So, last Thursday, I had... *drumroll please* *cymbal crash* *more pomp and circumstance* A JOB INTERVIEWWWW (In case it is not clear, that's a big deal for me.) Of course, I don't know if I have the job or not, but I'm really hoping that I get it.

Right now, I'm at my friend's dad's house, and we are ready to go and see Warped Tour tomorrow. I've never been to a concert before, so I'm pretty excited about it, but I'm not sure if I'm going to get to see the bands I know. The two friends I'm going with want to see Escape the Fate and A Day to Remember and other bands I don't know. ._. I want to see Flogging Molly (don't judge meeee) and Meg & Dia (don't judge meeeee), but in the end, that's okay. I think we are going to be seeing Breathe Carolina, so that's awesome.

I haven't been able to be keeping up with my Japanese, but I'm maybe halfway through Their Eyes Were Watching God. I'm liking it a lot more than I thought I would.

That's pretty much all that's going on. I'd write more in depth, or better, but I'm watching a movie and I'm distracted. So.

The place where I had an interview did not hire me, because it plans on selling alcohol, so it's back to square one for me. When I told my friend this, she misheard and thought I said "back to swear one." She was then like, "So... which would that be?" Which WOULD it be, el jay? What's the first swear...?

So that I don't forget it, I'm going to use some quick Japanese. Uh... わたしはなんさいですか？ろくじゅさいです。ローズちゃんもろくじゅさいです。ローズちゃんのうちわここです。コンビニはとてもちかいです。わたしのうちわとういでそ。 I suppose that's all I'm going to get for now. I've very tired. u.u

Uh. I've drawn two new pictures recently! They're at Amanen, my dA account. I want to do a LOT of art this summer, as well as learning Japanese. But right now, I need to focus on getting a job. I'm not sure if I'll have time to get applications tomorrow, so it may have to wait until Friday.

That's all so far. It's summer, so not much has been happening other than spending lots of time with my friends. Nn.

So, today! I went to graduation.

• Graduation, or as our principal insists on calling it, "commencement practices." Or, "commencement exercises." I think it's the latter. Anyway, she should either just call it graduation or commencement, because the seniors have to do so much practicing and exercising prior to the real deal that calling the real deal "practices" or "exercises" is a bit confusing.
• So many of my friends graduated this year, even more than last year, and I will miss them profoundly, I'm sure.
• My friend in my grade was there too, so I got to hang out with her, and two kids who had graduated last year. It is always good to hang out with people.
• I got to wear my summer dress! I was so excited and happy. I must get more dresses (some day, when I magically have that strange, intangible idea, "disposable income") because they are comfy and easy to wear, like shorts.
• The graduation song was "World's Greatest" by R. Kelly. One little corner of the students graduating was doing the whole swaying-back-and-forth thing. I wish everyone had done it, because if they were REALLY the world's greatest, they'd know that such songs demand silly, hippie-style swaying.
• A couple of people threw their caps at the end. At college graduations, that's when people throw their caps en masse, right?

After that, I went to a friend's graduation party, which was pretty nice, although I sadly was leaving before many people showed up. We did get to play some murderous badminton though. MURDEROUS, I tell you.

Also, everyone's favorite (read as, my and my friends' favorite) history teacher will finish her 10th year of teaching this year, so a friend and I got her a card and a Che Guevara doll, because if there's anything history doesn't have enough of, it's Che Guevara icons.

The title of this entry also happens to be the only part of that song I know. Is it even a song? Is it simply an advertisement jingle? By listening to the radio, I learn a whole lot of jingles. The creepy part is when they feature in your dream, only they're developed into a full on song. A song about carsalesmans. (WHAT.)

Anyway, that's completely irrelevant, because what I was going to talk about was my reason for celebrating: IT'S VACATION WEEK! But Tuesday is already over! D: I get so antsy during vacation, because I want to enjoy it very fully, but the days just go by. It's like those songs about "the best days of your life" — if I know I'm supposed to be enjoying myself, I feel... compelled to, or something. Crazy, I know.

I went up to the university yesterday, but the weather, sadly, was not so good. I'm really looking forward to the summertime. I'd love to just have no time constraints. At the same time, though, I kinda need time constraints to get anything done. If there was some way to make school less stressful, and less painful to the eyes (due to lack of sleep), then I think I would no longer resent school so much. Still, I'm exceedingly long-winded today, but I'm not precisely saying anything of note, so I ought to wrap this up.

Oh! I do have one more thing to say. I just remembered: kids' shows are creepy these days. o.o At my friend's house, we were watching this show called Flapjack, and it wasn't creepy I suppose, but it was really really weird, but then we watched this show called Chowder, and it was like... disturbing. It made me think of some sort of extra creepy Anpanman. But, yeah, that's what my friends and I get for watching shows aimed at people half our age, I suppose.

Yesterday, I went to my friend's house and we decided it would be a good idea to make chocolate chip cookies. How harmless can that be, right? We were using the Joy of Cooking recipe and everything. It's pretty impossible to muddle chocolate chip cookies.

Anyway, I was having a grand old time softening the butter (by which I mean, beating the crap out of it), while my friend was measuring out some other stuff in a separate bowl. She goes over to the recipe and is like, "Okay, one teaspoon of hot water," and then marches over to the sink with the tablespoon. Luckily, before she adds the water, I point out to her that she has the tablespoon, which is very different from the teaspoon. She gives me this "Oh... um... crap" sort of look, but switches the spoons. A few minutes later: "So wait, Nina... what would happen if you added a tablespoon of salt instead of a teaspoon?" Oh dear.

Although a tablespoon of salt had already been added to the flour, when the recipe only called for a teaspoon, we were able to sift some of the excess salt out. Still, the final product was peculiarly salty chocolate chip cookies. They didn't taste inherently bad, but you had to be prepared for the saltiness, or else you'd be in for an unpleasant surprise.

In conclusion: whoever named the measuring spoons shouldn't have given them all names starting with a "t."

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.

#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.

This post is REALLY LONG, so I apologize.

So, Monday was rather fantastic. I got to school and was not looking forward to algebra (I never am...). But, in some incredible run of luck, algebra didn't suck. I was not wishing pain on my teacher the whole time. In fact, I was understanding everything, and I didn't wish any bad things on anyone! I hope this is a good omen for algebra in general. I'm going to hope it all gets better from here! Also, I wasn't looking forward to band, and was hoping that maybe we'd have a band study, but since I was almost sure my conductor was in school that day, I figured we'd have to play... but we didn't! It turned out that my conductor's plane back from Chicago had been held up due to the snowstorms. It was quite the real life deus ex machina.

( and then even MORE stuff happened )

Today, I did an entire ID sheet for history. This is an accomplishment, because ID sheets are really hard and take a long time. The reason for this is that they just give you a list of historical terms/items, usually somewhere between 26 and 30 (this time it was 38), and then you have the name every bit of significance they had between two certain years. The years this time were 1789 and 1800, and my goodness, a lot of stuff happened in those years. Yeesh. But I finished it! And now I have to write an essay on Frankenstein. Oodles of fun.

I am very excited for Christmas! On the one hand, it can't come fast enough, but on the other, I still need to make Christmas cards, clean up the living room so that we have a space to put advent calenders and decorations, buy everyone stuff... Aww maaaan, I've really got to get to that. I can't make up my mind about what to do for gifts, though. Should I get my whole family and very close friends something, and get them all something nice, or should I get all of my friends something small? I dunno. If it boils down to it I'll at least make cards and get people candy. Candy is always good.

In other news, my writer's block/lack of inspiration/lack of ability to formulate a plot is *still* stopping me from writing anything. Very frustrating.

That's all for now. Oh, one more thing! A bundle of teachers were cross-dressing on Friday. You just don't expect to see male teachers in dresses, but it wasn't so weird mostly because mostly they were wearing those shapeless, hardly feminine dresses that might as well have been pants. It was still very funny though.

Three more school days until a [brief but still awesome] vacation!

My friends are planning to go and see the Twilight movie over vacation. Don't get me wrong, of course, none of us enjoyed the books. Still, the movie looks really, really funny. It's one of those things which, unlike the books, might actually be so bad it's good.. We shall see.

Also, I am absolutely loving Frankenstein. The writing is a bit weighty, it's true, and she really needs to find a different way to say "wretch," but otherwise, it's excellent. I'm really very back and forth as far as Romantics and Romanticism goes. I like some of what they stand for, but other stuff seems silly. Like, believing that people are born perfectly good, or that humankind can be perfected, is silly. Also, I don't think that everyone would be much better off without society. Society has its bad sides, but it's not ALL bad. And while yes, sewing dead bodies together and turning people into poisonous plants is a bad idea, science is not inherently evil. The other stuff is okay though. (Thus passes Nina's all mighty judgment on Romanticism: it is Pretty Okay.)

I feel like I should work on NaNo, but I already know I'm not going to finish, and I don't feel terrible inspired. Ah, well, so it goes.