slow night, so long

today's title is from kings of leon. it's one of the good songs from before they sold out and became all pearl jammy. is it sad that i preferred them as musicians when they were drunk, drugged up, and whoring themselves out around england? because i totally do - their music was just so much better then.

it has been a slow night (and day) though. i've mostly been doing homework and last-minute scholarship applications, with occasional breaks for snacking or running or heading down to the grocery store to buy more ice pops. i know, i know - my life. it's terribly exciting, right?

so i guess this post is going to be more of a link/picture/music post than anything else (since i'm doubting any of you wants to hear the story of the little old lady in line behind me at harris teeter and her conviction that the 'teevee', pronounced with extreme emphasis on the 'e' sound, lectured the cashier about the importance of triple-ply toilet paper).

to begin with, while googling around for reviews of the last and latest johnny cash album, i came across this and it made me smile. he was pretty awesome, right? which, naturally, leads into the beginning of my homework playlist: god's gonna cut you down.

i studied for calc a little, drafted my poisonwood essay, and then took a break to watch the unseen skins vignettes online and catch up on reading the music director's blog, now that i've watched all the way through the fourth season. among other things, i realized that eyes as candles by passion pit and dog days are over by florence and the machine were both used in one of my favorite episodes. in other words, they became songs two and three on today's playlist.

after skins, i finished studying for calc and started doing more scholarship applications. that got tedious fast, though, so eventually i wandered back to tumblr and found a pretty amazing this, which is stark sands' cover of outkast's hey ya. i thought it was so amazing that i wasted a good half hour of my day finding a download link for it - which, let me tell you, was not easy since it's not even available on itunes.

insert a break for ice pop shopping, showering, and dancing around the house to she's lost control by joy division and skream's 0800 dub. and, i'll admit that those songs don't really go together except for how much i love them both. that and you can't really listen to either of them without wanting to move.

then came a few hours of uninterrupted work, after which i rewarded myself for my wonderful display of concentration by looking at funny pictures:

then came dinner, catching up on my emails, and blog-reading (speaking of which, hannah got a blog, go follow her). i still haven't turned my phone back on, though. strangely enough, i've been enjoying the silence. 

so that was my day, as told by ginger through pictures, music, and occasional capital letter-free text. here's hoping tomorrow will be more interesting. and by 'more interesting' i mean 'interesting in a good way and not in an i-failed-calculus-and-forgot-my-lit-homework-on-the-kitchen-table way'. 

la lala la

did you know that barbara kingsolver researched for twenty years before finishing the poisonwood bible? that's a pretty daunting number. so is 433. as in 4 minutes, 33 seconds of silence. this was a buzzer club question a few weeks ago - none of us knew the answer. it popped up on a blog i follow today and i thought i'd share the link with you.

(heartless (kanye west cover) - the fray)

yesterday was fun. it probably shouldn't have been since now i have a ton of homework to finish before tomorrow, but i don't really regret it. i should probably get over this whole procrastinating thing before college.

speaking of college, what's with all of the tiny schools no one's ever heard of still sending application emails? deadlines have passed and i'm clearly not interested. i still don't know how exactly they all got my email (i never checked that box on the sat that says it's okay for collegeboard to send out your information) but it's really annoying. i hate that i can't check my email without deleting thirty billion college emails first.

(stateline - butch walker)

this poem has been on my mind lately. i've always been a big dylan thomas fan, but i always stayed closer to refusal to mourn the death of a child by fire in london and things of that sort than poems like this. i suppose it's because when i first started reading his poetry i thought this was more literal than the others. and, like all little teenies making their first forays unaccompanied into the wide world of poetry, i was in search of something a little more ephemeral. it's always more gratifying to one's own ego to try and wrestle with the 'big' topics and forget that, to quote l. m. montgomery (again), 'all things great are wound up with all things little'.

(the little things - colbie caillat)

i've managed to work out some this weekend, but i'm thinking the bulk of getting back into shape is going to have to wait until after midterms. sadly, i can only study (or read, for that matter) when i'm munching on something. let's face it - i'm a grazer. and it is horrifyingly easy to go through an entire pint of ice cream while reviewing econ. at least the shape of the output and total revenue curves of a firm in the short-term will always be grouped together with the taste of half-baked ice cream. i just hope my stomach doesn't pull that embarrassing grr-argh-i-am-godzilla-feed-me routine during the exam. those things are long and we can't even eat in that classroom because of some stupid kid with peanut allergies. in other words, i won't even be able to have breakfast/graze during the two hour long economics exam.

if i had a kid who has one of those obnoxious food-in-class-preventing allergies, i'd at least have the decency to home school it so the other kids didn't have to suffer. geez (oh man).

(typical - mutemath)

anyway, here's your poisonwood quote of the day. i've been picking these by random - letting the book fall open and typing whatever i highlighted in round one, which was the fun stuff, not the colonialism or adah-related quotes. today's quote could kind of fall under any of those topics, though, so i guess you lucked out:

i'm sure you've been waiting for this (with bated breath and quivering lips)

(can you guess why i used this picture?)

today's post is going to be a little different. instead of throwing in a paragraph about what i'm listening to and why i'm listening to it at the end of the post, i put my itunes on shuffle and am going to include whatever comes on during this post. i think it'd be pretty interesting if you could figure out why i like certain songs or artists. even if you know me, i think there'll be a few surprises.

(shoot your gun - the 20-20s)

so remember when i was excited about finishing the yearbook spreads due before break? or how i thought that meeting this deadline would be easy to meet because cory, gina, and i only had one spread due?

yeah, i was wrong.

(shadowfeet - brooke fraser)

it turns out that when you have a spread on activities that happen before school, getting pictures and interviews for said activities has to happen...before school. that time when you have to wake up early. and not forget your homework in the kitchen and turn around on three minutes from hay road to go back and get it. and remember to check out cameras the day before you show up at 8:30 to take pictures.

now, i know what you're all thinking. it probably goes something like this:

but gina and i honestly didn't think it would be this hard to coordinate everything. so far this one spread has required more crazed text messages, preplanning, and actual effort than the last four did. combined. (i do believe in italics! i do, i do!)

our infographic ideas for it are pretty awesome, though, so hopefully the result will be proportional to the effort placed in it. and even if it isn't, gina's layout design for the spread is one of my favorites, so maybe people will just be happy with that and not bother reading/looking at the infographics.

(bottle it up - sara bareilles)

oh, and i'm thinking it's time gina got her own label. i don't know what yet, though. it took me forever to find the post i linked to at the beginning because it didn't have a yearbook label, so i went through and labelled everything properly. i'd be kind of sad to have to go through and label all the gina posts, but i suppose one must suffer in the name of organization. besides, i've actually finished my homework before midnight - how better to celebrate than by blogging and catching up on all my recorded shows and movies?

yeah, i know. my life: it's boring.

(when doves cry (cover) - damien rice)

speaking of shows i've recorded, the new episode of make it or break it on abc family is at the head of the queue. go ahead and judge me, since i freely admit that my favorite television shows are the most ridiculous. proof? i watch jersey shore. apparently the rolling stone staff does, too, which is the justification i use whenever someone tries to call me on it. however, i will never, ever (and you can quote me on that, mr. frost) watch the secret life of the american teenager. just hearing people try to describe the plot to me makes me want to wash my brain out.

(amon hen - howard shore)

i did record last night's premiere of chuck, though. i've heard enough people tell me about how wonderful it's supposed to be that i couldn't resist.

of course, now that i've said that, i'm going to watch it and be hopelessly disappointed. such is life, right? although i'm thinking it's a good sign that the cast is so pretty and the episode opened with a flashback. it makes things easier to underst- holy james bond briefcase, batman. the scene with the television started out funny and has turned interesting. although i would really hate to have scenes relating to george bush flash through my mind every time i turned on the news.

(better off dancing - the donnas)

(kerosene - miranda lambert)

i'd blog more but my day was pretty boring. school. learning (of a sort). homework. as per usual, i felt like the AP government vocabulary was a slight to the collective intelligence of the senior class. half of the terms overlapped with terms from the last quarter of apush - do teacher's really assume our attention spans are that short? are our brains supposed to auto-erase knowledge after a span of six months? i just set my email account to do that - yay auto-emptying trash and spam boxes! - but i don't think it's possible to recreate the effect in my mind. oh, and the other half of the terms could be defined using common sense and a basic knowledge of current events (CIA? cold war? gee, what's next, "define: president"?)

(slow dance - senses fail)

okay, this post has dragged on forever. i'd like to say this is proof of my ability to write about any topic however uninteresting (in other words, my 'blogging is an academic exercise' essay for random scholarships fastweb likes to email me), but we all know that it really just shows how much i excel at bullshitting.

i'm going to drag this on just a little bit longer to impart one last bit of news. i hit the ten thousand mark on itunes today. actually, that was a lie. i bought my ten thousandth song last night but then i had to go through my library and cull the songs i no longer like/see myself listening to. i thought i'd pass my excitement on to you: if you guess what songs 10,000 - 10,009 were (well, the album or artist, anyway) you get to pick the topic of my next post. i'll even pull a j. k. rowling (oh, how i miss her, i wish she'd write something new) and give you a hint: RDJ.

(sons & daughters - the decemberists)

oh, and excluding the length of this post, how do we feel about the new format? keep the shuffle songs or go back to the original here's-your-giant-run-on-sentence-of-music-go-ahead-and-skip-it-steffi paragraphs?

(dramamine - modest mouse)

this is the last thing. really: the cast of chuck has its own car commercial! with ipods! and they're adorable! i need to download seasons 1 & 2.

let's just begin this post on a happy note

because you know that a first-monday-back-at-school-in-over-sixteen-days post will not be filled with many happymaking facts.

so, fact #1: i am actually ridiculously, unironically happy about the fact that i managed to discover - and fill my itunes top 25 - with bat for lashes and phoenix and the dirty projectors (although this one's only because of mark hoppus's music blog) long before pretentious indie music blogs started featuring them on their year-end roundups.

fact #2: the new blogger dashboard draft thing? is awesome. if i'd had my way if s-la hadn't made me get one of these things i'd still be on livejournal or tumblr, which are both much easier to use (and have communities for basically everything) so it's nice to see google catching up. you go blogger, coco.

fact #3: i've officially completed my reread of the poisonwood bible, just in time for class tomorrow. that makes the fourth time i've read it. the multiple points of view are still so well done as to make you feel you fail at life and/or writing. rachel is sadly still a moron. i foresee this being a fun unit in lit.

oh, and the best news of all? i've got a full scholarship to my preferred tiny safety school. which is, you know, exciting. at the very least i'm no longer feeling super-stressed, so hopefully i'll actually be able to keep my new year's resolution of zen this year.

and now for the bad news:

this writing-a-story thing is highly complicated. i'm afraid i'm going to have to chop a good chunk of what i wrote during my all-night writing binge. i adore some bits of it but it just isn't doing anything to further the plot and if i keep it the pace will drag. oh well. i'm hoping after about fifteen years and compulsive rewriting this might actually turn out decently. like let-people-read-this decent, even. one can only hope.

i've updated the bloglist, too. it's tiny right now - a few of the most recent adds to the old one and two new songs. well, i'm not sure if they count as two separate songs since kid cudi's the prayer samples the funeral by band of horses. i love the original and the not-quite-a-remix, though, so they both went it. also - and you'll probably be able to tell this by the lyrics - both of those songs have been my theme for what little of The Book With No Name that i've written so far. oh and right now i'm listening to holdin' on together by phoenix.

ugh, i have to go back to my homework now. i'd rant about that, too, but gina and jenibean have both done a better job of that, so just read their posts instead.

here, i'll leave you with something vaguely inspirational. or i assume it's inspirational since when i look at it now i mostly just laugh uncontrollably, since when i was a tiny wee widdle emo rachel and had a myspace and a xanga and still had an aim screenname to post away messages to (oh, the bad old days) this was one of my deep and insightful posts. it's good to know that, no matter how old and grown up you may feel, some things never change:

if i lived in new york, my theme song would be

empire state of mind feat. alicia keys by jay-z. that's pretty much the only halfway original thought i've had in the last few days. it's not what i'm listening to right now, though. currently playing: there's my bailout! by bomb the music industry.

i have now tried and failed four times to blog about my holiday. every time i approach the keyboard with the intention of transcribing the events of the last few days my fingers just shrivel up and die of premature exhaustion. i've given up all hopes of ever getting it all down. for those of you who'll see me tomorrow, you'll get the entire story in excruciating detail. everyone else - well, a blogger should try and keep a little mystery about herself, non?

i'll tell you about the last twenty four hours, instead. to begin with, i had the strangest dream last night. the fact that i still remember it is unusual enough because i almost never remember my dreams, but it gets much weirder.

in the dream my nose, which is slightly beaky to begin with, morphed into an actual beak. a toucan's beak, to be precise, only rainbow striped like toucan sam's.

i didn't get any wings or magical cereal powers. just a leopard printed snuggie and a replica harry potter wand like one of the ones they sell in those in-flight magazines. and then - equipped with beak, wand, and snuggie - i flapped off into the night and started hexing the mailboxes of lansdowne. the james bond theme song was playing. it all seemed a little like a video game, actually. like, i was running through the streets, dodging cars and giving mailboxes legs. it was exciting. if only it'd been real.

in other news, watching this took up a significant amount of the trip back yesterday. (it's just the first part but the rest of the videos are all on the marblehornets username)

also, commonapp.org finally disappeared from my top sites on safari today. i was so excited that i...immediately reopened the site and clapped at all the little green triangles on the screen. i know, i'm pretty lame. also, i'll never get over the irony of listing my favorite word as 'quiet' on the UVA supplement. it's actually my second favorite, but i felt like a 250 word ode to violet might be a little too much for the poor, scholarly admissions officers to handle.

oh, and this kinda made my day:

i have applied to college

well, the ones due on january 1, anyway. including william & mary!

here's how i'm rewarding myself:

jeni's music on the side reinspired my love of ingrid michaelson. am listening to winter song by sarah bareilles and ingrid!

ok, time to go back to apping.

you're a wizard, harry

what's playing on itunes right now? HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE. oh, itunes, i less than three you (no, really - a whole sampler of free holiday songs? why, you shouldn't have).

well, currently it's on pause at 5 minutes and 46 seconds since it's still downloading, but i'm excited. while i wait for it to finish, here's an update of my day.

the yearbook spreads are done! gina put the finishing touches on them a few minutes ago since cory has class and i was in guidance (i finally got an answer for my transcript request form question - if they have copies of your common app forms already, you write that on the side instead of saying its attached). and i just sent my sat score reports! (ugh, $78.00, way to rip us off, collegeboard). oh, and i wore my new coat and scarf today! they were both quite comfortable and warm, which was appreciated since our school is freezing cold.

and oh my god, i think i'm dying of cute:

still busy. still a bee.

i'm wishing for sleet tonight. catching up on homework. ugh, i had to miss calc and physics today because of a dentist appointment - which, yay, clean teeth and no cavities and making sure none of my little toothles have decided to move since my braces came off, but blegh makeup homework and notes. at least i got to go in early and get random stalker pictures of people eating breakfast.

still working on college applications. just submitted nyu and columbia! i've got to drop off more transcript requests to guidance tomorrow.

i'm listening to bang by empires (click the link, since it's their newest single the band's offering it as a free download). trying to decipher the calc notes.

here, amuse yourself with dental health while i go back to homework.

so buzz, buzz, buzz, doc there's a hole where something was

i'm a busy little worker bee today. i'm thisclose to being done with college applications. i don't even care about getting in anymore, just as long as i've applied. news from yearbookistan is bleak - we've still got a ton of work to do. hopefully i can finish my tech supplement, review my common app, send in my sat scores, and do my physics homework in time to plug in Science Kid's quotes. thank god for gina/yearbook editrix of doom. she is my first person of the week, even if she does make me do all of the awkward knocking/pulling people out of class. that's all for now. look for real blogging after all my work is done.

oh, and i have my favorite drink in the world again. too busy for pictures.

what's on the ipod right now? something is not right with me by the cold war kids. it seems appropriate.

here, have a cute wallababy. looking at it made me feel less stressed (for like a second)

yesterday in pictures

this is what we did in yearbookistan yesterday. and, yes, those are the shoes whose purchase was decided by text-in vote. i just thought you'd like to see how they've been doing. the other shoes are cory's. they're pretty, non? playing around on commonapp.org right now. i just can't decide if i want to change my essays or not. i still have to email my guidance counselor my secondary school report, too. oh, college, by the time i arrive on campus i'll already be dead.

get tied up in your day (let go and walk away)

so today was a busy day. been checking all of my college application essays and starting the tech application (due january 15! you go VT coco), did some of my homework, discovered my favorite lunch in the whole world (cherry tomatoes, asiago cheese, extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, and toasted wheat bread), and wore my new ankle boots to starbucks to pick up my favorite drink in the whole world (see below). here, have a picture of my new boots. they're purple and fantastically comfortable. and pretty. did i mention how pretty they are?

oh, and in my brief fit of productivity today i managed to start writing the short story that's been floating around my head for a while. i probably should have held off on that until i have the time to finish it/outline/develop theme and motivations and other Important Literary Things that will prevent me from becoming SMeyer, but i just couldn't resist. hopefully by the time i get back to it the intro will still look okay. otherwise i guess it'll be rewrite time.

what am i listening to right now? the saints are coming - u2 feat. green day. just finished listening to thou shalt always kill (dan le sac vs. scroobius pip). it was my homework song of the day. for future reference, never listen to that song while trying to work. catchy beats and the most argumentative lyrics (no, seriously. i get that it's supposed to be all hipster ironic or whatever but "the beatles? just a band. the clash? just a band." are not lyrics to derive equations to) made concentration impossible. hence my current musical/blogging wind-down.

...so i'm taking the sat tomorrow

well, actually i'm not all that worried, because it's just the subject test and...i know my subjects? like, i've studied, but i'm not freaking out. so there's that.

okay, so that wasn't completely true. i am freaking out, but not over the sat. related rates project to do this weekend and makeup homework for school and college applications to finish and...yeah. these are the kinds of topics that require serious ellipsis to cover my inner spazzery. just trust me on this.

what's on the ole ipod right now? the tower of learning by rufus wainwright.

i'm watching smallville right now. this show gets dumber every year and i still can't stop watching.

before i go, though, i'll leave you with this, since a little birdie known as bloggy let me know that Certain Persons don't like a band i like to think of as B! and the Guyliners.

blogolating

hmm, so nothing much happened today. worked on my college essays (they're really awful, i'm giving it a week and then i'll go back and revise them into something less terrible). found some music. read a little more potter and am working my way through oryx and crake by margaret atwood. it's such a good book; her writing's so lovely and atmospheric and creepy (well, it is about the apocalypse).

oh, and my preorder on itunes for the glee soundtrack downloaded today, so my ipod is basically the happiest thing on earth (see what i did there? with the glee and the happy and the punning? yea? yea? ok, i'll admit it, i really am this lame)

and aladdin's playing on tv right now, so i'm just going to go watch that.