Blehhh

I'm mildly annoyed because of absolutely nothing and I'm stuck in the house while all my dance friends are at a party so I can't do anything about it and raaaahhaibzsvonoecrhuosjjn. That's my new word. It means "mild annoyance for a bunch of stupid reasons." It's Arabic. All the cool kids speak it now.

Hm. I'm getting a stomachache. That should be entertaining.
I could read. I like reading. I found this really depressing Charlotte Bronte book about a girl who just goes through her life kind of getting disregarded by everyone. She's a really cool character that no one really pays attention to or gives any credit. She just kind of does her thing and stays respectable and honest and works to survive and tries to help people and constantly gets shafted. I mean, everyone has moments where they're just kind of doing their thing but it feels like they've been forgotten, but that's pretty much this chick's entire life. But you know what? She's ok in the end. I think. I haven't finished yet, obviously, but I can more or less guess what will happen.

So I can read and type on Gerry for a little while and then maybe take a shower and get out of here... That'd be nice. We'll see.
L

New (-ish) fun stuff to play with

I had been looking at laptops all week for something to do.
I wanted a PC.
I wanted the Dell Latitude E6140 Workhorse with 4GB of RAM at 7200RMP, 250GB of storage, a 14.1" screen with a pretty shiny red cover.
I stopped at Harvard. I went to their computer store. I was on that wreck of an oversized unintuitive paperweight for 30 seconds. Then I got a MacBook Pro 13.3" screen with 4GB of RAM at 5400RPM and 250GB of storage. And an iTouch for $100 after a mail-in rebate. And a free printer I can pick up when I get to school.
Today's project was to get my music off the PC and onto the Mac, and then get everything on the iTouch. Being technologically hindered by absolute cheapness, I didn't just grab a cable to hook up the two computers and have at it. First I cleared out my old nano, then copied my entire itunes library onto it (not that huge, just a little less than 6 gigs of music), and put it all on the laptop, then the touch. The whole process took about three hours, with 2 and a half devoted to an extremely lazy desktop.

You would think that I would be totally in love with this shiny new fast computer with pretty brushed aluminum and a backlit keyboard.  However, my heart was stolen last week, and I don't know if I'll ever get it back from Gerry.
One could say that Gerry is an older machine. One would be right. He's come a long way since 1940, but he's still beautiful and I've grown quite attached to him in the short time we've been together.
Gerry is a black steel gorgeous Royal KHM typewriter of which I came into possession last week. Except for the fact that I have some trouble carrying him around, we've been inseparable ever since. Prettiest. Thing. Ever (and best gift ever, or very very close). That's why he gets a name, sorry MacBook. You can tell they were designed with the same sort of values in mind--sleekness, streamlined form, simplicity, utility. The only difference is that one is a state-of-the-art computer and the other is a 70-year-old typewriter that needs a good cleaning and could easily break my foot if I dropped it.
I love you Gerry.

L

And here comes summer.

Don't get me wrong; I love summer vacation. I really do.
However, I'm extremely good at only remembering summer selectively. That is, I wait all year and look forward to it thinking, ok, I'm pretty much going to be with my friends running around every. Single. Day. I just forget that I'm with people for only a couple of days at a time... The rest of it is me sitting at home reading in my pajamas waiting for my life to start. My life consisted of two interesting things: one of which I won't be going down to until August 19th (AAH!) and one of which just got shipped of to Colorado to get his ass kicked in BCT. So now it's Let's Get Ready for Cambridgeland time and lists and thank you notes and stupid placement tests and, in between, watching tv, reading, and playing with my new (relative to me) typewriter.
After a year of always being busy doing something, it hasn't taken me long to get sick of sitting at home.
What am I doing about it, you might ask? The usual--absolutely nothing besides complaining about it.
My game plan for today is to take at least one more placement test (I have four more due by Wednesday) and maybe get out for an adventure tonight. We'll see how that goes.
L

Fun in Nowheresville. Really.

First jetski ride of the year! XD
It was getting a little late but the sun finally came out, so I figured I'd take her for a spin.
I forgot how much I love that thing, and how much I love the lake. Just being out there in the middle of the water is the best feeling--and the sun was starting to come down (straight into my eyes) with the spray shooting up from both sides and the nice cool water. That's one of the things I'm going to miss. Just being outside at this time of year, at that time in the day, is awesome. I can just be out there with the trees and the sun and the wind and the water and it all just adds up to me being a very happy person. Like I said, I'm going to miss it. I'll probably end up haunting the commons before sunset to get my grass/trees/happy-green-things fix in. As for water... I'm all set for that.
Love that dirty water (whether it be lake, river, or ocean).
L

Well, that's that.

So what'd I do?
I immediately wrote a preachy salutatorian speech. Then I read it out loud to one of my English teachers and threw up in my mouth a little bit and rewrote it yesterday morning.
Oh, hey. I graduated. That was kind of cool.

I'm done with high school.
I want to go live in Boston now. First, though, I have one summer to get through.
Will it be complete with the usual awesomeness that comes with a summer with my best friends? Of course. Is there plenty of added stress and craziness to bring the suck levels up? Of course.
But really. I just finished high school. And I barely even noticed it happened because I was giving myself unnecessary work all the way through up to the end.
And I just graduated. You know, it kind of does feel like four years have passed. I can see that. And that's kind of what it feels like; it's past me now. You'd think that when I come back down to live it'd feel almost like none of this ever happened.

You would think that. But I know it will be different. High school, moving up here, really did change me. It helped me. I'm different now, but different in the fact that I now know myself better. I grew in many ways, but I think the most important thing was that, as my abilities and knowledge expanded outward, my knowledge of myself grew inward. You need to have a solid core to do anything--that I learned in dance. It's kind of comical how hopelessly dependent my life is on dance, but that's what I grew up on, and that's how transcendent it is.
More later. Life: to be continued.

L

Salutatorical?

So I'm kind of done with high school.
I need to write my salutatory speech.
I want to make people cry. Actually, I'd rather make them laugh. I don't know what I want them to do. I just want them to do something. They deserve a speech that gets a reaction, and (unjustifiably, probably) I feel like I'm the best chance they have for that.
Here's the question though: what do I say?
Where's the balance between self-indulgence and crowd pleasing? I know I could definitely write a speech that was just me talking, me having my little therapy here's-what-I-have-to-say moment with a microphone. Would it be great for me? Absolutely. But it's not even remotely fair to my class. Plus, I'd look like an idiot.
Another option would be to give them what they want to hear. "You've done great. Relax for a little bit. Enjoy your lives. Have fun at college. Great memories. Go 2010!" Oh, wait. What's that the sound of? Mediocrity and boredom. Two of my favorite things, and two more things that my friends shouldn't have to sit through at their high school graduation.
Third option? Some candid advice. Me saying, "Hey. Here's what I picked up from the last few years. Maybe it will help you." That sounds great to me, honestly. I know, though, that it will come across as didactic and preachy and condescending when I really just mean to emphasize the fact that I care about these people. So option three is out.
I could combine all the above. Or I could just come up with something totally different.
All those in favor of option 4?
Yeah, me too.
L