The Wonderful World of Photobooths

I love photobooths. Is there a better way to capture the fun of a night at the mall? I think not! Here we have last Saturday with (from left to right) Jen K, Stephanie, and me. I'm not exactly sure what we're doing here. The cube was a little squished with three of us, but we've fit four before, so it could have been worse. Today was... interesting. We had an early release and our classes were only about 20 minutes each. Geography was the shortest and we talked about death penalties for the entire class! We always seem to wind up on some topic that has nothing to do with what we're learning about and ask random questions about it for half the period. Did you know that Texas has the highest execution rate? It's true. Remind me to never move to Texas. I'm trying to rack my brain for things to report, but there hasn't been much going on. I've figured out that the the other team has way better people than mine, so there aren't as many stories that will make you fall out of your chair laughing. Actually, there aren't any stories like that. How sad. This entry is wrapping up to be pretty boring, so I'll give a shout out to Jen K! She's got the blog bookmarked and dependably reads it every day! You rock Jenn!

The Mall Adventure

I miss D.C. That was the first thing I said when I got on the bus this morning. It's true, I feel homesick. That place became my home in less than 6 days! Brooke's there right now (envy, envy, envy) and I bet she's having a great time. Sadly, she doesn't have Kevin to share it with her! I finally got a picture of him up. Our poor, headless Kevin on the Clover Cafeteria table. ;) Today wasn't very exciting. It's Monday, what do you expect? But Saturday night was. I haven't had that much fun in weeks! Just Stephanie (stephaniecassandra.blogspot.com), Jen, and myself plus the ability to bottom-feed. Bottom-feeding is like what Spongebob does in that episode that ends with the gorilla and the horse running away. Yeah, we walked through the mall passing random strangers and doing that. We also did it in the elevator. The three of us took the elevator like 5 times for no reason. We got it to ourselves a few times and sang forgotten Brittney Spears songs at the top of our lungs. Forgotten to everyone but us, that is. We still know every lyric from when we were in kindergarten and would pop the CD in everyday after school, making up new lyrics that were so much better than the original ones and dancing around the family room. Things aren't like that anymore, but we sure got close in that elevator. We also had a dance party in Target. Stephanie brought her dinosaur-aged iPod (what would we do without that thing?), plugged it into one of the new iHomes, turned up the volume loud enough for the entire first floor to hear (maybe even the second if they were lucky), circled her finger around the dial and pushed play once landing on Womanizer. We danced around the narrow isle mouthing the words and doing strange hand movements that belonged in Napoleon Dynamite until this nerdy guy showed up. He worked at Target, and walked by quite a few times during our party to check on us. Eventually, he stopped, made a strange hand motion that we hadn't thought to do in our dance, and told us to "quiet down please". Steph mindlessly grabbed her dinosaur and we giggle-walked to Macy's. Oh, and then there were the wangsters and Mr. Nice Guy. There were two, wanna be gangsters in matching blue T-shirts that hung down to their knees at the mall. Stephanie and Jen spotted them first, claiming they were like "girls, girls, girls" when they passed. So after grabbing a giant Coke at the pretzel place, we walked by them, saying loudly "I DON'T JUDGE." They heard us and came back later to say "Remember, don't judge" to which we replied "WE DO NOW!" and ran away to find Mr. Nice Guy. He's this almost hot 16 year old or possibly tall 15 year old who walked by us and said hi. I stared at Steph and Jen to my left and screeched "do you know him?" Neither of them did, so it still remains a mystery if Mr. Nice Guy thought we were hot or thought he knew us. We never did find him after that. There was this whole plan to give him the rejection hot line number and everything! Oh well. I'll post a picture of our mall adventure tomorrow, if I have time to blog. It's an early release day, but I have ortho and hair appointments. We'll see. It's time for me to do some homework. Blahhhhhhhh. Let's escape to Washington D.C.

What happened to the past?

This is me at the Lincoln Memorial. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech there. President Lincoln sits inside. And Kevin the pollypocket man was carried on the steps. Yes, famous Kevin! Well, famous among team 6-2 alumni. I'll post a picture of poor, headless Kevin tomorrow. Anywho, this week was SPIRIT WEEK! Sports team shirts Monday, crazy hair day Tuesday, dress up day Thursday (Only about a fifth of the school did this. Probably even less. For the record, I was not one of them), and band shirts Friday. But it was Wednesday that was the most important of them all. Red and White day. That can only mean on thing: RED OCTOBER!!! The one day that we get extremely short classes, run around in the gym to decorate instead of to get a passing grade, and stay until 7:30 to watch the cross country, field hockey, and football teams go against towns usually a lot better than ours. Last year's Red October was amazing (you'll only know why if your close enough). But this year, it was below 40 degrees, the hot chocolate tasted like boiling water, and there was barely any drama. Boring? Hell yeah. At least I had Steph to laugh at the fat football players with. We won our football game, lost one of the field hockey games, and won cross country only because the other team forfeited. Lucky people didn't have to stay out freezing their feet off. That's the only part of me that was cold. I found out that my new sneakers won't work in the winter. :( But whatever. Oh, and I forgot about the only slightly dramatic part of that day! I broke up with my boyfriend. There really aren't many details about it like I know he'll be looking for. That's not huge news though. I go through guys like I go through mascara. The big news is that I'm single again! Which is a good thing, because it's been a while since the last time I've been without a boyfriend for more than a week. A VERY long time. 10 months to be exact. ;) There were no cute guys at DC which was extremely disappointing. They all had weird names, glasses, and were in desperate need of some Proactive. So the rest of this week didn't consist of much. Today we were forced to board extra small, 10 year old buses with 6 foot tall rakes, and drive to an old persons house to take care of their lawn for 2 hours. My homeroom went to Mr. Hanaford's house where we found a Market Basket bag covered by some leaves. Get it, Mr. Hanaford's house and a Market Basket bag? Well it only took us an hour to clean the yard, and we spent the rest of the time eating our brown paper bag lunches and standing under the big oak tree, diving for any leaf that fell. The guys made a huge deal of trying to catch the leaves. I don't see how hard it can be to watch where it's falling and grab it. But they grabbed the air most of the time even though there were five of them directly in the path of the leaf. Halloween is one week from today. I'm going to be Minnie Mouse! I always get excited for Halloween. The 150 piece bags of candy, the barely ever creative costumes, and, best of all, the people with strange accents that ask if you would like a "Sneeeeeeakers" while handing you a Snickers bar. Yes, Halloween will be fun this year.

Miss me?

I'm baaaaaaaaack. That's the first thing I said when I walked into homeroom Friday morning. Although, it didn't feel like I was. I'm pretty sure that I was still in my little dream about JrNYLC. Did I really go to Washington? Did I really make all those friends? Did it really happen? DC was amazing. No, amazing is an understatement. Best time of my life is more appropriate. I've never had more fun. Me, 4 of my favorite friends, two suitcases and a cute new TH bag was all I needed. I was planning on telling you about two Fridays ago, but who cares about a boring school day when there are so many Washington stories to write about? The picture above is (from left to right): Stephanie (stephaniecassandra.blogspot.com), Sarah, and me on the plane. As we were taking off, I thought one thing "There's no going back" It was true. I was starting something new and, I didn't know it then, but the experience ended up changing my life. Anyway, we were watching Mean Girls and School of Rock, taking an endless stream of photos, and laughing at Joey and Allissa in the next seat over on the Southwest Flight to BWI. Since you have to have 3 in a row, the two of them were squished in with this big, grumpy, harry guy who they spilt Coke on. Poor guy. He kept giving us dirty looks as we left the plane, but did we care? Of course not! Why? We were in Maryland. That was my first time there, and I was loving it. The five of us were greeted by some lady named Marilyn. She lead us to another lady who helped us get our bags. Then that lady led us to this guy who raced us through the deserted airport to the shortly departing bus. We got there in time, all boarding with huge grins on our faces. It was about a 45 minute drive to the 4-H Youth Conference Center where we would be staying for the next 5 days. When we got off the bus, we spotted the "Young Marines" who were also staying at the 4-H. About 20 of them were lined up on either side of the brick walkway, hands behind their backs, legs spread shoulder length apart, staring straight ahead. I hoped that they weren't supposed to be our welcome committee. After waiting in line for about 25 minutes to check in and get my room key, I was outside again getting lost on the campus. The map showed an underground passageway, a ramp, some stairs, and a couple doors. That was enough to get me completely confused. I had to ask two cleaning people who didn't even speak English if they knew where room number 5105 was. Eventually, I slid my key through the slot and was granted access to my dorm. I was the first on there so I got the best bunk (on bottom so I don't fall off ;) ). I left my room, heading to get my name badge. I feel so empty without it now! We had to wear them everywhere at the conference besides the shower and in bed. I took a tour of the campus with Joey and went back to a large room where we played games like getting in groups and making weird shapes with our bodies to form objects such blenders and microwaves. As Stephanie said in her speech on our last day there "because that's what leaders do, right?" The rest of that day was a blur of new people. I met girls from all over the country. When we had our LFGs that night (Leadership Focus Groups), I met Christine, who's as big a Twilight lover as me! It took us a while to get off the topic about how hott Edward Cullen is. I also met Lindsey, a Junior Olympic Diver, and Erin, and Irish step dancer. We formed our group of cute girls right away. I loved the rest of my LFG, too. Those kids in Problem Solving 1 are hilarious and know how to make anything fun. At 10:00, I met my roommates for the first time. I would be sharing a dorm with Jessica, from Colorado, Nia, from Texas, and Susan from Florida. We were all kind of shy at first, but by the end of the night we were being yelled at to quite down. I was lucky not to get put in a room with any strange ones that had to label all their clothes or told you that they had a farting problem before you even knew their name. Yeah, that's what happened to a few of my friends. I really miss JrNYLC. It's hard to believe that my time there is over. Once again, there is no going back.

This is it.

Hey guys! I'm leaving for the airport in half an hour! I was planning on finishing a really long entry about yesterday, but I don't think I'll have time to before we leave. But I promise that when I get back, I'll have a desciption of my whole week from yesterday to next Friday! Yeah, I won't be able to blog while I'm at the conference. :( Sorry! Tell everyone I said hi and fill my seat in math! Love you guys! See you in a week!

Rubber ducks are cool!

The pig and apple fest was today. It's one of the very few things our town has to offer that most people come to and enjoy. This year's was probably the best one so far. The rides were a lot better, even though they were still extremely crappy. But the pizza, fried dough, and root beer floats made my day. Along with my rubber duck. There was this free game where they put like 20 big rubber ducks in a plastic container filled with water and you had to pick the one you thought had something on the bottom. If you got that one, you won a big duck the size of the ones in the tub. Otherwise. you just get a little one. So a very long story about how I got my ducks short, I got one of the little ducks, then "insert freakish person's name here" threw it in a trash can, dug it out, and threw it at some kid on a bike (God knows where my poor little duck is now!). So I went back to the duck stand and did the thing again. Luckily, the elderly man running it didn't recognize me, so my excuse that it was for my "little sister (who doesn't exist) who had already gone home with my parents" wasn't needed! It was about an hour away from the closing of the festival, and when I didn't win again, the guy gave me a little duck and a big one! It was awesome. Sadly, my new little duck didn't work, which was wicked annoying! But whatever. After the Pig and Apple, I went shoe shopping and got a cute pair of brown flats for DC, a pair of brown, tan, and blue plaid sneakers, and adorable knit slipper/shoes! I came home to find Feasting on Waves was on the Food Network and started my 3 and a half hours of television watching (I'm so lazy) with that. In that time I was able to see a new episode of iCarly, Drake and Josh, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, the Simpsons, and some of The Notebook while flipping through Everyday With Rachel Ray to find good food to make this week. And now I'm here, lying in my queen size bed covered in an aqua comforter and lime green sheets, with an amazing HP laptop perched on my waist. The sad thing is that it's almost 11:30 and I'm not even tired! I'm such a night owl. Always the last one to fall asleep at the sleepover, but I've never pulled an allnighter. I have to find a friend that can do it with me! Maybe I'll try one tonight...nah. I have to go shopping for more DC clothes in the morning and I don't to be fall asleep on the thong table in Aero! That could be slightly embarrassing. But I might not be able to if I'm wearing socks. That's one thing that I figured out. I cannot sleep with socks on. I have no idea why. But I can't. I get all restless turn over a lot nd when I take my socks off, I'm fine! It's weird. I could probably stay up all night if I had socks on. I'll have to do that sometime. But for now, I'm tired and I'm going to sleep. Nighty night!

The dance! (finally)

So the dance finally came! YAY! Yes, I slow danced. With who? You should already know. Anyway, it was amazing. I was completely disappointed that we didn't do the Macarana, Cha Cha Slide, or Hamster Dance though! Those are like my highlights of the whole night. Haha, I'm such a nerd. :) Anyway, I haven't been on my laptop for days (sorry!!!). So here's run down of my week after Friday night:

Saturday: Julia and Jen K's parties! So much fun! Julia's was first. Val, Jen J, Kathryn, Rachel, Caroline, and of course, Julia were all there. We called Kiss, planning on requesting Hot n Cold, but at the last minuet, Julia decided that she wanted them to play Happy Birthday. She told the lady that, but whoever was on the other line just mumbled something and hung up. What a nice way to get the party started. So I called back (using Rachel's phone since my freaking AT&T "with more bars in more places" had none in her basement) and asked for Hot n Cold. Five minuets later, I was doing Stephanie's dance to it with Rachel. After a non-stop-hysterical time with Julia and her awesome obese cat, Lilly, I ran to my mother's car with Caroline and we raced across the bridge to Jen's house. We were the 3/4th ones there, surprisingly, since we were about 10 minutes late (Julia's ended at 4 and Jen's started at 4). I had my second slice of pizza that day (4th that week!) and 3rd piece of cake. Well, more like third huge mound of frosting since that's all I like off of it! :) After eating, we piled into Jen's mom's car and headed to the mall. Jen's plan was to have us do a scavenger hunt for a bunch of random items like an undressed mannequin and eating a food sample. It was wicked fun. For the undressed mannequin one, we were having a hard time, so we sprinted to Macy's, tore the clothes of a statue dressed in underwear, and took the picture. But some old lady was starring at us, and when we were leaving, we noticed her going to customer service. Opps! We ran back into the rest of the mall to find more stuff before she could get us. Once we finished the hunt, it was back to Jen's for some present opening and Freeze. At 8:00, the doorbell rang again, this time with my mom, and Caroline and I raced through the rain to the car with our hoods up. Caroline was going to stay with Caroline W for the night while her parents were away, and I was heading back to Julia's for a sleepover. This time, just Kathryn, Jen, Julia, and I were in attendance. When I got there, about and hour and a half late, they were doing High School Musical on the PS3. I tried to do it, and got a C because you have to sing in a really high, squeaky voice to get an A. The games made for 5 year olds!! It's extremely annoying. After, we did manicures. I cannot paint my own nails. No matter what. It's just another thing I'm incapable of. Haha. I had Kathryn do it instead. We stayed up til 4 searching for freaks from our school on myspace. We found one that made us crack up for the rest of the night.

Sunday: Came home from Julia's. Spent the rest of the day getting ready for DC!! By the way, 7 MORE DAYS! I've been waiting months for this thing! I thought I was going to die from being incredibly lucky when I found out I was going. At the time, I had just gotten the highest score you could get on the biggest Social Studies test of the year, had an amazing bf (who I know hate with every bit of hatred a person can stand), gotten the biggest role in the school play out of my entire grade, and school was out in less than 3 weeks! Could life get any better? Apparently so. I jumped off the bus in a happy moode. After getting myself a snack of delicious kettle corn (it may just be the most delicious thing in the world), I saw a smallish, off white envelope on the counter. It looked all official with a gold emblem as a return address. I tore it open to find that my science teacher had nominated me to go to the Jr National Young Leaders conference in Washington, DC!! That night on AIM, I alerted all my friends, including Stephanie, who then found out that she had gotten nominated too! I wish I could go back to that day....

Monday: Back to school. :( Not much going on today. Oh wait, there was. I walked into a door frame and stubbed half my foot so bad that I could barely walk without limping. I told you, I'm extremely clumsy!

Tuesday: Jen J was out! :( We had gym. I hate gym, with the female teacher that is always trying to get a good look at the girls. It's revolting. I had a note to get out of gym because of my foot in my pocket the whole day, but decided not to use it since I didn't feel like getting a 0. We had to do pull-ups and crunches. I'm pretty good at crunches, 56 is my record. But pull-ups are just not my thing. Last time I got none, since I couldn't pull myself up even 2 inches. This time I got 1/3! Yay! Now I know that if I'm dangling off a cliff, I can pull myself a third of the way up before plummeting to my death below!

Wednesday: Jen was back :), but Julia was out with a fractured nose! :( My foot is so bruised it looks like I colored on it with a purple Sharpie.

Thursday: Julia's still out! :( Nothing fun in school. Dance was okay. My my foot prevented me from doing any good leaps in Jazz. Although I did discover a new song that I really like. It's "The Show" by Lenka. "I'm just a little bit caught in the middle..." Ahaha.

Friday: Finally, an enjoyable Friday! We watched another creepy natural disaster movie in Geography, this time on Tsunamis. There was this guy they interviewed that didn't even know how to spell it. Pretty sad. After that, there a test in math. Not too bad, but I probably failed. We played "vocab bingo" in ELA. Jen won 3 games and I won 2. We both got tons of "Chinese, tainted candy", as Mr. P likes to call it. But I like Chinese tainted candy! It's so fake that it's delicious! Theater was fun. We finished our skit and presented it. It was all about me, Julia (who came back today!), Jen J, and Val having a sleepover when a guy selling makeup shows up. We get into a big fight with him because he's a guy and guys aren't supposed to sell makeup. So Jen gets really mad, and knocks him out. But she feels really bad about it, so we give him a makeover while he's unconscious to make him feel better. The best part of the whole thing was Val saying "Why are my pants vibrating? Did I leave Cheetos in them again? Oh, it's my phone." They way she said it made everyone crack up. In science we had another test, and then went home to get ready for the dance!! I already told you about that. But I'll say it again: AMAZING TIME!! :D

So that's all you missed. I'll try to post some pics from Jen's party later. Oh, by the way, in the above picture we have from left to right: Caroline P, Jen K, Heather, and me all crammed into a tiny photo booth at the mall! I love photo booths. I have to get a picture from one every time I go to the mall with friends. So far I have 4 covering my mirror, and tons more in my closet. The Pig and Apple fest in about an hour. We'll be runnning around tryng to find people we know. Who knows what will happen!