I really hate this APES Biome project. I want to kill it. I want to kill it dead.
So I'm taking a break from that, and all the other homework I'm forced to do tonight to "succed in school." I have a Trig test tomorrow. Ugh. With all this homework, my backback has put on a few pounds. She could definitely stand to lose some weight. C'mon, Lorraine...just do some crunches or something. I swear, every little bit helps you to not be so damn heavy.
So Lindsey's coming home this weekend. Yay! See you soon, Lindsey!
Nothing important happened today. If it had, I would blog about it, but it didn't. Seriously. It was just a regular, boring, long day, that I would very much like to end so I can go to sleep and not wake up for a little while. But, as I have a lot more Biome work to do and studying for Trig to do, I probably won't get to go to sleep for several more unbearable hours.

Edited to add: Man. Why does Yahoo! always say I have new mail when I don't have new mail? It's supposed to say "Mail" when you don't have anything new, and "New Mail" when you have something unread. But mine almost always says "New Mail", even when I have no unread mail! I get my hopes up and everything, and then Yahoo! has to go and kill all my dreams. Damn you, Yahoo!. Damn you.

A nice little Quote Of The Day from Sara Beverly to tide you over until I can come up with enough of a day to blog about:
"Yeah, the rats are really nice...until they detach their jaw and swallow you whole!"

There's nothing that cures all ills like driving really, really, really fast on Library Road. Library Road, of course, is the road that leads to the library--I know not its name, but I know what its speed limit is, and I know how to break it. Bethany pointed out to me that Freemanville is a great road to go fast on, as we sped down Waters, but I maintain that I will forever love to speed down Library Road.
I was driving home from the mall area earlier, down North Point Parkway where all those business buildings are, and on the other side of the road I saw a guy in a motorized wheelchair. Driving. In the middle of a lane. People were having to slow down and pass him, because although it looked like he was trying to just ride his wheelchair down the very far side of the road, he was jutting out into the lane and no one could get by. It amused me. A guy riding a wheelchair in the middle of the road! You don't see that everyday.
So all that put me in a good mood, but then I came home and my mother ruined it once again by telling me that not only are we going to Columbus tomorrow, my own personal Hell, but we're also going to church with my grandparents. She had previously told me that we wouldn't be going to church with them. You're probably thinking, Amy, you're a dork. Stop complaining. You'd just have to go to church here, anyway. But you haven't been to my grandparent's church. Imagine how much I dislike my church. The nice, normal, Methodist church. Then imagine how much I dislike my grandparents Southern Baptist church. Yeah. A lot. And then the final, crushing blow: we have to drive all the way down to Columbus in our church clothes.
Yeah, I know. Stop complaining, it's no big deal, don't kill your parents yet. But c'mon...I'd much rather be anywhere else on earth tomorrow.
Columbus sucks.

So tonight was fun. In a quick overview: pizza, Must-See TV, chocolate chip mini-muffin fight, Act One, and Pictionary. Then some people left. Then a frantic phonecall, and then some more people left. And then A Conversation. And then I left, so I don't know beyond that. Ask someone else if you wish.
I'm so glad it's a long weekend now. I think I might just sleep all day long tomorrow. That would be nice, but I'll probably end up waking up and working on my Biome project for APES, which I haven't even started yet. I should probably do that.
I've been going through this stage lately where I actually tell people how I feel. It's a strange thing for me. I don't know quite yet how it's working out for me. Not so well, I'd say, as I think most people don't care to know how I actually feel or shouldn't be told how I'm actually feeling. We'll see.
We had to eat inside again today, but no rats. Probably because we spent all lunch quoting Hamlet back and forth to each other, in desperate preparation for what we thought would be The Test From Hell, but actually wasn't that bad. I don't know, perhaps because I actually studied this time, but it wasn't that hard. Of course, you can all laugh at me when I fail miserably after saying it wasn't hard. Ha. Ha.
A great song to end a mix with is 'Nightswimming' by REM. Everyone should have a copy of that song, I think. It's a nice song.

We were forced to eat in the cafeteria today, as it was raining domesticated house-pets outside. And a rat BIT me! I was walking to throw away my lunch bag in the trash can, when all of a sudden I felt these RAZOR SHARP TEETH chomp down on my right leg! So I started screaming, and a few people turned to gape in horror, because there was a GIANT RAT holding onto my leg with its TEETH! And so I started kicking and thrashing, and finally I managed to kick it off, and it flew across the cafeteria into the lunchline! And the lunch ladies shrieked with glee, and I think I saw them put it in a big pot labeled "Stew"! Man. It was scary.
Other things of note today:
We were assigned new seats in APES this morning. I think assigned seating is a tool of Satan and should only be utilized in cases of dire emergency, i.e. rat infestation. So now I'm separated from Ashleigh--how will I go on? Oh yeah, and I'm separated from Jason and Bethany, too, but they're not as funny as Mashe is. "There are apes everywhere! Look! I see one now!"
The counselor Ms. Edwards came into Lit to talk to us about the Hope scholarship, encourage us to attend a two year school, and mix up her words. She kept saying things that just didn't register in my brain, and I would think and think about it until I finally realized that the stuff she was saying actually didn't make sense. Did anyone else notice that, or was it just me? For a second there I thought I had gone retarded.
'Ed' premieres tonight. How come nobody else watches 'Ed'? 'Ed' rocks. How can you go wrong when it's a show about a bowling alley lawyer? "I'm a lawyer, and I own a bowling alley. Two separate things."
And that's all for now. I'm off to go attempt to memorize Hamlet in its entirety. I figure that's the only way I'll pass the test tomorrow. Wish me luck, if you wish.

Sometimes before I die I'd like to see a real live fox.

Khakis swing. Yeah.

Hey guys. This is me, avoiding writing my Hamlet paper. Which means I'm avoiding finishing reading Hamlet, and then avoiding finding someone or something to explain to me what on earth I'm supposed to write about. Isn't this fun?
Do you guys remember "great expectorations?" Man, that was classic. Good times, good times. Heh heh.
It's nice being done with Prince Of Tides, and not having to read it for two hours or so every day. But now that it's over, my urge to read something familiar has passed, and I'm not reading anything. I started rereading Catcher for the tenth time this morning, but then I remembered that we might have a pop quiz in APES and decided to study for that. But alas, it was not meant to be. I'm sure there'll be one tomorrow, though. Damn.
I think I'm the only blogger of our little blogging circle who blogs and blogs and blogs but never really says anything. Everybody's writing these intense, thoughtful commentaries on what's going on in the world in politics and science and religion, and those who aren't (::cough cough:: Ashleigh ::cough cough::) are at least writing about other meaningful things, like how we're wasting our high school years. But me, I write about Josh Joplin and coughing up lungs and how my comments died. It's like mine is the ditzy blog. At least I don't replace words with numbers and spell things wrong to be "cute." 2 minnie peeple doo that.
You know, I think I learn a lot more in APES when Ashleigh isn't there. Because that day last week when it was Yom Kippur and Jason and Bethany were gone, and Ashleigh was either pretending to be Jewish or at the orthodontist so I was all by myself, I actually took good notes and paid attention. But then Ash comes back and all we do all period is laugh about animals and the misspellings of various peoples' names, like today. And I just don't learn. Ashleigh, you're making me fail!
We get this Friday off. I need a break from school badly. I think we all do. We should all do something fun. I hear the new Reese Witherspoon movie is good...haha...anyone? Anyone?

"And I am not the only Caulfield catching more than kids..." --'I Am Not The Only Cowboy'. Josh Joplin rocks my world!

Lindsey started a blog! Go visit it!

Just got back from the Josh Joplin Group concert...pretty damn amazing. I love Josh; Josh is great. He had a lot of energy, much more than I expected. The venue was alright--I'd never seen a show there before. Me, Jason, and Bethany had our elbows resting on the edge of the stage the entire time, which was nice, while Pennington and Ashleigh languished (and dozed) back in the seats. Josh was pretty good with the crowd--when he wasn't spitting all over us (he'd had a carrot, he said), he was jumping all over the place and getting down right in front of us to play. It was nice. I touched his hand.
It was the cd release party so I only knew the words to roughly half the songs, but that made it even nicer when those songs were played. The band did an awesome rendition of 'This Land Is Your Land'. And they played my two favorite of their songs--'I've Changed' and 'Here I Am' (or 'Here I Is', as the case may be...). So I was alright.
Ashleigh said on her blog that nobody ever reads song lyrics on blogs. She's probably right.

"Beneath the snow lies a dream that I once had
And I know that I'll never go back
To the Christmas colored neighborhood as thoughtful as a card
With a plastic baby Jesus in the yard
And it was all and it was nothing at all
And it was all and it was nothing at all
What we didn't know, we didn't think to ask
The world was just a globe we used in class
Where the gym teacher was always mad and as far as we could tell
He only exercised his right to yell
And it was all and it was nothing at all
And it was all and it was nothing at all
As the kings of boredom we ruled as we know how
Or at least as long as our curfews would allow
Couple skates, lovesick songs, in moments without pause
As Johnny Cougar amplified our cause
And it was all and it was nothing at all
And it was all and it was nothing at all
We were the great believers that dreams came with stars
And freedom just depended on the car
Until one day the sky fell in and freedom lost control
And ran off the road and hit a pole
And it was all and it was nothing at all
And it was all and it was nothing at all
And it was all and it was nothing at all
And it was all and it was nothing at all
Beneath the snow lies a dream that I once had."

Sums it up.

A decision I should have made weeks ago:
My comments are leaving. Gone. Adios. Bye-bye. You can say goodbye to them and wish them well if you so choose, but by tomorrow they'll be gone. I don't even know if this blog will survive much longer, but regardless, the comments are going extinct tonight. Say goodbye...

I coughed up a lung a little while ago. It was pretty funny. Well...more gross than funny, but funny all the same.

I've been reading The Prince Of Tides for the past few hours. I really like it. I can't say anything very specific about it, not yet, because I still have approximately 200 pages to read by Sunday, when I have to write my paper on it. I can do it. Sure.
So anyway, reading it somehow strangely inspired me to go back and reread the autobiography we wrote for Wade's class in 10th grade. So I went and dug it up off my hard drive and read it. And...it's one of the worst things I've ever written. It's just terrible. I wish I could go back and rewrite it. I wrote about everything that never mattered to me, because I felt that you were supposed to write about moving and school in an autobiography. If I could write it over, I would write about random events and friends and memories and things that really matter to me. I suppose I could rewrite it. But at this point, unless it's for a grade, I don't think I can assign myself any homework. I'm too bogged down as it is.
I can't believe it's only Wednesday. This week has dragged by. This weekend, I hope, will be fun. I need some fun, desperately, and fast.
Why is it that only when I'm overwhelmed with school/required reading (Prince Of Tides mainly, but also Hamlet and the never-ending chapters for APES) do I get the insatiable urge to read something else? Like for the past week, I've had a huge craving to go back and reread either Catcher, Perks, or one of the Harry Potter books. And I want to very badly, but I know if I do, I'll feel guilty about it because I should be reading Prince Of Tides and I'm not. So I'm glad I'll be finishing Prince Of Tides on Sunday, so I can finally read something else without feeling guilty.
And today's discovery? As much as I've been consistently avoiding downloading anything by Neutral Milk Hotel to try out, they really aren't bad at all.

Every day I'm coming to loathe drama more and more. The only thing I've ever been "good" at, and I hate it more and more as the days go by. Damn.

I love Hollister.
The Mall of Georgia can be very peaceful sometimes. I went there with my mom today after when I would have gotten home from school, had I been able to make it through the school day. It was nice, not too crowded. I bought a shirt at Hollister and I would have bought a pair of navy blue corduroys, but I wasn't sure if you just went in the dressing room or if, like at Abercrombie, you had to have a salesperson unlock it for you. So I didn't try on the pants, which I regret, so I'm going back on Sunday to remedy my mistake. Hollister is such a great store. I mean the atmosphere. First of all, it looks like a beach house, and anything that looks like a beach house is fine by me. Second of all, they play music in there that just makes me want to buy more and more clothes. Even though some of it's old stuff ('Bent' by Matchbox 20 and 'Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic' by The Police were some prime clips of the day), it just gets me in that tranquil mood I have to be in to want to run up debts with the credit card. Now all I need to know is how the lighting in their dressing rooms are and I'm set.
A downside to the Mall of GA is their selection when it comes to music and movies. Sure, they have Suncoast, which thinks of itself as the headquarters for film buffs and people who know movies but is really just a glorified version of the DVD section at Best Buy, and they have Sam Goody, whose main intention it is to overprice music that's bad to begin with, but they don't have anything really substantial. I guess you can't really say that Best Buy, Media Play (which basically is Sam Goody, only with books), and FYE are greatly substantial music/movie stores, but at least they've got selection. Oh, I don't know. Maybe we should all just shop online.

I was issued a reprieve from the evils of Trig by the nice volunteers at the nurse's office. The ones who are very helpful, so long as you get sick between the hours of 11:00 and 1:30. Turns out the strongest medicine they can offer is "Why don't you go lie down on our ultra-sanitized paper cot until next period," so I checked out before fifth. I was sick, that wasn't a lie. I think Kenneth Branagh made me ill. So after muddling through most of study hall feeling awful, I allowed myself to be convinced to go try to check out. Knowing that there was no way I could face Trig in my condition, going home was a welcome solution.
So today is Yom Kippur. I find it strange the number of kids at our school who suddenly became Jewish over the weekend. Although I did consider it, I decided against it, as I didn't want to not be able to eat. Incidentally, Beth and I called Bethany at lunch to describe to her in detail how good our food was. Was that mean? Nah...
So as it turns out, Jason screwed up the dates and the Jimmy Eat World concert at the Tabernacle is Thursday, not Saturday, which is the day we were going to go. But Bethany saved the day by finding out that there's a Josh Joplin Group concert at the Variety Playhouse Saturday night that we can go to to replace the JEW concert we have to miss. Aw...and I love JEW. Don't get me wrong, JJG is great too...but I'll have to go relearn all the song lyrics before the show. Damn.
And finally, one thing I learned during my blog vacation is that Palaniuk is pronounced "Paul-AH-nick". Nobody has been able to answer me when I ask them that, so it was nice to finally find out for sure.

Hey.
My blog's on an indefinite vacation, a hiatus, if you will, but I'm returning briefly to ask you this:
Is anyone besides me sick of Poulos' bullshit? As Sara and I decided after school today, there is more bullshit flowing in that room alone than anywhere else on earth. Anyone? Or is it just me.

Yeah, it sucks.
Yeah, I know.
Congratulations to all of you who got in. I'm sure you'll have fun. I wish I could be there with you.
This might be my last blog for awhile. Perhaps. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see.

Agh, the hell has set in. Throat constricting...stomach turning...brow creasing...yep, that's hell alright. Things would be a lot better if someone would just smite me down right about now. Or if Daniel R. could buy me that self confidence a few months early...

So I haven't been around in awhile. I was going to write something Friday night, but let's just say that the blog I was planning was way too inflammatory, so I decided to let it be for awhile. And now it's Sunday and I'll do my best to not be boring.
Friday night was way fun; I got some great pictures; we may have lost, but at least we lost in style. Sure...right. Steak & Shake afterwards actually was kind of boring, but we can fix that for next time. And as for that pep rally Friday during school, well, at least some people have pep.
Saturday night was...interesting. We finally have proof that Daniel's girlfriend actually exists! It's nice to know. So we went to Tara to see 'One Hour Photo', but Bethany's not too bright. Nick was going to buy her ticket, since she's not seventeen yet, and instead of standing off the side like a good little sixteen year old, she offered her student ID to the Billy Corgan look-alike manning the ticket booth, thus cementing our not being able to get in the movie. The guy basically said that if any of us came near the theater that night, he'd murder us with his bare hands. Really. I swear.
So we went back to Jason's, where the most fun of the evening was hiding from Bethany in that scary closet thing. She wasn't amused.
Today me, Ashleigh, and Jason made a documentary about the Nitrogen cycle for APES. We're pretty damn brilliant filmmakers, as it turns out. Some of you will get to see this movie tomorrow. Others of you, sadly, will not.
And tomorrow are 'Breakfast Club' callbacks, which essentially means a day full of stress, hurt, anger, and wallowing. I know I'm excited. Score.

Arg. "I have that within which passes show/These but the trappings and the suits of woe..." Or something to that effect. Actually, I'm not nearly as bad off as I was earlier, as some of you were "fortunate" enough to witness. At least none of you (that read this blog) were forced to watch the tears. Be thankful for that. Man, I'm a walking train wreck. But tomorrow's festivities will certainly cheer me up-- Pep rally? Tailgating? Getting our ass kicked by Roswell? Steak & Shake? Score. I'm excited. And presumably, Beth will be giving me my Senior Girls shirt tomorrow, and all will be well...at least for a little while. The weekend will be average, and then come Monday I'll revert to my current state.
I just want to say now, in case (since I will probably NOT be cast) I become the bitter girl you all know I can be after auditions are officially over, that I think this play will be great. We have great people for every part and it will (probably) be a fun cast. Ideally. I hope all the fun people get in and the non-fun/less-fun people don't. But I really don't have as much control over things as I would like to have...very little, it seems.
God, I'm depressing myself. Make me shut up. If you see me in the hall or in class tomorrow, and I'm not acting all happy and giddy like I usually at least try to, slap me or something. Hit me really hard in the stomach, tell me everything's going to be alright, and just walk away before I retaliate. "Arm-swinging length!!!" Who gets that reference?
That's enough out of me for tonight. I can't talk about auditions, and that's all that I'm really thinking about, so I can't really write any more anyway.

We had our first round of auditions today, and it was actually quite fun. We saw some really good people, I won't say anything more in that direction, but it was more enjoyable than I'd been told. I like being in a position of (slight) power. I even got to yell at Nick some...although that was more because I slammed a door into his face than because I was auditioning people. Yeah, about that...sorry, Nick...
I wish I could go on and on in detail about who was good and who sucked and who I think should get what part, but obviously I can't. It would be mean and unfair and some of you are auditioning tomorrow. Good luck to those of you who are, all of you, including myself, or course.
On another note, my visit to Athens made me almost change my view on attending UGA. I still don't really want to...but now, a sizable part of me really does. I know I would have a lot of fun, and I wouldn't be as stressed out, and believe it or not, there are smart people that go there. So I wouldn't be, as some of us assume, surrounded by idiots. But then again, I really do feel like if I don't get out of Georgia now, I might never be able to get up the motivation or reason to leave. And that would suck. Really badly. If it wasn't for that, and the pretentious bitch deep inside me that longs to go someplace with more prestige, I think it might be at least near the top of my options.
That's all I want to say for now. I might return later. Again, good luck to anyone who's auditioning tomorrow.

Well I just returned from Athens, it was tons of fun, and not in that way you use when you're describing a fat person. I really did have a great time. So did Laura, I think. I'm not going to give a full-fledged, minute-by-minute account of the 25 hours we were there, because I don't want to, but I'll go over the highlights.
We got there at 3 yesterday, parked by a hideous frat house, and went to Lindsey's dorm in Mell. It was nice, bigger than I expected, with a sink and everything. She and her roommate, who pronounces it 'preetee', had decorated it quite nicely--it would have made a good example picture for an article entitled, 'Make The Most Of Your Space In Style'. She had used several pieces from the Todd Oldham dorm line, which is very cool.
We spent a good portion of our time there hanging out with Lindsey and Alex Rowland, who affectionately titled himself the Asshole Of Athens. He's pretty damn funny, and we all talked and laughed and ate in Clocked, a quaint little restaurant downtown. Then we went back to Lindsey's dorm to "chill". The town was pretty much dead. Everyone was either hung over in their rooms from the game Saturday night (UGA vs. Clemson, UGA won), or had gone home for the long weekend. There wasn't much exciting going on, and apparently the streets weren't nearly as crowded as they normally are, but I liked it even so.
Laura and I coerced Lindsey to call one of her two boys. John, who is one of the cutest and sweetest guys I've met in a long, long time, and who wears this amazing blue plaid fedora, came over and hung out with us in the dorm for a few hours, and then we finally gave up on his roommate joining us and went out to a 10 o'clock dinner at Papa John's down the street. John was really great, very animated. He's a drama major and me and Laura both agree that Lindsey should "pick him". Something about the way he flips his hat before he puts it on. Cute.
John hadn't gone to sleep until 7 AM that morning, and it was getting late, so he retired to his dorm. But the night was still young--we gathered up Alex (who, being hypoglycemic, required food every fifteen minutes or so) and went down to The Grill to drink sodas and watch him eat. We all told Lindsey to call Joe, her other boy, so she did and he invited us to a party. We decided to make an appearance but not stay long. So we followed his directions and wound up at the wrong apartment complex, called him back, and finally ended up at the right complex, only to find out that the party was moving. So we all piled back in Lindsey's car (Joe was sandwiched in between me and the door--what a lovely way to first meet!) and drove around for awhile, as none of the drivers in the caravan of cars understood the concept of following. Eventually we wound up at a really cute guy named Thomas' apartment for the party. We wound up being four of about six sober people total. The party was kind of lame, because I don't really see the pleasure in going to a drinking party and not drinking, but we stayed awhile. It was interesting to watch all the drunken college kids fall over each other, and some of the guys there seemed really nice. We left the party around 3, and were convinced to drive a drunk-off-his-ass high school senior named Morgan back to a dorm, so we did. Then back to Lindsey's dorm to watch some 'Moulin Rouge' (can't leave that out). Joe called soon after we got back and asked if we wanted to come over to his dorm to watch 'Requim For A Dream', but we were all a little tired and decided to just stay in. It was around 4 when we wound up going to sleep.
We didn't wake up until noon, and after getting ready, we went and ate at The Grill again for lunch. We ran into Joe there--but we still think Lindsey should pick John. And then Lindsey took us the long way back to the dorm, so we could see some of North Campus before we had to leave. Then...we had to leave.
It was really so much fun. It's easy to get there, so we're definitely going back more often. I'd like to see some of the people we met again, especially John, pssst Lindsey (pick him!). All in all it was a great time. Good times, indeed.
I don't know how I'm going to manage to go back to high school again tomorrow. The difference is crazy. I wish we could have stayed in Athens for a while longer, but alas...Alpharetta beckoned. Damn Alpharetta.