What does your handwriting say about YOU?

You fill every waking moment with activity.
You are a social person who likes to talk and meet others.
You are diplomatic, objective, and live in the present.
You are a talkative person, maybe even a busybody!
You are self-confident and like to bring attention to yourself.

Makes me sound like a histrionic, lol....

So I was flipping back through past LiveJournal entries during Governor's School [Cue nostalgia] and found this quote that I consider to be quite thought-provoking in an only semi-angsty way.  So here it goes:

The entire sum of existence is based off of being needed by just one person.

Consider.

It's rather poignant.  Just one person.  One.
Needed.  Not "wanted," which involves the whims and caprices of human desires, but needed.  Food is needed, unless you're a model.  Oxygen is needed, unless you're dead.  Need implies a physical requirement for existence.  To be needed by someone is the greatest gift a person can receive.  Needed.  Look for someone who needs you, not for someone who wants you.  That is the only way to a truly satisfying inter-personal relationship.  Who do you need?  Who do you want?  Are you able to determine the difference?

Consider.

Notice I never say "just great."
Notice I never say "well."
Notice I never say "horrid" or "grand."
When you ask how I’m doing, it’s scarce above "hell."

When you loved me I could not write
A single word of rhyme or prose.
I struggled with the implements,
But put them all down for a rose.

I thought the loss a small one,
Though I admit I missed the pen.
And now my heart is torn in two,
The words flow easy back again.

I also feel compelled to write a story about the Italian Mafia or the Russian 'Mafiya.'
Actually, I typically feel compelled to write a lot of things.
And say the word 'compelled.'
Compelledcompelledcompelled.

Goodness gracious.  I had three coffee-enhanced beverages in nine hours.  That's one every three hours.  Addiction knows no bounds.
....My hands are shaking.
Curse you, addiction.
Until tomorrow morning, that is.  At which point you shall be embraced by open, bleary arms.

So yeah.  There was a mouse in my room this (technical) morning.  Know how I found this out?  It woke me up by running across my face.  ....And somehow getting under the covers.  Now for those of you who have never been roused by something small and rodenty skittering over your cheek, permit me to explain: you will move faster than you ever have in your entire life, because you have no idea what just did that, and for all you know it could be bloodsucking.  So when the cat scratched at my door to be let in, by God she was let in.  Such is the cost of rousing me from my slumber.  You will die.  An obese cat will hunt you down and dispatch you with a frightening amount of noise, and I will find your rigor-mortis-ized body in the morning and dispose of you.  So think carefully, if you really want to test how much of a morning person I am not.

Wow.... Mom made something called "peasant stew."  Delighful!  No peasants were harmed in the manufacturing of this product.

Coca-Cola to Launch New Coffee-Infused Soda
I'm sure Brian already has the release date on his calendar.

Dear God, my left eardrum just burst.  "HELLO, IS BARBARA THERE?"  "No.  Thank you for inquiring."  *Click*  Gah, so tempting.

Anyone who can give me advice concerning swing club, please do or risk extermination.  I feel like it's really dwindling.  Although today we actually had more guys than girls!  I about passed out from happy shock.  But yes, any tips and suggestions you may have would be vastly appreciated.

"How to Buy Your Way Into High Society" -- an article on eHow.com.  My political career has begun.
Although I really disdain buying titles.  Really.  If any old slob can become Duke Hazzard, why keep them around?  (Kind of like when Louis Vuitton went mainstream at your local high school.  Oy gevalt, or however you spell it.)

Annnnnnd I just ran out of things to rave over.

Criminal justice final tomorrow.  I need an eleventy-one (111) to make an A in that class.

.......HAAA!

*Ahem*  Anywho....

Holy crap.... I think yesterday was one of the best days ever.

Governor's School Reunion = Bittersweet.  It was wonderful to see everyone again and talk to people I almost never freakin' see (despite the fact that three of us live in the same town).  But at the same time, we knew that a few hours later we were going to be ripped apart, like cloth sewn back together for a few hours only.  Corey brought his water pistol.  That resulted in several fights and the infamous quote of, "What'd you give me if I shot that kid?"  "....How 'bout a hug?"  *Begins firing*  (Unfortunately, the toddler was out of range.)  We almost got Cameron to try on a wedding dress, but to no avail.

-- "This water gun was full when I got here.  That means the rest is.... In my pocket."
-- "They can't kick us out!  We own them!!"
-- "They're starting to clean up.  I think that's a sign to leave."  "It's kind of like the fortune cookie at Chinese restaurants."  "Or serving coffee after a dinner party."
-- "Photo-op for the radiance that is us."

Ahh, but then it was time to wend my way from Bellevue to Brentwood!  Exciting.  Unfortunately, the directions failed to note just how far one would have to drive after turning left onto Franklin Road.  Convinced I had missed it and unwilling to venture where there are no streetlights (everyone knows civilisation ends where the streetlights do), I turn around and start driving, looking for box #409.  If it exists, it's somewhere much farther past the red-light district of Nashville, which is where I wound up.  I kid you not, syringes littered the sidewalk as a bag lady strolled past a packed adult bookstore.  "Eighth Avenue South?!  What?!!!"  Ahem.  Turn around slowly, so as not to attract attention, and decide to keep driving in the opposite direction until I fall off the edge of the map or my gasoline runs out (and hoping that I found the edge first).  Call Mom in panic.  "I can't find it!  Gahhh!"  *Looks at next sign*  "Um.... Nevermind...."

The dancing part was, in a word, phenomenal.  Only capitalised, and in italics.  And fuschia.  Yes, fuschia.  I met a "physician's assistant" (read: nurse) who hadn't been dancing for even a year, but I had difficulty keeping up with him!  It was splendid.  And we waltzed.  Oh yes, we waltzed.  And spun.  And waltzed some more.  The waltzing made my night.  *Happy glow*  "Do you know how to flip?"  "Yes --"  *He executes tricky maneuvers*  *I panic*  "NOT THAT FLIP!!!!"
It was all so wonderful, though.  Despite having to run my feet under ice water upon returning home.  I totally learned little teensy moves to teach Swing Club this Tuesday.  Yay!!  Definitely coming back to the next one.  :-)

And then there was the Vice Child.  Bear in mind, this event was held at a church.  I will render the highlights of our conversation here:
*Polite small talk for three minutes at most*
Vice Child: "I bet it (mumble) sucks."
Me: (Nods vaguely)
Vice Child: You have?!!
Me: (No longer vague)  What??
Vice Child: I asked if you'd ever had sex!
Me: (Regrets vague nod) Um.... No.... Am I missing out, or something??
Vice Child: (Nods vigorously)
Me: .......

(Scant seconds later)
Vice Child: How old do I look?
Me: ....Uhhhh.... Sixteen-seventeen, I'd say you're pretty on-target.  (Note: Clearly not the answer Vice Child was looking for.)

(And then Vice Child earns her nickname.)
Vice Child: So have you ever done drugs?
Me: Caffeine.
Vice Child: I mean like real drugs.
Me: Well, no.
Vice Child: Do you smoke?
Me: (Emphatic) No.
Vice Child: Do you drink?
Me: Yes, a little.
Vice Child: (Interested) Really????  Have you ever been drunk??????
Me: Noooo.  The most it's ever been was two glasses of champagne at my grandmother's birthday!

(Still fewer seconds later)
Vice Child: You know I weighed myself the other day and I weighed 115.  I was like 'Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhmigawd.'
Me: (No longer humouring) Um, okay.

All this, while she pulled her shirt still farther down every time something male walked by.  Unfortunately, I had not yet begun the habit of dragging random guys standing alone out onto the dance floor, and was unable to save myself.  Yeah, quickly got over it after being rescued.

But it all makes for an experience, right??

I think the next time I have to perform mass communication with the Swing Club, I'll make them give me their emails.  Not their telephone numbers.

It just makes things so much easier.  You think I would have realised this earlier.

But no.

It took a go-round.
But at least it was just one.

Without further ado:

-- Jump, Jive, and Swing! 1940's Big Band Christmas Ball
-- Saturday, December 3 (that's today)
-- Living Word Community Church (formerly Brentwood Baptist) at 409 Franklin Road, Brentwood, TN
-- $10
-- Swing dance lessons are 7:30-8:30, with dancing until 11:00
-- Complimentary appetizers/drinks/coffee
-- Smoke and alcohol free, if that's a draw for you

Be there, or be a one-dimensional figure with four equal sides.

Things that annoy me:
-- Mutilation of Christmas carols.
-- Especially mutilations of Christmas carols that involve the singer flaunting how much vibrata they can put in their pipes.
-- Those who are firmly convinced that the higher they sing, the better.  Just because you can break glass at a whim does not mean you should necessarily try.  I like my eardrums unpierced, thank you and good night.

On a happier, non-disgruntled note.... I found something awesome!!  Or at least something that stole my wallet.  Ahem.  It was completely random, I swear.

Proud owner of:

It makes me happy.  Pink and shiny, how could it not??  XD

The night they invented champagne,
It's plain as it can be --
They thought of you and me.
The night they invented champagne,
They absolutely knew
That all we'd want to do
Is fly to the sky on champagne,
And shout to everyone in sight
That since the world began,
No woman or a man
Has ever been so happy as we are to-night!

Aurora

You're a tired old thing aren't you? We first came under Aurora's spell in Sleeping Beauty (1959)

'Tired old thing' indeed.  It's a classic!  Tchaikovsky, mmmm.... And I only rigged one question.  XD

Well, after that bit of mirth.... Sometimes, inexplicably (I lie), I can feel incredibly alone.  Bitter and proud, baby.  The motto has suited me well for four years running, I see no reason for it to stop.  (See, Nathan, I finally admitted it, lol!  Are you happy? ;-) :-P)

Here's Sullivan.  She's always laughing.

Okay.... So Caroline (Sullivan/sister, not Ford) tagged me to list five oddities that encompass my being....

1.) I dislike it when poems don't rhyme.  Not that I dislike the poem itself, you understand.  I'm not condemnding the myriad non-rhyming forms of expression, I'm just weird.
2.) According to others (such as the aforementioned Caroline), I raise my eyebrows whenever about to take a bite or sip of something.
3.) I hold doors for guys.  And get into fights over it.
4.) Cold black coffee is a delightful beverage.
5.) Ummm.... I really, really, really God-awfully hate it when people mess with my hair.  It's a psychological neurosis.  Only three people in the world are allowed to do that.  Three.  The rest.... I will kill you.

So there you go.  And since I've been commanded to tag, I tag:
-- Everyone who reads this.

HA!

So I hope everyone had a fantabulous turkey day and ate altogether too much food.  It's quite easy to do.  The average American eats around 920 calories worth of food at the Thanksgiving meal.  Don't ask me how I know this.  Even I don't have the answer.

Hah, so Dad and I are going to build a Generic Ranger costume for him to wear to faire, and a Generic Jedi costume so we can go be weirdos at some sci-fi convention.  Never thought I'd see that in my life....

Time to go demolish some more of the turkey carcass....

Last night at work it was incredibly gratifying for me to be asked what Northern state I was from.

And be able to tell them that I've lived in the same house, in the same town (I.e. here) my entire life.  ^_^

[[Edit]] .....I just heard my eighty-year-old grandmother refer to something as 'skanky.'  O_O  [[/Edit]]

So I was backstage help/fitting room attendant at the "Miss Oakland" pageant Saturday.
It was, in a word, an experience.

If you were in a burning museum and you had to save one item: a Van Gogh or an elderly woman who probably didn't have very long to live, anyway, which would you choose and why?

So I just realised something.... Out of the nine-odd colleges I'm applying to, four are in the northeast, two are in the west, and one each for midwest, southeast, and abroad.  Fully eight of these are reach schools.  Crap.

Craving Panera.  And a cast-iron bat (still).

"Halaigh, Halaigh, A Lie, Halaigh" by Bright Eyes has been stuck in my head all friggin' yesterday and today.  That's what I get for putting it on REPEAT this morning on the way to school.  But hey, it was/is applicable.  I've been deceived by someone I thought was close to me.  By someone I thought I knew.  This is two extraordinarily painful experiences I've already had (on two separate occassions), combined.  It's fun.  Fun like a hospice patient.  Thank God my mascara didn't run.  Sometimes that's the only thing that keeps me from letting the dams break, but I'll take what I can get.  Crying period is bad enough, but in public must be infinitely worse.  Thanks to Schleicher for listening and talking and making sure no one saw.  It's great how I can go from distraught to irritated in all of seven hours.

I'm golden now, though.  Always am.... Always have to be, you know?

So.... Uh.... Apparently Earth's climate has regressed back into the latest Ice Age, and the White House meteorologists were too busy taking  ethics courses to broadcast such news.  Anyway, I believe I was talking about the weather, and how we're all going to die from frostbite, and how it's really a plot, and.... Oh nevermind.  Although I got to look like a Siberian refugee trudging across campus in the all-encompassing darkness.

Oh ye of the XY-chromosomal persuasion, why must ye be so perplexing?
And maddening??
And really, really make me want to go off and hit something (preferably the offensive member of the XY-persuasion).  With a bat.  A metal bat.  Hard.  Several times.  Okay, maybe just once.  But dang if it doesn't feel like five.
Tip of the iceberg, people.  Tip of the ever-loving iceberg.

On a completely unrelated note.... You ever have those times where you're just not very tolerant of other forms of human life?  Here, I'll prove it to you.  Come closer.  *Snirkle*

And of course, now is the time for my yoga book to go missing.   I can make an attempt at bendy Zen nonetheless.  *Stretch, rip, ow.*

So my hair's dark brown now.  It's fun.

Still haven't broached the subject of bartending school with Dad.  Maybe I'll let him find out by enrolling.
.....Maybe not.

Ah, the blissful solitude and tranquility that come with an empty house.  Too bad I have to leave it all to work.  *Sniff*

My nasty uniform needs ironing.  Which means I must begin this process known as 'suiting up for slavery.'  Figures, as soon as I have some regulars at that joint I've turned in my notice.

Life is good.  I don't see why people agonise so much about it.  At least we're on the fun side of ground level!

Yeah, I know.  I should be writing those three papers due tomorrow (two of which are in a completely different language).

There was a mouse in my CPU at like 4:30 this morning.  No, it was not attached by a cord.  Little bugger woke me up.  Blah.  Death to all rodents.  I briefly considered turning the computer on and electrocuting it, but multiple unwarranted bursts of reason prevented this.
1.) I'd have small pangs of remorse that would gradually grow as I drank coffee and thus became human.
2.) It'd ruin my computer.
3.) If it didn't ruin my computer, I'd still be scraping fried mouse out of the myriad of gears that make the machine work.  Not exactly the way I'd planned to spend my spare week.
4.) Two words: karmic smackdown.

So instead I reflected on the benefits of cyanide.
Charming.

Okay.  Now I'm going to go write those papers.

Oh yeah, I turned in my two-week notice at Shoney's today.
And Mum says I can attend bartending school so long as Daddy doesn't disown me.  Score!
And my right hand is curiously swollen from two college applications that I randomly decided to fill out last night.  I always knew higher education would come to no good!

....Paper??

So it's decided.  Before I die, I'm going to Ghana and taking the canopy hike (the longest canopy trail in the world), visiting elephants, going to a cocoa farm, and escaping near-inevitable snacking by crocodiles.  Because everybody makes random resolutions to visit Africa for no apparent reason.  Oh yes, and we're stopping by Africa's diamond mines, too.  A weekend jaunt in Morocco, couple days in Egypt....  Oh yes.  It's going to be awesome.

I'm also going to start watching the Travel Channel more often (the infamous spawn site of this hairbrained adventure).  *Grins*  "Look!  Killer elephants at dawn!"  Exciting.

Okay, really random, but why, dear God above us, WHY do ballroom dancers wear such horrid, tacky, most of all downright trashy costumes??!  They live on this planet (or so I thought), they know that eight strips of fuschia jersey do not a dress make.  How do they keep from blinding small children?  Do they employ rubber cement to make certain every tawdry strip stays in just the right crucial place??  But -- but -- Whyyyyyyyy?  *Weeps, tears hair*  ....*Gnashes teeth*

Exhibit A (Or, more appropriately, XXX) -- Even Paris Hilton would blush.

It's like a loincloth with too much fabric someone tied to a swimsuit top.

It's times like these which convince me that yes, God really has forsaken us all.

Okay.  I'm done.  Apologies.  I'm off to drown my sorrows and horror in decently-cut attire.

You know those people who seem happy enough to see you when they see you, but never really make the effort to do that?  Like if you happen to be there with the group, that's well and good, but you'll never be quite as close as the other seven people in the room, and it's apparent.  Like you're asked along because it's nice, or you're good for a laugh, or it serves some purpose other than pure company.  And you wax between being really disgusted by such a phenomenon, and making plans to see these people again.  Kind of like bulimia, what with the bing(e)ing and purging and all.

I'm going to bed.  No idea where this spike of depression came from, but I'm sure it's nothing eight hours of sleep can't distract from.  Never is, after all.

She leads the most charmed of lives
She dazzles and astounds.
But stands, when audience has gone,
In figures hunched, eyes to the ground.

She has no major problems --
Or none to which she will admit.
Her smiling laughs will fog the mind.
That glass slipper's a narrow fit.

Okay, off to make good on that eight hour distraction.  But dernit if I can't leave a post 100% angsty.  It's like I'm OCD regarding this, or something.  Merde.  Okay, here we go.... Verse 1 of Amish Paradise.  Watch and be amazingly amused, foo'.

As I walk through the valley where I harvest my grain,
I take a look at my wife and realize she’s very plain,
But that’s just perfect for an Amish like me.
You know I shun fancy things like electricity.
At 4:30 in the morning I’m milkin’ cows,
Jebediah feeds the chickens and Jacob plows... Fool.
And I’ve been milkin’ and plowin’ so long that
Even Ezekiel thinks that my mind is gone.
I’m a man of the land, I’m into discipline.
Got a Bible in my hand and a beard on my chin,
But if I finish all of my chores and you finish thine,
Then tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 1699.

Teehee.  I love it. 

So I skipped school today.  It was fun.  Half because I view the whole practise as increasingly pointless (except for perhaps my European History class and definitely my English class), and half because my tonsils were swollen to Goodyear proportions.

Lovely image, eh?  They're deflated now.  But everyone knows that sickness can often be cured by some old-fashioned retail therapy.

It was worth it.  Staying home, anyway.  Mum and I bonded.  To some extent.  We cursed each other over boardgames, anyway (calling each other "fiendish hags" and whatnot).  So I guess that could be construed as "bonding."  Our relationship is weird.  But awesome.  After all, how else could "I want you to leave!" (in regards to moving out) be construed in a loving manner??  *Headshake, eye-roll*

The delicious pizza essence wafts from the kitchen below, mocking me in my hunger.

I take great satisfaction from the fact that top oil executives were systematically grilled and basted and grilled again before the Senate yesterday, trying to explain the fact that soaring gas prices are in no way related to their soaring profits.  *StabStab*  Suffice to say, they failed to provide satisfactory answers.  Let's get those numbers back to 86 cents (hell, I'll take $1), peoples.  Oh wait.  You need those five Rolls Royces to survive.  (Sorry.)

Move along, people.  Nothing to see here.  HTML is being obstreperous, and I need to beat it into submission before properly posting (ah-ha!  Alliteration!  And you thought you'd never see THAT again!!)