a series of unfortunate events

and i don't even have the benefit of having my misfortunes narrated by lemony snicket. if i could just go through life with a snarky, possibly british author detailing my every move i have a feeling that i'd be a much better person. or at least a more self-aware one.

even if the one and only, most perfect ruler of the universe neil gaiman were narrating my life, today would still be enough to make me depressed. you see, a catastrophe has befallen me - a disaster, a calamity, un contretemps, and other-synonyms-for-Something-Really-Bad-which-i'm-too-lazy-to-look-up-on-thesaurus.com.

in other words, my ipod broke.

for those of you unfamiliar with her, this is ophelia the ipod, looking annoyed. i can only assume she's annoyed with me since there is no other reason why she refuses to turn on after a whole day of being charged while i was at school.

i am, as you can imagine, distraught. my suffering was only compounded by the momster refusing to drive to the apple store to get it fixed until this weekend. i will admit that i reacted poorly to this news (there was shouting...and stomping, slamming of doors, and pointed blasting of music through my subpar computer speakers to prove a point, mother. i'm beginning to suspect that i have a tendency to melodrama when i'm annoyed)

you may now be wondering how i can reflect on this calamity-catastrophe-contretemps so calmly. shouldn't i still be screaming and threatening to throw my life away and become a crack addict if my ipod doesn't magically resuscitate itself right now?

of course not. the momster's not even in the house anymore and it would be an utter waste to do all that yelling without an audience. also, she went grocery shopping and i'm very, very fond of whole fruit ice pops and pound cake, so she's temporarily forgiven.

in all seriousness, i calmed down once i realized that i still had my phone, which, once i removed all the apps, bookmarks, and about 90% of my contacts, can now hold around 3,000 songs.

so then came the tedious song-selection process - it's something i had to in a relatively calm state of mind. so, armed with my pound cake, coffee, and 100-calorie sandwich (i made it myself, though, so who knows if it really is or not), i got to work. the smart playlist that resulted is...interesting, to say the least.

and, in case you were wondering, i decided to exclude my favorite/most played artists and songs. if i'm going to be without an ipod for the next two weeks or so, i might as well spend it listening to relatively new songs, right?

oh, and just for kicks, this is the 100-calorie wondersandwich. i came up with it (and by 'came up with' i mean that i figured out how much of each ingredient to use so everything would total up to a hundred calories) over the weekend while i was trying to think of the perfect bite-sized snack food for when you're sick of junk food. enjoy yet another grainy iphone photo:

oh, and in case you were wondering, i'm listening to hometown glory by adele. i love this song, but the end of cassie's episode on skins made me start playing it on loop all day. 

never gave a thought to an honorable living

today's title comes from yeasayer's madder red. it's a great song, check it out.

remember how i've been worried about yearbook this week? our deadline is tomorrow, but i don't feel fussed anymore. to begin with, i managed to make my story a little better during early release today by getting the apples to apples table to give me better quotes about deadlines/college applications. s-la's was my favorite (and i'm sorry i spelled your name with a ph! i come to early release from a class with stephanie! it's hard to keep track of spellings when people never use your full name anyway). on a slightly related note, i would just like to inform Certain Persons that metal/screamo/doom metal is in no way related to the music i listen to. not even a little. my music (and all three thousand seventy-two genres which itunes tells me comprise it) refuses to associate with that sort of crap and would prefer to never be mentioned in relation to it ever again. especially since metal (excluding every time i die and slipknot) is the one genre i will never, ever listen to or like in any way.

after early release, gina and i stayed after school and worked on our spreads. it went a little like this. or this:

that's the art room (where the literary magazine meets), and i'm wearing one of the floral dresses i got with s-la. we spent a good fifteen minutes or so interviewing (i love interviewing yearbook and newspaper people - they always know how to give good quotes) and spinning around while standing atop chairs. it was pretty hard to get all the way around at first - i was mostly flapping my arms and looking silly until tori took pity on me and spun me. and then gina and i spun backwards around the room a few times since there was nothing else to really do.

this really is just the worst week for deadlines - there was a staff meeting today, so we couldn't get sholly to give us the keys to the camera room, and spring sports tryouts are this week, so cory couldn't stay after to help out. well, that and the 8492853 homework assignments and tests that all magically happened to fall within this oh-so-short five-day span.

in case you couldn't tell, i'm a little bitter. let's cheer ourselves up, okay?

and, my personal favorite:

it's getting tragic now

so today's post has actual points and topics and things, but i thought i'd just start off with a question. you know when you're dunking cookies in milk and the cookie breaks off and sinks to the bottom? yeah, that just happened to me. three times in a row. and the momster was just in the kitchen to give me a weird look for getting a fork out to fish my cookies off the bottom of the cup, so i think i'm going to have to resign myself to losing those three cookies forever. my woe, it's a tangible thing.

(standing in the way of control - fat segal)

topic the first: life sucks. then you go to yearbook. and slit your wrists. today was pretty awful as far as deadlines and homework are concerned. our yearbook spreads are due wednesday and gina and i have...nothing, actually. well, we have our stories (i finished mine today), but that's just about it. i have this prediction that most of this week is going to be spent on yearbook things. yippee.

(as serious as your life - four tet)

don't worry, this post has happy parts. like this:

this, in case you were wondering, is the cast of skins. it's a show on the e4 channel in england which the momster bought to cheer me up because operation: read instead was kind of killing me this weekend. it's not a show that would ever be on american television (and i do mean ever, since the fcc would possibly implode if it had to deal with the things this show gets up to), so i'm not counting it. don't judge me, i need some form of outlet.

(star guitar - the chemical brothers)

remember how i said that the secret life of the american whatever is the most unrealistic, pointless excuse for a television show i've ever seen? well, think of skins as the answer to it. they have real problems! and those problems aren't usually tidily resolved at the end of the episode! people screw up and are different and look healthy and...i love the british. i really do. everyone but steffi needs to start watching skins, like, right now. (s-la, sorry, but they're so far from g-rated that you'd be better off staying away)

(totally wired - the fall)

also, the music is awesome. i love that their music directors blog about their song choices - it makes finding things so much easier and the things they have to say are pretty interesting. i never really thought about why television shows use the music they do. actually, all the songs i listed today came from my brand new skins playlist. 

(up where we belong - joe cocker)

so that's all for today. i have to go do my lit, physics, and calc homework. what joy. 

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.

you waited since lunch (it all comes at once)

i had a plan for this post but it got derailed by gabe saporta posting this:

please tell me this means there's a midtown reunion show in the works. i can hope, right?

in other news, i've finished listening through my preorder of ke$ha's new album. conclusions: she does fun, dance-y, mildly obnoxious songs perfectly. i've got a new treadmill playlist filled with nothing but her new releases and demos. there's a couple of times where she tries to be comparatively serious - "dancing with tears in my eyes" & "hangover" - and it just doesn't work. i mean, this is the girl who sings about wanting someone to put a little love in her glove box.

just to get all the music-related news out of the way, i'm listening to the vampire weekend's new album contra. it's amazing. my current favorite song is white sky. hence the title of this post. oh, and i'm currently listening to diplomat's son off the same album.

now, onto the most depressing part of the day - and also the reason i didn't blog yesterday.

still confused? well, here's the whole story. i stayed up all night on sunday. i came home from school on monday and took a three hour nap. and then i stayed up all night again doing homework. so, naturally, tuesday called for a long-overdue bout of power-napping. except i actually got about four hours of sleep since i still had - you guessed it - more homework.

most you already know this, but i'll point it out anyway. i am not a morning person. i'm even less of one when i've had, at most, eight hours of sleep in three days. in other words, i woke up super late this morning. like 8:40 late. it was my first tardy since this but i still have saturday school. oh, and when i got to class i found out that we were having a free day in my econ class (first block). we could either do homework or watch up. i'm sure you can all imagine my bitterness - i wasted all my time yesterday doing homework. i got super-detention for doing my homework. and then i walk into an AP-class-turned-study-hall? i was pretty much seconds away from yelling the unabbreviated version of fml this morning. it didn't help that i had another free period in yearbook today. at least now i remember why procrastination is a girl's best friend. and enzo and a few other people i know are also stuck in saturday school as a result of chronic lateness, so i won't be alone. my bitterness is still unassuaged.

blogging from my neighbor's house, by the way. i'm babysitting until midnight. it's a good thing they live right next door. the youngest has an eight o'clock bedtime, so she's already in bed and the oldest decided to stay in his room and read - the third harry potter, apparently - until he has to go to sleep (nine), so all's well. i finished all my homework last night (just checked...still bitter) and all i have with me is my laptop, so i've been cleaning up my folders. so far i've freed up 42 GB by deleting old school projects. i've also done my routine itunes purge, clearing out any duplicates and songs i don't really like. down to 9457 now, but it leaves me feeling so happy to know that compy is all organized now. i'm gonna finish that up and check on kid #2 now.

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:

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)

stories from sat-subject-day (it's the new saturday)

so last night lulu (short for lucifer, even if her papers call her chocolate chip) ate my headphones. she didn't swallow them, so at least we don't have to take her to the vet again, but my poor headphones are lying in a mangled little heap in my trash can - but not for long, since the cleaning people are puttering around upstairs and will probably be emptying it out soon.

i took the SAT subject tests again today. lit had more olde english. u.s. wasn't bad. i got to realize that i've forgotten all world history halfway through that exam. also, the room i was in had the most annoying motivational posters i have ever seen ('failure to plan is planning to fail'. 'destiny isn't a chance it's a choice'. 'the longest journeys begin with one step'. 'it's not where you're from, it's where you're going', which is actually not that bad since it was ella fitzgerald who said it, but the rest - and the whole wall was full of them!) and pictures of really creepy cats all over the walls. not the cute kind i've been posting, but like, chubby, furry ones with crazy eyes. it was quite disturbing. that so wasn't the worst part, though.

to start with, i forgot my wallet at home since i got mi madre to drive me (thereby not having to find a spot in county's tiny lot to park). luckily, i didn't need any id since the proctor knew me (and has been the proctor for every AP test i've ever taken, what's up with that?) and the other proctor-people roaming the halls said collegeboard would take that as confirmation. so at least i got to take the stupid test. what joy.

and after the test (see above for commentary, i'm not a big fan of being chronological today), i tried to call the momster to get a ride home. of course, since loudoun county high school is like nine thousand years old, there wasn't any reception in the building. not even right next to the windows. so i stepped outside - where i miraculously had all five bars, not even six inches away from the inside of the school - and called. the momster left the launching pad. and i tried to go back inside - out of the snow - to wait. only to find out that all the doors were on, like, automatic lock since SAT testing was still going on. so i got to huddle in the snow while i waited - here's the view from my cozy little niche of death, doom, and post-testing depression. it was cold.

and then i got home and found my headphones. see, we came full circle. look at that narrative style.

i'm listening to Tom Gable = OMG TABLE by the sandwiches. it's accompanied by the cleaning people speaking spanish and the vacuum cleaner's whoosh noise. my favorite drink in the world is too cold to keep my company, but i've got her warmer cousin Peppermint Mocha instead. peppy wants you to know she's just as photogenic as the other members of the starbucks family. see? she takes good pictures. those effects are courtesy of the yearbook camera, which i used during lunch on friday to get stalker pictures of people eating and didn't get to return afterwards - luckily, i remembered to sign it out, so it's okay. i never got to see cory or gina friday, though, so my science lab story still reads like a schizophrenic choose-your-own adventure story. '...and among those devoted few, students show their love of science in different ways. INSERT NAME HERE is one such student. He is so excited about working on his science fair project that he decided to spend his study hall conducting his experiment on IDK LOOK AT THE QUOTES in the technology education lab. "BLAHBLAHBLAH SCIENCE BLAHBLAHBLAH quotes"' so, basically, i'm either going to have to finish this in yearbook on monday or the 'it happened in the lab' spread is going to the yearbook's first game of mad libs.

my song has changed. every band in the usa by the fold. i really hate the original, but i somehow can't get enough of parodies and covers. miley cyrus has great songwriters.

also, i just realized this is the first snow of the season! yay! it makes christmas feel so much closer. i can't wait. i want antlers.

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.

adventures in cheeseballing

i finished my related rates project! a full week early, which means i get five (badly needed) extra credit points.

oh, and i'm dogwalking again this week. yet another crazy schedule. so i headed over today after yearbook (i stayed after school for that today. there's so much to do! i just wish i could have stayed longer) and ended up locked out. of every door. like, the key literally wouldn't turn in the lock (and it was the right key, too, i triple-checked). and it's happened before, but in the past i could always just go through the back door.

the thing is, to get through the back door, you have to go through the gate that lets you in the backyard. the gate which had rusted shut. luckily, cheeseball's owner's neighbors are very nice (and had things to drop off and pick up from their garage) and brought a ladder so we could climb over the fence into the backyard and use the back door.

which makes this house number two that i've broken into since halloween.

don't worry, i remembered to pry open the backyard gate so i can get in again. maybe tomorrow morning i'll take a picture? i'm just glad i didn't have to cheeseball this morning, since i was already at school at 7:30 to check my calculus project (which is done! early!) with my partner. 7:30 in the morning. i know, i'm shocked too.

oh, and tomorrow is buzzer club (otherwise known as academic bowl). i think certain people named s-la should come along.

here's a soundtrack to my day today (now with commentary):

round here - counting crows (it played during my attempts to break into casa de cheeseball, mostly because i forgot to take out my earbuds) i'd post the music video but universal's full of nazis that disabled embedding on their youtube account.

white horse (taylor swift cover) - jordan mccoy (her voice is interesting. i wish she'd done the full cover)

over my head (cable car) - a day to remember (this is another cover, this time of the fray. but we already know i love covers. thank god for punk goes pop, right?)

the ballad of serenity - sonny rhodes (i was feeling some joss whedon nostalgia. when i have the time, i will finally watch dollhouse.)

school - supertramp (do i have to explain why i was listening to this?)

anthems for a seventeen-year-old girl - broken social scene (ditto.)

battle of who could care less - ben folds five (no, really, i should have to explain this least of all)

seventeen - kings of leon (it's kings of leon.)

still have homework to do. and the daily show/colbert report hour of happiness to listen to while i do said homework. i feel like having them on in the background subliminally influences me to be more snarky when i'm doing homework, and if there's anything those sadists masquerading as my teachers deserve, it's snark.