Hello.

I haven't said hi in a while and it's about the end of the year. I figured I'll finish up with some of my favorite things of the year.

Character Portraits

"Lirael" by away-with-the-fae (deviantART)

"Sabriel" by *Iribel (deviantART)

 Food

Deliciousness aka potato/onion/hamburger/carrot/Lawry's over a campfire

New York farmers market

 TV Shows/ Movies

Inspector Lewis (Season Three)

Avatar

 School Activities

The Mouse That Roared

Tennis

 Actresses

Mo Harrington (Rosethorn in CoM)

Clare Holman (Laura Hobson in IL)

Outta State Friends

Chris, aka Harriet Pothead

Kelsey and Jordan

Places

Denver

New York

In State Friends

Claire

Jess

 Generally Good Pictures

Grizzly in Yellowstone

Mel and Cart

Songs

On Thestral We Ride- The Hermione Crookshanks Experience

Don't Unplug Me- All Caps

The Lighting of the Beacons- Howard Shore

Harry and Hermione- Nickolas Hooper

You might have to reload it, but do watch....

Almost Christmas break!

I finished my French and Algebra II finals today. I think I did fairly well, so I'm happy. Masie gave me a white buffalo at the 'secret speechling' thing today. I named it Luna. I find the name completely appropriate, seeing as it's all pale like Luna (Lovegood) and we had the lunar eclipse last night. Good luck fellow test-takers!

Fairness

Life isn't fair. Everyone knows it, yet we all expect life to be fair. We strive for fairness, so the kids in Africa won't be hungry; so animals aren't mistreated; so many things can be or not be. But we're never there.
Fairness is part of utopia. And according to some philosophers (and my English teacher) we cannot have utopia while there is human greed. And as long as there are humans, there will be human greed.
Everyone is guilty of being greedy a few times, whether it's about a little thing like a creme-filled donut or a big thing like millions of dollars.

So accept that we can't have fairness.  Maybe you cry over that fact sometimes, but just remember that there's someone who worse off then you. I end up thinking of the little kids in cancer wards. I met a girl once, when I was in a pediatric hospital. She had to have two IV stands, because she had too many cords and tubes for just one stand.
Today, I got this flyer in the mail for a 6-week camp in Leadville, Colorado. My dad was sitting next to me, and I told him I couldn't do it. I mean, it wasn't anything we would take seriously anyways but... I wouldn't be able to do it. I couldn't bring all of my pump supplies and the camp would be at a really high elevation so my anemia would be a problem. I just sat there, on the sofa and thought that life really sucks sometimes.
It's just so horrid sometimes. There's little kids starving in Africa and people dying from being overweight here. There's people dying from cancer and living with diseases that don't have a cure, that are just genetic or auto-immune. There's animals being put down in shelters and skinned alive and hit by cars right now. There's people who drive drunk and kill kids and parents.
It's a good thing this isn't on paper or the ink would be all smeared with tears. :')
People abandon baby animals in the snow and sometimes it's all so awful.
But then, I suppose, there are the people who hire a taxi to take them home or rescue the animals or raise money for the kids in Africa or donate organs so that someone else can live. There's someone fixing a wrong right now, still striving for the impossible. Striving for fairness.

Spontaneous

I had originally meant to post something different, but I changed my mind. I was on FanFiction and I read this. . . . I think you call it a 'drabble,' because it's short, but I really liked it. Here's the link. If you read it, please review. It's frustrating to see that people are reading your stuff, but never saying anything.
At any rate, today's theme is 'spontaneous.' I have a list of words below, in bold. The sentences are the first thing I think about the word. If you like, do it yourself.

1. Walk
    Patience and anger and together and alone. It can be anything, near or far.
2. Beauty
    There's so many ways, it's not just the surface.
3. Catch
     I saw you! You saw me!
4. Speak
    Common language, we all have it.
5. Lack
    So much.
6. Mine
    Is it ever really? But my affairs are my own, and no one need stick their neb into them.
7. Laugh
    Happiness. Warmth and companionship.
8. While
    Why did it happen that way? While I did this, you. . . .
9. Solstice
    Safety in one's self. The little place in my closet with my pillow and blankets, the place no one knows about.
10. Stay
     Don't leave me!
11. Together
     Is this really what I want?
12. Distraction
      Oh! It's snowing!
13. Fear
      Spiders. Getting in trouble.
14. Love
      Real or not real?
15. Look
      Don't do, just look and learn.
16. Begin
      How many times must we, before we get it right?
17. Second
      First place loser.
18. Color
      Yellow. Rainbows. People. Life.
19. Candy
      Sweet. Why can't everything just be like a butterscotch? Sweet and long-lasting?
20. Nothing
      Dark. But needed.
21. Familiar
      -songs play softly on the radio. Something I know, not a variable.
22. Show
      The truth. But it's cloaked in lies.
23. Day
      Another one.
24. Ask
      The right thing. It's so easy to say the wrong thing.
25. Think
      Be yourself. People think they can control everything you do. They're wrong. Your mind is free.
26. Yours
       My friendship.
27. Friend
      I trust you not to hurt me and to love me and cry with me and make me smile and let me lean on you and to let me do the same for you.
28. Complicated 
      Everything is. Especially people. They are the wild variables in life that you can't control. You don't know if they equal x or q or h or k or anything.
29. Hurt
      It's so easy to do but hard to fix. Forgive but never forget. That is what happens. Remember that.
30. Song
      Everything is a song. There is music in everything and everyone and you can find it. No one is without song. We all have a voice, in some form.
31. Youth
       -is not eternal, despite Cher's efforts, haha. We all want it. We all want to look youthful. But youth, childhood, innocence, is taken away and lost far too soon.
32. Alone
      We all need to be alone, sometimes. We need our alone-time. But we can't stay alone. We are forever together.
33. Full
       -of complications. And joy and sorrow and laughter and tears. That is life. It is full.
34. Simplicity
       I wish we could all live this way. We don't need curtains and posters and make-up and fast-food and cars and complications. But we have them, whether we want them or not.
35. Heart
       It's so fragile and strong at the same time. Our hearts are so tender, especially to the people we love. But we have the heart to live and struggle on through our world.
36. Courage
       We all have some of it. It takes courage to stand up to our enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to our friends. -JK Rowling. Even if we don't believe we have any courage, it takes courage to say that. We all have great courage, somewhere.
37. Live
      -life to the fullest. Make it colorful and vivid and as good as you can.
38. Anger 
      Try not to take it out on the people you love. Some people really make me angry and I absolutely hate them. I suppose it's one of those forgive but not forget things. . . but I haven't really forgiven.

Okay. It's now quite a while later than when I started, but I'm still feeling the spontaneous thing. This time, I'll do the alphabet. One quote, from a book or movie or person, for each letter. If you can't remember who said it (or if anyone actually did) that's fine; just put down some little bit of wisdom or something.

A- An opportunity is like a ripe apple. You need to pluck it.

B- Be yourself.

C-
D- It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. -Albus Dumbledore; Harry Potter

E-
F- "This really isn't fair." "We really couldn't care." -Odette, Derek, and Bromley; "The Swan Princess"

G-
H-
I- 
J-
K-
L-
M- "There has to be something we can do." "We're mages. We do what we can, but some problems are too big to fix." "Then I wish I weren't a mage. What good is magic, if you can't use it to help people?" -Sandry and Lark, Daja's Book
     
N- Not all who wander are lost. -JRR Tolkien

O-
P-
Q-
R- I'd rather rescue myself. -The Cheetah Girls; "Cinderella"

S- Much suspected of me, nothing proved can be. -Elizabeth Tudor

T-
U-
V-
W- Weeding! It's summer, isn't it? So it's always weeding! -Rosethorn; Briar's Book

X-
Y-
Z- 

I got distracted. But you can see what there is. ヅ 

Negativity

I suppose every once in a while, you have to just vent about how everything is going all wrong and everyone hates you, and all your grades are F's. No one can truly stay sane without talking to people.
Sometimes, everything just seems to pile up. I think I really pushed a lot of stuff back for NaNo, which wasn't the best idea. I'm really behind on memorizing things for speech and I haven't even started my online history class (!) but I suppose it's not going too badly. Just for the sake of my sanity, I'm just going to writ out my to-do list. Sorry.
1. Go over Antony's speech for English
2. Work on memorizing Junie script for Speech
3. Go over poetry for Speech
4. Remember to get a seat next to Rachael on the bus
5. Do leadership homework
6. Work on lyrical analysis paper
7. Look up how to make a toga, remember to bring sandals
8. Keep reading America textbook
9. Remember CMS dance on Friday (4:45)
10. Figure out a present for Secret Speechling
11. Figure out white elephant thing for StuCo
12. Why not make it a round dozen? Relax.

This is a cool painting I saw. It features a whole load of Shakespearean people.

State Drama- Best Video Ever

It was a lot of fun. I really liked it. I think we all kinda failed, ranking-wise, but we had fun at it. Here's a great video.

Nev's make-up on James

Drama Princess

I just got back from state Drama and it was pretty fun. Like I said earlier, we had a great cast and we all got along really well. Everyone was really supportive. We had a new director, Whitney, and she's really nice. She is tiny, reminiscent of Tinkerbell, and she wears a bright orange peacoat. I'll tell you my favorite stories here.
1. Duwop jokes. A duwop is a long, thin braid on a person with short hair. Our techie, Sharon, has a infamous duwop. We actually found another lady with a duwop at state and a play entitled 'duwop wed widing hood.'
2. The other night, our group went to watch 'You Can't Take It With You' which was put on by the college. It was really crowded at the end, so we kinda split into two groups. My friends and I were walking through the back hallways of the proscenium building to get to our team's little 'camp' and it was really dark. The end of the corridor leading to the camp was really dark and it had a curtain and a bright red exit sign over the door. Someone, Mel, I think said it was kinda creepy, so I started singing the Jaws music. And then the curtain flew back and someone was standing there! We screamed soo loud. I think Anna and I were the loudest through. We full-out screamed bloody murder. A guy actually looked out of the guys' dressing room to see what was happening. It was just Tyler, but my legs were shaking so hard. It was pretty funny.
3. The cafeteria food was really good. They served the best macaroni and cheese I think I've ever eaten. Our hotel had amazing cream cheese muffins. The chocolate ones weren't bad either....
4. Last night, we got back to our hotel at about 10:30. We decided to get pizza. It arrived around 11 and we had to be in our rooms by 11:30. It was really fun. We had cheese sticks and cheese pizza and canadian bacon pizza. Trevor spilled garlic sauce all over the table; it was pretty funny. We played 'Never Ever Have I Ever' for a while then went up to our rooms at 11:29. We were all sneaking down the hall, because we knew Sharon was probably watching through her peephole. Then Bailey stomped really loudly and we all ran away. :D
5. Sharon has a bus driver license.
6. I saw JJ at state and he did a costume design of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Did anyone ever make a dramatic adaptation of it? I did Camelot. It was fun.
7. We had a pillow fight on the bus ride home and that was cool. We stopped for gas in Meeteetsee and I got off the bus and walked around it. Melinda was sitting with her back against the window and I knocked on it. She shrieked so loud I could hear it through the window. I got back on the bus and she called me a trickster or something, haha.
8. I found this old cartoon I used to watch called Poochie. It was neat to find it for real. Go here to see it.

C'est decembre

It's Deeee-cemmmm-berrrrrrrr!!!! Haha! NaNo is over and I now have a few moments of spare time. I'm in Casper right now, at State Drama. It was a total OMG-freakout-helpme day, but in the end it was good. I had a lot of fun. Latinas, tittles, heels, and ninjas yeah!