Whassup livejournal? It's been a while. I've been reading every day, just haven't had the time/energy/patience to write something. So... here goes, I guess.

I've been craptastically sick for like a week now. And I missed school on Monday so I have no idea what is going on in calculus now. But that day I worked for like 5 hours finishing up my skeleton. Whoever invented paper mache needs to be slapped. I'm serious. You think it's going to be easy, and once you're in the middle of it with gross flour-paste hands and only half of it done, that's when you start to hate your life. All that doesn't matter now because I finally turned it in on Thursday.

On Wednesday we had the first field trip in like two years. It was amazing. Our whole anatomy class went up to Seattle to see the BODIES exhibit. We got there at around 10 and our time slot for the exhibit wasn't until 11, so we went down to Pike Place and chilled. We hung out at the original Starbucks until a huge group of Japanese tourists came in and overcrowded everything. And there was this weird dude outside who was trying to sell some homeless cats. And they were all wearing sweaters. And he was wearing a tail. Awkward much?
Regardless, the exhibit was really cool. There's this one part where there's a body that is only blood vessels.

It blows your mind. Plus, it was a day in Seattle with a bunch of my closest friends. What more could one ask for?

Thursday morning, by contrast, blew. See, there's this scholarship at USF that you can get if you have a 3.8 GPA and a 1320 on your SATs, reading and math. And it pays for a ton of private school tuition. The SAT scores from earlier this month came out on Thursday. Guess what I got. Just guess.
1310.

That's a damn good score too! Ugh. There's an admissions counselor from USF coming to my school on Tuesday, so I'll talk to him about it.

Yesterday was the Masquerade Ball at school. I drove the manual transmission there! (And to University Place and back!) And I stalled so many times, it was embarrassing. But I did it. And I was a sexy peacock.

Yes, that is me and zombified Billy Mays. It was awesome.

Doing the real deal Halloween party tonight. Woo!

OMG.

30 ROCK AND WEEKEND UPDATE AND THE OFFICE.

I TOTALLY BLANKED AND JUST NOW REMEMBERED THAT THEY WERE ON TONIGHT.

(It's not a big deal, I can watch them online tomorrow, it's just that I'm so spaced out that I didn't even remember until 10:20. SOMEONE NEEDS A VACATION.)

So I haven't updated in a while... what else is new.

The SAT went pretty well. I don't want to jinx it, but I felt good about it, so I won't say any more about that. Oh, and I took it at Granite Bay, which is where I would have gone if I lived with my dad during high school. It has around a 0.1% minority rate. And the first sign outside the building was an anti-birth control poster (student made, no less). But my dad and I saw Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, so it was all good in the end.

Also, in my beloved humanities class, we're staging a mock trial between a tribe in Nigeria and the Shell refineries that destroyed their land. I swear that I'm interested in these topics, and then this teacher starts barking at us about the details of every little activity we do, and it makes me more apathetic about it. What's worse is that my side (the tribe) has awful evidence when compared to the other side (Shell). Not to mention that the defendants are acting like typical skeezy lawyers. I think we're almost done with Nigeria.
Oh humanities, how I loathe thee. Mark my words, I will NOT let this woman ruin China for me.

There is lots of whining in this post. I apologize. It's been a long month and a half. Here is something to make everything better.



Doesn't that just turn your heart into a squeeing little puddle of goo? Yes. Yes it does.

Off to watch Glee!

So Zombieland is the best zombie movie ever, I've just decided. Better than 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead. Woody Harrelson is probably the main reason behind that, too. And the Mancion de Murray. Everyone needs to see this movie. (This coming from the person who spent most of 28 Days Later under a blanket.)

So I saw the movie with Claire, Derek, Scott and his friend Cory. Then we drove back to Scott's house, where Martin and Alaura and Jas met up with us. And we all really wanted food, but at that point it was 10 o'clock and the only things near Scott's house that were open were Denny's and Shari's. So someone got the idea to go to Farelli's, which is ALL THE WAY across town by my house. And we piled into Claire's Scion and Alaura's Mini Cooper and drove there.
Of course, no one remembered how insanely expensive Farelli's pizza was, so we ordered exactly one pizza and one order of focaccia poppers. (Which led to a huge debate over the pronunciation of focaccia - Derek thinks it's pronounced "fokasha" and I think it's pronounced "fokotcha." Wikipedia says I'm right. Suck it, Derek.)
So then we left the waitress a huge and much-deserved tip and Cory and Alaura left and we all drove back to Scott's house. At that point we were too tired to do anything so we just sat on the couch for an hour and didn't move.
And then Claire and I dropped Jas off at her house in the South End and got completely lost in Lakewood trying to find our way back to the North End. It was kind of hilarious.

Next week is a conference week, so we have two six-hour days and one four-hour day, and that's it. And I'm taking the SAT in California because I had already made the flight reservations to visit my dad next weekend and then I found out I needed to take the SAT that same weekend to get my scores in on time. So now I'm taking it in Granite Bay. :/

Oh, and I'm making a life-size skeleton for my anatomy class! I think I'm using papier mache and newspaper, which is kind of lame on its own, but I'll have to spruce it up somehow.

And I'm reeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaalllllly hyper today. I need to go do stuff.

I was just sitting on my bed and this giganto spider just crawls past me. I HATE SPIDER SEASON. I'm finding them EVERYWHERE.

This week has been really weird already. I just had another email exchange with my mentor and guidance counselor because apparently I hadn't turned in my request for honors humanities. Which, um, I DID. So I have to walk back up to the office tomorrow to get that sorted out.

We (as in, a bunch of seniors) were going to go to the fair this afternoon, but surprise surprise, no one could make except for a few of us. The whole deal is that the fair's in Puyallup, and all the Puyallup kids get (or used to get) a day off to go check out the fair. Apparently today was that day, so we wanted a bunch of us SOTA kids to go out and represent. When no one could make it, we dropped it. Our class sucks at planning so hard, it's ridiculous.
However, my mom's boss went to see Crosby Stills & Nash there and saw Ben Gibbard and Zooey Deschanel (or, as I am now calling her, ZO_Oey).

And THEN during my early dismissal today, I organized ID photos of all the students and staff for the codirectors to - get this - put on their iPhones. So they can identify people on the go. Total Big Brother shit.

Oh, and on Monday we were eating outside and Paul just sat down and started eating with us. It was kind of weird, and pretty awesome.

And there was a fire drill this morning in the middle of calculus, but a bunch of us played quack-diddlioso (sp?) outside.

Yeah, it's only Wednesday. Tomorrow is the market and Friday is Day of Caring. There will probably be more weird things happening before the weekend.

P.S. Tomorrow is WEEKEND UPDATE THURSDAY and AMY'S BACK!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

I had the most random day ever.

First, I was going to be a representative for my mentor group in ASB, which means that instead of going to school on Fridays at 10, I go at 8:45. So I walked down to the bus stop at 8 or so. There was another guy waiting, so for a long time we just stood around. The bus didn't come at 8:20 like it was supposed to, and then it didn't come at 8:30 or 8:40.
AND while I was waiting, all these yellow jackets were buzzing around and one stung me on the back of the knee. Well, it didn't really sting me, it just kind of poked me before I swatted it away. But then it buzzed around me and poked me in the EXACT SAME PLACE. I hate bees anyway, so I was already freaked out.
Around 8:40 I gave up and walked the six blocks to the other bus route. The guy was a freshman at Puget Sound and didn't know where to go, so he came with me. So we talked about high school and California (he was from Stockton) and college parties (he was a freshman).
The bus finally came at 9:00. BUT, once we got to the main street by the hospital, the whole street was blocked by fire trucks. So the bus had to go around the hospital and then downtown. So I got to the meeting about fifteen minutes before it was over. Awesome.
(The meeting wasn't at all interesting anyway. Just brainstorming for fundraisers. Uggggghhh.)

It got better after that, though. I found out that the school computers have Dreamweaver, so I can work on my senior project at school. (I'm making an online yearbook - :O) And we all went to this great burger place for lunch. And we drove around in my friend's Mini Cooper that she'll get to take to college! WHICH IS NOT FAIR.

ANNNND there's some weird shit going on at the college tonight. People are running and screaming everywhere, but the frats are on the other side of the campus. Dunno, dunno. I'm so tired. And the AIDS walk is tomorrow. But I've gotta sleep first.

Bought my first footless tights and flats today. Someone please tell me I'm not turning into an indie kid.

So I think it's time for a CAMP POST WHAT WHAT???

Wednesday
I didn't get put in Harmony Springs this time! No more carrying stuff around for the ENTIRE DAY because it took too long to walk back and get something. A bunch of my friends got stuck there, though. I was in Lakeside Lodge, which is (true to its name) right next to the lake and much, much more centrally located. My cabin leader turned out to be Praxia, my other humanities teacher (aka my only hope for humanities this semester). She's AWESOME. She doesn't seem a lot older than us, and she's really down to earth.
Anyways. We took all of the ID card photos during lunch and dinner. At lunch I thought I was doing well when I took one or two pictures per person, then I looked over at Doris, who was taking four or five each. Oops. I let someone else take over at dinner. But then I picked out the best pictures for each person and organized them. My hair is rather poofy (and almost werewolf-like) in my photo, but I might just leave it and make my senior portraits even more awesome.
At free time, the weather was gorgeous and THE BLOB was back! It was closed last year. I didn't go in the water that day so I took photos of people on the Blob. Then I skipped cabin reading to organize more photos...
Someone's parent led the sing-along this year but it WASN'T MR. CAIRNS so it wasn't all that cool. Our expectations were already set far too high, but this guy did the best he could. He did that human storm thing with us, and that was pretty cool. Not Mr. Cairns cool, but what can you do when he's in Hong Kong?

Thursday
We had some instructional blocks, which are supposed to be like classes but really aren't - they're just to make camp count as the first three days of school. We had to get nine people on top of one square-foot piece of wood and stay on for seven seconds. It didn't work, but we were close. Then that afternoon, every mentor group had to do this photo scavenger hunt for the camp slideshow. It was very ironic that our group, which is led by the photography teacher and had no problem working together in the morning, absolutely could not do it without Doris' help. And then I downloaded all the pictures from all the cameras and got flustered. And THEN I presented my recycling video at showcase but the speakers made it sound like SHIT. Luke had even fixed the audio and it still didn't work. Ugggggh.
So there's always some activity after showcase on Thursday night. Last year it was a dance, and the epic crump battle that took place there. This year, it was an all-school movie. Everyone camped out on the playfield and there was a movie screen tied between a couple trees. The movie was The Princess Bride, which apparently ALL the teachers wanted, but only a few of the students did. But before that, when we were all getting settled in the grass, a bunch of FIREWORKS started going off. It was like an 8-minute display and everyone flipped the hell out. We all started joking that it was the science teachers who did it and that's where all the money from Artrageous went. Turns out there was a kiddie day camp when we were there and one of the parents owned a pyrotechnics company. But I'm still going to say it was for us. Really, what other graduating class got fireworks at their last camp? And when the movie was playing, only a few people were actually watching, but everyone cheered when Inigo killed the six-fingered man. It was weird.

Friday
Everyone was dead tired. And there were nasty churros at breakfast that tasted like chicken. But right before the buses came, all the seniors got a photo next to the lake. Jas and Kryshaun jumped in the lake first, of course. There wasn't a crapload of traffic this time, which was actually nice.

So this was my final time at Black Lake, as a student at least. It was sad because it's the end, but it also marked the beginning of senior year, which I am determined to make the BEST YEAR EVER. I won't be saying that in November when three of my apps are due, but just don't listen to me then. This year is gonna rock.

P.S. We have finally found a decent emcee for our school. Last year was spent trying to fill the Galen void, but my friend Domino is awesome at it. Woo hoo!

Watching the Spongebob marathon. Also, I look like this:

I've heard that merlot and email don't mix. Do you think that goes for oxycodone and blogging?

( this is me coked out on painkillers )

Jerry Springer is slowly making my day better, though.

It's officially my last full day in the CA this summer... boo. It will be nice to come home, even if I'm getting my wisdom teeth out on Tuesday. I'm hoping the two weeks that follow will make up for it.

Anyways... Tahoe was fun! We hiked up the same trail that goes up to Mt. Tallac, but veered off at one point to Susie Lake. Scott caught two minnows with his bare hands. And there was poker every night! (I watched. I tried to learn the terms just by watching, but I have a way to go before I know enough to play.)

Then last Saturday, Dad and I went back down to SF for the Giants game. We took the BART down from Walnut Creek. It was my first time in the Tube that goes under the bay. And we walked through Chinatown, but I didn't see a lot of food markets. We must have missed them. Ended up walking all the way to the ballpark, which was about a mile and a half. The fog was rolling in, too, so it was getting chilly. We had nosebleed seats way in the upper deck. What sucked was that the stairs were between us and home plate, so people were always blocking our view of the pitches. Giants won, though. And it was Dog Day! There was a costume contest before the game and the winner was a pug dressed in a pizza box that was decorated like the stadium. I couldn't find any photos, so here's a video. Skip to 1:25 to see him.

I got a Giants shirt too! My mom started calling me a traitor because I wasn't rooting for the former Mariners who were on the Phillies now (?) but I'm allowed to support two teams, right? One in each league? Yes. Yes I am.

So I'm really, really in love with San Francisco. I bought this notebook today and made a vow not to write in it until I'm done with this year of school. I made another vow to finish the regular moleskin I have now before I graduate. It can be done, I think.

Good night all.

Sax Man is currently blasting out of my stepbrother's room.

I am so proud. XD

I should explain that last post, because looking back, it sounds a little doomsday. Yes, Scott has swine flu, but he's not gravely ill or anything. He's been hacking up a lung for the better part of this week, but otherwise he's been doing stuff as usual. And Kate's fever was really low-grade, so she wasn't even sure if she had it. The flu apparently spread at Scott's camp (fifteen kids went home early, including him) and his friend's brother had just got diagnosed, so he went to the doctor and sure enough, he had it. According to the doctor, swine flu has a two-week incubation period (having the flu with no symptoms) and a one-week contagious period after the first symptom shows up. We've been around Scott since Sunday, so he's still officially contagious. So we'll see.

Anyways. Jas was here this past week! ( long entry is long )
This is a very long post with no pictures, so here's a dance from SYTYCD that Jas and I flailed over.

Scott has swine flu. And Kate has a fever.

I'll post about this week later. Right now I can't help but worry. I'd rather just get it and be done with it than be in this incubation limbo.

Pictures, anyone?

( this cut hates your slow connection )

Hanging out at my grandparents' place in San Jose now. I love it here because nothing ever changes. ;)

I am so tired. But tonight was so worth it. Review under the cut you see below.

( this is said cut )

Oh, and I left my phone in AG this morning. So I have no phone, watch or alarm clock for the next few days. Argh.

OMFG OMFG OMFG.

Just got into San Jose. I thought I was going back up to Sacramento tonight with my dad, so I was surprised when he told me to take the back bedroom at my (dad's side) grandparents' house. And there was an envelope (which I figured was the money from when I was working for him). So we ate lunch and said goodbye to my other (mom's side) grandparents and some other stuff, and my dad said to look at the envelope before it got too late. and I was all "???" so I checked it. And it wasn't a check.

IT WAS DEATH CAB TICKETS. IN BERKELEY. FOR TONIGHT.



*is aspazz*

UC Santa Barbara is a no. I wasn't feeling it. The campus is huge and sprawling, and I didn't see myself there.
Oh, and get this - The UC system doesn't require letters of recommendation, but then they don't tell me how to submit them. So today I ask the admissions guy how to send them in. AND THEY DON'T ACCEPT THEM. The guy basically said that I could send them in, but they would get put in a box and immediately get recycled. They're not allowed to read them. Wtf. So I'm really not getting into Berkeley.

So I fell asleep in the car and when I woke up... we were at Neverland Ranch. I was kind of "meh" about walking around until I saw this guy that I KNEW I had seen on TV. I just couldn't place him. When we finally got back, I started googling around, and then I realized...
( Twas... )

Before I say anything else, DOES ANYONE REMEMBER HOKU!?!?



I was googling Michelle Branch because she has a new solo album coming out (I HATED The Wreckers, her country group) and Hoku came up and I immediately went back to being an eight-year old pseudo-surfer girl. I had her first album on repeat for MONTHS. She's trying to look all weird and gritty now, though. :/

Anyways. I'm in SoCal (Arroyo Grande, to be specific) for the week. My cousin Jen got remarried on Sunday up in Folsom. It was a tiny wedding - the ceremony and reception were all in one room. It was pretty nice, though. We (my grandparents and I) made the drive down here Monday morning. It's five hours from Sac to AG, through farmland and brown GOLDEN hills. But we're 10 minutes away from Pismo Beach! And we're going to Santa Barbara tomorrow to check out UCSB. Reason? I have four colleges to apply to, and I'm only sure of getting into one. It's no bustling metropolis, but my cousin went there and loved it, so who knows. Report to come.

P.S. I don't really know what to think about this being Wikipedia's featured article. It's definitely worth a laugh, though, if you consider why the names of streets were chosen back then.

NOOOOOOO BILLY MAYS DIED. JUNE 2009 IS OFFICIALLY THE DEADLIEST CELEBRITY MONTH EVER.



Another eventful weekend. On Friday I went up to Squaw Valley (near Lake Tahoe) with my uncle Pete. His friend Heather was running Western States, the 100-mile race that he ran three years ago. He was pacing her for about 30 miles. So we spent the day up there with everyone getting ready for the race. Lots of nervous energy. And the whole place is a resort, so everything is ridiculously overpriced. Either way, it was cool to see the start line and remember crewing for Pete.
Then on the way back, he had two friends who were running the race and needed someone to drive their car down to the finish line in Auburn. So Pete drove their car and I drove his SUV through the mountains. (Without breaking anything, mind you.) And then I drove it from Auburn back to Roseville. So, almost a hundred miles on freeway. Hells yes.

Then last night was our family's birthday celebration. We all sat around and watched Motherlover. I LOVE MY FAMILY. Except I played Like A Boss in the car on the way home and Dad was horrified. LOL.