So, I went up to the local university to see a famous person put on a lecture... only to find that the lecture had been canceled because they famous person got sick. I had somewhere in the vicinity of an hour before the Japanese discussion group I was going to. I needed to come up with ways to spend time. Thus, I present to you

How To Enjoy Yourself At The Local University When You Know No One, Have No Money, And Are Not A Student

1. Make sure you really have no money. If you have any, go to the café. If you have only a little, go to the pastry place. Get food. Enjoy food. If you have any leftover food—
2. Feed a squirrel. Bonus points if said squirrel sticks around and waits for more food, and approaches you. Even more points if he gets his friends.
3. Go to the library and research the first thing you see for no more than three minutes. Take notes. Book: Wagner and Nietzche. Page: 34. "This essay, written in July 1864, was supposed to outline
Wagner's political stance after his participation in the Dresden Uprising." FASCINATING.
4. Use the public access computers in the library.
5. Inwardly fume about the students using all the public access computers in the library.
6. Look in vain for an empty table.
8. Ride the elevators.
9. Pretend to make a phone call for the sake of sitting in the soundproof booth.
10. Ride the elevators.
11. Look for a place to charge your phone.
12. Turn riding the elevators into a game. How To Play: Board an elevator on ground floor and ride to the top. Switch elevators whenever someone enters. Pick floors at random, or at age-significant points (like 21 for drinking, 18 for voting, 16 for driving.)
12a. Hide in bookshelves after switching off of an elevator with some people, and then switching onto
a new elevator with the same people.
13. Never let on that you are playing a game. Always look completely business-like.
14. Pretend to take notes on work.
15. Pretend to take notes on the people around you.
16. Take notes on the people around you. Three blue shirts, all different shades. Two water bottles at one table, with two water fountains about ten feet away. No ironic "be green" shirts, though.
17. Count the bikes outside the library: nineteen.
18. Assess the birds and squirrels outside the library: twittery and adorable.

How many of these did I do?



...


ALL OF THE ABOVE. Except the second one, I ate all my food, sorry squirrels.

- Clark Gable is the BEST MAN (whois,sadly,nolonger) ALIVE. Okay, so maybe not the best, but definitely one of, and I need to see more movies he stars in.

- I saw Gone With The Wind today and it was really good but really sad but really long but really good. :D: It gets a happy/sad face.

- I need to see more classic movies, because they're just really excellent. And you know? Classic books are too. I should read more of those (especially the ones I've been assigned).

- I am going to get my ears double or even triple pierced. Probably, I will have one of my friends help me with it, but then I wonder, does it hurt a whole lot? I think it'd be worth it, though.

- I'm not going to dye my hair for a good long while. Over a year, at any rate. Everybody! Hold me to it!

- In the same fashion that NY <3's NY, the Old South <3's the Old South. That is to say, every movie or book which talks about the Old South, or any character in any movie or book who talks about it, absolutely *loves* it because everything was so very quaint and idyllic! Even if it wasn't really.

RIP Michael Jackson.
._.

I should learn the thriller dance.

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, as with every Thursday, I went to babysit at a neighbor's house. Well, not precisely a neighbor, but in the neighborhood. Anyway, the two kids decided they wanted to draw with chalk outside, so I went out with them and the chalk. They got sick of this pretty quickly, though, because it was really windy and cold and the chalk kept rolling places. We went to go back inside, but then I realized I had shut the front door, and it was locked. Ruh roh. Oh well, I thought, the kids wanted to play in the back yard, so we could just go back there. I lifted them both over the fence and then climbed over myself, and they played for a while.

After a while they got bored and wanted a snack, so I went to the back door to let us all in. Now, I should probably mention, just so that I don't sound completely idiotic, the fact that the back door is almost invariably unlocked. But today? Locked. I kinda stood there for a few minutes, then tried the door again, because as we all know, if you have a strong enough sense of denial, reality changes! (Note: this statement is false.)

Anyway, I asked the kids if they knew of any neighbor with a spare key, but the kids are both under the age of 5, and neither of them had any idea. In the end, I boosted them both back over the fence, climbed over, and just went back to my house with them because we couldn't very well sit outside for three hours, and my house is about two minutes away on foot. It all worked out in the end, and we went back in time for their dad to get home and let us in, but damn if I didn't feel like the biggest idiot alive.

In other news, I'm studying Japanese more (whoo!), and checked on the university's dual enrollment program. Juniors are apparently only allowed to take two classes? Hrmm. We shall see.

So, lately I have been up to here with frustrating and annoying circumstances and people, be they teachers or friends or life in general, so it's good to have things to amuse me. I finished Wuthering Heights yesterday (it was so good), and so I was looking at art for it (I loved that book so much omg) and found this (read that book) bit of art (RIGHT NOW) which amused me:


I AM HEATHCLIFF by ~bananafish67 on deviantART

It is only funny if you've read Wuthering Heights AND know Stephen Colbert, but I'm pretty sure that people on the f-list have mostly done at least half.

I was planning on doing ALL my homework, and ended up doing one thing. -.- I don't know what happened to my self-discipline this year, or if I never had any to begin with, but I am not working efficiently of late, not at all. For homework, I still have:

- a Latin project which will take a lot of thinking time
- a bewildering biology sheet
- a packet of algebra problems
- Act I and Act II of Julius Caesar

Hoo boy, am I excited! u.u The worst part of this is that my English teacher was originally going to have us read Julius Caesar in class, which would've been awesome, because then I would've actually had time to read my own books outside of school, but as it is, I shall be reading Shakespeare instead. And, while Shakespeare is interesting and all, I have a lot of books that I really really want to get to. At any rate, because of all this work, I can't get up to the university tomorrow, which is a bummer. Ah, well.

I went and saw a Japanese puppet performance today, and it was quite good. There was one part where the god Ebisu was trying to think to of as many things to drink to as possible, so he could keep drinking, and some of the things he toasted to were: success, happiness, world peace, more green cars on the streets, no more bricks falling off the local library. (I suppose those are actually local jokes...) They also performed this scene where a woman's jealousy transforms her into a demon (littlemetaldrop and jugduf might remember this), and a scene where this couple dies by suicide, but comes back to life. Overall, the whole performance was quite good.

It's amazing that I didn't do anything today, and I'm still exhausted at the end.

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.

- First field trip of the year tomorrow! YAY

- I found out why lacrosse is called lacrosse today. It seems that the "when in doubt, it must be some sort of religious thing" works for gym class, too.

- Why are there so many of my teachers on facebook?

- History class: "So, the Dutch, Frannish, and the Spench..." When this spoonerism was pointed out to him, my teacher said, "Well, it isn't as bad as the time I mixed up the first letters of the Turks and the Kurds."

- The new cadence for band is nothing but noise. Seriously. Rather than being helpful and aiding me in keeping step, it is confusing and distracting, and I have to focus on blocking it out so that I can stay in step. While I've come to like the new conductor otherwise, this is one thing which I still can't help but think "Whyyy?" And I don't think we'll ever get the old cadence back either. )':

- I thiiink I finally understand some of those algebra things. Possibly.

I actually have a story to tell about my life today! Rare, isn't it?

One of the kids I babysit is four years old, and he really loves playing this "Namco Museum" video game, with a bunch of old Namco games on it. One of the recent times I was babysitting for him, he had been playing Pac-Man, and he had the volume up to the maximum (I swear he has as much fun messing with the volume as he does actually playing the games). He got bored with Pac-Man quickly though, so he switched to a different game. For whatever reason, the music for that game was very quiet. He was sorta confused, and asked me, "This game has no sound?" So, I told him, "No, this game just has a tiny sound." Admittedly, that was a kind of odd way to describe it, and I guess he thought so too, because from then our conversation ran something like this:

Him: A tiny sound?
Me: Yes.
Him: This game has a tiny sound?
Me: It does.
(a few minutes pass)
Him: This game has a tiny sound, right?
Me: Right.
Him: Not a big sound?
Me: Not a big sound.

He asked me about it quite a few times. When we got to a boss battle level, he got all smiley and asked, "Does THIS level have a tiny sound?" because it had gotten louder, so I told him no, this one had a bigger sound. It was all very fun, the way he latched onto the phrase and kept on repeating it. Whenever he thinks something is odd or interesting, he likes to ask about it and repeat it. He did that when I was wearing nail polish one time. I suppose that when I was four, I thought nail polish was a strange concept as well.