"Just get me through December, so I can start again..." --Natalie MacMaster, "Get Me Through December"

Just a few more days left, guys...

Nostalgia is good for putting one in a good mood. Ah, to be 12 years old and watching the first few episodes of "Dawson's Creek" back before it began to suck.

"All that you fashion; all that you make; all that you build; all that you break; all that you measure; all that you feel; all this you can't leave behind..." --U2, "Walk On"

Everybody remembers those email surveys, right? You know the ones. I was just thinking how glad I am that nobody sends those anymore. Because if somebody sent me a survey, I was always compelled to actually fill it out--you know how people are, always dying to reveal more insignificant information about themselves. Questions like "WoUlD u RaTha EaT scOrPioNs or LiVe In a DiTcH?" What? But of course, we'd fill them out, and send them to fifty of our closest friends, because if we didn't, "yOu'Re CrUsH WiLL hAtE U!" or "Sum-1 U LuV wiLL lOsE an EyE!" So ridiculous. So, as I said, I'm very glad everyone's gotten over those damn surveys and stopped filling them out and sending them to be. Because, if they did, I'd probably have to fill them out.
But I was thinking in church today about that ubiquitous "would you rather be really hot or really cold" question that seemed to be in every single survey. That's how boring church is. I actually contemplate those things. But actually, I thought of it because church today was broiling hot, and I couldn't decide if I would rather be there and roast or be someplace else and freeze. Hmm.
Speaking of church, I really wish my parents would stop forcing me to go. It's gotten kind of crazy. I tell them I don't want to go and they tell me that if I don't go, I won't leave the house for six months or something. I think I should be able to decide if I want to go to church or not, but apparently, free thought is against the rules here. What they don't realize is that I'd probably go less often but more willingly if they let me choose, rather than going every weekend begrudgingly.
So anyway, surveys suck; I can't pick between hot and cold; I don't want to go to church anymore. That about wraps things up. That's it.

I just peeled my very first orange.

Yes, that's right, until this very moment I had never peeled an orange before. I somehow arbitrarily decided somewhere around the second grade that I despised oranges and all of their siblings (tangerines, nectarines, et cetera), and haven't really eaten them since. I remember a neighbor trying to feed me a tangerine once and my throwing a fit. So I've had this ten-year prejudice against oranges for no reason at all, it seems. Oranges aren't evil at all. Although, I have made a giant mess around the computer table with the orange peel that I had to pull off tiny bit after tiny bit. And I've dripped a significant portion of the orange's juice all over everything. And the orange really wasn't all that good. So...maybe seven-year-old me had more sense than I once believed she did. My decision?

Oranges: More trouble than they're worth.

At least the room smells good, now.

Highlight of my evening: George W. Bush not knowing the words to "Jingle Bells." Lowlight (is that right?) of my evening: Hmm. Never mind.
Does anybody else feel like school is just around the corner? It really feels like I'm going to have to wake up at 6:30 tomorrow and get ready to go back. And I am very much not ready to be back. There was so much wrong with last semester that I'd like to be fixed about next semester, and I'm afraid that the sooner we go back, the less likely all those things are to be fixed.
Okay, well. Sorry my blog's been so awful lately. I'm going to try and make it better; really, I am. Sometimes I feel like just ending it entirely, you know, for lack of material. But I'm not going to pull a "I'm going to quit blogging. Wait, no I'm not!" so I'll just say that I'll try and make it less boring. I'll work on it.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.
Let your heart be light;
From now on our troubles will be out of sight.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas,
Make the yuletide gay,
From now on our troubles will be miles away.
Here we are, as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore,
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.
Through the years we all will be together
If the Fates allow,
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough,
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Damn pop culture. Or something. Because of the game, probably, I always pronounce it "guess-ture" before I can catch myself, even though I know it's really pronounced "jes-ture." One of these days that's going to embarrass me.

Merry Christmas Eve!!! (More to come.)

"If love is what we're made of, then what am I afraid of? Just 'cause freedom rings, it doesn't mean we're free..." --Rhett Miller, "World Inside The World"

God, I'm so not frugal. Disfrugal? Unfrugal? Anyway. So I had $30 that I got from my aunt for Christmas to go spend, and I felt like spending money to console myself over the Savannah thing. I went to Media Play, and after getting permission (you know, I had to get permission to make sure I wasn't getting it from my parents for Christmas...) I blew all that money on the "Back To The Future" Complete Trilogy on DVD. Well, it's worth it, I think. Three discs chock full of Marty McFly and the gang. Sounds like fun! Plus, outtakes, deleted scenes, and the music video for "The Power Of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News! What more could a girl ask for?
Plus, I bought the Rhett Miller cd, "The Instigator," because I felt that I couldn't live without it one more day. I think I was right. It was getting hard to breathe there for a minute until I put the cd into my car stereo. But alas, Rhett Miller saves the day once again and keeps me from ceasing to exist.
Well soon I'll go see "Two Weeks Notice" with Ashleigh and Catherine, and then I'll stop spending so much damn money for a while. But winter break is really a drain on your resources, because we live in this hellhole, so to speak, where everything there is to do costs buckets of money. Oh, well.

Well Savannah's fucked.
If anybody cares, email me.
God. Just when things were getting better. They get worse.

Ugh, well, I'm writing this from Columbus. I'm searching for some means of escape. Although, I think my parents are going to let me drive back tonight with Sarah instead of driving back tomorrow morning by myself. Which will be quite the improvement. Driving by myself leads to lots of getting lost, and while I love getting lost in Alpharetta, I don't particularly care for getting lost here, where I have no sense of direction or location.
I think we're about to eat lunch with the relatives, then comes present opening, which is not altogether a bad experience, except when the three year old cries that he doesn't have enough presents. He's like the fat boy in Harry Potter, whatever his name was. Haha.
"I've got this great idea...why don't we pitch it to the Franklin fucking mint..." Sorry, in my head. G'bye!

For those of you cool kids who took or are taking Physics:

That's High School Physics:

www.explodingdog.com

Well, I thought it was cute.

Heard on some tv news station last night: there's a prediction of 28 degrees and rainfall for Christmas eve. You know what that could mean...

Well, my day significantly improved (and I mean significantly...you understand) upon seeing three ex-Miltonite guys("late greats," as Friedman would say, even though only two of them had his class) ranging from "damn hot" to "really cute'' at the mall. What a great way to wrap up an afternoon of shopping. Plus, my Christmas shopping is all done--I found something that will potentially beat what Laura got, and that's all that really matters, right? It's kind of sad that in my fit of competitiveness (is that the word? is that a word?) I spent about ten dollars more than I had left in my Christmas fund in order to "win," so to speak. And I might not even win. Hmm.
I've been trying to learn the words to "We Didn't Start The Fire" in the car; Billy Joel rocks. But it's hard. I don't know why it only took me three or four listens to know all the words to "It's The End Of The World (As We Know It)," but it's taking ages to learn this song. And why do I want to know all the words, you ask? I don't know; it's fun to sing along to. I get tired of knowing every eighth lyric, and filling in the rest with a blend of humming and singing.
So I'm going to go wrap all my presents now, and then Muppets tonight! Yeah! I hope to see you all there, or at least most of you. Maybe just some of you. We'll just have to wait and see.

Trivia rocks!

We got 2nd place at Tijuana Joe's tonight! It was way cool. I'm most proud of knowing the answer to the Ernie Banks question, thanks to allusionary lore. Of course, all they needed was the words "Chicago Cubs," but we proceeded to put both of his positions and his quote: "The sun is shining; the sky is blue: Let's play two!" Serkie rolled over in her grave before she was even dead when we got the John Hancock question wrong, but we redeemed ourselves in US History with the Scopes Monkey Trial question. Well, we have 20 Tijuana Joe's dollars to spend, so, that's cool.
Now I'm pitifully behind in studying for the Lit final--that review sheet is really killing me! Does anybody else remember a damn thing about Heart of Darkness? Because I surely don't.

"I feel fine, for the first time in a long time..." --Josh Joplin Group, "Trailways"

Well look at that, I'm in an infintely better mood already, and I haven't even gone to Trivia yet. Maybe it was the fact that I quite possibly got an actual zero (meaning absolutely no questions right) on my APES final, or maybe it was just watching student films in Film as our final. Or maybe eating at Chili's, or the thought of impending Trivia. Who knows, but I'll take a good mood where I can get it.
So, Lit final tomorrow. I'm not worried about the Allusions; I know the Allusions. Or, at least, well enough to do well on that section. I'm not worried about the prose AP writing either, just about the AP writing on a novel we've read. I don't remember any of the books well enough to write anything on them, methinks. But in just over two days it will all be over, anyway, so there's really nothing to be upset about. I'd rather do poorly on all my finals and have school be done with for a little bit than not have finals and have to keep going for longer.
Well, that's all, until I can think of something actually interesting to say. I think I'll go listen to Queen's "Under Pressure," you know, try and make my good mood even better.

"I don't have much room...to live." --Something Corporate, "Konstantine"

It's been a "Konstantine" kind of day.
Finals are crazy. But at least the coming of finals means that school is almost over. I don't know if I can make it...we'll see.
Um...never mind. I shouldn't blog anything I have to say, anyway. I'll blog something tomorrow.

Oh yeah! Trivia tomorrow! That always makes me feel better. Yay.

"You don't have to scream to say something that you honestly mean..." --Jimmy Eat World, "No Sensitivity"

I did my fair share of screaming today: in my car, at drivers who cut me off or went really slow, and in my mind, at people who misunderstood what I said entirely or who made me really, really mad. Both kinds of screaming were useless I suppose, because the other drivers couldn't hear me and the other people didn't know I was screaming.
But today wasn't all bad. The Allusions Gathering at Steak & Shake was fun! All of you who didn't show up, you missed it. We had a blast. Haha, well, at least we learned some allusions. I think I'll do a lot better on the final now that we've gone over them all a few times. I won the game, too! Sarah was a close second, of course. But I won. Hehe.
Oh, and since he doesn't have a blog of his own (yet), I'll post this: everyone congratulate Jason tomorrow if you see him because he got into Emerson early action (or decision, or something like that. You get the idea). So, yay!

So Ashleigh and I went to the Mall of GA for some more Christmas shopping today. We saw the most gorgeous guy ever created working in Hot Topic--the sheer image of perfection (or "perfectness," as I said at the time, my mind clouded by his hotness). We want to bake him cookies.
We decided that Georgia really is hell, as it's roughly seventy degrees outside. It should be snowing, dammit! What kind of place do we live in where you can wear t-shirts on Christmas?!
And then I finally got to meet Ashleigh's pig. Bubbles. She was pleasant enough, but refused to get up and shake my hand. I was a little miffed; she wasn't minding her manners at all. But Ashleigh said she'd probably be in a better mood next time. She's quite possibly the fattest creature I've ever seen on four legs. Almost as fat as Sarah's giant cats!
And that's fat.

We had fun tonight. (Ashleigh is here too. This isn't just me being strange. Joint blog, people.) Making fun of people rocks. However, Jason, if you ever read this again that is, I don't appreciate you leaving a forty page manifesto on Laura's blog and writing a half-sentence comment about Nick Ciarochi on mine. You could easily be beaten up for that.
I'm loving the condom idea. Soon. Ashleigh wants banana. I want cherry, if possible.
Damn you people who never comment.

Alright, now I know I'm not the best driver in the world, but at least I don't have a Godawful case of road rage. I went to return some movies to Blockbuster a little while ago, and as I was making a right turn out of the shopping center onto the road, this middle-aged couple in a Grand Cherokee were making a left turn out of the opposite shopping center onto the same road. Don't right turners get right of way? Even if they don't, I was already halfway turned when they tried to go, and they almost hit me trying to cut in front of me, and as I drove by them the woman flicked me off and mouthed "Fuck you!" And this I can handle. I laughed; it amused me actually. But then they proceeded to flick me off repeatedly and mouth "Fuck you! Motherfucker! Fuck you!" over and over and over again for at least a full mile while they were driving directly behind me before I turned. God, calm down, people. It's not the end of the world that you almost hit me. Some people need to drink some tea or get a massage or something, just to make them not freak out all the time. Grr. And the worst was that they were old! I could handle it from kids, or from 20somethings, but when a balding man and a pudgy woman are screaming obscenities at me, that's just crossing the line.

Joe has a blog? And nobody told me? Tsk. You guys have to start letting me in on these things!

By the way, I'm in love with this new Haloscan feature! We can link to comments! This rocks.

Well, it's settled, I'm not getting into Virginia. If Kristen Sheulke can't get in because she doesn't have enough AP classes (she has three), then I certainly don't have enough AP classes (I have four). And if Kellen doesn't have a high enough SAT score with a freaking 1500 to get him in, then mine is certainly far too low. Grr. It's beginning to look like I shouldn't have even applied. I remember "back in the day" when I thought I'd be going to some prestigious college, and now I can't even get accepted to a state school. All of you people who are really smart (which, let's face it, is about 99% of the people who read my blog) should thank your lucky stars that you were blessed with the ability to take smart math classes and with the ability to know ahead of time that taking one AP junior year is not nearly enough. You know, I'm also beginning to think that colleges should put out minimums for all applicants, like "you must score at least a _____ on your SAT and have a GPA of __.__ in order to apply to our college." I mean, I can see problems with that, but at least it would prevent people from getting their hopes up so much.
Eh. Anyway. So this weekend should be good--everybody come to Laura's thing tomorrow. We'll have fun. And then I get to go Christmas shopping on Sunday! Yay! And then on Monday, everybody come to the Allusion Steak & Shake par-tay! Yeah! It'll be awesome. Come.

The Polar Express rocks my socks off. I seriously love this book. Every year we break it out and put it on the coffee table, and although I don't have fun memories about reading it together every year or something, it's still a great book. Everybody should go to their "favorite neighborhood bookstore" and buy a copy of it.
I think Erin told me this last week, and I agree with her: those GAP "Start A Love Train" commercials make me want to go buy a whole bunch of GAP clothes and dance around. I guess that means the commercials are working. I love winter clothes. Scarves and mittens rock my world. Only, not the kind of scarves that are really dresses and shirts. Those are odd.

Alright, for all of you who don't know any allusions, for all of you who know a few, and for all of you who made hundreds of flashcards and could recite them in your sleep, Beth and I are planning an allusion gathering for Monday evening, five o'clock at Steak & Shake. We'll probably stay for a couple of hours, so if anybody wants to come, come. Bring flashcards if you have them and we'll learn everything just in time for Friedman's final. Good plan? Good plan.
So Economics was remarkably boring, as we watched a video on how money came to be, so I was reading last week's Entertainment Weekly, and the article on the last page ("The Joel Stein Show") was fairly amusing. It was entitled "Re:Actors" and was basically Joel Stein rambling about how anybody can act. "Acting isn't a craft. Shoe cobbling and silver-smithing are crafts. Acting is modeling with talking thrown in. With the sole exception of Heather Graham, anyone in the world can act," he says. I like that. I was amused. Of course, most of the people he quoted as saying things like "I didn't even finish high school, so why would I go to acting class?" and "There's nothing hard about acting except the long hours" were actors on tv shows, and in truth, most of them really suck. But either way, an entirely amusing article. It made economics just that much more bearable.

You know it's quite a day when you have a discussion about spandex pants.
It's really nice when you're ill-humored to turn on Kazaa and blare some old-school Queen. It's really not so nice when you're computer crashes five minutes after you begin, but I've learned to live with it. At least my car doesn't stall seventeen times on the way to school. Something to be thankful for, I suppose.
Beth and I almost went to SOFTI this morning. We had good intentions--really, we did--but Chik Fil A took precedence. Besides, why tarnish my record of never, ever going to a SOFTI meeting in my high school career despite the fact that several of my friends are in it? Me and Ashleigh'll probably be in the picture, anyway. Hehe. And none of you can stop us. Ha!
One day I'll be able to stop censoring this blog so damn much. I do it because I know so many people that I don't know about read it, or at least a few do. Right now I don't really have anything important to censor, but maybe next time I do, I'll just say it. Hmm.
So I'm excited about Beth's and my life of crime. Much cooler than college. For those of you who don't read her blog (meaning, most of you...hehe...), she's been reading Catch Me If You Can and we've decided to become partners-in-crime, as we read up on all the stuff criminals shouldn't do (ex. after robbing a convenience store, stop before leaving the store to count the money), and run from the law. We'll be "on the lam." Is it "lam"? Or "lamb"? Or even "lamm"? Who knows? Does anybody remember that episode of "Doug" where Doug was "on the lam/lamm/lamb"? I think he thought he'd skipped school or something. Well I remember it.
Speaking of old-school Nickelodeon, who remembers "Pete & Pete"? That show rocked my universe (Thanks, Ian). The mom with the plate in her head, and "Endless Mike" (quite possibly the coolest name of a high school bully EVER), and Artie, "the strongest man in the world!" I miss that show.
Ooh, does anybody remember "Roundhouse"? That's way old! It was part of the original SNICK line up I think. With the kids who breakdanced and the dad who had a remote-contol recliner and such. Amusing, but I never liked it much.
And everybody remembers the others. "Clarissa Explains It All." "Are You Afraid Of The Dark"? (Yes.) "Rocko's Modern Life." Ah, nostalgia. I find it remotely amusing that one day, we'll be feeling sentimental and nostalgic about shows like "The Simpsons" and "Gilmore Girls." Interesting.
And I'm tapped. Sorry for my lack of interesting blogs lately; I'll try and get better soon. I'm sure things'll pick up once school is done.

I was perusing the Living section of the AJC this afternoon, when my eyes lighted on the Celebrity Birthdays. Celebrity Birthday number two was Kenneth Branagh, who turned 42, I believe. Interesting. Celebrity Birthday number four, however, was Raven-Symone. Hmm. Raven-Symone? Celebrity? What? Hmm.
Today started off well...a chicken biscuit and club pictures. But then it was mediocre and then it got not-very-good and then it stayed not-so-good the rest of the day. Oh well, the semester's almost over. Things will be better then.
God, I have nothing to say here! I'm drawing a blank. I probably shouldn't have even blogged tonight, as I have nothing to talk about, but oh well. Maybe tomorrow I can come up with something better.

This Anonymous thing is much fun. I love a good mystery. I just wish we had more to go on than "Most of you know me!" (A subtle hint for you to tell us something more, perhaps?)
Remember, Drama club picture tomorrow at 8:30 on the track. Be there, or...or I'll hunt you down and...um. Yeah. Just come.
Wow, I'm so ready for it to be Christmas break. School is just grating on my nerves right now. At least most of my projects are over. Score, I get to move on to more college applications now! Ugh. Too much!
I have this new WebStats thing (powered by Yinga), and one of the features is that it tells you how people got to your website, like through a link from another page, or through a search engine or whatever. And if you were found through a search engine, it tells you what people searched for when your page came up. So far, people have accessed my site by searching "flash greetings for good night," "listen to drops of jupiter," and "gay test." Hmm. Interesting. Four of my visitors in the last two days, it seems, have gotten to my site through the link on your blog, Laura. Also interesting.
Well, I need to go read my APES book and work on Christmas cards. We're decorating the tree tonight!

Christmas Coke tastes so much better than regular Coke.

The Drama Club yearbook picture is December 10th (next Tuesday) at 8:30 am on the track. If you're in the club, if you want to be in the club, or if you want to be indexed in the yearbook as much as you possibly can, then come to the picture. We don't want a repeat of last year's original picture (where four of us showed up). And if any of you want to know when another club's picture is, I have the complete list, hehe. So you can ask.

God, Samm just called me from the concert and let me listen to the first few lines of "If."

I officially hate weather.

Please ice...please ice...please ice...
I have so much I would like to write here...but...I won't. Anyway.
My day was ruined when I woke up this morning to discover that the weathermen were right: Dahlonega is one huge chunk of ice. Somebody out there is out to spite me. So then to add insult to injury, we're still in school...I desperately hope that tomorrow we won't be. Ugh. Tesch--"We'll probably be in session tomorrow, so don't worry: your prayers will be answered." Ugh.
Timoree, Erin Zingales, Ms. Nic, and I had a discussion during Film today about how much the administration hates our graduating class. Erin says it's because we were really wild freshman year, and although most of the really bad kids have since dropped out or gotten arrested or something, the admin. still holds a grudge for our behavior freshman year. We also talked about how reluctant everyone is to give us any sort of senior priviledge. Did you guys know that they're thinking of doing away with our extended lunch? Well, sort of. Timoree says that they're thinking of only letting those seniors with perfect attendance and no tardies have extended lunch every day, and it would reset itself every nine weeks. But Ms. Nic says that they're thinking of still letting seniors have extended lunch and letting all people will perfect attendance/no tardies have extended lunch, meaning in all grades. Ugh. But then, I don't know who's right out of the two of them, and according to Timoree they were just considering doing all that.
We also talked about our senior prank this year. We need to do something really good, we decided. For one thing, to make up for that awful chicken prank last year. It was really funny in theory, but in actuality, it was pretty horrible. And for another thing, we need to, I don't know, take revenge on the administration for hating us so much all the time. But we couldn't think of anything really clever. We need the best minds of our grade working on this on...Drew, Dan, all of you, get on it! Hehe.
Oh yeah, speaking of Lit (yeah, I wasn't, I get it...), on Saturday at Beth's house at noon we're going to have a movie-watching. Like we did after we read Hamlet, when we watched "Hamlet 2000," only this time we're going to watch "O" because we just finished reading Othello. So, anyone who wants to come, come. I guess it's mainly a Friedman's class thing because we just read the play, but everybody else is welcome to come as well. So, yeah. Come.

Please don't ice....please don't ice...please don't ice...

Guys that work at Best Buy are really nice. They're just all so friendly...and several of them are kind of cute! The girls...I don't even notice the girls, so I don't know if they're nice or not. I'm sure there were some girls there...but they just kind of stay on the periphery. The guys are nice, though.
I just bought the 99Xmas Soundtrack vol. III and I'm glad to say it doesn't disappoint. I'm really, really glad that they rerecorded the Butch Walker song instead of using the Marvelous 3 version from vol. I and changing the artists name. Well, the cd is very cool, take it from somebody who has all three.
Well, that's all for now. My homework needs me. Yucky.

"I wish I could say that everything was okay, but I'd be lying like a rug on the floor."

Butch Walker at North GA College on Wednesday night! Yay!

"Amy, if you and Jarrett mated, you'd have Butch Walker babies." --Bethany
Does that mean little babies who looked like Butch Walker? Because those would be some strange looking children...

It's freezing. I don't understand...why am I still existing? I really thought that when it was this cold in your house, you wouldn't know it at all, because you'd have frozen to death already. I think I'm going numb. Oh, there goes my left leg. Completely numb. Can't feel it at all. Oh wait...yep, my right shoulder, too. Ooh...looks like frostbite is setting in...yucky. I never knew frostbite was so...black.
In other news, all these projects I find myself buried under (quite literally--I'm sitting here at the computer with a massive pile of projects coming up to my elbows) are irksome. Don't teachers realize that I'm sleepy and want to go to bed? I guess not.
Christmas break, where are you? I need you now.