Well, V-day was awesome. As usual Aileen and I had an idiotic-chick-flick marathon while eating bags of candy, only this time her boyfriend had to sit through it as well. Poor Aileen's boyfriend, sitting through such lovely films as Sydney White, A Cinderella Story, Another Cinderella Story, the Princess Diaries and A Walk To Remember. Luckily for him, though, the only movie we saw all of was A Walk To Remember. Anyway, I've been missing photos, sooooooooo~

( photos for 365 photos )

This week is vacation from school and I am psyched.

"A man said to the universe:
'Sir, I exist!'
'However,' replied the universe,
'The fact has not created in me
a sense of obligation.'"
— Stephen Crane

That, that right up there, I liked that.

Today was most definitely a day. My algebra teacher got mad at me because I didn't have my calculator consistently on my desk. What can I say, we have very tiny desks in that class. Also, I spilled Mountain Dew all over the couch. And the rug. And the floor. And my jeans. Aaaaah. However, the English test on My Antonia got postponed.

( the photos I have been missing (warning: boring) )

Also, just a couple of days until I am Older. Fun fun.

Recently in Latin, we learned about defixiones, or curse tablets. Apparently, people made a lot of them back in the day. Basically, you wrote down, in dedication to some god/goddess/evil spirit, what you wanted to happen to a person who you were angry at. This person could be anyone from a lover who jilted you, to an unknown thief who stole your precious cloak. (There was one defixio about a stolen cloak.) One angry defixio is crazily intense in its vengeance against some girl: May burning fever seize all her limbs, kill her soul and her heart. O Gods of the Underworld, break and smash her bones, choke her, let her body be twisted and shattered - phrix, phrox. The two words at the end are nonsense, "magic" words like "abracadabra" to give the defixio more evil magic power. o.o Other things that gave a defixio more power: writing it backwards; including an illustration; putting a nail through it, throwing it down a well, or both; starting at someone's head and describing all the bad things you want to happen to them, from there downwards.

Aaaaanyway, we have to make a defixio as an assignment in class, which feels sorta creepy in a "we're doing crazy Roman voodoo in Latin!" kind of way, but I guess it's fun. Unfortunately, our limited vocabulary, combined with the requirement that we include genitive phrases, gives us phrases such as "sim caput Vilbiae plenus murum," or, "may Vilbia's head fill with mice." ...yeah.

( if you'd prefer to skip the Latin info dump, the photos are below here )

So, today in band, our conductor FINALLY admitted that she is, in fact, pregnant. This is made rather ironic and funny, seeing as she's a fill-in conductor for our old one... who is on maternity leave, because about this time last year, she announced that she was pregnant. So, yeah, I guess that being the band conductor at my school is a fantastic fertility drug. Now we just have to worry about the student interns who sometimes conduct the band...

In other news, my dear mother almost but then didn't ride that plane that crashed into the Hudson! o.o Luckily, she didn't (and is safe) and all the people who were on it are also fine. Nonetheless, it was a bit nervous-making to hear about.

And finally, here are the four photos I was missing from 365 photos.

( below a cut of course )

This is a single-egg frying pan, just right for frying one egg for breakfast. Also, if you manage to squish two eggs into it, then you can make egg McMuffins, only sans the Mc, since they're homemade. I should've included something else in for size comparison, because the adorable thing about this frying pan and spatula is that it's so small. I love it.

( I still am working on bouncing flash, so here is the photo again minus the flash )

I keep posting these past midnight. Arg. Anyway, I took a photo of two ducks earlier, so here are two MORE ducks, only of a very different style.



Today didn't feel so much like Saturday, because I babysat for three hours all morning, then four and a half more in the evening. The space between sort of just disappeared. I'm going to blame insufficient sleep (which is generally my scapegoat for everything), and try and fix that.

If I'm not making sense, it is because of insufficient sleep.

I'm very glad today was Friday. I've been ridiculously exhausted all week long. I truly need to get more sleep. On the bright side, I got to see some old childhood friends today. :D Also, for no justifiable reason, I watched some episodes of a weird old 80s show. It was truly outrageous.

And, here is today's photo:



We have a bunch of shoes down the stairs, and I feel it might've made a good photo if the flash hadn't messed it up. Without flash, though, it took in too much light and was too blurry and yellow. So, imagine that you can nicely see all the shoes arranged on the stairs.

Today, was had ANOTHER two hour delay, and once again, I went out to the bus stop early, but this time, I realized my error without being told. It was, I must say, pretty funny, and also, pretty awesome.

Photo the seventh of 365 photos.



I keep forgetting to take photos when I'm outside, so this is another bit of my living room. It's too bad, because today was a snow day, and I could've taken a photo of the delightful slush. (Not so delightful when it caused my dad to swerve off the road...)

I'm going to sleep now.

PS. I saw Onmyoji today and it was PHENOMENAL.

I've gotten my algebra grade back to what it was at the end of last term. I have the remainder of this term to raise it as much as humanly possible.

My father is heading off to the Wonderful Magical Special Land of Brittania! Unfortunately, there may be freezing rain tomorrow, which will make the journey to the airport hazardous. Fingers crossed it all turns out well, though.

These are the sorts of days I would not necessarily blog if not for having a photo to post. But here's Battle Hymn of the Republic Jewel, my other guinea pig.



He's almost six years old. That makes him an Ancient and Wise Soothsayer in guinea pig years. (This is probably also why he looks crazy. His eyes are naturally red, though.) (Also, I have no idea what's up with all the random capitals in this entry. I guess it will Forever Be A Mystery.)

The number count down refers to, as usual, how many days of school until my next vacation. Just, you know, in case you're curious or something.

Today, the roads were incredibly iced over, because of freezing rain. I went out dutifully at 7 AM to wait for my bus, taking excessive care not to slip and fall (and I nearly did many times -- the roads were insane). Anyway, I was standing at the bus stop, waiting, waiting, wondering why no one else was out, getting suspicious, and finally a nice lady drove by and stopped to pull down her window and say, "There's a two hour delay." Apparently, the station which has the delays/dismissals/cancellations announced across the bottom of the screen hides those announcements when it is doing the weather, and it was doing the weather when I checked to see if we had a delay. So, I got ready at 6:30 all for naught. In the end, though, I still got the two extra hours of sleep, and I got to miss algebra, so I am in no way complaining. :D

I was still pretty sleepy all day, but that's life. I got a 95 on my Frankenstein essay, which is AWESOME. Still, these two sample essays I read were pretty epic, and I'm going to aim to think creatively like they did. One person wrote about Walton being schizophrenic, something which is seemingly obvious when pointed out, but which we didn't even mention in class, so they thought of it all their own. The other person compared Victor and Frankenstein to the narrator and Tyler Durden in Fight Club, which I thought was just a little amusing, because it sorta felt like they were doing that thing of saying "I read Fight Club! Isn't that great?" (I would totally do the same thing if I could find a parallel with some famous book I've read.)

( and finally, photo the fifth )

The news for the past four days has made me angry, upset, and overall, listen to more U2 than I have in ages.

School starts tomorrow. Six weeks until my next vacation.

( two photos today! )

#3 for 365 photos.



It's a little dude who grows grass. I think it was sent from Japan. It's on the bookshelf chilling with the old Japanese books.

I went to the bookstore with my friend today and bought Foucault's Pendulum, which I am quite looking forward to reading. Then we went off and saw Valkyrie.

I think my biggest issue with Valkyrie was Tom Cruise. I just kept feeling like he didn't fit the part. At least it wasn't Brad Pitt, though. ._. I would've loved it if the movie had been in German, with, well... German people, but I guess that no one in America would go to the theatre and pay money to watch something with subtitles. Even though I knew it was in English, I was still kind of sad that they fake you out at the beginning and are like, "Look, we're doing this in German, and just have subtitles!" and then Tom Cruise starts talking and they're like, "PSYCHE!"

Overall, the movie was pretty good, I'd say. It got positively painful to watch, though, when it looks like everything is going to go well, because you know it will all fall apart, and you're just anticipating it the whole time. I won't spoil the ending, but I will say there's an incredibly depressing firing squad scene.

Tomorrow the last day of vacation. It's very sad. I had a lot of plans for vacation that didn't go through... Ah well, c'est la vie.

My father's birthday was today, so we had a very nice little celebration at home with homemade pizza and cake.

And, from that cake, here is photo #2 for 365 photos:



Also, yay for having all of my icons back! I love having a paid account.

That's all for today, folks.