Pandamonium

So I took a look at the supplements for the private colleges I'm applying to.

AND OH MY GOD!

Tufts has an optional essay.  One of the prompts: write a short story using one of six (?) titles.

Call me a geek, but I am SO excited for that one.  Anyone who knows me knows I love telling stories. :)

Yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay yay.

That's not why I love my iPod, but anytime is definitely a great time for Christmas music. :)

Changed the layout today.  Hm, haven't touched this thing in a long while.

This layout was categorized under "simple"--don't get me wrong, I love bright colors like the old layout, but there's a certain charm in just...simple.  Yeah.

Anyway.

IT'S NOVEMBER!  UC Applications!  Just trucking along.  I'm just getting by day by day.

There was a reg committee meeting today.  Mr. Ishibashi, Ms. Bookwalter, Ms. Choi, Ms. Winter, Mr. Fong, Ms. Giles, Adee, and Mayton were there.  I said more than usual, but it was all good.

I can't help but think that that committee doesn't get much done.  Too much planning, not enough action.  Gee, I sound like Ruby!

I'm looking forward to Friday.  IT WILL BE A DAY FULL OF FOOD!! :D

And everyone knows how much I love food.

After Friday, I get crackin' again.  D<  GO GO GO!

I'm supposed to be asleep right now.  Rather, I'm supposed to be in bed, doing my homework like a good little girl.

This is where you'll probably ask, "Don't good little girls who are on top of their homework finish it before midnight?"

Uh.

Anyway.

For my own personal record and memory, on Tuesday, September 8, 2009, I suffered a grease burn at approximately 6:00PM.  The burns encompass my neck, the right side of my face, and parts of my left arm.

Wow.  Dumb.

I was talking to Colonel on Friday, and he said, "There's a book in the making, isn't there?"  About accidents, he means.  He also brought up my last "accident," when Harley attacked...

And it just got me thinking.  When I fractured a toe in Freshmen year after walking into a kitchen stool, it was pretty much concealed other than my slight limp.  When I sprained my left foot after misdirecting my anger into a kick to Steve's elbow, I had crutches for about a week, but crutches are a fairly common sight at school (interestingly enough, I haven't seen anyone crippled yet in the halls.  Maybe everyone just gets hurt later on).  When my leg was bitten and clawed by Harley the kinkajou, the wound site was completely hidden except for when I wore shorts (which I wore often after the attack, because the strain on my leg caused by my jeans as I walked became too much for the tender wound).  But now...

Now I've suffered a burn, and I wear the evidence on my face, my neck.  There's no concealing it--it's clear as day.  No one else has these marks...

Sometimes it bothers me, when I think about it too much.  Sometimes it doesn't--sometimes  I have this I-don't-care attitude about the burns and I can walk confidently past a bunch of people and pay no heed to their eyes.  I have no explanation for my fluctuations in confidence, or my self-consciousness about the burns.  It just happens.

I think, maybe, it depends who I'm around.  Let's take my immediate family and close friends, for example--they won't stare, and I'm completely comfortable around them.  With strangers, it's a different story; if I know I'm never going to see them again, I could care less about what they see and think.  However, when I'm at school..although the other students may very well be "strangers," to me, I still see them every day.  When I walk into class, I feel the need to cover myself with a binder, a book, a jacket, something.  My wounds will heal, eventually, but in the meantime...

Why do I care about this?

Sigh.

The above quote is from some old 1986 Chinese movie I've never seen.  Big Trouble in Little China, apparently.  Anyway.

School starts in about seven hours, and I can't sleep.  I went to bed a little over two hours ago and just can't nod off.  Am I nervous?  Perhaps.  Over what?  I have no idea.

This summer has been nothing short of amazing; the only thing that could've made it better was if it were longer.  That said, I'm really sad to see it end.  I'll try not to whine about it too much.  Seasons pass and time waits for no one.

Senior Year.  I'm a senior.  What?  Yeah, you heard me right.  Coming from a K-8 school, it feels like I just got to Lowell.  Haven't been here long enough, if you catch my drift.  I still feel like a freshman, and now...now, I'm on the top of this vicious class food chain.  Too soon, too soon.

When I was back at school last Monday and Tuesday for Mentor Training and Freshmen Orientation, respectively, it felt like I'd never left the place; it felt like I'd never gone on summer vacation.  It felt like school was in session.  Right now, however, that feeling's been replaced by something else--something foreign.  Right now, I can't imagine being back on that campus.  It's unreal.

Of course, my disillusionment will harden into reality in due time.  Six-ish hours, anyone?

The reason why I got out of bed and hopped back in front of my computer monitor was because something was bothering me about a mass email I sent out through Peers to all the Coaches and Mentors.  Something told me that I'd forgotten to attach an image file I prepared to help the Freshmen understand the mod schedule--and hey, I was right.  I then hoped that writing in this dusty thing (do websites gather dust after weeks of neglect?) might help tucker me out, but...so far, no dice.

On a completely random note, I'm beginning to think my body and mind disagree with each other quite often.  For example, I don't feel tired, but I've yawned several times in the past hour.  Another example: I won't feel hungry, but my stomach'll growl.  This contradiction between my body and mind tend to go on for hours until I drop from exhaustion and succumb to sleep, or, in the case of my stomach, feel extremely painful pangs of hunger that demand food, lest I stop functioning.

I dunno.  Maybe it isn't just me who's like that and I'm just being weird.  Oh well.

Hm, another yawn.  I'm beginning to feel tired--yannoe, the sleepy kind (I was tired earlier, but that was more of an I-was-out-all-day-and-now-I'm-home kind of tired.  I'm not making sense, huh? :P ).  Good, good.  I guess I better scurry back to bed and hope that I'll fall asleep sometime during the next hour.  Toodles.

Hi, it's been a while. :)

I just recently returned from a ten day cruise up to Alaska!  It was a lot of fun.  I binged on laziness, though my younger brothers would argue that I do that all the time.  Let's see if I can recount what has happened over the duration of the trip...

June 13: My brothers and I went to the early morning Tae Kwon Do session.  This is would be the last real exercise I would get in days.  My dad's friend Dickson picked my family up at one, and dropped us off at the pier.  We borded the ship; it was a Princess cruiseliner called the Sea Princess.  As the ship took off, we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge--everyone, including myself, swarmed on the top deck to take photos.  Haha.  That night for dinner, we were introduced to the other family we'd be dining with for the next ten days, the Wangs.  They had three young kids: a girl and two boys.  The kids were coughing.  I would later come to regret that.  We were also introduced to our waiter and his assitant--Norman and...Borshe, I think was his name.  Norman was super nice, and Borshe was just a little creepy. o.o

June 14: At sea.  I didn't particularly like the food in the buffet/mess hall...the quality was terrible, actually. o.o  I think this was the day my mom dragged me to this presentation about HAIR...and I was selected as a "model," so they said.  They pinned up my hair like crazy--it looked nice though.  I later counted two hair ties and twenty seven bobby pins. o.o

June 15: At sea again.  More eating and sleeping.

June 16: Port of Call: Ketchikan, Alaska, the state's first city.  While the tourists were al bundled up in layers of jackets--myself included--the locals were in t-shirts and shorts.  We took a city tour and saw a lot of bald eagles and totem poles.  There are so many bald eagles in Alaska--they were never endangered up there in the first place because of the abundance of salmon; instead, they flood the air like crows.  After the city tour, we took a walking tour of the house of a (now dead) prostitute back in the days when prostitution was legal.  Interesting.  o_o

June 17: Port of Call: Juneau, Alaska's capital city.  For a capital city, it's not very bustling.  We went whale watching for three hours and saw steller sea lions, bald eagles, and humpback whales, including a mommy and her calf.  It was really awesome. :)  After whale watching, we went to go look at a glacier...it was very dirty.  And cold.  It was near an arctic tern nesting ground, though, so that was kind of cool (no pun intended).

June 18: Not exactly a port of call, but the ship did a scenic drive-by of Tracy Arm.  There was a big glacier.  Unfortunately, this drive-by only really happened from 5am-7am, so I didn't see a lot of it.  For the little part of it that I did see, I was very grouchy (everyone knows I'm not a morning person).

June 19: Sea day, en route to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

June 20: Landed in Victoria!  The city is really pretty.  We took another city tour, and then a tour of the legislative building.  The legislative building tour had a really nifty portion where an actor playing the architect who designed the building had his two cents. :)

June 21: Sea day.  I woke up with a sore throat--never a good sign.  Later in the day, I  got a killer headache, then got nauseous.  I ended up skipping dinner and throwing up in the sink.  Gross.  I'm pretty sure I caught something from those coughing little kids. x_x

June 22: Last sea day.  I still had a sore throat when I woke up, but the headache was gone.  My family and I actually decided to go to the gym--while my parents were on the exercise equipment, my brothers and I practiced some martial arts in the gym.  One of the workers initially tried to kick us out--he had this really snobbish tone his his voice, humph!--but I think after he watched us throw some kicks around, he was a little scared more respectful of us.  I saw his eyes grow wide :)

June 23: Disembarkation.  Aww, time to come back to reality.  Sadly, I was still feeling ill.  We were home by 11 AM.  Hmm.

... I'm still pretty sick.  I've still got that sore throat, and it's not coupled with a bad cough.  And my voice is gone.  I'm gonna try my best to recover as quickly as possible, though. x_x

Some time during the duration of my cruise, I got in some movie watching.  I watched Gran Torino, Slumdog Millionaire, and Twilight, in that order.  Of the three, Gran Torino is my favorite.

... I thihnk I'm calling in sick for the zoo tomorrow.  I don't feel so good. x_x

Anyway, time to update my to-do list:

- Design Lowell Peer Resources Project Leader shirt
- Redesign Lowell Peer Resources Coach shirt
- DRAW
- WRITE
- Play video games.
- Turn 17.
- Figure out birthday party.
- ZOO: train on more animals!
- Look at colleges
- RELAX
- [placeholder]
- learn to drive
- hang out with Megan
- hang out with Ruby (biking trip, right?  Uh, Ruby, the 12th is my mom's birthday...)
- add more to this list