door. They lived with their son during the time we were there.
Anyway, it's hard to recall what happened when, aside from Friday, but whatever. I made 12 basketball 3-pointers over the course of the week (5 on monday, 7 on Friday) and also found my long-lost power tool twin, who doesn't even live in the same state as me. It doesn't matter, though. It's still awesome. Anyway, I also learned how to do the power drill, and, on Friday, successfully drilled in about a third of the sub-floor all by myself. I feel proud. I also learned how to do a new saw (my title, after all, being Saw Queen): the reciprocating saw. It's basically the electric version of the classic saw. I still prefer the circular/ skill saw.
I also did a whole ton of friendship bracelets and things, and we all got a cross to wear somewhere on our bodies during the week. A lot of people wore it around their necks, but I wore mine (normally) knotted on my hair tie or on my belt loop. There WAS a lot of dirt and stuff, but I really didn't care. It was good prep for the backpacking trip, as was breaking in a new sleeping bag and learning how to comfortably sleep on hard ground.
In all, I really enjoyed it. It was INSANELY fun, so much I can't describe. YAAAY!!!