Two things that I've learned so far regarding ASP: Nametags and fruit breaks are Serious Business.

I really like my classes. Ancient Greece is a lot of fun; right now we're doing an overview on the gods and creation, along with learning the Greek alphabet. I can transliterate things from Greek to English now. Our intern is really big into languages as far as I can tell, so we're going to be doing a bit of learning the language as well, which is good for me the language lover. Today we were talking about exciting things such as how Kronos castrated Ouranos with a sickle, and how Freud's theories relate to mythology (which includes how apparently every woman wants a penis and men are afraid of women because of "vagina denta" which means vagina with teeth. Oh, the images there.)

My other class is Writing Workshop. in which we prepare to do lots of personal writing (to have stuff prepared for writing college application essays). We had to read an article last night and discuss the argument that the writer makes, so I totally put on my AP English hat and was all RHETORICAL ANALYSIS FTW! (Speaking of English, I got a 93 on my final, yay! Not quite sure how that happened...)

Also, many people have decided that the St. Paul's campus = Hogwarts. It totally is, though, except there are no house-elves and ghosts and we can't do magic. There's even a kid named Harry Potter in the program. There's also a kid who apparently looks like Edward Cullen according to a girl in my dorm. It's a magical place here at SPS ASP.

So here's what I did while putting off finishing my homework:

( colorbars! )They're surprisingly easy to make; the hardest part is resizing all the images (especially for the FFX one because I had to capture all the images from video files). Then after that all I had to do was go into GIMP, adjust the colors/brightness/contrast if needed and then run a rainbow gradient across it. Stay tuned; I may be making more.

I've also uploaded a couple of new icons that I made this weekend, including a new default one. I'm rather proud of my texture use on this one, and also that on this particular batch of icons I refrained from being all LOL GRADIENT FLARE YAY!

Only five more days left of school, and then exams. This year has gone by so fast. We should be getting our schedules for next year this week. I'm taking AP English Literature, Honors Latin IV, Honors Precalc, Honors Physics, whatever the quarter-long senior theology courses are (I know two of them are World Religions and Ethics), Contemporary American Studies, and Anatomy, in case anybody wants to know.

I also went to graduation yesterday. I was part of the water crew which was pretty much the best job ever because we were under a tent and surrounded by water coolers so we could have a drink whenever we wanted, and we got to socialize with a lot of people. Except we were the one job that didn't get any recognition over the announcements this afternoon thanking all the students that helped out with graduation. PEOPLE WOULD HAVE GOTTEN DEHYDRATED IF IT WASN'T FOR US, DAMN IT.

Over the weekend I found a good site for watching movies online. It pretty much has every movie you could ever want to watch, except it directs you to brightly colored Asian websites to watch them. So on Saturday I watched Serenity (the movie sequel to the TV show Firefly) and it was pretty awesome, except WASH FRICKING DIED and then right after it happened I had to go eat dinner... it was almost as bad as the time I had to go on a tour of the Ben & Jerry's factory in Vermont right after Dumbledore died. Anyway, next time I have a large chunk of time free I'm going to watch Fantasia, which I haven't seen since I was probably between the ages of 8 and 10 and pretty much one of the only reasons I want to watch it is for the Nightmare Fuel-inducing "Night on Bald Mountain" segment because let's face it, that song is awesome. (& of course there's the Sorceror's Apprentice segment with Mickey Mouse and the moving brooms.)

Oh, and I started organizing one of my storylines into an actual story. Let's see how far I can get with it.

I've realized that I don't use this userpic very often and now I'm wondering why that is because it's a very pretty userpic, probably one of my favorites that I've created. (Though the rainbow gradient flare is a little much, but especially when I first started using GIMP I was all LOL GRADIANT FLARE YAY!)

I'm in the mood to list things off so here are some of my ramblings.

( ten things about my life, some of which no one cares about )
Uh, yeah, pardon my rambling. I think I'm going to be productive now and finish my Roaring Twenties packet for history.

HAPPY LOST SEASON FINALE DAY! =)

( cut for mini-rant about faraday's age )
But other than that little nitpick of mine, tonight is going to be awesome. This is the first time since season three that I get to watch the finale "live," since last year I had to wait until the Sunday after it aired because it was on while I was at a dress rehearsal.

Also, today I took the AP English test, which was not that bad. We were very well prepared, I think. & then afterwards we had Adventures in Clarisse's Car and went to La Festa and Starbucks. Now in English it will be ALL BOOKS, ALL BOOKS ALL THE TIME, NO MORE AP WORK. (Too bad we can't actually do really fun stuff like in the other AP classes.)

So I had quite the adventure today. I needed to go Mother's Day shopping at the mall (because yesterday my mum took me there and showed me exactly what she wanted... so yeah, not much of a surprise as to what she's getting), and I was going to have Andrew take me but he'd already done his shopping so I figured hey, I have a license, there's a car free, I'll just go by myself. So I'm driving to the mall, nothing really exciting there. Until I accidentally go through what I'm pretty sure is a red light.

The thing is, I'm not really sure whether it was red or not. I know there was a light there, but I didn't notice what color it was until I had already gone through it, and the only indication that I had done something wrong was that I practically got run over by a turning pickup truck. So then once I realize what I might have done I have a huge OH SHIT WHAT HAVE I DONE moment, and I definitely start hoping that there were no cops around to see it. So I drive the rest of the way to the mall feeling like I'm on the run from the law. It felt kind of badass, actually. From there the shopping trip proceeds normally. I bought my Mother's Day gift and then I went on the Quest for Another Denim Skirt, which took me to Kohl's and Old Navy, and I found success at Old Navy after discovering that there is only one style of (weird, really short) denim skirts in the juniors section of Kohl's.

So now I have another unsolved mystery in my life: Was The Light Red When I Went Through It? (The other unsolved mystery, of course, is the oft-mentioned How Did Final Fantasy X Get On My Lost Season Four Finale Tape?)

I've decided that Squall hates me, either that or he's got some kind of virus that makes him disagreeable. (I wonder if computers can get swine flu? /obligatory swine flu reference.) 'Course, it doesn't help that my virus scan has expired and I can't get it back without a username and password that I don't know. The only thing that Squall seems to have problems with is running Firefox. I never thought I would see the day when AOL runs better than Firefox, 'cause that's what's happening now.

Took the SATs this morning. Some parts of it fried my brain but as always I did derive extreme pleasure from the writing sections--the grammar-correcting bits, not the essay-writing. I've decided that I hate timed essay writing, which is kind of bad for an AP English Language student since that's what half the AP test is. That test is going to kick my ass, I just know it. (Thankfully that night I can celebrate with the season finale of Lost. Which, of course, will only make my mind melt more, but Lost is the good kind of mind melt. Yes, there is a difference between good mind melt and bad mind melt.)

Yeah, so I have a feeling this has the potential to get really rambly as I begin to talk about how hardcore cosplayers kind of creep me out and how I'm going to start another playthrough of FFVIII even though I'm going to have very little time to do it ever and how I'm and Organization XIII fangirl and probably a lot of other stuff.

[ETA: My mum made CUPCAKES! *glee!*]

The weather is so nice and warm down here in NY. It's like, 80 degrees. I love warm weather so much.

Things I have learned lately:

1. I am awesome at Wii Tennis.
2. I am awesome at whacking balls in Wii Golf, but I am sucky at putting.
3. Flailing my arms about in Wii Boxing makes me win.
4. My 10-year-old cousin who's a brown belt in Tae Kwan Do could probably kick my ass. I watched her regular and sparring classes this morning and she was pretty badass.

Vacation is almost over now. I am sad.

Today is the first day of vacation in which I don't have to go ANYWHERE. (Unless I go downtown tonight, and I'm kind of thinking I might want to buy some more spring-like clothes this afternoon.) & then tomorrow, it's up bright and early and off to Connecticut College and my cousins' house for the weekend. (The good news? This weekend outside NYC where they live it's supposed to be in the 70s, maybe up near 80. Yay!)

On Monday I visited Wheaton, which I liked; the only problem is that the town that it's in doesn't have a whole heck of a lot in it, so I think in order to do stuff outside of the college you'd have to go 15 miles to Providence... but then again, I'm used to having to drive for a while to get to entertainment. It was a nice school, though.

Yesterday I visited Skidmore, which I really liked; it's got a lot of dance, and it must have a really good English program because apparently it's the most popular major there. We got to eat lunch in the dining hall, too, and it has really good food. I didn't get to see many classrooms, though, because our tour group was huge and our tour guide was having trouble keeping track of all of us (and also she had to deal with the idiot parents who kept being all "You should stop walking when you talk to us so we can all hear!") The area around the college is nice, too; it's in Saratoga Springs, which has a nice downtown area and lots of shopping and food nearby. It's a little over four hours away from home, though, but that's the farthest-away school I'm looking at right now.

Also, car rides are a lot more fun when you can pass the time watching Lost. I brought the first season with me and I watched four episodes on the way there and five episodes on the way back. & of course my mum and I were analyzing everything considering what we know having seen up to almost the end of the fifth season, and laughing about how trivial their issues seem back in season one. (Back then, all they had to worry about was running out of water and hearing but not seeing the monster and people beating each other up; now they have to worry about ripping holes in the space-time continuum.) 

Oh, Mr. Twain, you are quite the hardcore snarker: Mark Twain offers some literary snark on James Fenimore Cooper and the Broken Twig Series Leather Stocking Tales. Hilarity ensues.

Also, my computer has twice tried to convince me that it is infected with viruses, but I know that it is lying because the dialogue boxes containing said information include phrases such as "WARNING!!!!" which makes me know it is the internet playing tricks because any self-respecting program would not abuse punctuation like that. Yeah. I can see through your lies, Mr. Internet.

I've also uploaded some of my own userpics just for a change. & I make much better icons in GIMP now, so I thought I'd make use of them.

Reason #924830 why I am not an intelligent person:

I just went downstairs to claim the internet for the night. It's dark but I don't think of turning a light on (there's the beginning of the problem right there). I walk into the trashcan, knocking in over. I almost walk into a pole. I go over to my mum's computer to find the internet NOT THERE. I have kind of a blinky moment, and then somebody turns a light on, and I'm all "WHERE'S THE INTERNET?" and Andrew's just like "Looking for this?" and gives it to me. Apparently he was going to give it to me upstairs but I went downstairs before he had the chance. But y'know, he could have given it to me when he came upstairs a few moments earlier, because I was quite clearly on the Playstation in the playroom, but no, he had to send me on an expedition in the darkness. Meanwhile there's popcorn kernals spilled all over the floor from when I knocked over the trashcan, so of course I have to pick all of those up while wishing that I had a lot more common sense.

(On a brighter note, I just totally slaughtered a boss in FFX that took me about 25 attempts to beat during my first playthrough. Quick-Hit and Doublecasted Flare FTW!)