i can see clearly now...

well, not now that the rain is gone (it's not, in fact it's still pouring outside and the weatherbug radar has the entire county covered in a solid block of red), but now that i have finally given in and gotten contacts. you know, those things i said i would never get (i am highly disturbed by the notion of placing anything on my eyeball, especially my own fingers and not excepting small bendy pieces of plastic). however, after years of mocking me for my inability to join the ranks of the corrective lens wearing masses, my own mother issued me an ultimatum - she wasn't going to pay for my second prom dress if i was determined to "ruin the effect of everything" by wearing glasses. and so, to the eye doctor i went. 

i am now on day two of this whole adjustment period business - specifically, i'm almost out of hour 2 of 4 for the day. so far, i've been convinced that i was going to go blind - in reality, i put the left lens in inside out, dripped lens solution into my eye because i couldn't find eye drops and my eyes are so dry it felt like the sahara had moved to my eye socket, and put my finger on the lens seven times and moved it around just because it looked so weird. 

and in the midst of all this excitement, i decided i'm going to blog my way through this experience. i've been neglecting this thing in the name of homework (the gods of gpantheon will not be denied), so i might as well get back in the hang of things. 

also, last night, i stayed up til 3 doing a project on fallacies for lang. here's the customer testimonial, i think you'll enjoy it.

what's playing on my ipod right now? c'etait salement romantique by coeur du pirate they're really good, and i'm trying to listen to more french music because a. the language is gorgeous and b. i have a test on monday that is supposedly 

ridiculously difficile, so it wouldn't hurt to prepare

what am i reading? the killer angels by michael shaara. actually, it's a reread (and for a reason - it's one of the best books i've ever read, and one of the few war books that i'll read for the battle descriptions and logistical information as much as the characters). i just finished incantation by alice hoffman. it was gorgeous and painful, just like all of her novels. i wish i had her flair for prose; everything she writes, every detail, every choice of syntax and scene, just flows. it's a little magical, to tell the truth. and more importantly, her writing has...oomph. it hurts, in just the right way. if you haven't read her books, start - practical magic is probably my favorite, but any of them will do. 

and it wouldn't be right if i didn't end with the usual pretty piccy from flickr. this one's called, appropriately, let there be light. isn't it gorgeous?

today i....

attempted to find a prom dress...and failed. shopping trip number two is scheduled for tomorrow after noon at 1200 hours. this is an emergency. prom is in three weeks and the only dresses i like are black. and, in a move that truly marks my ocd, i refuse to wear black to prom just because it's so overdone. and, yes, i am fully aware that i couldn't sound more like the stereotypical two-dimensional peddled-to-the-masses-by-the-disney-gods teenage girl if i tried. here, let me make up for it with:

look at the pretty. isn't flickr wonderful? photos like these make me want to give up and become a journalist or a photographer or something intense and deadliney. oh, the limitations being a chronic procrastinator has put on me.

also, i discovered rudyard kipling's poetry. and promptly had a "d'oh" moment -- where was this when i was being forced to analyze the stupid "white man's burden"? clearly the gods of the english department don't want us to like poetry -- it's always the same thing over and over: "stopping by woods on a snowy evening". and, don't get me wrong, i love robert frost, but honestly, it's time to broaden our literary horizons. by now that poem has become the equivalent of covering martin luther king jr,/the "i have a dream" speech in history and/or english class. wonderful the first few times, but a little overpowering in repetition.

also, as it's now after midnight (so what if it was ten p.m. when i started writing this? have you ever tried blogging from an iphone? honestly, it's almost enough for me to give in and jump on the old people/celebrities-who've-been-told-to-by-their-ancient-publicity-people bandwagon and join twitter), here's something to celebrate all the mother's day love. happy mama's day! now look at the pretty.

is this a soul that stirs in me, is it breaking free, wanting to come alive?

so i lied in my last post. this isn't even close to being about clothes (although, i did just get some new ones, yay for prezzies). just to get you up to speed, i just took my last ap quiz (of course, there is an 80 question practice test on tuesday, also graded), so for the next...oh, i don't know, we'll be generous and say two days, i might actually be able to blog. and then will come next monday, when the ap exams actually begin, in which case the only bloggage you'll be getting from is OHMYGOSH I'M DYING.



since i think we'd all like to avoid me posting anything of the sort, i thought i'd get this post out of the way now.



my latest book obsession has been c.s. lewis's mere christianity. i'm about three quarters of the way through it, and i'm pretty much in love with it. it's his perspectives on why religion in general, and christianity in specific, is the most logical view of the world and it goes on to explain why youcan't just adopt the "religion is a buffet" mentality and pick and choose the tenets you want to follow (but if religion was a buffet, what would 'thou shalt not kill' look like? i'm thinking a rare steak, what do you think? and what about adultery? i'm torn between an obscene ice sculpture and spotted dick...now that i think about it, i feel like the whole 'religion is a buffet' idea should just get its own post). really, i'm just in love with the book because it seems to verbalize so many of the ideas i believe, but in a more concise (and less rambly, parenthetical, teenage girlish sort of way). i feel like i should include quotes, but right now i'm in the school library during study hall, and on one side of me J is reading an anime featuring scantily clad girls with multi-tonal hair and physiologically improbable chests and gun-slinging, violence-adoring androgynous boys; and on my other side a collection of academy of science, sex-obsessed freshman nerds are wiki-ing sex.



in other words, these are not conditions conducive to quoting theological anythings. (unless one wants to throw a few of those chastity verses at them, because my school already has one pregnant underclassmen, we don't need the nerds to contribute a few more).



until then, i'm going to direct you to this song, which is based off the book and which has been in my itunes 25 most played years before i even realized c. s. lewis wrote anything besides narnia.

and while we're at it, here's a picture of the day, courtesy of flickr. i'll give you the quote the user used as a caption, just because it, too, is from My New Favorite Book.




[...] Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite [...]-- Quote by C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963)

clothes!

just a quick post before i go to bed - got to go shopping today! it was fun. and i actually restrained myself to just a few things, which is pretty impressive for me. i'm thinking my next post is going to analyze just why shopping is so much fun - or maybe why it only seems to be fun for girls. right now i'm going to go jog and then sleep - i've got to be up early tomorrow. oh, the horror. 

thirty six hours sans sleep, and conclusions reached thereon

so, in the grand tradition of all put-upon high school students, i decided to pull an All Nighter sunday night. the poorly punctuated results of this you already know (see below). now, all of twenty four hours later, i've decided to share my conclusions.

1. following intense bouts of not sleepage, the marathon sleep that follows is a Very Bad Idea

2. only pull all nighters on a day where you're guaranteed not to receive homework (think thursday) that's due the next day

3. if you are going to have homework due the day after you decided not to sleep at all, do said homework while you are still awake and semi-functioning

you might be wondering how i reached these conclusions. you might be thinking "well, these are oddly specific, clearly something happened to cause the creation of these axioms, and, my, isn't this a lovely run-on sentence?" well, you would be right.

let's just run over the past two days, shall we?

first, after not sleeping at all, i went to school, still pleasantly charged on a mixture of coffee, coke, and chocolate fondue.

so far, all is good. then, comes class, wherein i realized that teachers who talk and talk and talk make it near impossible, even when really trying, to stay awake. seriously. like, i was even pinching myself (and i have nails, this hurts) and i was still nodding off. then, by the end of the day, when i'm counting off the hours, i come to the realization that, not only do i have an entire chapter (forty two pages!) of my psychology textbook to outline, but i have a fifty question, fill-in-the blank, no-word-bank-provided quiz in history the next day. having remembered this (or been forced to remember this by the rantings of a friend henceforth referred to as K), i, like all dutiful students, resolved to stay up another few hours to complete all this classwork.

then i hopped on the bus, went to cheeseball's house (he's the dog i walk, he's cute, here have a picture:

and then went home, where i promptly, you guessed it, fell asleep. for thirteen and one-half hours.

i woke up, at around 7:30 a.m., took a look at the clock, and, in my infinite wisdom, went "oh, yay, i have hours to do my homework". having reached this conclusion, i then turned on the tv and started flipping through the channels...and noticed a disproportionate amount of infomercials and news shows. also, the 700 club was on and somehow i don't think that's normal primetime viewing. suspicions thus awakened, i wasn't exactly surprised when a quick flip to nbc revealed the oh so dreadful truth...and then i hopped out of bed for the quickest shower of my life, pulled on the first clothes i could find, and was almost late for school.

however, through all that, i managed to reach conclusion 4: those planning not to sleep during the normally prescribed hours of When It's Dark should make sure that they are on the yearbook staff. since our pages are already at the printer, it's a glorified study hall - so, psych accomplished and a 47/50 on the quiz. yay, non? also, i'm a national merit scholar semi-finalist, so all is good in the world of academics (for now)

early morning thoughts

so it is just shy of 6:30 right now. no, i didn't actually go to sleep last night, but that's fairly common this year. it's so common, in fact, that i thought i'd just share a few of the things that i usually think after a night like this. 

right now, the sky is just starting to turn light; i can hear (annoying, smug-sounding) birds cheep-cheep-cheeping in the trees behind my house. it rained last night, so the windows are still blurry with water and i can still hear the faint pattering of the early morning drizzle hitting the roof. in other words, the world is grey and cold and slightly too noisy to be comfortable (those darn birds). 

what did i do last night, you might be wondering. well, to start off with, i finished my english homework, then my math. i made a little dent in my (obscenely long) psych worksheet. i considered doing my chemistry homework (due around 2:45 today), but decided to do my laundry instead. the dryer's still going, in case you were wondering. in between that, i started watching season two of the tudors on itunes (1.99 an episode, in case you're considering it), bought the (strangely addictive) instrumental soundtrack, and used that as my background music while i ran for an hour or so. all in all, a pretty productive night, although i'm beginning to suspect that i'm either nocturnal or an insomniac. 

whichever's the case, i'm off to the shower now. au revoir mes amis. 

an interlude from fruit loop & facebook & english homework land

Look what I made today! Just thought I'd share. Back to all those other things.