brokenrecord

So Monday was my 19th birthday. It was pretty blah, since I basically just sat at home all day. I got Leopard and a copy of Windows XP for my birthday from my parents so I can finally use Windows on my Macbook because Paintshop Pro only works with Windows and I like PSP more than Photoshop and Photoshop is like a billion dollars anyways, and I bought PSP last year when my computer died and I had to get a new one for $80 and only used it for a few months before I got my Macbook. And now it turns out that I can only use that copy of PSP on one computer. gah. So I don't know what I'm going to do about that now, but I really don't want to have to buy it again. sigh.

I celebrated my birthday with Jackie, Galaxy, and Justin yesterday by having a Colin Firth marathon (which was really more watching Love Actually, 3 episodes of Arrested Development when Justin had class and Galaxy had to go to this thing for a friend, and the first Bridget Jones movie). It was fun, though.

I watched the season premiere of Torchwood this morning. ( Torchwood )

I am very, very happy that BBC America has decided to air this season basically as it airs in the UK (only a week and a few days behind), since once I go back to school, I can't download torrents any more (well I can, but the connection is ridiculously slow, and I might as well just wait until I get back home to download them all), so at least this way I won't have to wait months and months to see this season.

Also making me very, very happy: the new movie rentals system on iTunes and Netflix allowing unlimited online downloads of movies (not for all plans, but my parents have the plan that allows that) so I can watch movies when I get back to school. It's like the universe realized "What? The movies your school library has mostly suck and you're going to run out of movies there you actually want to watch very quickly? Well, here are two ways to make life easier for you so you can still watch a ridiculous amount of movies!" (Because yes, the universe does revolve around me.) Very awesome.

Went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter on Tuesday with a bunch of friends which was a lot of fun. And I really liked the movie. When I first came out I was just like "Well, that was better than I thought it would be" but the more I think about it, the more I really loved it. It's my favorite so far of the movies (well I've only seen the second half of Chamber of Secrets. And I totally hate Prisoner of Azkaban which I think is a very unpopular opinion but I love the book so much and I don't think anything could have lived up to what I hoped for it to be like. I think maybe if I rewatch it I would like it better. But at this point the 5th is totally my favorite). Of course they had to cut out a bunch of stuff, but that's to be expected, and once you get past that I think they did a good job of capturing the tone of the book. And it's just shot so beautifully. The cinematography is excellent.

I've been starting my reread of the series and something jumped out of me. ( Spoilers only for the first book. )

Anyways, I've been spending a lot more being social this week than I have since graduation. There was the Harry Potter thing and then Wednesday there was a small party-ish gathering thing in the band room for Mrs. Bentley's resignation which was nice and on Sunday I'm going to dinner with some friends and then we're going to watch Taming of the Shrew for this Shakespeare in the Park thing. So that'll be fun.

I ordered a Macbook (my graduation present) yesterday! I'm excited for it to come. I've never had a Mac before so I'm hoping I'll get used to it and like it and such. Hopefully it won't break down as frequently as my past few computers have (although those were all Dells and I've heard Dells are the worst).

Less happy and exciting, I'm getting a TB test on Thursday since it's required for college. If you don't know, I absolutely hate going to the doctor and needles. I'm so terrified of needles, and I swear I must have a much lower tolerance for pain than everyone else on the planet because I just cannot handle shots and blood tests and such. Everyone always says it won't be as bad as I think, but then it always is (or it's worse). I at least feel better that I have an appointment set and I won't just be worrying knowing I need to make an appointment before August 1st, but having no idea when it will be.

Yesterday night I saw Michael Urie (Marc on Ugly Betty) in Hamlet! It was a really good production, and he was awesome in it. There were actually a lot of people from TV shows, some I recognized and some I didn't. Henri Lubatti (Taylor's French ex-husband on The O.C.) played Rosencrantz. Dakin Mathews (who's been in like 200 different TV shows, but most notably to me as Headmaster Charleston on Gilmore Girls and the Angel of Destiny on Charmed) played Polonius (he was very, very excellent). Then there was also Robert Foxworth as Claudius and apparently he was on Six Feet Under for a few years which I haven't seen but my parents have. And there was Linda Gehringer who was Pennilyn Lott on Gilmore Girls and someone on The West Wing in an episode I haven't gotten to yet. Hamish Linklater played Hamlet and he's on The New Adventures of Old Christine which I haven't seen but he was also really great. I think that was about all anyone would recognize. Anyways, as I said, it was really awesome (although it was a bit surreal to see all these people I recognized from TV right in front of me). I wish I could go again.

So Wednesday was graduation, and it ended up being a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Not that I thought it would be awful, I just wasn't very interested in it. But it was nice. Afterwards I ate dinner with my parents and my aunt and then Jackie, Soan, and Jane slept over at my house and played Mario Party and Karaoke and such. Then Thursday was the last beach party ever and it was just kind of eh. I think most of us were just exhausted. I ended up not being able to sleep like at all the night before and I got about a 2 hour nap in before going so I was just kind of not able to think clearly or concentrate on anything. So it ended up being pretty dull. Oh well. It wasn't awful, and it had its moments.

Anyways, I guess summer has started now. I have absolutely nothing planned except going to Warped Tour next Friday (whee excited!). I think I'm going to spend my summer watching seasons 5-7 of The West Wing (I've had them since like February but school started getting crazy so I never got around to finishing the series, but I will now), watching season 1 of Friday Night Lights (everyone on my flist seems to love it and I've been planning it for awhile, I just wanted to wait until I'd have time to watch it and go crazy about it if I love it), reading a lot of books (right now Maurice by E. M. Forster and then I think I want to read the two Jane Austen books I haven't read yet, some more stuff by the Brontes since I love Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, maybe some Shakespeare, and I don't know what else. Maybe some of the books I've had in my bookshelf forever and haven't gotten to yet, like Middlemarch), and watching a lot of movies. It should be a good summer. (Last summer I ever get to truly relax, probably.)

Michael Urie (who plays Marc on Ugly Betty) is in a production of Hamlet as Horatio at South Coast Rep in Costa Mesa and I'm going to see it on June 22nd! :D I'm so ridiculously excited, you have no idea. It's only three weeks away!

Today is prom but I'm not going because I didn't have a date and I didn't like how the group was working out and I don't enjoy those sorts of things and the only reason I ever was inclined to go was because all my friends were going and I wanted to hang out with them. But now instead I'm going with Jackie and Jessica and a bunch of other people to see Pirates and get dinner and such, and I think I'm going to have a much better time doing that than going to prom. I'm also not going to Grad Nite for basically the same reason and so I guess Jackie, Soan, and I might do something? But it's not really settled yet. In any case, senior finals are two weeks from yesterday and then there are a few days and then it's graduation, and wow I can't believe it's almost over. It felt like I was waiting forever to graduate, and now all of a sudden it's here, and it's kind of crazy. I'm excited, though. I'm really sick of all this school stuff I have left to do.

I've been failing at updating and yet I've had absolutely nothing to do. I only had two full days of school last week due to AP tests and this week I haven't had any yet (although now I'm done with AP tests so that'll change). I've had no homework due to not going to class/teachers being kind and not assigning any.

I saw Spider-Man 3 on Friday with Jackie and Galaxy. That was... not so good. I thought I had lowered my expectations for it, but I didn't expect to not like it for the reasons I did, I guess. I felt like the beginning was boring, the middle was ridiculous (like they were trying to be funny, but went way over the top), and the very end was good. Oh well. If they make a fourth, I'd probably see it. Ah, there are so many sequels coming out, though. The trailers before it started, it was like... one original movie at the beginning, and then it was Harry Potter 5, Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Shrek 3, The Fantastic Four 2. So many sequels. It kind of got ridiculous after awhile.

2 hour until the last episode of Gilmore Girls ever! I'm kind of sad. I started watching that show when its very first episode aired when I was in 6th grade. I don't really know why, I think maybe because it came on before Charmed, but yeah. I've watched it ever since. I think I'm going to do what I did when The O.C. ended and make a post of my favorite moments, but it'll probably be a week or two until I do that since I have a bunch of memory book pages to finish before Monday and I feel like I should finish those first.

I'm in a very... book-reading-mood. I don't know why. I read all of Persuasion by Jane Austen on Sunday night (which I didn't mean to, I just was planning to read a few chapters, and then I got sucked in) and then all of The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger on Sunday and Monday. Reading The Time Traveler's Wife was totally just like reading Jane Eyre last fall all over again in terms of how obsessed I got over it and how I wanted to be reading it every minute and then rushing through it and being sad when it was over. I ordered like 4 books from Dover Publications because they are ridiculously cheap ($9 for four books! Well, ok, plus $5 shipping, but still. $14 is pretty good for two books, even!) but they probably won't come until next week, which makes me sad. I want new reading material now.

AP tests are over for me, anyways. I don't have much to say about them, except that I'm glad they're over, especially since I'm not even sending my scores. They started getting really tired near the end; Physics and Chem felt like I would never finish them. The English one was honestly kind of fun, though. It was kind of cool analzying a passage and poems without stressing out over the grade. And the prompt for the prose was totally exactly what we wrote our last two essays on. Not so much the last one (the prompt was different, but the essay ended up being about the same subject) but definitely the second to last one. I basically just rewrote that essay, except I used one character instead of 3. But yeah, I'm glad those are over.

I'm basically just waiting for school to be over now. 31 days until the last day of senior finals (and then a few days after that until graduation). I really can't wait for it to be over.

I'm actually kind of surprised that Gilmore Girls has been canceled. I mean, I know it wasn't looking good, but I figured it would come back either as a shortened season or with only a few appearances by Alexis Bledel or even a full season with the full cast. I'm mostly okay with it. It's had a long run, and it isn't as good as it was back in its first season. The only thing that sucks is that they didn't make the decision before they planned the final episodes. Oh well. I'm sure it'll still be good.

Anyways, I think I actually will be around a fair amount the next two weeks even with APs. I realized that it's in my best interest to do really badly on my APs. The thing is, the only AP that'll get me out of any requirements is French for the foreign language requirement, and it's really hard to do well on that exam (especially with the terrible teacher I have. We do absolutely no listening in class. I took the listening part of a practice test and got 50% on it. ugh.), and anyways, I kind of want to take French in college and learn it from a teacher who can actually teach (unlike the teacher I've had for three years in high school. ugh. I really hate her). Or maybe even learn a new language (I really want to learn Italian, but they don't offer it. Maybe German? That would be kind of cool). The rest of the classes, I can get credit towards my graduation credits but not to any requirements. So I'm afraid if I get credit for all these APs, then I'll go over the graduation credit limit and have to pay extra to take the classes to fulfill my major/general requirements. So I'm probably not even going to send any of my AP scores, which relieves a lot of stress for me for the next few weeks. No homework because of APs (well mostly), and I don't even have to worry about studying! Awesome.

So over the past few days I've been thinking, and I'm not going to send a letter to Vassar about how much I love the school and I would definitely go there if they took me off the waitlist (they encourage you to do that if it's your #1 school and you're on the waitlist because they want to take people off the waitlist who really want to go there over everywhere else) because it's not really true anymore. I'm really in love with Macalester. I've been looking into it a lot and it's just really awesome. And the benefits of Vassar aren't enough to outweigh what I think I would be losing by not going to Macalester. I'm staying on the waitlist because I already checked the box in pen, but I probably won't go if I'm taken off (although it's highly, highly unlikely I'll get off if I just sit and do nothing to tell them how much I love them), and I'm thinking I'm going to take myself off the waitlist by like the end of May. But yeah, anyways. It was kind of a big decision and I was struggling with it for a few days but now I'm really happy and so excited to go to Macalester. :D

These next few weeks are going to be kind of hell-ish for me, so I probably won't be around much. This week I have a combination of rehearsals for the musical (the Wind Ensemble is playing this medley of Miss Saigon, Les Miserables, and Grease before the musical [which isn't actually a musical, it's a musical revue of the musicals the school has put on in the past 10 years]) which are on Monday, Wednesday, and then the shows Thursday-Saturday, and I have a bunch of extra jazz band stuff, including the OC Fair Jazz Festival Friday and playing for the middle school parents' night on Wednesday. Plus I have a ridiculous amount of stuff due in English this week, most of which I haven't started (I need to do 10 lit journals by Friday. ugh). Then in two weeks is APs, so it's probably a good idea to start studying for those. At least for the French one, because if I get at least a 3, I can fulfill the language requirement at Macalester.

Ever since spring break ended, I've really felt like school should be over. I don't feel like doing any work and it just feels like everything should be done. sigh. At least it's two weeks of school, then two weeks of APs, and then after that only like 3 weeks until graduation. But it still seems like it's taking forever.

omg I GOT INTO TUFTS! I'm so seriously shocked by this. It's more selective than Vassar or Haverford (or ok maybe around the same as Haverford?) and I was expecting a rejection, at best a waitlist. But I got in! Now I don't know what to do. I had kind of dismissed it before, but I think I just did that because I didn't think I'd get in and wanted to soften the blow, you know? But at one time I really loved it. And I've been having trouble with Berkeley vs. Macalester, and Tufts is kind of a compromise between the two. It has the opportunities and prestige that Berkeley has but it also has the smaller size and more liberal arts feel (even though it is a university) of Macalester. Wow. This is going to take some thinking, now.

I also found out I got into UCLA yesterday after I posted, but... once I got into Berkeley I kind of assumed that would be the case (although I did hear of several people today at school who got into Berkeley and not LA, so you never know). I also got rejected by Stanford, but, you know, whatever. I'm pretty much convinced they only accept like 8 students a year and that they just accidentally put the % next to the 8% acceptance rate.

Anyways. Nothing else has been going on other than everyone getting into colleges and everyone talking about colleges all the time (which is pretty apparent from all my posts this week). The only other cool thing that happened this week is that I found out a poem I wrote for English got selected for the little poetry journal thing my English teacher puts out every time we write a poem. (I don't think I explained that very well.) It's not a huge deal, she selects like... 25-ish poems out of her... 100? maybe? students and then puts them all in a booklet and stuff and yeah, anyways, the poem I wrote for that assignment was chosen which was really shocking because I am awful at writing poetry (my first poem was terrible) and it was a bitch to write. But it made me really happy to see that.

So only two colleges left to hear from: Amherst and Brown. Unlikely I'll get into either (2 people from my school already got into Brown, and they don't like taking more than 1-2 from each school), but I guess there's always a chance.

Festival went well. Concert Band, Symphonic Band, and Wind Ensemble (the band I'm in) all got unanimous superiors for stage and superiors in sight reading, which hasn't happened ever in the four years I've gone to this school. Actually, I don't remember even one of the bands getting unanimous superior and superior any year (there was unanimous superior and excellent, and there was superior and superior, but not both). So yeah, pretty good.

Saturday was better than I expected. Waking up at 5:00 AM to go to school for the jazz festival was not my idea of fun. But we played well at the festival, Andrew and I listened to one group after we finished, and then we got to leave at like 10 AM because of the Jackie/Galaxy/Richard party thing while everyone else had to stay until like 7:30ish. So yeah, since I didn't stay, I don't know how we did, but I wouldn't imagine we got any amazing awards or anything. But we played our best, so I'm happy about that.

The party was great fun. It helped that I napped for 2 hours when I got home so I wasn't dead tired when I went to the party. There was a lot of people there and a good amount I didn't know very well, but there was enough that we could break off into our own groups and just hang out with the people we knew better. And Annie was there! God, I haven't seen her in ages. We need to hang out more, Annie. When the pool (where the party was) closed around 10 we went to Richard's house (in much smaller numbers) and hung out there. Oh, and Annie made me a facebook (which is here if you feel like friending me. I don't really know how much I'll use it. I'm thinking I'll use it more once I'm in college. But yeah, anyways). Annie and I left around midnight, and so did a couple of other people. But yeah, it was pretty fun.

The new Office promo for the April 5th episode (which can be found here) is ridiculously awesome. There are small spoilers in the last like... 20 seconds of the promo for the episode so if you're trying to avoid spoilers you might not want to watch it, or at least not watch that part, but the rest is like a summary from Casino Night about Jim/Pam, and it is so kickass. I'm so excited for the episode now. Less than two weeks! :D

Ok, so now I have to catch up on all the work I missed because of festival. I finished three nights of calculus (...which somehow only took me 20 minutes, whereas usually one night takes me about 30-40 minutes. I feel like I missed something) and the chem free response questions that were due Friday. Now all I have is some pages in a French packet, a French essay, memorizing a French skit, chapter 4 of The Sound and the Fury, and studying for the physics test. It seems like a lot, but it's only 2 PM, and I'm impressed I've done anything at all. I probably won't even study for the physics test because it'll most likely be the last test of the quarter and I've done well enough on the other two tests this quarter that I don't need to drop them and I can drop this test instead. Which is good, because I missed two days of notes with Festival and I haven't really absorbed anything else he's taught us on this unit.

Yeah, anyways. Off to do homework now.

gah I've been sucking recently at updating, and I feel obligated to update now, but I don't even have much to say. I don't even have an excuse, because I'm not any busier than usual or anything. It's just nothing exciting has been happening (still waiting for college letters. Two weeks until they start coming!) and most TV is on hiatus except for a few which I don't have anything to say about.

I'm going with a bunch of people to see Faculty Follies on Saturday night. It's this show that's held every 3 years at my school where the teachers put on skits and it should be really hilarious. I didn't get to see it freshman year since I didn't really know what it was until tickets were sold out, so I'm really looking forward to seeing it now. It kind of sucks for juniors and sophomores if it's held during their year, since it's their only chance to see it. I don't really understand why they do it every 3 years. It seems so random. 2 or 4 would make more sense. Oh well.

Next week is both CAHSEE and festival, which basically means no school for me. Well, not entirely, but Tuesday and Wednesday it doesn't start until 10:21 and we still get out at the same time (and it's block, so only 3 classes each day, but shorter than a normal block period). Then Thursday and Friday is festival and I ended up signing up for all day both days (let's hope no tests/essays are scheduled on those days. It sucks making up stuff) so provided that she schedules me at all times, then... no school those days! And even if she doesn't, I can always ask to be a floater and just fill in whatever job needs filling in. I've done that in past years.

Jackie, Galaxy, and Richard are having a joint 18th-birthday party next Saturday which also happens to be the day of the Fullerton Jazz Festival which I have to be at and which we're probably staying at until like 9 PM. But I talked to Mr. Johnson and he said he'd be fine with me leaving early, but he has to run it by Mrs. Bentley. I hope she has no problem with it, because I really want to go and it's pointless for us to stay at the festival for 13 hours (yeah, did I not mention? Our call time is 6:15 AM and we're performing around 8 AM and we'll be done by like 9 AM at the latest, but awards aren't until 8 PM and I don't see us actually leaving and be home until 9 at the latest. God I'm going to hate that morning). I'm glad he was so reasonable about it, though, because I was kind of freaking out. I'm hoping this all works out. It's making me nervous.

New Ugly Betty tonight makes me very happy. So does Supernatural, but I'm not as obsessed with Supernatural, so I'm more looking forward to Ugly Betty.

(This ended up a lot longer than I expected.)