So I just found out that Zooey Deschanel is most definitely going to be guest starring in an upcoming episode of Bones. I can't wait. This is the episode I've been waiting for since I started watching that show, and it's finally happening. 8DD December 17, only 3 more episodes until then!

I've also been neglecting my journal for a very long time because all of three people actually read it, so I sort of just stopped caring. But yesterday I was reading through some of my older entries, and it brought me a lot of joy, so I think I'll start using it again. It won't be very frequent, because I live on campus at UCM and don't have a computer, but I'll definitely start updating again.

29 day until my birthday.

And I'm sick of you.You know what? Fine. Be content to act like I'm not there until it's convenient for you to pretend you want to spend time with me. But let me say this: Next time you want to pretend to hang out, at least make an effort to convince me that you don't actually have something you'd rather be doing. Hint: Don't answer your phone 5 minutes into the movie that YOU wanted to watch, then tell ME to turn it down. Since you obviously don't want to be around me anyway, how about YOU leave the room for a change? Oh, and as for your stupidity, explain to me how it's possible that even after the 50 times I've told you not to pull up the guide when the VCR is recording what we're watching, you still think it's ok to pull up the guide when the VCR is recording what we're watching.

I'm done. Don't try to ask me to hang out again until you can convince me I'm not on the bottom of your priority list.

Tashina, Sara, and I went to Warrensburg last night after band camp was over. I haven't had so much fun in a while. Those two are hilarious.

We went to Country Kitchen for dinner at like, 10:45, and ended up staying until after midnight. Not because it took us forever to eat, but because we were having so much fun that somebody made a comment along the lines of, "We should do these midnight trips to Country Kitchen more often!" and somebody said, "It's not midnight." To which they replied, then we should stay here until it is!"

And we did.

And it was awesome. Tashina ordered coffee, and they gave her a bucketload of creamers. Sara decided she was going to drink them like shots of alcohol. She drank a French Vanilla and two Hazelnut. She really loved the Hazelnut, and then she started going crazy. We're thinking that coffee creamer may actually be a drug of some sort. When she started going completely crazy, we were all just dying of laughter and none of us are going to be able to hear the word "Hazelnut" ever again without laughing.

Mr. West knew we were going to Country Kitchen, so we all typed "Hazelnut!" into our phones and hit "send" at the exact same time. He was confused.

Eventually, Sara convinced the two of us to drink the coffee creamer too, so we all held up a little container of creamer, toasted them to each other, and took a shot. Then we all knew why Sara had gone so crazy, because we both went crazy too. I think in the end, Sara had 5 shots of creamer, I had three shots of creamer, and Tashina had two shots. But Tashina also drank 5 cups of coffee. We were all practically vibrating from being so hyped up. We paid our bill at midnight, then went to Wal-Mart. I can imagine the people at Wal-Mart really loved seeing us there. Sara was talking so loud, I swear you would be able to hear her throughout the whole store. lol, I was worried she was going to get us kicked out because people were going to think we were drunk or something. Ah, but what an experience that would have been.

So anyway, we all had a great time and I hope we can turn it into a regular thing once college starts up. I would love to do that again.

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think!

Pick your Artist:
Regina Spektor

Are you a male or female:
Lady

Describe yourself:
Human of the Year ;D

How do you feel:
Better

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Another Town

Your favorite form of transportation:
Back of a Truck

Your best friend is:
Just Like the Movies

You and your best friends are:
Flyin

What's the weather like:
Summer in the City

Favorite time of day:
Reading Time with Pickle (lul)

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
Musicbox

What is life to you:
One More Time With Feeling

Your last relationship:
Fidelity (It's pretty much the only one that made sense...)

Your fear:
Prisoners

What is the best advice you have to give:
Time is All Around

Thought for the Day:
Laughing With

How you would like to die:
On the Radio

Your soul's present condition:
Ghost of Corporate Future

Your motto:
Whisper (the closest thing to "Shut up" I could find. I jokingly tell my friends to shut up all the time, sometimes even when they're not talking)

Well that was fun.

I was supposed to go to AFW with Meredith and Jill tomorrow. I told my mom about it a week and a half ago, and she never seemed to have a problem with it. The rest of my family went to the lake this weekend, and I stayed home so I could go to AFW. Since my aunt has been at the lake all week, I've been house sitting and taking care of her dog for her. She was going to come home Thursday because she had to work today, then when she got off work, she was going back to the lake and taking her dog with her. Then she found out that I wasn't going to the lake, she was like, "Oh, well since you're staying in town, I can just leave Honey with you and you can look after her for the rest of the weekend." I told her that that would be pointless because I was going to be gone all day Saturday, and it would be just the same as nobody being in town to look after her. She said that as long as I let the dog out before I left and as soon as I got home, she would be fine. The only problem was that I didn't know when I would be leaving and getting home. She continued to insist that as long as she had food, she would be fine. Oh well, I figured that if she was so confident about it, it would be fine.

Well, Meredith called me today to tell me when we would be leaving her house, and also told me that they intended to spend the night so they could go to a masquerade ball from 8-midnight. Which was a problem, since Aunt Dana had pawned her dog off on me for the rest of the weekend instead of taking her to the lake with her. But I figured I could get my Aunt Jeanie to take care of Honey on Saturday since she lives in town and she's already taking care of my Grandma's dog anyway. I called her and told her the situation, and she had no problem with it. Ok. So I've made arrangements to take care of the dog. Problem solved, right? Of course not. Because you can always count on my mom to be a bitch.

I called her and told her that we were leaving at 7 the next morning and we were going to spend the night so we could go to the ball. She got all bent out of shape because I "made other obligations, and I promised I would take care of the dog." First of all, wrong. Aunt Dana only told me to take care of the dog from Tuesday through Thursday, then she would be taking the dog with her. It wasn't until after she found out that I wasn't going to the lake because I HAD PLANS FOR THE WEEKEND that she decided, "Oh, since you're not going to the lake, that must mean you're going to sit around doing nothing all weekend, so you can take care of my dog for me." And even after I explained that I wouldn't be able to take care of the dog, she still insisted that she would be fine. So, as much as I know you hate being proved wrong, mother, I did not promise to take care of the dog before I made these plans.

So I explained that first, then explained that Aunt Jeanie said she could take care of the dog. It was as if I hadn't explained the situation at all, because Mom continued to talk like me going would be a problem because I couldn't take care of the dog. Then she was like, "You're not spending the night. Sister and Will are going to be in the city tomorrow, just see if you can get a ride back with them." And I was like, "Uh-huh. They're going to be in Wichita. Is that so?" That was when she acted as if this was the first she was hearing about Wichita. She completely flipped out. Said that I never said anything about the convention being in Wichita, and I know that I did. You don't exactly leave something like that out when asking if you can go somewhere. But no. No matter how many times I insisted that I told her about Wichita, she insisted that I hadn't. It's because she doesn't listen. To anything. Ever. Anything that's being said is never important unless she's the one saying it.

Then she just said, "That shit's not gonna fly. Wait until I'm 2 hours away from home before you tell me that this festival thing is 4 hours away? No. You're not going." I tried to argue and tried to ask why I couldn't go, and she just kept repeating that I had prior obligations (taking care of the dog that I never agreed to take care of until after I made AFW arrangements, then found another babysitter for when I found out we were spending the night at AFW). And she went on some more about how she didn't know it was in Wichita, which she did. And oh yeah, she said I was already going on a trip to Ireland on Monday, so that should be good enough. So apparently, if I already have a trip scheduled for some other time, I'm not allowed to have any fun for the rest of the summer. Hmm yeah, that makes perfect sense.

I'm just so fucking pissed about the whole thing though. I've been excited about this for a week and a half, and then, at the very last possible minute, she changes her mind completely and told me to make other plans for tomorrow. I had to text Meredith back to tell her I couldn't go because I was crying too much to talk on the phone. Tashina was at my house when it happened, and she was as pissed as I was, if not more. She ranted for about ten minutes about how much she hates my mom and what a controlling bitch she is and how it isn't fair for her to still be able to treat me the way she does even though I'm 18 years old. Then she tried to cheer me up by telling me how much fun I can have in college when I don't have to listen to a word she says. She told me all the things I should do when I move out. Get a tattoo, go to all the anime conventions I want. In California. Or China. And I'll never have to answer the phone when mom calls. She had quite a list of rebellious things I should do. It made me chuckle. Then she had to leave, so I went to my sister's. Sister always makes everything better. It's so great that she lives in town now. Otherwise I probably would have spent the whole night crying.

I'm still pissed, and probably will be for a while. But I'm still at Sister's house, so my mood has improved dramatically. I'll just end the post by reminding you all of what a bitch my mom is.

My mom is a giant, overbearing, controlling, vindictive bitch.

So I've had an interesting day, to say the least.

My roommate for college and I planned to meet today at 10 AM at the Chinese place for lunch so we could talk about who was bringing what to the dorm and get to know each other. I woke up at 8:30 so I would have time to feed the dog and put her outside (I'm house sitting for my aunt while she's out of town), take a shower and get dressed. When I drove up to my house to get some clothes, there were cop cars and ambulances speeding down the street with their lights and sirens on. I thought it was a bit odd, but figured there was either a fire or somebody in town had a heart attack (They always send the entire emergency department to someone's house when they have a heart attack)

A little before 10:00, I headed out to the Chinese place to meet my roommate, and just up the street from the Chinese place is a big bank, which I noticed had a bunch of cop cars and ambulances in the parking lot. I thought maybe somebody inside the bank had collapsed and were being taken to the hospital, and continued on to the restaurant.

Come to find out, the Chinese place doesn't open until 10:30, so Glenda and I went back to my house to hang out until it opened. We ended up visiting for a while, so we didn't head back for lunch until an hour and a half later. An hour and a half later... and when we go back out, the cops are still sitting in the bank parking lot. I looked at the scene and I was like, "What is going on at the bank? You think somebody robbed it?" And I said it jokingly at first, but half a second later I was like, "Holy crap, you think somebody robbed the bank? I think somebody robbed the bank, I'll put my money down for it right now." Glenda texted her aunt and told her to turn on the news because something was happening at the bank, and her aunt called back 5 minutes later to tell her that somebody had indeed robbed the bank. I so called it. Apparently they originally thought that one of the cops had been shot, but that ended up not being true. The robbers did get away though, which sucks. You can't really blame the cops though, because Holden hasn't had a bank robbery in.. um... ever? And the robbers had clearly prepared for everything. When the cops lost their trail, they pulled their car off on some dirt road, set it on fire to destroy any evidence, then ran up the road and stole a truck to get away in.

What's even crazier is that this is the second major crime committed in Holden in three days. Sunday night, a woman was shot in the head and killed in her own home. Cops were able to catch the murderers. There were three of them, and they got them all.

Seriously though. What's happening in Holden? It's always been a relatively quiet town, and now we have a murder and an armed bank robbery within three days of each other? Wtf, yo. Wtf.

On a somewhat unrelated note, my roommate is pretty much awesome, and I'm really excited about moving into the dorms this semester. It's gonna be fun times.

I'm in full-blown obsession mode right now. I actually just started watching it this season, so I haven't even been into it for that long, but I fell for it pretty quickly. And two weeks ago, I got the entire first season on dvd at Hastings. Finished all 22 episodes in a day and a half. Then I rewatched several of them because I found that it was not yet possible for me to get burnt out. One week and one day later, I went back to Hastings and found season 2 on sale for 20 bucks. 21 more episodes to finish in 2 days. And yesterday, Suzan, Molly, Amy, Charles, and I went to see a movie in Warrensburg, and we spent a couple of hours in, you guessed it, Hastings, before the movie started.

I walked in, saw that season 3 was on the same shelf that season 2 had been on when it was deceptively on sale. I pointed it out to Charles and said, "You know, the tag may say that it's $49.99, but it's sitting on the same shelf as season 2, and neither had anything advertising that it was on sale. I'll bet you anything that it's actually only $19.99.... So I'm off to count my money." So I went, counted my money, found that I only had $6 in change and a 5 dollar check that hadn't been cashed, and accepted that I would not be getting season 3 today. As I got back up and browsed around the store, Charles walks up to me and hands me a piece of paper. I look at it to see that it's the receipt for season 3 because he bought it while I was back counting my change.

Woo~ is a substantial understatement. But now I own everything except for season 4, which hasn't been released yet. I know what I'm asking for Christmas. Anyway, just thought I'd share that I've found a new obsessive fandom, and even though my mom and I just spent the entire day watching season 3, mom says she wants to watch more, so I'm going to slip back in to the world of Bones for a few more hours. You probably won't be seeing me for a while ;D.

(P.S: Don't you love my icon? I had Jill make several of them for me. That one is my favorite, so I used it first ^^)

Reply to this post, and I will list three or more things I like about you. Then repost to your own journal to spread the love.

Wow, a lot of stuff has happened since my last post. I graduated, for one thing. That might be a significant thing one would want to post about. Finally, high school is freaking over. And of course, seniors get out of school before everyone else does. Guess what I did on my first day out of school.... I went back to school... >.> Yeah, we had graduation practice at 9:00 the next day, and after it was over, I just... stayed... for the entire day. Amy and Miranda and I stayed hidden away in the back of Fee's storage room and hung out. In between classes, I would go out and wander around in the hallways, looking for my underclassman friends. They were all elated to see me... you know, one day after the last time they saw me? lol.

Anyway. What else? Oh! Project grad night was the same day as graduation, and the graduating class had a lock-in at Warrensburg community center. There was a hypnotist there, and it was fucking hilarious. First he told the people that were hypnotized that it was getting colder and colder and colder, and they were sitting there shivering and rubbing their arms and curling up into a little ball. Then it got hotter and hotter and hotter, and they were sitting there fanning themselves, and one girl even started to take her pants off. Then he told them that the insides of their eyelids were movie screens, and he told them they were watching the funniest movie they had ever seen, and it was getting funnier and funnier and funnier. And they were all just sitting up there cracking up, and every time he said it was getting funnier, they would laugh harder. His show lasted about an hour, and he just kept making them do crazier and crazier things. So funny. Glad I went.

I've been enjoying myself pretty well since school got out. Annie and I hung out in Warrensburg when the rest of the school got out, then the next day Rob and I went to Meredith's and hung out. I also bought a Nintendo DS with some of the money I got for graduation. Mainly so I'll have something to do on the plane ride when I go to England this summer, plus I've kind of been wanting one for a while. For the game, I got Rings of Fate, it's one of Final Fantasy's Crystal Chronicals. It's really fun. Then Lanie, Rob, Meredith, Jill and I went to Hastings a couple of days ago to cause all sorts of shenanigans. That was a fun time. Jill posted a bunch of pictures from when we were there on her livejournal. Fun times.

I'm also a little sad though. Karen moved out today after living here for a year and a half. She just lives right down the street, so I'll still see her a lot. Plus she's invited me to have lunch at her house tomorrow and maybe stay over on the weekends if I want. I'm going to try to be a frequent visitor. I'm sad that she's gone, but at least now, going to visit her is just one more excuse to get out of my house and away from my mom. I'm so sick of being trapped with her, and lately, she's even more bitchy than normal. Just one more month until my trip. I can't wait to get out of here.

On a lighter note, we did move the computer back into Karen's old room. It was originally in here before Karen moved in, then we moved it into my mom's room. I hated having it in there. I'm so glad it's back in here now.

Aaaand, anything else? Meredith's mom signed them up for Netflix and they have 67 movies on the queue. So I'm definitely going to be spending a lot more time at Meredith's house, especially since she put season 3 of Bones on the list. Indeed, I am quite enjoying my summer so far.

I would have posted about this sooner, but my mom didn't pay our phone bill so our internet got shut off! 8D... T_T I'm on my grandma's computer right now.

Anyway, so we had our last band concert of the year last Wednesday, and I think it was pretty awesome if I do say so myself. It was just all bands, no choir (theirs was the night before) and all of the bands did really well.

The sixth grade band played three pieces, one of which I got to conduct as part of my senior project. The other two were Puff the Magic Dragon and Smoke on the water.... Is there something you're trying to tell us Mr. West? Should I be worried about your sixth graders? Hm... >.>

Seventh grade played.... something. And Viva la Vida. I really like that song. But I never knew what it was called before, so when they started playing it I was like, "oooohhhhh it's this song! -internal joy/sway-"

Eighth grade played Crazy Train. Lul. Ozzy. But they had a really awesome arrangement of it, so it sounded really cool. I loved their saxes. Why are saxes so awesome? Uh-oh -scopes the room to make sure Thomas and Jacob aren't around- Ok. Coast clear. Phew.

Jazz band was awesome as always. We did four songs. I played the drumset on the first one, which was Boogie Stop Shuffle by Mingus. We played it last year, but it wasn't as good then for two reasons. One, nobody could hear the piano (which had a pretty important part) and also, my solo was a little bit of suck. It was the first real solo I had ever been given, and it was 30 measures, so yeah. Newbie soloist on a massive solo does not a good performance make. But it was much better this time. I'm much more comfortable with solos now, and with Mr. West playing the piano this time, it sounded much, much better. We also played a Simon and Garfunkle tribute piece. It featured Bridge Over Troubled Water, the Sound of Silence, and Mrs. Robinson. Troy messed up at the beginning because he thought we were playing Linus and Lucy, which was his other song. So the song starts and he's playing the wrong song. I felt so bad for him. I could not even imagine what I would do if that happened to me. Luckilly, the only people that noticed he messed up were the people in Jazz band. I told my family about it later, and they didn't even realize he was playing the wrong song. Rob said he didn't notice either when I talked to him about it later. So that's good. I still felt really bad for Troy though.

Our third song was Linus and Lucy. You know, the song off of Charlie Brown that the piano kid is always playing? lol, It was so awesome. Maxwell owns a T-shirt just like the one Charlie Brown wears, and Gober can make the Charlie Brown teacher sound on his trombone. So here we have Maxwell standing there in his Charlie Brown T-shirt, and Mr. West stands up to the microphone just as Gober starts making the "mwamp mwahh mwamp mwamp mwamp mwah mwah" noise on his trombone. So Mr. West looks at the audience and goes, "Is that Charlie Brown's mom?" Gober makes the noise again. Mr. West says, "What's that?" -teacher noise- "Linus and Lucy's up next?" -noise- "Alright, awesome, let's listen." Then he counted us off and we played it. I loved it. My grandma loved it. Charlie Brown is like her favorite thing in the world, and the day of the concert would have been her and Grandad's 54th wedding anniversary. I voted for use to play that song as a present for her. And she loved it, so I'm happy. The last song we played was Sing, Sing, Sing by Glenn Miller. I had about 5 solos in that song, each a minimum of 8 measures. The last solo in the song is 40 measures and it's just me playing the entire time. During my solo, everbody else in the band literally puts their instrument on their laps and counts until it's time for them to play again.

God. I can't even describe how nervous I was. I don't think I've ever been so nervous in my life, and don't know that I ever will be again. I had been dreading this concert for weeks because the only thing I could think about was "What am I going to do if I drop my stick?" I think I was actually shaking right before we started playing it. The fear was almost paralyzing. But I got through it, and a lot of people told me my solo was awesome. One girl even told me that she gave me a standing ovation at the end. So I did well. My sister got the whole thing recorded and she's going to put it on youtube. I'll post a link when she does that. But seriously. I'm so relieved that it's over.

Oh yeah, and then the last band of the night was concert band. We played the Robin Hood Soundtrack Highlights, the Devil Went Down to Georgia, and Selections from Chicago. I love Chicago. It's hands down my favorite movie of all time. We had some tempo issues here and there, but overall, it sounded good I thought. Robin Hood was good too. Everyone loved Devil Went Down to Georgia. Jacob had to do the narration. He messed up a couple of times, but it still sounded good.

So all in all, the concert was a tremendous success and everyone loved it. I loved every song that we played and am sad we won't get to play them again, but more importantly, I'm just glad it's all over. Only four days left of my high school career!

Almost half of the teachers at school were gone today. It was stupid. Mr. West was gone because he had to go with the kids that made it to state solo and ensemble contest. So we had a sub. And he sucked. And when Mr. West finds out what he did, you can rest assured that sub will never be called in to teach for Mr. West again.

So band today. The bell rings, and everybody has their instruments out to get ready to play. Several students went over to the middle school because Mr. West recruited them to try to talk a bunch of his seventh graders out of quitting band next year. So they leave, and class starts, and the sub takes attendence. Then he pulls out the instruction sheet that Mr. West left for him and reads it to the class. It says "all students are to work individually on their three songs until 8:45, at which time they can put their stuff away and play a game." That seemed a little odd to me. Every time Mr. West has been gone before, his instructions always said "Work on their own until 8:45, then have the whole band run through the songs together." But whatever. The whole "Play a game" note was the least of my concerns. Because after he gets done reading these instructions he says, "So, he wants you to play until 8:45 on your own. I don't know, I didn't take my tylenol this morning because I didn't know I would be subbing for a band class. So what do you say we throw caution to the wind and just... talk about stuff for a while?" Ordinarilly, you'd think everyone would be right on board with a substitute offering a free day. But this is a band class and happens to have a lot of serious musicians in it that knew we needed to practice our music. So naturally everyone said no. But that didn't seem to matter. Even with everyone in the class telling this guy that they want to play music, he doesn't care. In fact, his exact words were, "You know, I'm pretty well know for... in fact some of my finest work has been accomplished when people told me 'you can't do that...' and I did it anyway."

So then he tells us he's going to give us a history lesson and asks if anyone knows how many times the United States has declared war, and if we could name some of those wars. Somebody mentioned World War I, and that was what started him off. For the next 30 minutes, this guy wouldn't let us play our instruments because he felt his little history lesson was more important. For 30 minutes, he stood at the front of class and went on and on and on about WWI. When it was, how it got started, how the US came to be involved and why. On and on, I thought he was never going to stop. Eventually, he got to the end of WWI, then asked us to name another war that he could educate us about. It was right around 8:45, and he was just about to launch into another lecture about another war when the kids that had gone to the middle school returned. First to walk through the door was Courtney, who, without even a glance in the sub's direction, grabbed her clarinet and said, "Alright, let's play guys!" One of the slacker kids that doesn't care about band and was loving that this idiot sub was wasting our time said, "We're having a history lesson here." Courtney replied, "Well I'm having a band lesson."

Oh. My. God. If there was ever a time that I completely loved Courtney, it was that moment right there. Never have I respected her more. I just wanted to run up and hug her. Some kids tried to complain, saying that we already knew our songs, and half the class was gone on solo and ensemble contest anyway, so there was no point in practicing, and they were enjoying the history lesson. Courtney said that if they didn't want to play, they could do whatever they wanted, but she was going to practice. Just then, another kid that had gone to the middle school caught the significance of "We're enjoying the history lesson." They said, "Have you guys not played at all?" The majority of the class, the part that actually wanted to be playing this whole time, said, "No! We haven't!" in a quite obviously pissed off way as they hastened to grab their instruments and start playing before idiot sub had a chance to start talking again. Well, he tried to start talking again anyway. He pointed out that it was after 8:45 and that the note said that they could play a game at 8:45. I didn't say anything, but I was thinking very loudly in my head, "Well, sir, the note also said to play until 8:45, but since you didn't seem to find it necessary to follow those instructions, I don't think we should follow the part that says 'play a game' either!"

But I didn't say anything. In fact, nobody said anything. He stood up there going on about how we didn't have to play and the instructions said we could play a game, and the whole time he's rambling, nobody says a word. They all completely ignore him and go about playing their instruments, pretending he's not even there. Oh yes. Everyone was pissed. I think they all hate him, and with good reason. Our concert is next Wednesday, and we only have one practice left between now and then. We needed this day, and he almost stole it from us. Luckilly, there was still another 50 minutes of class left, and when he saw that he was standing up there like an idiot talking to no one because everybody was giving him the cold shoulder, he just said, "Alright then. Disregard everything I said after 'hello.'" And he went and sat down. He didn't say a word for the rest of the hour. He just sat at the computer while the rest of us did what we were SUPPOSED TO BE DOING.

I was complaining about the whole ordeal in my next class, and Miss Roberts heard me telling the story to Miranda, so she had me repeat it so she could hear. I told her the whole story, and she looked like steam should have been coming out of her ears. She almost looked like she was going to start class, but then she shook her head, pursed her lips and flew out of the classroom faster and angrier than I've ever seen her before. I don't know what she did, but she was gone for over five minutes, and when she came back she said, "Sorry, I had to cool off. And don't worry, I didn't use your name."

So with that on top of how I'm sure Mr. West is going to act when he finds out, hopefully that guys sorry ass will never be seen in Holden again. At least not in band. Ah, sweet justice, how wonderful you are.

Meredith and Jill stayed after school today and the three of us had such a grand little time that I don't ever want to forget anything that happened. So I'm just going to write about every hysterical thing that happened so I never forget it. Just so you know, this post is going to be really long. I should probably put it behind a cut.

( Never forget this day. )

That... is without a doubt... the longest entry I have ever posted in this journal. I would not be offended if you didn't read the whole thing. Really though, I just didn't want to forget, so I had to write it all down. Meredith, Jill, if I missed anything, just write it in the comment box. There's really no need to make this post longer.

I didn't make this picture, I found it online, then added the text myself. So there's my little "I don't own this" disclaimer. But I wanted to get you a gift and am flat broke right now, so I thought you might enjoy this. Anyway, happy birthday, friend of mine.

Last week we had another garage sale to raise money for my trip to Ireland. We made 530 more dollars, and when my dad called up to see how our sale was going, he also called to say, "By the way, here's a thousand dollars." Which put us scary close to our goal. We were only 482 dollars short. Of course, we knew 482 dollars wasn't going to fall from the sky by the time the deadline to make the final payment passed a week later. We would still be able to make the final payment, but there's a $95 fee you have to pay if you turn the money in late. So we were looking at about another 550 more dollars. That is until my stepmom calls my mom up one morning last week and says, "By the way, I'm donating the last $482 you need for the payment." So that effectively paid off the rest of the trip entirely. Now all I have left to get is spending money (but that'll be easy.) So. Trip paid in full. Good thing number 1.

Phantom of the Opera was Sunday. We've had tickets to go for like 3 months now, and it finally happened. I was kind of worried that we wouldn't get to go, or it would get canceled, or at the very least we wouldn't be able to have dinner with Mrs. Wright and her family before the show like we had planned. There was this huge snowstorm that hit Colorado and they got so much snow that they declared a state of emergency. Then that same storm started heading for us. They said we were going to get a foot of snow. I didn't think we would get that much snow, but any snow at all makes the roads bad, so I was worried that we would get snowed out of Phantom. I was quite concerned. Of course it rained and sleeted and snowed all day Saturday, but by the time I woke up on Sunday, it had all completely melted. What a ripoff. But this time it was a good thing. So we went to the Cheesecake Factory with Mrs. Wright and her husband and mom, and it was awesome. Lol, both sides felt a bit awkward though. Diane felt awkward because Mrs. Wright was so much younger than her and she didn't really know how to act around her and her husband. And Mrs. Wright told me today that she and her husband felt underdressed compared to my parents because my dad was wearing a suit and Diane was wearing a dress, but Mrs. Wright was wearing casual pants and a nice sweater. Lol, all awkwardness aside however, I think we all had a really good time.

Not to mention that Phantom was completely awesome. If you've ever seen the movie, the play was exactly like it. To me it really felt like the movie had just stepped out of the screen and jumped up on a stage in front of me. It was fantastic. The actors all had such spectacular voices, it gave me chills. I'm getting chills right now just thinking about it. I think my favorite part (or at least the funniest part) was this scene wear Christine and the Phantom were at the cemetary, and the Phantom was trying to lure Christine into a trance with his voice. Of course it was working, but then Raoul came to the rescue. In the movie the two of them got into a swordfight, but they didn't have that fight in the play for some reason. Instead, they gave the Phantom a big staff and he shot fire out of it. Throughout the whole scene he was singing about how Christine would be his and he was her angel of music, and the whole time he kept shooting fire balls out of his staff at Raoul. Of course Raoul was getting pissed at the Phantom taunting him with fire, so he kept walking back like he was going to pick a fight with him, but the Phantom would just shoot more fire at him. It was so random, and so hilarious. I had to keep myself from laughing. Dinner plans working out and enjoying Phantom live. Good thing number 2.

Today in band we were on JWPepper.com looking for a third song to play at our last concert of the year. Long story short, everyone voted on One Winged Angel, which was cool and all, but I really really wanted to do Chicago, which was also on the list of songs we had picked out. Well, come to find out when I go to lunch, Thomas tells me that after class had been dismissed, Mr. West started looking at the sheet music for One Winged Angel and realized it was impossibly hard. So guess what he decided we would play instead? Oh yeah, we're totally playing Chicago. I was overjoyed. One Winged Angel is awesome and all, but Chicago is seriously one of my favorite movies of all time, and I love the fact that we're playing it to pieces. Playing a medly of songs from my favorite musical. Good thing number three.

Then I get home and saw that another business had replied to my letter that I sent out a month or so ago. One of the ideas we had for fundraising for my trip was to send a letter out to all of the businesses in town asking for donations. So far I've got 20 from one of the apartments in town, 40 from the newspaper, and 25 from one of the bars. Today when I got home I saw an envelope from the funeral home with my name on it. I open it up expecting around 20 dollars. No. Inside resides a 100 dollar check with my name on it. I was speechless. Didn't I say getting ahold of some spending money would be easy? Good thing number 4.

Oh, and I almost forgot. My mom went to the store last night for the first time in months. For the longest time we've had milk, a refridgerator door full of condiments, like, 4 heads of wilted lettuce, and some cheese in the refrigderator. And in the cabinets we had bread and peanut butter, which of course I could have used to make a sandwich, but seriously, I can only take so many dry PB sandwiches before the thought of them starts to repulse me. We also had napkins, paper plates, plastic spoons, stuffing mix, a mashed potato mix that's been up there for like a year, some random junk food and spaghetti noodles. We used to have an over abundance of spaghetti noodles until I ate almost all of them when I couldn't find anything else. Then we ran out of spaghetti sauce. Oh, we had some potatoes and I have a french fry maker, and one day when I was hungry I went to make some french fries, but mom told me I couldn't. She said it makes the house stink. Ok mom, let me go hungry so your nose won't be inconvenienced. Remind me again why you bought that fry maker in the first place? Oh, and I can't believe I almost forgot the chicken. While the rest of our food supply was dwindling, you could always count on the freezer to be overstocked with frozen chicken. Occassionally, mom would cook this frozen chicken. Woo, we had dinner for a night. Except I was also starting to get sick of chicken as well, since it was like the only thing we ever had.

Anyway, I'm getting away from the topic. The point is mom hasn't gone to the store in at least 3 months, and I've been very hungry. Last night, she went to Aldi's and got $45 worth of food. Now that's a lot of food even at a regular store, but at Aldi's where everything costs practically nothing? Whoa. There was so much food in our truck that I almost didn't have enough room to sit. It was extremely exciting. Seriously. So that's good thing number 5.

It's just been a good week. This is the happiest I've been for quite some time.

001. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
002. I will respond by asking you ANY five questions.
003. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
004. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
005. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

1. Who or what inspires you the most and why?
Hmm. That's a tough one. I'm not really inspired by a lot. I suppose I would say that my grandma inspires me the most. She's the person I want to be proud of me the most. And I find myself going out of my way to do things to keep her happy. Whenever I'm at her house, I make sure to turn off any lights I'm not using, if I eat something I wash my dish when I'm done, I make sure I don't leave a mess, stuff like that. And come to think of it, she's the only person I do any of that stuff for (without being asked). She's probably one of the only people in this world that I do stuff for because I want to do it, not because she tells me to.

2.What was your favorite pet you had as a child and what made it your favorite?
Lol, ahh, Zacky. How I miss that cat. He was quite the character. One day when I was in first grade, my sister had stayed home because she was sick, and when I got home, she had a kitten. I guess she just happened to look out in time to see a stray kitten wandering around, so she went out to play with it and of course fell in love with it immediately. Surprisingly, mom agreed to let her keep him, so long as he stayed outside. She named him Zackariah, but we called him Zacky for short. That cat did some of the most bizarre things. Whenever he drank out of his water bowl, he had to put his back leg over his ear. He purred so loud, we could literally hear his cardboard box of a home vibrating whenever we got out of the car after returning home. Oh, lol, and even though we had never given him a bath or run any water in the bathroom before, he somehow psychically knew what the bathroom was. Whenever we randomly brought him in the house when mom wasn't home, we would carry him into the bathroom, and he would freak out. His eyes would get huge, his body would get all stiff, and he would use his claws to hold on to our clothes for dear life. And he only did that in the bathroom. Anywhere else was fine. And on top of being hilarious, he was also so loving and affectionate. That cat was the first cat I can ever remember owning, and I don't think any pet will ever be able to replace him.

3. If you could change your name to anything at all, what would you change it to?
Coprea Von Dedd.

4. Have you ever had a near-death experience?
Yes, actually. Well, possibly. I don't know if this would have actually killed me or not, but one year, on New Year's Day, my dad was taking me home. We were at a stop light and the light was green, so my dad goes to turn. Well, some drunken idiot that was still hungover from all the New Year's Eve parties the night before comes speeding through his lovely red light. On my side, by the way. I don't remember exactly what happened, but my dad saw him coming and swerved just in time, and the guy just barely missed our car and hit somebody else instead. But with the other guy, he just hit the front end. He wasn't anywhere near hitting a person. But if my dad hadn't have seen him when he did, he would have crashed directly into me first.

5. Pepsi or Coca-Cola?
Pepsi.

Jazz Fest was yesterday. It was great fun. It was held in the giant reeces peanut butter cup at Northwest Missouri State, and when we got there, we made up a song about the peanut butter cup right there on the spot. It was awesome.

We did pretty well. We got third place out of four, and the school that we beat was really good. We were all very surprised that we had beat them. So we were pleased with ourselves.

Lol, Monica and I scared the shit out of Tashina in the bathroom. We hid behind a wall and when Tashina walked around the corner, Monica and I screamed "TASHINA!" really loud and ran at her with our arms reaching for her. She screamed and tried to run away, and by the time she had reached the other side of the bathroom she realized that she was not actually in any danger. Oh, but the look on her face when we got her. Lol, I have repeatedly said that had she not just gone to the bathroom, she would have peed her pants. But I guess we were closer to the auditorium than we thought we were because when we got out, Mr. West came after us. Oops. We didn't get in that much trouble though. He just went "What on earth were you guys doing just now? It was really loud!" But luckilly, there wasn't a band performing when we did it, so he wasn't too mad, and we were still laughing about it.

After lunch we had clinics from 1:00-2:00, then we all just sort of wandered around campus for a while. Tashina, Mr. West, Troy, and I were watching a movie in the lounge, and when Troy got up to go to the bathroom, we took his jacket and hid. When Troy came back and saw we and his jacket were gone, he started looking for us (And we weren't too hard to find. We were just on the other side of the wall). I took off running (I had the jacket). I ran up the stairs, then walked to the other side of the room and back down the other set of stairs. When I got back down, they had all disappeared. I shrugged it off and sat back down to continue watching we had been watching before. After a while, Tashina called me and told me they were all out on the dock by the lake. So I went and found them and everybody was there just kind of lazing about.

When it was time to head back to the concert hall, Monica didn't want to get up, and Mr. West said that if she wasn't up by the count of 5, she was going in the lake. She didn't get up. So Mr. West and I started to pick her up, then we dangled her over the water. She was screaming and protesting and we put her back down, but then she still wouldn't get up so Mr. West splashed water in her face. She finally got up and we went to the concert and awards ceremony.

After we got our trophy, it was time to head home. The bus ride home was fun. We spent half the ride singing theme songs from old cartoons we used to watch when we were younger. Spongebob, The Fairly Oddparents, Pokemon, Animaniacs, Cow and Chicken, Pinky and the Brain. We also sang a lot of Spongebob music. The Campfire song song, the F.U.N. song, the striped sweater song, etc. etc. It was such great fun. I was sad to get home and see the day end, long as it may have been.

But oh the memories!

>XD Keehee! I got a new icon. It's meaning is an inside joke, so some people may not get it, but rest assured, it's hilarious.

We're doing these fake resumes and interviews at school. They're annoying. Though it was good for hilarity in English on Friday. We were practicing for our interviews and Thomas volunteered to be the interviewer. He interviewed Candice and things were going completely normal at first. Then he asks his final interview question: "Can you give me three words that rhyme with your name?" The people at my table knew he was going to ask it, but it was still so funny because Candice was caught so off guard and Mrs. Book was laughing so hard. We also practiced entering the room for an interview and we would send half of the kids in the class out in the hallway so they could walk in, but whenever a random person was walking through the hallway, the group would throw them into the class.

Rebecca was in Beauty and the Beast last night. Mom and Miranda and I went and saw her in that. It was definitely awesome. Best play she's been in so far. That group always does a good job. Two memorable moments: Gaston was duck hunting, and he had his rifle. You hear his gun go off and I guess there was somebody up in the rafters waiting to drop the duck. Except the rafters where the person was sitting hung directly over the front row of the audience, so this giant stuffed duck fell on this guy's head. It was great. Then, later, there was a conversation between Lumier and Cogsworth, and they were supposed to be in a spotlight with the rest of the lights on the stage turned off. Well, the lights on the stage were turned off, but whoever was in charge of the spotlight was apparently not paying attention because they didn't turn it on when they were supposed to. Lumier and Cogsworth tried to just go on with the scene as if everything was normal, but after a while, they couldn't tolerate performing in darkness any longer. So they were standing there talking and all of a sudden Cogsworth goes, "I say, what happened to the lights?!" And finally somebody turned the spotlight on. Everybody laughed and Lumier goes, "Oh, thank you sir!" and bows. Good times.

Conference band was today. That was cool. I've never been before. Our band only has like 30 people in it, and the conference band had like, 120, so I was like "ho, whoa." when I got there. But we sounded awesome.

And speaking of stuff, I'm not going to have a free weekend for an entire month. As busy as this weekend alone has been, I still have Charles's confirmation to go to tomorrow, then next weekend I have Northwest Jazz contest (and possibly Nakakon if I can find a way to go), the weekend after that I'm having another garage sale for my fundraising, which will probably run from Friday through Saturday. Then the week after that I have another band contest and then I'm seeing Phantom of the Opera live (this one I'm superexcited for) and I'm going to miss school that Monday because I can't get a right back from the theater on Sunday so I'm going to have to spend the night at my dad's. Then, yet another week later, I have solo & ensamble contest.

So that's it. I'm booked solid for the next month. So nobody try to ask me anything. On the up side, I do have spring break somewhere in there, and Sister said she and Will wanted to take me and Charles to this really good sushi restaraunt that they know of. I still need to talk to Charles abou that... Oh well, he'll probably read this and contact me soon after, so problem solved. But I really would like March to be over. (Of course then I'll probably find out I have a shit load of things to do in April too. Oh, I just remembered! The art club is having it's annual "Rave" in early April, and I'm going to have to go because I'm in art club! Yup, my plans are filling up already! 8D D8<)

I'm getting really sick of a lot of things. Mainly people. Or just my life in general. It would be nice if I could just get up and leave and not have to deal with my life for a while.