1. Failing at shouting down my English teacher, but getting points for trying.
2. Seeing pictures of fluzzy white mice in the science book.
3. Finding out that I now have "regulars" for Tarot reading, and piquing someone's interest.
4. The awesome sub in Math.
5. Getting a 3.0 for this quarter. Whoo!
6. The field hockey game. The bees were bad, but the soccer team sans Alexey proved themselves to be a bunch of magnificent twatwaffles. Kind of like a tamer version of Urk Kuldar, really. I wish I could consider one of those boys my brother, but...meh.
7. Getting a ride home from Alexey. Had you told me back in freshman year that this would have happened, I would have laughed in your face. Progress towards some form of a friendship is clicking along nicely.

Highlights:
-Warm day was warm. I didn't even need my cloak.
-Getting to wear my gold dress.
-Seeing Pano again. Whee!
-My new pearl-on-a-string.
-Playing with fire.
-Conversations with Rich, among others.
-Coming  home and smelling like smoke.
-My favorite wall ever.

Lowlights:
-Smoke-induced headache.
-Yellowjackets swarming everywhere. Not just in our camp, but throughout the park. Thomas got stung.
-It really shouldn't bother me that Joe will flirt with anyone but me, but...
-Finding out that this was the 43rd's last reenactment for the year.

Next stop: Trenton!
(Possibly Ironworks, but that's doubtful.)

I'm feeling curiously like a seventeen-year-old girl right now. That seems to be happening a lot.

I've just spent the past half-hour drooling over vintage dresses. Matthew would be proud of my taste, methinks. They're not all attractive, but some of them are drop-dead gorgeous.

Some of my favorites:

Got Something to Say?
Steel My Kisses
Salutations--this one would be great for MUN
Cezanne
Creme de la Creme
Carriage Tour
Highlands

Now, to find a way to get monies...

Well, it appears that I did not completely fail this year's Senatorial interview. In fact, quite the opposite. I'm currently resisting the temptation to jump up and down while shrieking incoherently.

I was not prepared for that interview. I didn't know what the hell I was talking about. I was deathly afraid.

But it appears that a little bit of restraint and a lot of arrogance go a long way.

I've been selected as the ranking member of the committee I explicitly told my interviewer I know nothing about.

Life is kind of amazing right now.

-Moresca is in eleven days.

-I went to see Colin Powell speak tonight. He was amazing, and probably the only truly nonpartisan speaker I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

-It's probably not a good thing that I've been going through a series of mini existential crises all this year, but meh, whatever.

-My talks with a Certain Viking have become more frequent and more enjoyable. Progress, it is made!

-My sister and I have started playing Animal Crossing again. Currently, she's in the ER for back pain--and I hate to say "lucky me", but if I didn't, I'd be lying--and I'm off to start playing in a couple of minutes.

-One of my pet freshmen gave me a quartz crystal. It is shiny.

-I'm actually not angsty at something or other tonight. Even the Russian's continued silence and refusal to acknowledge me is not bothering me at all. This is a strange feeling. I think I like it, though.

Don't ask me why; this just kind of popped into my head this morning.

1. Grow your hair long. If it is not brown, dye it to that color. If it is not naturally frizzy/wavy, crimp it on a daily basis.
2. Develop obsessions with shiny things, fire, cookies and things that jingle.
3. Learn how to make certain foods, such as pierogies and spicy chicken and stars, and enjoy them. You will eat them whenever you get the chance.
4. Develop a vindictive streak. This is especially important in step five.
5. Work on your coping mechanisms. When faced with emotional trauma, you will take it one of three ways; either constantly crack jokes about it (often jokes that are in bad taste), want to know as much about it as you possibly can, or completely shut down except for crying jags and the vindictive streak mentioned in step four.
6. Have intense emotions, but make sure the louder emotions don't last for too long. You will never have a grudge against someone if you're yelling at them.
7. The words "elf-fucker" and "twatwaffle" are inherently funny and should be used whenever possible. Other nonsensical insults such as "assgoblin", "chickentits", "asshat" and "bullfuck" may be used where appropriate.
8. Brush up your Shakespeare. Also, brush up on your history, drama, Latin, Spanish and English in general. This last one is important; you will need to be the grammar nazi to end all grammar nazis.
9. Develop short, intense obsessions with certain things, then get bored of them and move on. This will not only entertain you for short periods of time, but will increase your intelligence as you will pick up a lot of trivial knowledge along the way.
10. If there is a pretty boy, you must chase him. No questions asked.

Matt, Mike and I managed to get the test of our new podcast, Aluminum Haberdashery, done tonight. We ended up talking about the "Princess Diana is a Vampire" theory; the recording clocked in at just under nine minutes for maybe two hundred words of text. That was exciting.

Granted, the echo on the recorder needs to be fixed. It's difficult to understand Matt when he sounds like he's standing in a cave.

Can't wait for next week!

All those who miss Henry and who think we need to kidnap him back to Delaware, please say Aye.

Nothing really special. It's been an okay day.

Thank God for Invisible Children, though. That fucking Leadership class was completely omitted today in favor of the assembly.

In terms of assemblies, it wasn't terrible. Though, when you take into account that this is Mount, that's really not saying much. Whatever. It served its purpose, and my tear ducts now hurt from my attempts at faking tears--when the eye of the administration is upon you in such a situation, the proper course of action is to make it look as though you're overcome with emotion.

Had Peter drive me home instead of taking the bus. I've decided I quite enjoy car rides with my favorite Democrat.

Other than that, it's been a thoroughly unremarkable day. I'm hoping something interesting will happen.

I'm feeling rather colorless right now. But not the bad kind of colorless, like that watery, miserably gray. This is a rather crystalline sort of colorless, like a block of pure quartz with a slight cloudiness and little rainbows trapped in the middle.

It could have something to do with it being three in the morning.

It might have to do with the weirdass turn my friendship with Nim has taken.

Maybe it's related to the fact that the Russian is suddenly paying more attention to me than my own teacher/older brother.

Whatever it is, it's not entirely unpleasant.

Oh, for Christ's sake. As if he needed something else to gloat about.

For those of you who haven't heard yet, Barack Obama has won this year's Nobel Peace Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

...bwuh?

author_by_night compared the award to giving a runner first place before he finished the marathon. It's not a bad analogy, but I like Kedric's comparison better; it's more like giving a schoolboy a gold star for effort or nominating the quarterback for Homecoming King.

This sort of thing, unfortunately, isn't uncommon with the Nobel Peace prize. According to WikiPedia--so feel free to take this with a grain of salt--past winners have included Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat, the United Nations (twice!), Mikhail Gorbachev, Elie Wiesel, Amnesty International, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (again, twice!), and Frederic Passy (who headed the first Nobel Peace Prize council).

Notable exceptions are Mahatma Gandhi, Pope John Paul II, Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, and Irena Sendler.

See anything wrong with this picture?

So far, Obama has managed to nominate a Supreme Court Justice, write up a stimulus package, buy up GM and Chrysler, and announce a "new era" of diplomacy. That's great! Not anything extraordinary, certainly--you'll notice most of it was talk--but good for a president.

Oh, wait...

"Extraordinary efforts."

Hm.

Something is off-balance here.

/endrepublicanrant

More to come, certainly.

I hate Dagordrama.

I hate the fact that I can't talk to half of the people in NOD without them accusing me of something or other.

I hate the fact that whatever I apparently did was usually done carelessly, but yet it's seen as malicious.

I hate the fact that it only hit in full force at the start of my Senior year, and that it couldn't have waited or come earlier.

I hate overreacting to everything because of stress.

I hate fluctuating between sensitive and impervious to insult.

I hate confusion, anger, and sudden emotional explosions that do nothing but make me bitter.

I hate Dagordrama.

American University was awesome. I really do think it's my first choice of school, but at the same time, I think it's a bad idea to want to go to a school because they trick-or-treat at the embassies (obviously, that's not the only reason, but still).

Knight of Music was also awesome. Someone actually made a point of speaking to me during Long Reach's show--a far better record than the fiasco with the candy bars two years ago--so I think I'm making some progress away from the status of "creepy Polish stalker girl". We shall see.
Apart from that, the shows were really excellent, the moon was full, and people were in high spirits. It was a good comp, all in all.

But the best part of the night?

Coming home and nearly stepping on a black, leather-bound, gold-embossed copy of the Necronomicon, left by a certain sociopath as a "cheer up" gift.

I love my life.

Peter,

How come you get to creep on the Mount LJs without fear of counter-creeping?

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would love to snicker over read about your life as TSA President.

Get a blog, please.

Sincerely,
Me

-I love my pet sophomore. She is adorably clever.

-I love my pet freshman. She is adorable in general.

-I got my wish with Hamish's message on the KR forums. A little more awkward than I would have liked, but it happens.

-There are 44 days 'til Moresca.

-I am not fond of my group for the TOK project.

-Apparently, I can now get away with wearing garb shirts to school. I rock.

-My bird is screaming, and I wish he would stop.

-As of yet, I have no prospects for Homecoming dates.

-Phaedra needs to get World Affairs up and running.

-I have a homework headache.

-Life is slightly less grey.

Wasps.

Oh.

My.

God.

I fucking hate wasps.

It's not fair that the damn things seem to be following me now. The one in the Spanish room didn't land on anyone, thank God, but that didn't stop me from having to run to the bathroom to avert a panic attack. Being stung by bees and stepping on yellowjackets is bad enough. I don't want to be around something that can sting multiple times, each time more painful than the last.

Shanice finally killed it. But then we had another droning menace.

(Peter, if you're reading this, we can hash it out via AIM.)

Political presentations in Spanish = good.
Political presentations in Spanish dealing with American politics = probably a bad idea.
The second option, but with the three class Republicans in the room = very bad idea.

Pete, we love you, but could you not talk down to use every time you present a point or argue with one or all of us? It would be very much appreciated, and I wouldn't have to make strangle-hands at Adrian and Amelia every time you open your mouth.

Well, technically I don't have to, but the DC on the Will Save to avoid said action is obnoxiously high.

And now for the miscellaneous grievances.

"The Night" keeps playing my head at inopportune moments. I wish it would go away. I'm the bitch, I'm not allowed to be upset. Or something.

I wish Hamish got online more; it's not fair that I have to wait until November to meet him.

45 days to Moresca.

Feeling somewhat lost and helpless right now.

I know it's my fault the relationship got broken off in the first place. Me and my lack of control, mixed with his jealousy, well...it wasn't really the greatest match.

I'm still not particularly happy about it. I'm free for the moment, yes, but at the price of one of my few points of stability. And it seems to be an unwritten rule of society that the bitch in the relationship deserves no comfort; that her lot will forever be suffering.

Sebastian would shit bricks if he read this, I know. I can see his little "I told you so" dance right now.

I'm off to try and drown my sorrows in my courseload.

This has just been the greatest day.

/sarcasm