man, these past few days have been confusing, very interesting, and extremely fun. i haven't had this much genuine fun in a long time. why, you ask? [who am i kidding, no one's asking, but i'll tell you anyways]

saturday i got to go to orientation at nissan for my prospective summer job. it shouldn't even be called orientation, more like sit and watch a safety video before spending 7 hours attaching and detaching bolts, screws and nuts to pointless pieces of metal which would quite easily be classified as modern art if only they were about 20 times larger. we're talking extreme monotony here. like, shoot yourself in the head because it would probably give you more of a sensation than this crap. i could feel my soul slipping away and being held captive by my future blue-collar job.
luckily for me, i happened to make quick friends with a certain cortney brothers who looks a good deal like a certain aimee davis. i seriously thought she might be aimee's older sister until i found out she was nothing of the sort. we spent much of our time laughing at the extremely bad 80's-style eye safety video with gambling allusions and was literally called "you bet your eyes." the entire hour-long torture can be wrapped up in the phrase "wear goggles." then we spent the remaining 7 hours racing each other to see who can perform our pointless and mundane tasks the quickest.

sunday i didn't even get to go to church cause i had to pack for our bpa trip to state finals in nashville. i was competing in html and hadn't studied or prepared in the least [classic example of senioritis]. we left siegel and went to the music city sheraton, who was hosting the conference. the 4 guys had two rooms, the 4 girls were all in one, and our two teachers kept an entire suite for themselves. needless to say, the suite became our hang-out zone. after a while i go in for my hour-long test which i finish in 25 minutes. when i arrive back at the suite, i find none other than the infamous DDR mat layed out on the floor.
for a quick explanatory note, i had never, ever played DDR before, though i had long wanted to. so as time goes by, i finally decide to give it a try, and i got hooked. bad. i picked it up very easily, probably because of percussion, and before the trip was over i was running through all of the standard levels and making a's [for those who actually know what i'm talking about]. it was a whole lot of fun. i still have the songs stuck in my head. we also watched some movies and tv and the like.
and man, there were some weird kids here. one kid was caught puking his guts all over the hall and expelled for drinking. another black girl walked out in the middle of the hall smoking a cigarette [which is also against the rules]. oh, and the woman across the hall from us was insane. she's bringing a group of high school students to a business professionals conference and taping their doors shut at 11. seriously, if your kids are so bad that you have to tape them into their room, don't bring them! as if that wasn't bad enough, she's patrolling the halls, fully dressed at 2 in the morning, listening through her kids' doors. then she scowls at us as we're leaving our teachers' suite 2 hours past curfue because we were watching wedding crashers with them, so we decide to take all the tape off her doors when she walks around the corner.
on monday night we came back to siegel to watch our basketball team win 76-67 [what an interesting score], and yesterday we went to opry mills, which proved to be infinitely less interesting that i had hoped. i did buy a book, though [V. by Thomas Pyncheon], and then a grande marble mocha machiatto, and sat down to read said book while drinking said coffee-laden product.

then today was the awards ceremony, a.k.a. go into a grand ballroom and sleep on the floor, even though our beds were much more comfortable. i actually won second place in html, which didn't entirely surprise me. the best part of it is that i get to go to bpa nationals in orlando from may 10-14 [the last week for seniors...], and the others that came to state will be allowed to come nationals, too. i'm mostly happy about this because i got to know them better, though it'd be a lie to say i want them all to come. the worst part of it is that almost all of the money will have to be raised by us. so, if anyone wants to donate or can think of any corporate sponsers, let me know. or if youre at siegel, by our snow cones. we'll probably start selling them at the end of the week.

so i guess that's that.