Things I've Learned

I've been reading people's blogs lately, which makes me want to blog. I figured just an update on my life would be boring, so I'm doing it in a more fun style I like to call "Things I've Learned About Myself".

1. I'm fickle.
Especially when it comes to guys. I have gone through four different stages of awkwardness with one guy in a period of four months. (Enjoyable acquaintance,very large crush, not-so-sure-anymore crush, and "I definitely don't like you") That's one stage per month. This is pathetic. Sometimes I hate being a girl.

2. My writing style changes depending on what I've been exposed to recently.
For instance, my writing style now is different than it normally is. This is because I was just reading my sister's blog and writes it somewhat like this. Also, a few days ago I was watching Vihart videos (look it up on YouTube, she's amazing) and she talks really, really fast. I therefore found myself talkinglikethisallfreakingdaylong. Have fun translating that.

3. I need my friends.
I could not live without my friends. I knew this before, but it's become very apparent to me this year after I started going to a different homeschool co-op. It's about 45 minutes away from where I live and I hardly ever see my non-school friends. When I do see them, it's like a little love fest. Seriously, I think if some people saw my texts or heard our conversations, they'd legitimately think I was lesbian. For the record, I am very very straight. See #1.

4.I have a lot of pet peeves.
For example; a)mouth noises b)people who are barely older than me talking to me like I'm 5 years old c)Know-it-alls d)people who act like they're so cool, when they clearly aren't. I'm going to shut up now.

See ya.

Red.

I have a new obsession:
Red hair.
Well, okay, it's not really new. I've had it for a while. But I LOVE red hair. I wonder if my mom would let me dye my hair red...

They say a picture's worth a thousand words, right? Well I just added six pictures. Do the math. No explanation needed.

My Life at the Present

School
Dance
D-Group
Time with God
Sleep
Try to have a life.

Next week?

Start all over.

Fan Art

So, recently I have been reading popular books and I've discovered a nice array of fan art online. I have also learned that while I love fan art, I can't stand fan fiction. They always mess up the characters.
Anywho, I am currently reading City of Bones from the Mortal Instruments series (about four years behind the times, I know, but I just read Clockwork Angel and got hooked. Plus my brother's girlfriend has been telling me I need to read them. she was right)and I have noticed that there is a LOT of fan art out there. So, just for the heck of it, I have made a list of my top five favorite Mortal Instruments fan art. Have fun!

#5

I have to say, although I love Clary in this one, I don't like how they did Jace. Nevertheless, great layout, amazing art.

#4

I love the stylized way this is drawn with both Clary and Jace super skinny. I like the unrealistic kind sometimes, because it makes me feel better about not agreeing with the way they draw the characters. I didn't have that problem with this one though.

#3

Seriously, I like worship whoever did this. The artwork is absolutely AMAZING. I really just can't get over how good it is. I do think they drew Clary a little bit more mature than I imagine her, but then again I am only on the first book. Not how I picture Jace either, but somehow I still love it.

#2

Oh gosh. I could go on and on about this one. Everything about it is perfectly accurate with the book. The runes, and the white scars where runes were, the black clothes, the city in the background. I just love it. Love it love it love it. Okay, I'll shut up now or we'll have no room for number one.

#1

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this picture. I can't even put it into words. It's so simple yet the details are amazing. I love that it's drawn on regular old lined paper. The words behind it look awesome too. I love that the artist took the time to cover Jace's arms in runes. You can even see a little one peaking out from under his shirt collar. I also like that they included the stele. Not only is the artistry wonderful, I just think it's kind of adorable.

Runner up

I'm not a fan of how either of them look (not really how I pictured them at all) but you have to admit, the artwork is darn good.

Drama

As opposed to any normal teenager, I am not about to launch into a melodramatic sap story about how my life sucks. No, I mean like the acting kind of drama.
This year I am in a play called Arthur's Sword, Merlin's Fire. It's basically like Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone, and what happens after. I guess it's the sequel or something... I don't know. Anyway, I am playing Ludmilla and Lady of the Lake. Ludmilla is Arthur's foster mother, and Lady of the Lake is.. "A Celtic Water Deity." Or at least that's what the script says.
I've been noticing recently that things can get really awkward when you start talking about your "husband" and "kids" around people. Like, one day we were in the car on the way home from youth group, and I was telling my friend about how in class we met our "family" (a strange experience to say the least) and I said something about foster son, and a guy sitting in front of me turns around and goes "What?!" to which I responded, "Oh, didn't I tell you?" Don't worry, I did explain the situation to him. It was funny though. The thing i, this has happened at least three times now. It's really entertaining.
I did learn in class on Monday that I am the only person NOT in the big epic battle scene at the end. You have no idea how disappointed I was. I was all looking forward to killing some people. Although, the reason I can't is because I will need to be in my Lady of the Lake costume. I feel this is a good excuse. As long as I get an epic costume, I'm okay.
Kind of as a side not to this, I'm not doing a musical this year, so to make up for the lack of bursting into song, I made a broadway showtune playlist on Pandora. I'm really happy about this. :)

Wishing I was a cool Japanese person.

So, I've been reading this manga series called W Juliet, (cover of first installment displayed here)

And I've been noticing a lot of suffixes that seem to be honorifics or something like that, so I took the liberty of Googling "Japanese Honorifics" and via Wikipedia, learned the meaning of four titles that had previously been mysteries to me.

San-Kind of like "Mr." "Miss" "Ms." etc. Pretty much everybody uses it for everybody else, both formally and informally. Some people even use it for their own spouses.

Chan- A diminutive suffix. Used for babies, children, mousy teenage girls, or basically anything someone thinks is cute. Like, Puppy-chan. No. Probably not. Anyone else play SSX Tricky back in the old Game Cube days? If so, I bet you remember Kaori. I would call her Kaori-chan.

Kun- (Never actually seen this one in my graphic novels (NERD ALERT) but I found it useful to know)This suffix is used by older people referring to younger people. Like something your friend's mom would call you.

Sempai- This one, although fun to say, has a pretty simple definition. Basically it is used to address a senior colleague. (Yeah, I had to look up how to spell colleague.)

Sensei-Literally means "Former-born". Used for authority figures like policemen, governors. Paris Hilton

So anyway. That has been my experience of the Japanese language. That's not true. I also learned that Nii-chan means big brother, and Nee-San means big sister. Maybe I should start saying them...

Fear

Alright, I hate to lay this on you guys, but my youth leader asked us to write about our fear and I thought this would be a good outlet. Especially since I have no followers. Nice and safe right? Ha! Right. Except for the fact that my own personal fear will be displayed on the internet for all eternity.(Muahahahahaha.) But how bad can it be, right?
Alright. Here we go.
For the past... while I've felt like I'm moderately good at a wide variety of things, but not really good at one specific thing that I'm like, "I want to do this for the rest of my life and I think I could do it." Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of things I'd love to do. I would love to dance or sing or act or write for a living. But lets face it, none of these things are very practical. And dance has a HORRIBLE shelf life, especially ballet. Also, I'm terrified that I'm not good enough to do any of these things professionally and that I'll be shot down the second I try and end up working at a grocery store the rest of my life. Personally, I don't want this.
Really, I have plenty of people telling me how talented I am, and there's always those people who tell you that you can do anything you set your mind to. But, a) nobody wants to insult anybody these days, so how do I know that people are always telling the truth about my talent? and b)sometimes, no matter how much you want something, you don't get it. Have you seen some people on American Idol? Some of those people think they're God's gift to the world. Others of us know that they are sadly mistaken.
In addition to all of this, I have always wanted to be a person that stands out and makes a statement and can get a point across. And yet, every day-even when I'm just trying to find something to wear for the day- I am faced with the cold hard reality that I am not one of those people. Mostly because I'm so deathly afraid that people won't like me, which, frankly, is something I SERIOUSLY need to get over. But really, I don't do much without asking myself what people will think of me.
Alright, now I'm just getting off topic. But really, that's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid that if I make a statement and be different and support something I believe in that people will hate me. And I'm afraid that I'm just not good enough at anything to go into it professionally.
Whew. Okay. So, this is me making a statement now.

Puppy Pilgrimage

This past weekend I, my parents, and my best friend Ashlee made the four hour voyage to Farmersburg, Indiana to pick out a cocker spaniel puppy that we will soon be adopting. Why, you may be wondering, were we willing to drive that far just to visit puppies for an hour and forty-five minutes? I'm kind of wondering that too. But we did. The trip there wasn't actually that bad. Especially since Ashlee and I had a deck of cards, a computer, and Inception- which we never did end up watching. A bummer, seeing as I still haven't seen it. Anywho, as is expected on any car trip with my mother, we stopped to use the restroom about once every hour, but I'm used to that by now.
We reached the breeders' neighborhood in pretty good time and commenced looking for their house. It was a neighborhood pretty much in the middle of nowhere. It probably used to be nice, but had ceased being so a good twenty years back.It also has the unfortunate burden of having a Fifth Street and a Fifth Avenue within about eight small blocks of each other. The breeders' house is off of Fifth Avenue. So, we're driving down Fifth Street, going "Where the heck is this place?" We then called the breeder- Susan- and got directions to their house, in the slightly nicer part of town.
Finally, we got there and were greeted at the door by a very quiet man in his late fifties or early sixties. He lead us into the living room where we met his wife, Susan. The house smelled overwhelmingly of perfume, but it was enough to deal with. She then lead us into the garage which they've converted into their puppy palace. I almost gagged as I walked into the room, the smell of dog was so strong. Even the little incense burner on the washing machine didn't help unless you were standing directly next to it. I'm serious, the smell was so bad that even when you got used to it, if you took a deep breath, you got the full effect again.
Susan then opened the lids on the cages the puppies were in and we forgot all about the smell. They were so cute and TINY! Our last three dogs have been golden retrievers which means when we get them they're about the size of a fat cat, and weigh about seventeen pounds. These guys were just a little bit bigger than my hand.
Although before we even saw the puppies we were bombarded by the mother dogs, begging for attention.
We all held some puppies for a while. One of them, a white and tan spotted dog, fell asleep on Ashlee almost instantly and stayed there for the rest of the visit. I had less luck, but I finally found a dog that seemed to enjoy my company. She was a cutie; brown and tan spotted. They called her Marilyn because of a little spot on her muzzle that looked a bit like a beauty mark.
But, it didn't matter what dog I liked because the instant Mom picked up a little black and white one, she was in love. He was her dog. We stayed and talked and played with the puppies for about an hour and forty-five minutes before thanking the breeders one last time and then climbing reluctantly back into the car.
The drive back was... well interesting. The exit to get back on the highway was blocked, and we ended up having to drive forty-five minutes out of our way. We stopped at Subway for lunch, where the poor employee must have been new, because the looked thoroughly confused. I should have said my order slower, but oh well. He's got to learn one way or another. Five hours later, we dropped Ashlee off at home, and I immediately lay down and conked out in the back seat. We got home, had Chipotle for dinner, and then I made cupcakes for a party the next day. Then, I went to bed. It felt SO GOOD.

But you want to know what the best part is?
We're doing it all again in three weeks when we go back to bring the puppy-Toby- home. Maybe at least this time I'll have a cute puppy to sit on my lap.

Show Night

You're jittery, you're glittery, your hair's been sprayed so hard you could crack it with a hammer. You put on your costume, apply just one more layer of mascara, and then...

You wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Song after song after song until you think you'll go crazy. Finally, they call you on deck. You wait in the wings, fidgeting with the sequin on your skirt because you just CAN'T stand still. You crack your toes,  relevé and then come down, half paying attention to the dance going on onstage, half trying to remember what the heck you're supposed to do when you get out there. The lights go down, the audience cheers, and you run onstage.

Then

SNAP!

It's over.

You dash offstage, running frantically past people and trying not to run anyone over.

             "Make a hole!" you yell, stripping off your costume even though you're not even close to the dressing room yet.

You make it to the dressing room, half naked, attempting to find your next costume. "One song change, one song change" repeats over and over in your head. You drop something, put your costume on backwards, lose your shoe. You let out a very creative profanity. You shove a tiara on your head and hop on one foot as you put a shoe on the other. You run on deck just in time and, with no time to breathe, perform another two minute forty-eight second song.

            And somehow-though you're so tired you feel like you're going to puke and you could swear the floor's moving- it's worth it.

            It's worth it because your family is in the audience cheering for you. It's worth it as your best friend hands you your water bottle and gives you a hug even though you're dripping with sweat. It's worth it, because for two minutes and forty-eight seconds,

You lived

Starkid

Oh boy guys. Cue the girls screaming for Darren Criss. Now if you haven't heard of Starkid before well... I actually can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, it's obviously a horrible thing that you have never experienced the epicness (and if you haven't, go look up A Very Potter Musical on Youtube right now), but you are also spared from an excess of fangirls and, quite possibly, fanboys. (mostly fangirls.) I am currently on act 1 part 3 of their newest release, Starship. While grotesque at times, I have to say so far it is rather hilarious. Not that I expected anything less, I'm just saying the hype is ridiculous. It's almost as bad as the Royal Wedding. Seriously, just seven hours after the soundtrack came out on iTunes, the Starship soundtrack came in number 16 on the list of most popular albums. And, since I always point these things out and I just assume you do to, you are probably wondering how I know all this if I am not a "fangirl". It's called research people. Get over it. I'll have to report back once I've finished it to conclusively decide if this show is up to the standards of AVPM/AVPS, but things are looking good for them. Okay, off to study for my Spanish exam.

Beam me up, Scotty.

My Cast for the Hunger Games.

Well, If you are at all familiar with the series The Hunger Games, you have probably noticed that it is going to be made into a movie. I have seen oodles of people post a list of actors they would like as the cast but I have yet to see one I completely agree with. Therefore, I decided to write one of my own for all of you. (all of you, at this point, being my imaginary friends seeing as I have zero followers. Sad face.)This may be completely boring to the rest of you, but just indulge me for a while, kay?

After debating for a very very long time, I have come to the decision that Ellen Page would make a rather nice Katniss. So far, I haven't seen anyone else suggest her, but I personally think she would do a really good job.

Peeta, I have deliberated, should most definitely be William Moseley. Sure he's British, but he could probably pull an American accent off. He's pretty much exactly how I picture Peeta to look. And seriously? He's GORGEOUS!

Gale completely stumped me. For a while I though maybe Logan Lerman, but he's a little too pretty boy for my taste. I also thought maybe Skandar Keynes, but if William Moseley as Peeta, it would just be Narnia all over again. I actually don't even know who this guy is. He's an actor, but I don't know his name. Anyway, he's closer than anything I can come up with.

Prim I didn't have much trouble with. It seemed obvious to me that it should be Elle Fanning. Of course, she is supposed to be a little younger, but that's what makeup artists are for right?

Rue was kind of difficult. I really don't know of many child actresses. My only thought is Yara Shahidi from Imagine That. She's pretty cute, and I bet she could do it well.

Haymich, I honestly didn't have a clue about coming into this. I always pictured him as kind of old and hunched over. Someone else put Robert Downey Jr. for Haymich. At first, I thought "ha, yeah. no." but the more I thought about it, it wasn't that bad.

Effie was a no brainer! Immediately I knew that it absolutely HAD to be Kristin Chenoweth

Cina was so easy it wasn't even funny. Um, helloooo Hugh Dancy!

I think that's it! Well... Awesome. Hope you like it!

Oh no! I've become an anime nerd!

Soooo I have recently discovered the movie Howl's Moving Castle by Hayao Miyazaki.And yes, I am hooked. I watched it about five times on Google Video before I broke down and bought it. And now, I must admit, I have to start watching his other movies. I never thought that I would enjoy anime. I don't know, it just didn't seem like my thing, but I love Miyazaki's movies. Granted I've only seen two, but they were both so good! I watched Ponyo with my friend who happens to also be a big Miyazaki fan and we sat through the whole movie thinking (And occasionally saying) "They're FIVE!". (for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's a love story between two five year olds). Then again, that's the Japanese for you. Alright, I'm done now.
Talk to you in about a month, or whenever I find something remotely interesting to say.
Peace!
Lisa

Stupid Questions

Some people say there is no such thing as a stupid question. I beg to differ. It's like, after the big football game the reporters go up to the quarter back and say "How do you feel right now?" What are they going to say? "Horrible. I feel like I just killed a kitten." Of course not! Also, when people go to funerals or... I don't know a doctor's appointment or something and people ask "How was it?" and you're like, "Oh yeah. Highlight of my week."
Anyway. Just a thought. But I mean really?
"You just won the Super Bowl! What are you going to do?"
"Eh. I'm going to go home and sleep. But I can't say that because I'm getting paid to say that I'm going to Disney World. *cough* not."