islanded in a stream of stars

Awkward moments of the day:
1. Accidentally catching my hallmate making out with some dude with the door open. Floorcest seems to be contagious.
2. Going into the wrong classroom; apparently I'm not taking Jewish-American studies.
3. Mistaking two seniors for freshmen.

But on the bright side, I haven't been attacked by any sorority girls today.

And just for the heck of it, may I present to you a poll.

[Poll #802174]

Someone randomly left a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade by our mailbox. I guess it's less sketchy than having to scrape the remains of watermelon rinds that have bee rolled down the hill and then run over by unwitting cars, but it's still a bit odd. Then again, I can't imagine why anyone would be silly enough to bike down the street sober as it's a pretty steep angle.

Two random questions:

1. Should one be insulted or feel honored to be subject to being TP'd (having one's house wrapped around with toilet tissue paper? My mother and I were randomly debating about this; I'm of the "that's just insulting/rude school" while she holds the opposite opinion.

2. What exactly is the musical term for when there are multiple melody lines in a musical number that combine into a sort of jigsaw puzzle harmony? It's like when you have each group sing its melody individually and then you start having them intersect along the lines of "One Day More" from Les Miz or "Tonight" from West Side Story or that act of Rigaletto whose name I can't quite remember or describe. It's more precise than "polyphony" and applies more to opera and/or musicals.

I have no idea why this popped into my head, but it did:

If you had to choose, would you rather read Charlotte Brönte with a touch of Jane Austen or Jane Austen with a touch of Charlotte Brönte?

(Did I steal that question from Little Women? I could swear I remember reading of this question somewhere before.)

Edit: I'll confess, I'm rooting for Charlotte with just a bit of Austen's wit

You know you haven't been studying for your AP Euro exam when you start laughing at the word "Quadripartite" (refering the 4-way division of Berlin) really loudly. And I better shut up before I get really scary and my brain starts leaking all of this knowledge out before the test.

I know I brought this upon myself, gah!

I don't know how to end this entry elegantly, so I'll disobey journalistic style and end with a quotation:

Context: I'm helping some juniors study for AP US History:
Me: I just love McCarthyism.
Friend: What?!
Me: They had the best anti-communist slogans! Are there Bolsheviks breeding in YOUR bathroom?

Am I always this flippant? Come to think of it, don't answer that last question.

Quadripartite really is a funny word!

Only in my family would a wedding invitation:

a) be received 5 days after the actual wedding
b) have too much postage
c) have our last name spelled incorrectly
d) have creepy gold leaf anime cartoons on it
e) be claimed as the reason why my grandmother is currently on an operating table for a broken foot

Can you guess why we have so few family reunions nowadays?

Oh, and happy International Workers' Day!

I can't possibly imagine why people at the gym give me strange looks when I do my Euro history reading while running on the treadmill. Wouldn't it be really boring to stare at the walls the whole time while sweating it out?

The college decision issue is much trickier than I initially bargained for, but I'm hoping to send in my enrollment forms by Monday. I'm having some major committment issues at the moment.

( And a few promised On Her Majesty's Secret Service screencaps for dancing_avenger )

Ingredients for an Alias episode:

Intertwining storylines: check
Random conspiracies: check (I don't know if I've ever publicly shared my dishwashing gloves theory, have I?)
Journalists checking out a vague sort of conspiracy theory: check, if you loosely define "conspiracy"
Having to work on multiple missions/assignments all at once for fear of being killed/tortured by superiors: check. Newspaper editors behind schedule are SCARY.
Occasionally freaky family dynamics: half a check?
Having issues balancing public and private lives: check
Surveillance measures: half a check? There was a random bunch of people around the shared driveway with my neighbors' house taking pictures of said house for reasons unknown, and said house is right across from mine. I personally suspect it has to do with the whole armed robbery thing, and that these spectators are morbidly curious neighbors who have come to feast upon misfortune.
Outrageous disguises complete with wigs: I'll have to work on that one

My life is bearing a really eerie resemblance.

I've felt a little like that Mad TV spoof of Alias-where does Sydney Bristow get all of that time to go to grad school, save the world but actually work for the opposition, actually save the world while having to disguise these heroic activities from the opposition, keep her best friend from discovering the opposition as well as help open up her roommate's restaurant? I need those time management skills! I've been working on at least four different articles for two different publications in a mad process of interviewing, writing, rewriting and editing this afternoon and the distinctions between all of the stories are starting to get really blurry. I have seriously earned newfound respect for professional journalists whose word counts are longer than 600 words and have to do more research for their stories on just as short deadlines. I haven't even finished layout for my own paper yet because InDesign wouldn't open on the first two computers I was working on and then claimed that Times New Roman as a font didn't exist and started highlighting all of the text boxes in this awful shade of salmon pink.

I carried on my longest interview ever with the school counselor for my eating disorders article; as I spent an hour instead of twenty minutes talking to her with eyepiece_simile accompanying me, I missed an appointment. Time flies when you're talking about misperceptions of bulemia. It was a very informative interview, certainly, but I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to incorporate all of these perspectives I'm getting in 800 words when I can think of even more people I should to talk to. My story angle keeps on making multiple revolutions around the unit circle.

That was a bad attempt at a math joke. I'll shut up now.

( The rest of this entry dissolves into self-centered tripe; read with caution )

Robotics=major awesomeness

As just about everyone seems to know by now, we're going to FIRST Nationals in Atlanta! While I was a lazy slacker (the only vaguely useful purpose I served during the competition was to cheer our team on obnoxiously), I can honestly say that the rest of the team so deserved the Engineering Inspiration award. You guys rock. The saftey runnerup and entrepreneurship awards were a little more sketchy, but perhaps that's a tribute to our collective BS skills.

I've still kept the scout report sheets that Seana and I came up with just in case we want to keep tabs on the other SVR teams that will be going to Atlanta if anyone wants them.

And I can honestly say I haven't been to a wilder celebration party-the couch pile was priceless. Then again, my idea of a party generally involves intense board game playing and a lot of sugar.

Amongst other random things that have happened lately, my mother just gave me a very good argument about why I am a closet WASP and ought to move to Boston. The only minor flaw is that I'm Asian but I suppose we could overlook that.

I thought I heard my mother listening to a female Russian-accented televangelist just a few minutes ago. She (the television evangelist, not my mother) was speaking in that sort of forceful I-really-want-to-save-your-soul-and-open-your-heart-to-Christ-by-having-you-donate-your-life-savings-to-me sort of way.

And when I turned around to see what was going, I realized that said TV personality was actually urging viewers about the dangers of not exfoliating one's skin on a daily basis. And she was warning us that AHA skincare cleaners are the devil.

What scared me most was that my mother was taking detailed notes.

If skin care is the religion of today, I think I need a time machine.

AAH! I have roughly half an hour before I must go home, and I have barely 1.5 pages of my play written!

And my evil world domination organization doesn't have a name yet!!!

Why can't I remember any of my then-brilliant ideas that I came up with at 2 or 6 in this morning?!

Edit: as of 10:47 tonight I still have some obvious missing chunks in the script, and I need to leave now. How am I going to finish this thing?!?!