I'm so sick of goodbyes

Yesterday was step 2 in my transition to adulthood. I went down to city hall and registered to vote. That's right folks, I am now a registered democrat in the city and county of San Francisco. I'm sure you care so very deeply, but it's something I've always wanted to do. I always have paid attention to the local politics, like who's on the school board and what's happening among the supervisors and the mayor, but I've never gotten to participate in any of this except as a "poll worker" (they placed me at City Hall, and I ended up actually doing work all day, like helping people fill in ballots, running errands, etc., unlike the expected sitting on my ass in someone's garage and getting paid for it.) Since I was downtown anyway, I decided to then go to the library, but realized that I couldn't check anything out due to tremendous amounts of overdue fines I owed and didn't want to pay right then. I looked for books that would let me learn Finnish. My search took me all over the building before I discovered that the only relevant book on the language was a dictionary that looked like it had been to Finland and back three times in a rubber raft. I gave up there and decided to look online instead.

Unlike yesterday, today I managed to drag myself into school to return my calc book. However, when I was done, I proceeded to wander the halls until I found Julie in the counseling office and made her sign my yearbook. Then I read the paper. Then I left school. (Can't you tell how exciting my summer's going to be?) I went to Borders to see if they had any books on Finnish, and surprise surprise, they had one book, and it was the one (Leney, out of print) that I was looking for! Excellent. Came home, spent a bit of time online and then Andrea came over and we talked for a while.
23:58

Many endings

Mmm. I'm so very sick of shopping. But at least today I actually bought what I needed (re:wanted), namely summer shirts and a nice pair of on-sale jeans.

Yes, today was my last day of class in high school. Now it's time for me to finish the year in some way, either to let it fizzle out, or to continue going to school, persisting in getting the contact info of everyone I know, taking pictures, etc. I'll probably do the second one and wait until all the senior events to do anything productive, only because I don't like going to school when I don't have to. I'd much rather sleep. No one else would be at school anyway.

It's sort of sad. I know that leaving high school is yet another Big Step in life on the way to becoming independent, but if only it would end in a more appropriate manner. I don't like the dead weeks between the end of actual class content and graduation, because it leaves many in limbo as to who and who they will not see again. There are many years in the past when I've never been able to say goodbye to someone who's about to graduate. This year everyone in my class will stay until that event, but hardly anyone else will. So I'll probably miss a lot of people with whom I'd like to keep in touch.

Meanwhile, this summer my parents are planning to take a lovely little car excursion to Ashland/Seattle/Vancouver. So I'd be gone for two weeks while that happens. Those two weeks happen to coincide with all my friends leaving for school, and it's possible that the last I'd see of Andrea before she comes back for Christmas is at the beginning of July, and I'd only be able to see Meredith right before I leave. They're my two best friends right now, and I wouldn't be able to see them for almost six months. It wasn't so bad, going to high school, because most people are still in San Francisco, but when we graduate, everyone will be spread all over the country. It's hard to believe.

I've reached my first step of adulthood. I bought an adult fast pass for June. (!)
23:05

New experiences, part 1

So. Prom. You don't really care, but I want to write about it.

On Sunday morning (or rather, afternoon) I went to go find an Appropriate and Matching Hairpiece. Now, this is rather difficult with my new haircut. What am I supposed to do with it? What did I want it to look like? My mother drove me to the mall, where I proceeded to go to Claire's to find something appropriately glittery. I determined, after I found a rhinestone clip, that although the store is an excellent resource for prom hairthings, it makes me not want to be a teenage girl. That is, I will be joyous when I am no longer associated with the little squealing middle-schoolers who occupy the place. The whole store is just a pit of glitter, maribou, annoying accesories with "princess" written on them and other things I'd rather not think about. So that's the last time I'm going in. Really.

When I got home, I had approximately three hours to get ready. I know it sounds like a long time, but I'm slow and I dawdle and procrastinate. Amazingly, it took less time than that, except at the end my mother and sister started fussing over me and distracted me from my tasks (putting stuff in a bag and getting it to fit.) Eventually, when I wasn't ready, Karin said there was someone who looked like Dario parking in front of our house and then wandering around, so I hurried and took a little too long. On the way out the door, my parents took our picture what seemed like several dozen times and then we finally left. Of course, once we had gotten a few blocks away and I was doing my mental checklist, I realized that yet again I had remembered everything...except for my money. I had about $13 in my wallet, but all the money I meant to bring I had left in the pocket of my pants which, of course, I hadn't worn. And they call me absentminded. Tsk.

At the restaurant, we waited for about 20 minutes for Diane and Bret to show up. It turned out that they had gotten lost, like we almost did. Dinner was...well, interesting. It was inexpensive, and I saw a lot of other people from school there (Hershel, Karrie, Toto, Ben, Emily...whoever Toto's date was, as I don't remember.) But then I think there was tension between us over my choice of dining location ("Did your parents tell you who works here? Former drug addicts, Kate," Diane whispered to me. As if she should care.) and other things. I wouldn't rate it high on my list of enjoyable meals, because people kept making snide remarks to one another and then no one caught them and...yeah. But the food was pretty good.

After dinner we decided it was too early to show up at the dance so we drove around Mission Bay and then went to his house so I could meet his parents and they could take our picture. "I think my sister has some friends over," he told me, and I could see them through some fuzzy glass in another room. After a couple minutes, she poked her head out and then, of all the things I expected that evening, the least-expected or looked-forward-to thing happened. Yes, it turned out that my sister, who I had seen about two hours earlier, was there, along with Leci and some other friends of hers who all attacked me and told me I looked pretty and stuff before they headed back to watch movies or whatever. We had our picture taken and then left for prom.

So there really isn't that much to say about the actual prom. The music was awful (Vanilla Ice??), the floor was kind of crowded, but other than that, it was pretty fun. Most of my classmates were there, most people had dates...etc. So we danced. Not very well. (My friends love to make fun of the way I dance, but Diane says I'm not that bad, but then I'm not too sure. I took several pictures, both with my date and with my friends, who dragged me away from him when they arrived. I felt kind of bad about doing that.

After the dance ended, we went to Mel's with my friends. Some people had breakfast, but I only had about $4 at that point so I could only have a milkshake. So that was fun, to sit down when my shoes were killing me. We thought Diane and Bret were joining us so they could get a ride somewhere, but evidently they caught a ride to some parties. We left at around 2:15 to drive around for a bit, for one thing to see what Danielle Steel's house looked like. (He had never seen it. I wanted to see her 26 on-street parking permits.) After that we walked in the park across the street, then went to Land's End and then I went home.

I eventually got home at 6am or so and slept for a few hours until I went to REI in the afternoon to see if they had any reasonable watches.

I know some people want to know more, but they don't get to hear.
18:25

It wasn't that bad

Seriously, though, the title Attack of the Clones makes the movie sound far worse than it actually is. I thought it was a definite improvement over Episode 1, especially in the plot department, although the acting wasn't much better. No cheesy little kids, a plus for sure. But I think the critics were overreacting to the film's bad parts, because I found it rather enjoyable. (Although I still can't sit through something that long without having to pee...more than once. At least it wasn't as bad as LOTR in terms of length.)

I've gotten a haircut. I mean, I got all of them cut. I don't understand why people enjoy having their hair done, or going to spas, because I don't find it a very fun experience to sit around with no glasses while I get my hair shampooed numerous times and then vigorously washed out with a showerhead that contains the force of a fire hose. I don't like sitting around listening to old ladies gossip and read fashion magazines. No wonder I avoid getting my hair cut as all costs and then hate it so much.

Of course, I still hate my hair. No matter how much the stylist gushed over how curly and great it is, I still don't like it in any way, shape or form. No matter how much relaxant gunk I apply, no matter how it's cut, I end up looking like a puffball. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. People with straight hair are envious of me, and I of them. I want my sister's hair, or some boring white suburbanite's hair, just not this chaotic mess of straw that resides on my scalp and calls itself my hair.

No, I will not learn to embrace it, dammit. Other people hate the shape of their bodies. I don't hate my shape; I'm perfectly happy with my weight, but I wish I had different hair, or different skin, or feet that weren't square, or...you get the point. Just that I were less ugly. Damn low self-image and esteem and all that crap. I'd like to be self-conscious right now.

Prom's tomorrow and I never did learn to dance. Guess I'll research that right now. [Reminder of Pac Bell cable ad right now, the one with the little boy, his neighbor, and the "how to meet girls" video downloading very slowly on dialup connection. That's me, yeah.]
23:31

Plans (suck)

I can never stick with plans, even five minutes after I make them.

We decided to see a movie this afternoon, so we drove to the theater. No good: Star Wars had started half an hour earlier, so instead we went to West Portal and had ice cream and I went to Walgreens. An all-around exciting afternoon, beaten only in interest by my sitting around Meredith's house later that day and finding out several things, the most important of which is that she and Andrea both are holding a grudge against me, something which I can do nothing to correct. "I'm being a bitch," I admitted. "No, Kate, it's nothing you can do anything about...you're just being yourself," she told me, "and that's why we're mad. But don't tell her I said anything, and don't try to change it, because you can't."

So I'm more than a bit puzzled. And annoyed. Not with anyone, really. But what is it that I've done that would make my best friends begrudge me, and why aren't they directly blaming me? I mean, I can think of a few things...my having abandoned their plans for prom, for one thing, but I tried to alleviate that. I do understand that Andrea's not terribly pleased with my choice of replacements. I just hope they get over this on their own, since I can't do anything about it now.
23:35

That was fast

I became a local admin on Elendor in 1/24 the time it took me on WoD. It's not like it was any more active on WoD than it is in my culture (Bree), but I didn't have the same problems with overly-cliquely administrators. What's funny, though, is that it took me this long to discover that Malorie/Tiriel is the same person as Alyena/Selene, from WoD. We both laughed for a long time when we found this out. How is it that life can be so coincidental, and the internet such a small world? I've known her for what, four and a half years elsewhere, and we end up joining the same tiny culture on another game. What are the odds?

Other than that, I really haven't done much today. The usual sitting around the halls waiting for class deal, except at the end Diane and I tried out our physics/chem demo. It's flaming bubbles, the coolest demo that ever existed in any science class, which is why we're fudging the physics relation just so we can do it. [If you've never heard of this, it basically consists of a column of methane filled soap bubbles which then floats and gets ignited in a giant burst of flame. Do not try this in a flammable room or with your hair loose. In fact, don't try this at home.]

I have to call up the Cliff House to make dinner reservations for Sunday. Hopefully they still have space for us.
21:46

What they call endings

So today was officially my last day at Berkeley. I went over a little early so I could go buy a scantron at the bookstore. While I was waiting in line, a guy turned to me. "Psych 2, right?" I nodded. We started talking about our lab credits. He whined about how he had to do four extra hours because he showed up ten minutes late for something. I laughed. The guy at the counter wished us both good luck. I wasn't really worried about the test until I got in and heard the guy behind me going over what he knew off the top of the head, which was basically everything contained in the book.

But now it's over. And I'm graduating from high school in two weeks and two days. Could it get any better?

Yes, it could. I could have more to do. Earlier, while I rode back home on Bart, I was so bored I was starting to go crazy. Like I wanted to stand up and start screaming or pacing back and forth down the aisle. Is this a bad sign? It's been happening more and more recently: either I've been bored almost to tears or just so frustrated I've had the same reaction.
22:02

Silence and rumination

...but it's hard, of course, when everyone you know is not available at that particular time, and everyone around you is crying, and you're not. Should I be grieving for someone I've never met, or merely for the concept? I know if I had known him at all, I probably would be sobbing, as I tend to fall apart over these things, but since I honestly had no concept of who he was other than the brother of a classmate, someone who attended the same high school, and a statistic, I didn't know what to think. But still, I couldn't help but think about last October, when things started to not be fun, and I was supposed to go to a concert that night. And when I arrived home that afternoon, finding out that one of my closest friends online was on the verge of suicide, and nothing I could say would dissuade him. The rest of us conspired, not against, but for him, just as I had done in one other case a year or two earlier for someone else. Calling a hotline halfway across the country, and then leaving the house to go out with my friends and having to put on a perfectly normal face, that was the hardest part of it all.
01:27

No wonder everyone thinks I'm a bad teacher...

It's hilarious when people make assumptions about their readers' knowledge like this:

The spelling is adopted from Latin a, e, i, o, u are pronounced quite as in Italian, Spanish, Basque, romanized Japanese (except u), Esperanto or Klingon, y, a", o" quite like in Germanic languages. All vowels are pure vowels, and lax.

--from what is described as "some lessons on basic Finnish"

Yes, and everyone knows exactly how vowels are pronounced in Klingon, right?
01:15

I turned to look but it was gone

Wandering down the halls today was like walking through a cemetery. No one spoke. Even in my American Democracy class, for the first five minutes of class, people spoke in hushed whispers, stared blankly, cried, or just waited as Ms. Ow painfully took attendance and then read the news for those who hadn't already heard. There were very few who hadn't, except those who came to school late who hadn't spoken to anyone yet.

When someone you didn't know dies, it's hard to feel anything. But still, when I couldn't find anyone after class, I sat in the hall and sort of watched people. A lot of his sister's friends were crying a few feet away from me, but we don't really talk to each other, so I couldn't do anything. Even the freshmen and sophomores were numbed by it, or were talking. There's nothing like a suicide in the community to get everyone in school not to talk. Some paced up and down the hall, some walked very slowly, checking on everyone, like Dr. Green was doing. I haven't been in her class since I was in 10th grade, but it's nice that she still remembers my name. It's good to know that as cold as the Lowell teachers want to appear, there's some humans among the lot of them.

It's that time of year again, when I tire of petty commercialism. I suspect that my dislike of shopping now has to do with the fact that I've inspected over a hundred styles of prom shoes in the last two days while looking for outfits with friends, but I don't know. The same thing happened to me last year. There's just something about the end of the school year when the classes go out with a fizzle instead of a bang, students end up with half a day free between classes and go downtown or go to the mall instead.
23:02

Pulling the long-expected rabbit

After my waste of time downtown and at school, I went to work for a short training. Of course, I missed the first half of it, which was on Tuesday, but I also realized that working weekday afternoons is much more pleasant than working on weekends. I should do it more often. The people are more mature, more familiar, and I feel less inclined to freak them out by not talking.

So I learned the fundamentals of performing magic tricks. The training was less about the tricks themselves and the mechanics of sleight-of-hand than the actual performance: How to distract the audience, how to get a volunteer involved, the dos and don'ts of banter, and so forth. The end of the lesson included critiques of magic tricks performed by the people who had attended the other training (which occurred while I was in an AP test, nonetheless.) It was pretty interesting seeing the same three tricks by eight different people, looking at the variations in style among those magicians.
19:19

Question

Why does everyone feel the need to plan my life for me?

I mean, I know it's supposed to be every young girl's dream to plan a wedding, a family, a house, even a funeral down to the last detail, the last flower, the last wine glass, but I haven't even gotten to planning my prom dinner, let alone what I'm going to eat for lunch tomorrow. So then why do people feel it's necessary to ask me, after I've stated numerous times that I don't know if I even want to live a traditional life, if they can be my bridesmaid, no matter who I marry?

I usually tell them sure, though, just because otherwise I'll get grief for some reason or another.
22:41

Or overlook this supposed crime

So yet again I had a useless day of school. It's highly frustrating, this rule of mine against cutting classes that aren't really over. It means I have to get up at an unreasonable hour of the morning to get to school to do nothing but sit at my desk and read. I mean, sure, it forces me to study for my remaining finals, but I'd rather sleep any day.

I need something to do now, because really, sitting online all day gets boring. Especially since my server's being a bitch and saying I've exceeded my quota, when I haven't even come close. Unless, of course, there's some massive file I don't know about. It probably has to do with the large amounts of email accumulating for my dad while he's in Seattle. I wouldn't know. All I know is that my FTP program says no uploading, not enough space on disk, and I shrugged. Wow, I'm such a clueless webmistress. And I also need to redesign or at least get everything aligned so it's using one format. I'm still thinking about getting a domain of my own and better hosting, so I'd know what was going on with everything instead of having to rely on someone else to do that for me.

14 days left.
22:16

Now it's over

After I take any remaining finals I may have at Lowell, and pass my psych final, I won't have to take an in-class final for another four years. Aren't you jealous? I am. If I were anyone else, I'd want to kill me.

Yesterday, as I neglected to mention, I spent a day in the gym sitting at a table in a fold-up chair and getting a horrible backache, not to mention taking hours and hours of econ AP tests. They weren't difficult, and they really give too much time for the essay part, especially that dumb reading period at the beginning, in which one can answer the entire question and then illustrate the copied answers during the rest of the time. My drawings were of a Taxman, some people in the US and Japan looking at the relative prices of imported goods, Raffi singing about utils, Claire the monopolist, unhappy competitors, and a polluting factory. I hope the readers are amused. I might as well make the most of these tests, even if they don't count for anything.

Meanwhile, it's all over now, or was at 4:53 pm today. I turned in my physics exam, complete with stupid statements about labs that don't work in real life, and clueless ramblings in the E&M section. (I hate having to calculate E field when given some bent piece of charge. Who the hell does that kind of thing? No one, that's who. Or no one should have to, anyway.) And then a few minutes before the end of the test, my sister called me, and I didn't realize my phone was ringing. After I was bitching about people leaving their phones on a few days ago. (It wasn't my fault, really. Nancy borrowed it to call Antonio earlier, which probably explains his calling me later and my confused reaction. It's all gradually falling into place.)
22:57

Quake fun

Nice little shaker we had about five minutes ago. Lasted only a few seconds, but it rattled the house, and me, of course. My immediate reaction to these things is to jump into any open doorway, even though there's nothing near me that could possibly fall down or over.

On the subject of such events, I'll tell my Loma Prieta story.

My parents were at the World Series game. (Giants vs. A's, the bridge series.) Karin was 2; I was five, and we were at home with a babysitter. At that point, I was still in my room which would soon be the guest room. Kate (the babysitter) told me to take a nap, so I went into my room. It was the quilt with the clouds on it. The room was dark but some light came under the shade. When the quake hit, I was nto in bed, but I ran down the hallway and under the table in the dining room. Kate was holding my sister and standing in her bedroom door.

Afterwards, the phones were down, and so was the electricity. We went to the front steps and listened to this flashlight-radio that was yellow (that is now broken.) Stephanie was also outside, as were Pat and Margaret and the Jiangs. This old homeless guy wandered by and joined the party later on, after my parents got back from Candlestick. (They said they watched the Bay Bridge breaking on a handheld TV.)

That was the first story I ever wrote down, in Kindergarten, called The Big Earthquake.

But as for the one we just had, my mother and I bet on 5.5. We'll see tomorrow. Meanwhile, I +polled on Elendor and got a surprising number of responses from people who live in the area. We've been chatting for the last half hour about quakes and such now. Fun.
22:27

[insert cheesy music here]

So yesterday I went with Karin to see Spider-man. This was not against my will, although frankly, I've never liked the comic very much. I saw it with the sole purpose of seeing Tobey Maguire in glasses. Yes, folks, I am shallow. I do not deny it. But I thought the movie wasn't very good, except the scenes with Peter in glasses. I mean...

Yeah, so the ending was cheesy. But the effects were pretty good, which is the opposite of what the Chronicle reviewers said, but right now I feel very contrary, so I'll argue with anything you put in front of me.

I think my new goal in life is to freak out my coworkers. I've figured out that, like the relationship between small children and rodents, I'm just as scared as them as they are of me, so I figure if I sit there quietly and occasionally interject with a poignant and precise comment, that will put them off all the more. Do I find this amusing? Of course. An interesting social experiment? Probably. I forgot to sign in, which pissed off a lot of people, but I'm starting to get the hang of how exactly to piss off the right people. See, my supervisors weren't pissed at all, but the people who made the schedule, who piss me off by giving me bad assignments, were very much annoyed. Now all I have to do is create an annoying-wave laser and aim it, and presto, instant fun. I'm not sadistic. No, really.

I might go to Scotland this summer. Yay. Go me.
21:54

Tired, part 2

I hate having nothing to do at school. I still have to go, and I still can't get over my anti-cutting-class rule, so I end up getting there at 7:30 and not really doing anything until 1. For instance, today went like this:
English: Briefly talked about the previous day's exam, then wrote down email addresses for our teacher, listened to a few stories about her son and graduation.
American Democracy: Well, it's not like we ever do anything here, but today she told us to go to the computer lab and study for our exams, or look at our college websites.
Calculus: No class. Cancelled.
Econ: More review. I never got to read my poem, either.
Physics: More review. Diane wanted Shapiro to drive her to Krispy Kreme, and he said he would, but then there'd be no one to teach the class. He told me to do it as a joke, and I accepted, so I did teach for about ten minutes as we went over a mechanics problem. Of course, Shapiro just sat back in his chair and watched, and no one ever got donuts. But there seemed to be a positive response to my being teacher, so maybe I'm not so horrible at this as certain friends of mine like to imply.

During all the empty space between classes, we wandered around school and at one point ran into Edelman, who still won't reveal whether or not he'll still be at Lowell next year. It's so sad to see all these disgruntled faculty members (and parents. My dad resigned from the SSC this week. I don't know what's left for him to resign from.) The thing is, though I'm equally sick of the way the school is run, so I guess it's unfair of me to expect these teachers to still be there when I visit next year. But it's so sad to see everyone abandon the institution all at once. Only one of my teachers from eighth grade is still teaching at Burke's, and half my teachers from this year are retiring. It seems like an awful lot of the others are considering transferring elsewhere because of the administration.

It was my last day at Berkeley until the final. We covered my favorite topic, visual illusions, in class, so that was fun.

I've got a huge problem that I have to take care of in the next 16 days. I don't know how to dance. Midweeklies in sixth grade taught me nothing useful, and my sources tell me that I won't be able to rely on being led through the dance, so now I've got to learn a few moves before May 26 or I'll make a total fool of myself during the dances that don't just require jumping around.
19:03

What I need for you

The English AP was such a pain in the arm. Most of it was okay, except I don't like writing for two hours straight, and one of the reading sections was Evil. Elevated and formal diction my ass, this woman wrote in a way that obscured the meaning for 99% of the people taking the test. But I won't go into that.

After the test, I was exhausted, but I had no time for a break before I had to go to econ. And then physics. And then Shapiro made this comment which seemed hilariously heartbreaking at the time, than on Saturday morning he wanted us to all come to a review session, and that he'd put more essay review problems online, and then he finished class by saying that we should all get more sleep. That is the epitome of teachers contradicting themselves. What has the world come to?

Later, when I was more awake, I managed to crank out two poems about macroeconomics. I'm going to index my stupid poetry and songs tomorrow or over the weekend, just so everyone can see them and laugh at how bad a poet I fancy myself.
22:48

Reminders written on back of hand

Well, now that I'm free of 20% of my burden, I have another test to look forward to tomorrow. This time it's English, and I couldn't very well cram for that. I'll be doing that in time for Econ, or Physics, but I suppose if I can't write now then I won't be able to learn in time for tomorrow's test. So.

Today was nice, because I had a nice long break in the middle. My day, sans calculus, really isn't much. Diane and I went to Stonestown for lunch, looked at jewelry, and other wonderful things.

Friday is my last day of class at Berkeley. It's been nice. I really like the school, and I don't want to leave. I'll go visit my friends there in the coming years, and hopefully I'll be able to go to grad school there, which is what I really want to do. I don't know why there are so many people from my class who seem to begrudge their having to go there next year. Ultimately, had I not gotten into Caltech, I probably would have chosen to go to Cal. (Of course, that didn't happen. So.)

Should sleep now.
22:32

Braindead now

I just took an AP test. Well, this morning I did, and it'll probably be my easiest, ironically--Calculus. The only problem is that it had too many things which I swore beforehand would not be on the test, and then people laughed when they were. It didn't matter too much, as I'm extraordinarily good at BSing my way through a math test, or as I'd like to say, making an educated guess. Don't remember what Euler's method is? Well, I guessed from the rest of the question, and I guessed right, how to figure out the approximate value of a function given a nearby value and the derivative there. Don't remember how to deal with slope fields? Connect the dots. It's all very imprecise and someday I'll learn how not to do this.

After the test I sat around at school for a while with Diane and Andrea. Diane told people as they walked by that they needed haircuts; I ate lunch. After a bit, I decided that I would not be pimped out to other teachers for my TAing abilities that day, and that I'd go home. Diane wanted to try on one of my dresses, so she came with me for a few minutes, and I gave her birthday present to her. (A squiggly light bulb. I never would have guessed that it was exactly what she wanted, but that turned out to be true.)

Now I'm tutoring Kelsi twice a week in Algebra to make some extra money, and it's convenient, since she just lives across the street and I don't have to go far to get there, unlike for the girl I used to tutor in Spanish who lived on Ocean, which isn't terribly close, and the streetcar was then undergoing construction.
22:39

GDP rising

So later I went downtown again to go shopping with my mother. I got a prom dress, of which I'll take a picture when the time comes. (In other words, wait a bit and you'll see it on me, but not right now.) I also got some shoes with low heels because I do not want to deal with the pain and agony I went through last year at Winterball with four inches below my foot. I can't dance wearing flats, and my dancing ability varies inversely with the height of my shoes.

I called Meredith later, and we were going to see Spiderman, but then upon my arrival at the Metreon, I discovered to my dismay that every show until midnight was sold out, so we'd have to go to West Portal instead, but when she came, we had to go to Borders to get an AP prep book for her, and got...delayed on the way looking for a dress for her. (If I could convince her to get one, that would mean that she was going, which means moral support for me while I'm trying to deal with a new experience. I'm vastly undereducated on the Ways of Dealing with Dates, and I'm afraid of screwing up.)
22:27

Tired and uninspired

So I've actually accomplished something on a Saturday. In fact, I've taken care of two things on my list. Normally I get nothing at all done on the sixth day, but today was an exception.

After a rude awakening involving Karin coming into my room, turning on the light, sitting on my feet, and yelling "Katalones, get up!! We're leaving in 25 minutes!" I dragged myself out of bed, made breakfast, took a shower, and left to drop her off at her photo developing place, and then I went with my mother to the credit union so I could get my account in my name, open a checking account, and other such lovely economic things. So pretty soon I will be able to write my own checks, use my shiny Visa debit card, and I'll have to keep track of all my expenses. Which requires responsibility. Will I survive my first challenge of being an adult? Check back soon for updates.

When I got home an hour or two later, Stephanie from across the street sort of yelled to me, "the Lincoln math teachers are shitty! And so are the books!" I walked over to her, and she explained that she needed me to tutor Kelsi in algebra because she found my help last time, strangely, extremely helpful. I suppose I could do with some extra money, and I would like to help her understand this, because I learned algebra in the same convoluted way, using diamonds and stuff during factoring. (A product of new new math or whatever.) We talked for a bit about LA ("Sarah hated it. It has no culture at all. She spent her whole time cooped up in the art department at UCLA." and "LA: land of fake tits.") until Gilbert came, commented a bit about people he knew who had though people from Northern California were unrightfully snobby until he moved here from LA and realized why we were this way. I then left and had lunch.

Part 2 to follow. I've got to watch some really bad movie that got bad reviews now.
21:04

Consumers at their best

My dad told me I had to go shopping this evening. He said, "Take this gift certificate and buy some clothes, because it expires tomorrow." Now, wouldn't most people love to hear that? (Or most teenage girls, yes.) So I went to Macy's and checked out what they had and discovered, yet again, that I do not mix well with spring fashion. The moment I walked into the juniors department I was greeted with their summary of what this season's about: flirty and feminine. I just about died. I could hardly find anything to waste money on.

I also looked at prom dresses. Everything was either beetle green, plum, or size 13. Such work actually paying attention to looks. Meredith told me everything I have to take care of in the next three weeks, and it's so much work being a teenage girl. How can anyone stand it? Hair appointment, nails, shoes, dress, makeup...argh. No wonder guys think female beauty habits are frivolous. I should never have given up my subscription to Seventeen.

I'm sick of taking practice AP exams. I just want to get these things over with as soon as possible and finish the year in style. I don't have to worry about my scores, although I'd like to get 5s on everything just so I could say I did it, but I'm worried about the E&M essays; they just might screw me over.

Spiderman tomorrow. ; )
22:58

The timeless question...

Is David Byrne immortal?

(I say he's an elf.)
16:35

Must I move?

I need to learn to avoid people like the one described here.
15:44

Mayday

Alex noted that I'm trying to only acquire useless skills. I agree fully. Here is a partial list of things I'd like to learn to do:

• Learn Finnish (or Welsh)
  
• Fence
  
• Weld stuff. (There's also a class in illuminated sculpture somewhere else that looks fun. Someday.)
  
• Broadcast stuff on the radio
  
• Shuffle and deal cards really well in different ways

I remember last summer, or the one before, Becca and I came up with a list of things we wanted to learn. She said there's someplace where one can take classes in interrogation. I'm intrigued.

I have Big Plans for this summer in terms of personal goals. I have to read a bunch of books that people glare at you when you say you haven't read them. I also have to learn to do metalworking, and clean my room (this takes planning, I tell you.) And learn to drive. (Too useful for my tastes.) I have to revamp my website so the pages match each other at least, and work some more on my language, which is on hiatus right now. I suppose I'll have other lofty goals as time progresses.

In other news, Dario asked me to prom and I accepted.
22:47