Senior year comes to a close

Today was my last full day of high school. I still have to take finals on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I only have to go in for half a day. It's pretty surreal, especially since all of the underclassmen are still in school. It was very bittersweet at school today; while we were all so excited to leave, it was still sad that we are in our last days of high school. At least that's how I felt about it.

The seniors were planning to walk out of class 15 minutes before the bell and parade around the halls shouting and cheering. Instead, the principal gave us all a nice little surprise by coming on the intercom 35 minutes before the bell and dismissing all of the seniors. Since I don't have a car or license, I still would have had to wait the half hour until school was officially was out so I could ride the bus home. I definitely wasn't going to do that, so I went and found my friends Amanda, Simon and Cassie, figuring we could hang out or something. We planned on going to Dunkin' Donuts to get strawberry Coolattas, so we all went to the parking lot. Amanda and I got into Cassie's car and waited for her to say goodbye to Simon since he had to go to work. 25 minutes later we were still waiting them to finish doing the things that couples do that should really not be seen by anyone else. At this point Amanda and I were getting anxious, so Amanda, who also only has her driver's permit, hopped into the drivers seat and drove Cassie's car in a big circle in the parking lot, hoping that she would realize that we were ready to leave. While she did realize this, she wasn't ready to leave herself. So, we got into Simon's car and drove to Dunkin' Donuts ourselves. This is probably the most illegal thing I've ever done, since neither Amanda nor I have our licenses and because I'm still considered a minor since I'm not 18 yet. This just made it more fun, especially since I was blaring Nine Inch Nails and freaking out all of the old people downtown by singing "I wanna fuck you like an animal" at the top of my lungs. When we got back, Cassie was finally ready to leave so she drove Amanda and I back to my house.

I had to mail a package of two CDs that I recently sold on eBay so Amanda and I walked down to the Post Office. While we were walking there, some guy in a truck whistled at me and then turned around to look at me while he passed. That was pretty cool, but I think it was only because I happened to be wearing a short skirt. Anyway, I mailed the package and then I bought a few things at the bead store so I can make a necklace this weekend when I'm bored. After Amanda's dad picked her up at 5 when we got back to my house, I fell asleep on the couch until 9 because I've only gotten a total of 17 hours of sleep since Monday night.

Tomorrow morning at around 7 my dad and I are leaving for our summer house in Maine. I will be there for the whole weekend. I'm working at the gift shop tomorrow at 3 in the afternoon, which I'm actually really excited about because I like working there and it kind of signifies the beginning of summer. Plus there are a bunch of cute guys that work at the restaurant and surf shop next door, so that's always a plus.

Anyway, I have to go finish packing for the weekend. I will blog again within a few days of returning home, probably. Adios!

A decent senior prom

It's one in the morning and I'm still not very tired because I've only been awake for 10 1/2 hours. Yep, I woke up at 2:30 in the afternoon. That's thirteen hours of sleep, which I'm certain is a personal record. Last night was prom night, so I think that explains why I was so tired. Overall, prom was alright. I ended up being a bit of a wallflower, which actually doesn't usually happen. I only danced a few times during the last hour of prom. The problem is I'm really picky with the songs I will dance to: no reggaeton, no really awful rap songs, no songs that tell me what to do (i.e. the Electric Slide, Cotton-Eyed Joe, the Cha Cha Slide, and so on and so forth), and no slow songs (simply because I don't have anyone to dance with during these). This leaves very few songs that I actually will dance to, given that school dances are always hip-hop——dominated.

On top of this, I wasn't in the greatest of moods, which I had been expecting long before prom was even in the near future. It's simply because I didn't have a date. At homecoming I was able to get away with not having a date because it didn't really matter, but at prom it does matter. Everyone automatically assumes that if you go to prom, you have a date. The question is, "Who are you going with?" and not, "Do you have a date?" Two underclassmen asked me who I was going to prom with and when I told them I didn't have a date, they looked at me like I was crazy. At prom, the couples stayed together the whole time. While at the dinner table, the couples would talk between themselves and I was left having to butt into their conversations. They were all good about it, mind you, but I felt awkward. And of course I felt awful having to sit there alone at the table while the couples got up to slow dance. I'm no stranger to this feeling, though. My history of school dance dates is rather unfortunate.

The highlight of my prom night happened before we even entered the hotel. TJ pulled up to the entrance of the hotel in his Sunfire convertible (we arrived at prom in style; that is, until I ruined the moment by doing the following...) to drop Morgan and I off since it was pouring rain out. He stopped parallel to a car full of old ladies who admired me as I gracefully climbed out of the backseat, only to catch the heel of my shoe on what I assume to have been the seatbelt and fall flat on my face, skinning my knee in the process. What a way to make an entrance. I got up laughing hysterically, and it took me a while to stop. Luckily I was wearing a short dress, otherwise I probably would have torn a hole at the knee. My dress did fall right at my knee, though, so a bit of blood stained the hem before I was able to get to a bathroom to wipe it off. Wow, I am laughing right now just thinking about it. That's definitely something I'm going to remember.

Overall prom was decent. I didn't get to spend as much time with my friends as I would have liked since they were all mostly occupied with their dates, but I had a good time nonetheless.

Check out this article that I was interviewed for about college debt. I had an internship through my high school at Nashoba Publishing, a company that publishes several small town newspapers in my area. The reporter asked me one day if he could interview me for the story and I obliged. There was a picture of me in the paper that went along with the article but it isn't displayed on the site, which is unfortunate because it was actually a pretty good picture. It's kind of cool because not many people can say that they've been interviewed for a newspaper article before, even if it is just for a small weekly newspaper.

Anyway, I'm going to go try to go to bed now, even though I've still only been awake for 11 1/2 hours. By the way, even though it's already 2 a.m. Sunday morning, I've changed the date and time to 11:59 p.m. on Saturday since it's still Saturday to me because I haven't gone to sleep yet. Adios.

Songs from the Black Hole & Rivers Cuomo

Something a little fishy has been going on with Weezer lately. Namely, Rivers Cuomo. A few weeks ago I checked his MySpace blog, as I usually do, and his most recent post at that time featured a tracklisting of Weezer's currently unreleased album Songs from the Black Hole (this post has since been deleted as well as all of his posts before that, which is a shame because they provided a very candid insight into his life). Before reading this post, I had never heard of Songs from the Black Hole before, so I decided to do some research. It turns out that Rivers began recording this album in 8-track form in 1994 after The Blue Album. It was never finished, but some songs intended for SFTBH were included on Pinkerton instead. The other songs remain unreleased, but some can be heard on the unofficial SFTBH website. They are actually rather good, and I would love to see the album released sometime in the near future.

This brings me back to my original point. Due to the recent activity surrounding SFTBH, I suspect that maybe Weezer is planning on releasing it sometime soon. Of course, this is only speculation. Rivers said that he would like to release the SFTBH songs but he is unable to because Geffen alone has the rights to his music. Perhaps this has changed? I find it unlikely, but I still have hope.

In the meantime, Rivers has been posting the sheet music and lyrics for some of the SFTBH songs on his website. My theory is that he's trying to keep his fans somewhat satisfied by posting sheet music because he feels bad that he can't legally release anything from SFTBH... or something like that. I mean, I would feel pretty bad too if there was an online petition with 1,000+ signatures in support of releasing my currently unreleased and highly desired album while I couldn't do anything about it, legally.

There's something else weird that I noticed. Perhaps it's nothing, but I find it hard to believe that Rivers would do something like this just for the hell of it, especially since he's an English major. In his latest post at his blog (keep in mind it may not be there a few days from now, since lately he's been in the habit of editing his posts and rewriting them completely as opposed to creating a brand new post) he has quite a few spelling mistakes, which I assume to be deliberate. I've noticed a trend of replacing some "a"s and "e"s with "i"s. See here:

I think the three male charicters were supposed to reprisent differint parts of my personality: i.e., the asceticism of Jonis vs. the party hearty aesthetic of Wuan and Dondo (Don Juan, get it?). The two main female charicters reprisented the two extremes in the types of women I was attracted to: Maria (rock chick) and . . . I can't remember the other girl's name but she was the good girl. I guess I've bin into irreconcilible dichotomies for a long time. Our robot "M1" was to be played by Karl!

This is really puzzling. Perhaps I'm overanalyzing it, but I feel like there has to be some reason as to why he would do this. Also, earlier in the same entry, he spelled "songs" like "sawngs". Uh... what?

I have heard rumors that Make Believe, Weezer's latest album, is also their last. I really hope this isn't true. Even if they don't record a whole new album, I'll still definitely be satisfied if they release SFTBH. Actually, what I want most is for them to go on tour again. I'm really angry that I missed their tour last fall. I can easily say that attending a Weezer concert would be one of the best experiences of my life (as would attending a Pearl Jam concert, but unfortunately I'm missing them, too; both of them are next week), and I hope that all of my opportunities for that haven't passed yet. I'm not sure of the likelihood of that happening though, since Rivers will be married in a matter of days, and musicians often retire once they get married. Plus, Weezer has been around for 14 years. I have a feeling they're all going to start settling down.

It's always sad when a really good band retires. It's a huge disappointment because you kind of assume (or hope, at least) that they'll keep making new albums forever. It's like that with Weezer. They've been around for so long and they're still so good that I can't really imagine them retiring. It's going to be a sad day for music when Weezer finally retires. I hope they'll still be around for a while, but in reality it's probably sooner than any of us Weezer fans can bear.

RAIN!

I have never witnessed so much rain in my life, at least that I can remember. It has been raining almost non-stop for nearly two weeks now, and it's not supposed to stop until this weekend. It's rained so much in Massachusetts that quite a few schools were forced to close. Look at the flood pictures here and here. It's insane. Thankfully my area wasn't hit nearly this hard. We haven't had any flooding thus far, as far as I know, though I'm not ruling it out since we still have several days of rain left. Our basement is prone to flooding; it's flooded before over only one night of rain so frankly I'm surprised it hasn't flooded yet.

This past Friday was my senior class trip to Six Flags New England. Of course I was psyched because I had been dying to ride some rollercoasters and hang out with my friends. We planned to arrive at the park at 10 a.m. and stay until 4, which would give us plenty of time to ride everything that we wanted to... but of course we didn't plan on the weather ruining our plans. It was already raining pretty hard when we got there but we were still optimistic. We rode the Cyclone and were completely drenched as a result. This was where our optimism began to wane. We were wet and cold, but were still in a good enough mood for more rides, so we trekked all the way to the other side of the park, only to find the Mind Eraser and the Batman were closed due to the weather, along with many of the other rides. After we ate lunch we were so soaked and cold that we decided we couldn't last any longer in the clothes that we were in. We, along with half of the other people in the park, were in the stores buying dry shirts, pants, sweatshirts, etc. I bought a big comfy pair of man pants and returned to our bus in the parking lot to change. There wasn't one person on the trip that was miserable because of the weather, so we left two hours early. It was a really disappointing trip.

Prom is this Friday. Currently I'm still trying to work out my plans for before and after, and I'm beginning to think that it's a lot more stress than it's worth. It's bad enough that I don't have a date. Anyway, I need to avoid trailing off into something depressing. Graduation is in 18 days. It's going to go by really fast because I'm going to be really busy for the next few weeks until then. There's prom this weekend, and then next weekend I'm going up to Maine and I'll be working the whole time (which I'm actually really looking forward to). The weekend after that I will no longer be in high school and I will be attending graduation parties, including my own on that Sunday. I can't believe how fast this is all going!

I came across this blog the other day. I'm hoping it's some kind of sick joke but I don't think that's the case at all. I'm really disgusted by his post that compares the current Iraq War casualties to those of other American wars in the past. This "Big Brother" states that the Iraq War is, apparently, "a war we can afford." This comment really drives me over the edge. It shows a complete and utter disregard for the value of human life (though I suppose that's what war is, anyway). Comparing the deaths of one war to another does absolutely nothing. Each war is completely different, completely different circumstances with different causes and results. And frankly, it is not "affordable" to lose even one life, American or not. I don't understand how people like President Bush fail to see the importance of each and every human life.

Anyway, I should stop until I get too carried away. If any of you have been wondering why I haven't been posting as frequently as usual, I blame it on Family Guy. Ever since I found this genius website, I've been devoting several hours of my day just to watching Family Guy episodes. Time well spent, I think. After I finish all of these episodes I think I'm going to move on to some of the other shows and the music videos, too.

The season finale of Grey's Anatomy will be on soon, so I'm going to go get settled in front of the TV in time for it. Adios.

White water rafting weekend

I am still tired from my class trip this weekend, even two days after I returned home. I didn't sleep much at all, so with that on top of the little sleep I get during the week anyway, I'm more tired than usual right now. Even so, it's worth it - for the most part. I had a pretty good time, which I'll recap for you below:

We left school at around 12:30 Friday afternoon and arrived a lot earlier than I expected (around 4) at the hotel. Amanda, Morgan, Cassie and I brought our things up to our room and then went downstairs to scope out the pool. Already half of the guys on the trip were in the pool and the rest of the girls were on their way down behind us, so we decided it would be best to wait to go swimming until later when every cubic inch of the pool wasn't filled with some part of our classmates' bodies. Instead we left the hotel and ate dinner at an Asian buffet down the street (the picture at left shows our rafting group at the buffet; from left: Simon, Cassie, Chris, Nick, Morgan, myself and Amanda behind the camera) where I had possibly the worst tasting pistachio ice cream I have ever had.

Anyway, upon our return to the hotel we decided it was time to go swimming. We put on our itty bitty bathing suits (honestly, mine wouldn't be itty bitty if I could help it, but unfortunately with my body shape I bust out of any and every bathing suit there is) and went downstairs again to the pool. Everyone else was still out eating dinner around the town so the pool was completely empty, thankfully. I hadn't worn a bathing suit in public in about a year, so luckily I had enough time to get used to being nearly naked in front of people before some of our other classmates began trickling in. We must have been swimming for three or even four hours, and I was in the pool for the entire time save my three quick trips to the bathroom. We were all quite pruney when we returned to the hotel room at 10:45. The picture at the right is of my friend Cassie and I.

After a few hours of lounging on beds with friends and boys (why is it that lately whenever I sleep over somewhere, I seem to end up doing this?) and a long discussion about girlie things that are too racy to put here [sex], we finally dozed off at 1:30, only to be awoken a mere five hours later so we could get ready for our white water rafting adventure. We arrived at the headquarters at 8, where they had prepared for us a large breakfast. After our meal we put on our entire wet suit outfit, complete with "booties". This was an interesting experience. Over our bathing suits we wore a two-piece wet suit (an overall sort of thing and a jacket type thing), a windbreaker, gloves, wet suit booties, and a helmet. Needless to say it took a while to pull all of these things on ourselves. Once we were finally all dressed, we boarded the bus that would take us to the river. It was quite hot and uncomfortable in the wet suits, but I would be thankful for them later because the water was only 40°.

Finally we arrived at the river, dragged our rafts down to the shore, hopped in and were off. It was much easier and less tiring to paddle than I expected (though my arms were a little sore the next morning). We were met with some rapids rather quickly and it wasn't too long before we were all wet. I had been worried that I was going to fall out of the boat, but I think it's a lot easier to stay in the boat than it appears, as long as you wedge your foot inside. It was really fun; much like a water rollercoaster. It makes those theme park rapids rides look ridiculously tame. Anyway, we were all still hot even after being splashed countless times by the rapids, so our guide let us jump in for a little swim. It was shockingly cold at first, even with our wet suits on, but very refreshing. Unfortunately after that I wasn't able to become warm again.

After about an hour of rapids there was another hour or so of just flat, calm water. After a while of floating along I was pretty bored and ready to go back and change into warm clothes. Eventually we returned to the headquarters again where we were served a meal of steak, various salads, and some kind of really good bread. We watched a slideshow of pictures from our trip (which we should be getting sometime soon, and I will probably post them here when I do). We went back to the hotel, and... this is where the interesting part begins.

The problem with our class trip is that we were way up in Maine in the middle of nowhere, where there is absolutely nothing to do. Some people went bowling (the main attraction of Waterville) and some swam in the pool downstairs, but we were too tired to either so we just ordered two pizzas and some breadsticks and hung out in our room.

By this time we were all incredibly tired from the little sleep we got the night before and from being tossed around in 40° water all day. We bought a ton of energy drinks so we could stay awake until our curfew at 1 a.m. At first I questioned why it said "Adult Energy Drink" at the front of the bottle; now I understand. These drinks are not to be abused. Everyone was guzzling them down and acting crazy, and after the high we suddenly crashed. Badly. Literally everyone who had been drinking that stuff was in an awful, depressed mood. I was extremely irritable and angry at everyone, and I was not unique. There was quite a bit of drama as a result. We finally calmed down just enough to settle in bed to watch TV. The combination of my complete exhaustion and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (a sick movie that I absolutely loathe and despise) put me to sleep rather quickly.

I woke up at 8:30 the next morning still grumpy from the night before so I took a shower and packed all of my things. We left at 10 and I slept the entire ride home while listening to the melodious sounds of Weezer. We arrived back at the school at 1:30 and I went straight home.

Despite my crappy Saturday night, I still had a lot of fun last weekend. It was great hanging out with my friends and I got to get to know a few people better. The white water rafting was good too, of course. I'm going to attempt to catch up on my sleep tonight but I think we all know by now how likely that is. Adios.

Quick update before class trip

Because I haven't updated in one week and because I won't be updating again for at least the next three days, I figured I might as well write a quick, short post to update those of you that actually take the time to read this. I’m at school right now, and so far this week this is really the only time I’ve had available to blog. I have been incredibly busy, what with all of the papers due this week. I take two college courses through my high school, so I had finals this week and a paper in each class – one of which had to be 10-15 pages long (though mine barely broke 9). In addition I had a paper due in my World Literature course, and a rough draft for my paper in my Senior Project. For a short description, in Senior Project you get an internship in the area which you go to for one class period two days a week. At the end of the semester you are required to write a lengthy paper and perform a huge presentation in front of a panel of important faculty members.

Normally I would just blog this weekend, but I won’t have access to a computer. At noon today I am leaving for my class trip to Waterville, Maine (basically in the middle of nowhere) for white water rafting. Not your typical class trip. I’m not really excited for the white water rafting part (in fact, a few years ago I vowed never to go white water rafting after I heard several horror stories), but what I am excited for is hanging out with my friends (don’t worry, I will spare you the whole cliché of how this is one of our last times together to hang out as a group, and I love them all so very much, blah, blah, blah… you’ve heard it all before). It takes about five hours to get there, so from noon to 5 my classmates and myself will all be packed on a charter bus. This should be interesting. I brought my old school GameBoy Color so I can reconnect with my childhood and play Zelda: Link’s Awakening (good stuff, really) white attempting to drown out the sounds of the annoying, giggling girls behind me with Robert Plant moaning into my ears from my headphones. Yeah, I’ve been on plenty of these class field trips to know what to expect.

Anyway, the bell is just about to ring so I will sign off. I expect to have a lot more time to blog next week so I will certainly update everyone probably not after I get home on Sunday because I will be so tired but more likely on Monday after school. Ciao!

The general theme for today seems to be music (Part III)

I have been severely obsessed with Voxtrot lately. Last night I listened to Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives; The Start of Something; and Raised by Wolves at least five times in a row. I highly recommend indulging in these free mp3s:

Voxtrot - Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives
Voxtrot - The Start of Something

I really don't know what it is about them that makes them so appealing. Listen to those files and maybe you can help me figure it out.

I'm really frustrated that I didn't get to go to their show in Wellesley two weeks ago. It was pretty much the only all ages show in the area that I was remotely interested in. There isn't really much to choose from with all ages shows; they're all 18 or 21+, such as the 18+ Citizen Cope show my friend went to the other night, but of course I couldn't go because I'm five months too young. I couldn't go to the Voxtrot show because it was a school night and there was no way I'd be able to get all the way out to Wellesley, let alone get home in time. Oh well, I'm sure they'll come to my area again sometime within the next year as they are quickly gaining popularity in the indie community.

In the meantime I have been saving up money in my PayPal account, mainly by selling old clothes and other items on eBay, so I can buy a Voxtrot tee and a copy of their EP from their website. Go bid on some of my items, it's a worthy cause!

Moving on to my next musical obsession: Wolfmother. Their self-titled album is coming out this Tuesday, March 2 (the same day as the new Pearl Jam album, also self-titled), and I am extremely excited. I've already heard all of the songs on it one way or another, three of which were on the Dimensions EP that I just couldn't resist buying, but I still can't wait to own a hard copy of the full album (the problem is scraping up enough money to do so).
[photo credit]

All thirteen tracks are available to listen to on their MySpace, and I would highly recommend doing so. Only ten of the tracks are visible, but if you click on the 10th (Witchcraft [which, may I add, is an excellent song - one of the few, perhaps the only, rock song I've heard that utilizes a flute exceptionally]) and press the "next track" button, you'll be able to access the last three tracks. You don't want to miss them, because they're some of the best songs on the whole album: Tales, Love Train, and Vagabond. Hmm, apparently it's been fixed so twelve of the tracks are now showing... but they've removed Love Train! That's incredibly frustrating because that's my favorite song on the whole album (next to Woman). Oh well, you can download it for free here anyway:

Wolfmother - Love Train

Also, this week Dimension is iTunes Single of the Week, which means you can get it free - yes, free - on iTunes, so you better get on that if you know what's good for you.

Wolfmother is coming to the Paradise in Boston on May 31st, and guess what? It's 18+. I can't go. Boston venues just really want to keep me from having fun, don't they? Hopefully they will come back again soon, either when I'm 18 (which isn't too far from now) or with an all ages show (doubtful). They are gaining popularity rather quickly and I think it's only a matter of time until they blow up and gain Strokes status. The days of cheap shows at small, intimate venues are numbered for Wolfmother, which, although excellent for the band's success, is kind of sucky for the fans because this is the best time to see them; that is, when they're still playing at venues where you can stand up against the wall and they're still only a mere thirty feet away.

This blog is going to become dangerously long if I don't end it right here - otherwise I will just continue to ramble on senselessly about other random bands that I have it hard for (yes, that was indeed an inappropriate sexual reference). On that note, adieu!