day ten.

Today was a little different. In fear of saying something stupid, as it is 11:30 and it hasn't been the best day ever, short and sweet seems to be the best solution here.

I lounged. I babysat. I lounged. I Sonic-ed. I cried. I TV-ed. I blogged. I finished.

Tomorrow will be better, it's simply a process.

day nine.

I spent the day with Hannah, the girl who came up with the name for this blog! Golf clap, everyone. She was a tad annoyed that I've strayed from the original intent of the blog in only eight days. I haven't exactly been telling my tales of ONE specific activity and the like, I've been just describing the day in detail. But it's much easier and simpler, and GOSH DARN IT AMERICANS ENJOY SIMPLICITY, like McDonalds and Red Box and Wal-Mart.
Anyways, Hannah came over to swim. So we swam. After getting cold and hungry, it only seemed logical to drive 20 minutes to our neighborhood Coldstone Creamery. Of course, that required us to get dressed, and since Hannah's such a stickler for following blog rules, our new thing was dressing up ridiculously. From my recent jet-setting trip to Africa, we donned some wrap skirts, t-shirts, and a nice bun atop our heads, finishing our look like a cherry on a sundae. We deemed ourselves respectable and hopped in the van. SIDENOTE: It's a Honda Odyssey, so I named it Homer. Get it? No? Go back to 7th grade english, kid. Anyways, we arrived at Coldstone with only minimal curb bumpage and directional challenges. While munching on our delicacies, and frugally buying them with a gift card, something was wrong with the machine and Swaja or Sanjaya or Mr. Manager Man needed to be called out. He ended up buying our gift card from me and giving me the remaining balance on my card in cash. A win for the day!
We ventured outside, decided against sitting on the grass and chose the curb, and ate away. I finished with a fury, and realized I was still starving. Chik-Fil-A beckoned me, and I simply couldn't resist. My first drive-thru experience was what anyone would expect it to be: average. I ordered a medium fry, $1.75. I drove around, handed the guy my money before he even said hi, and eagerly awaited my fries. The exchange was made, first a thank you, then a my pleasure, and I much too excitedly chowed down.
Our drive home consisted of developing a theory of hipsters. It goes a little something like this. Hipsters are really easy to make fun of, and everyone does it, including hipsters. This is because if a hipster called himself a hipster, that would defy the whole purpose of him being a hipster, and he'd obviously be a poser. Assuming said hipster is a man. Thus, the way being a hipster works.
Hannah leaves for Haiti tomorrow to make tarp shelters and give out SillyBandz and the like. Send her your prayers!

day eight.

So I'll admit it, I made no decent attempt to try something new today. I apologize, but not profusely. I woke up, ate some cereal, lounged, showered, babysat, ran a few errands, and got a call from who else but Melissa, our little celebrity! Before I tell you why she called, you have to know something really important. I am in love with Chipotle. It's a restaurant a lot like Subway, just with burritos and tacos. I've been there every weekend for the past five weeks, and I have no intention of stopping soon. So, she called, telling me that her and her mom were going to Chipotle for lunch, and asked if I wanted to go along. I accepted with a thousand yeses and before I knew it, I was munching on a burrito the size of a small baby.
We then got in the car, boiling on the inside from our Mexican, and the outside from the easily 90 degree weather, and traveled to Kohl's. Melissa got some pajama shorts for her trip to Europe, and I tried on some ridiculous outfits. There were some pants that had a newspaper print complete with suspenders. I paired them with a discotheque-ish shirt, one shouldered, and crazily printed. I looked hot. Then, I tried on this corset/striped/buttoned mess of a shirt with some Native American (is that politically correct?) booty shorts. They had patches and feathers. It was a look.
Then we came home. We swam. It rained. We ran inside. My dad walked on the roof. Unrelatedly, which is not a word, he peeled his toenail back. He complains constantly and is googling a podiatrist. I ate a SpongeBob Push-Up Pop. It was good.

day seven.

ONE WEEK-AVERSARY! Celebration aside, today was pretty great. I woke up bright and early to see my sister off to West Virginia. I'm lonely for a week now. More time to blog?
On the way there, on the way home, on the way to church, on the way to lunch, AND on the way home from lunch, I found myself reading! I was given a short stack of books from Melissa, who's now a celebrity because of this blog. Two of the three are galleys, extreme reader jargon for a book that's not yet been released for sale, but is available for reviews. You can see a huge convention where tons of these galleys are given out on this VlogBrothers video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M9-zU-Sx0k
Reading a book before it's hit makes you feel like an extreme insider. Even though it's from a friend who has a friend who gets the galleys. The book is by David Levithan and some other woman, and so far it's enticing. So enticing that I read it in the car, and have surprisingly gotten over my car sickness, which has plagued me my whole life long. Either that, or I'm just entranced by this "obvious teen fiction," a partial quote from this blog's own celebrity, Melissa.
I also made a checkerboard cake today. It got burnt and the icing was goopy. It was not one of my better moments. The day is now done, and it's time to go to bed.

day six.

Today will make up for the pathetic excuses I've been shooting out. I spent my Friday evening with my dearest bud, Melissa (SHOUT OUT!), venturing out to New Jersey to see The Taming of the Shrew. In lieu of the potential Jersey jokes I could too easily use here, I'll tell you how it went.
I was told to eat before I came, so I made a nice bagel, egg, and cheese sandwhich. We'll call it a cheggel, to borrow the name from another of my dearest friends. Melissa and parents picked me up, and we started on our GPS guided trip to New Jersey. Her father was occupied by a GameBoy, her mother was the expedition leader. We stopped in some quaint town for dinner. Why, you might ask? They had not eaten, and a logical solution was for me to have two dinners. So that's exactly what happened. A large piece of broccoli tried to alter the health benefits of my plate, but the chicken fingers and french fries overtook it by far. After a quick dinner, we continued to the theater, chock full of nerds. I could tell by the amount of glasses. Our seats, row D, were wonderful, and I couldn't have asked for better. The show was phenomenal! As one to not necessarily enjoy Shakespeare in text, a live show was definitely an easier way to understand what was going on. I'll admit, there were times when I found myself horridly befuddled by what was going on, and even considering the fact that it had to be another language, but the actors helped me focus. Steve Wilson, James Michael Reilly, Joel Rainwater and Victoria Mack are all actors to google and fawn over, and I don't feel like telling you how they each individually made my night. Overall, the production was wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Today, I made bread pudding with Melissa and a munchkin from North Carolina. We ate it. It was good. Then I went to a grad party and stuffed my face. The end.

day five.

UPDATE. Since I'm going to the Shakespeare play tonight, I'll post about it tomorrow. Therefore, this won't be a legitimate blog. Also, I decided to nix the idea of bringing the camera to the play.
In other exciting news, my paycheck for babysitting today was $40, for 6 and a half hours of painstaking child-watching. Anyways, I'm leaving in 2 minutes, so you'll hear from me tomorrow.

day four.

Today, I made a book. Not a real book, not a long book, not even a completed book. Just a cleverly folded piece of paper with some colored pencil scribbles inside. My dearest friend, who is currently traveling Europe with her touring choir at school, sent me a postcard, asking for a little journal. But before I can tell you about the journal, we have to go back a bit.
See, there was this show on TV last summer, a reality show that no one watched except for us, and we fell in LOVE with one of the contestants. We loved him so much, that I had him come to her 16th birthday party as a surprise. Long story short, we didn't really stay friends with him, so now we just stalk him on Facebook. Her request for the journal? A collection of his Facebook statuses while she's away. Creepy? Yes. Funny? For sure. But altogether, a harmless action.
And this was another lame blog post. Tomorrow I'm going to see some Shakespeare play with Melissa, and I think I'm taking the camera. So expect something much more exciting tomorrow.

For my nonexistent readers, if you'd like to make YOUR OWN magic book, here's the link.
http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/magic-book-892804/

day three.

We're still going! Day three, and I haven't given up yet. This is good.
Today, while I babysat and enjoyed myself almost too much (sarcmark, google it), my experience of the day was attempting to learn some Polish. In late July, I'm going to Poland with a missions group from my church to work in a really impoverished town. In preparation for this, we're trying to learn more about Poland as a whole. One of those aspects? The language.
I'll begin by saying that the language is read horribly different from english. For example? Jak sie masz is pronounced "yak shay mash." If you're wondering, "jak sie masz" means "how are you." Other than that, the language seems to be consistent in pronunciation, but there certainly aren't many ties to english.
I'm sure it's not going to be highly pertinent that we're able to speak the language. We'll have translators and stuff, so we'll be fine. It's just kind of fun to learn a couple new words.
This was a rather boring post. I guess there's not much to say other than that I tried to learn some Polish, and it worked a little bit. I might make a YouTube video of some of the stuff I learned at one point in time. If you haven't already checked it out, go to http://www.youtube.com/enjoyingthesun for my first video of many. I'll write something more exciting tomorrow, I'm sure.

day two.

Here it is, day two, and I'm still going. That's not an intense accomplishment, but it counts. Anyways, today consisted of showering, getting dressed, doing nothing, babysitting, doing nothing, and visiting my wisdom teeth-less friend. Now I'm home, sucking on a Ring Pop, and feeling like I'm in Julie and Julia (fantastic movie for those who haven't seen it), blogging away.
So today's new adventure? Pretending to be a soccer mom. My babysitting job required me to drive and pick up the kid from VBS (Vacation Bible School for those of you who haven't grown up in Christian Suburbia). Needless to say, the car I drive is a minivan. I had to google the church's address and plug it in my GPS, which comes in handy more than I'd like to admit, and drive down streets I've never heard of to find the kid. I then had to install a car seat while waiting for VBS to let out. After doing so, I walked inside with the rest of the soccer moms and watched my kid and theirs enjoy a cheaply made video endorsing compassion and sharing. The children were then released, in which I proceeded to far too easily grab her and run. On the ride home I was given the honor of listening to the VBS endorsed CD, in which we both enthusiastically sang along.
When we got home, I cooked up some Arthur-O's, an organic version of Spaghetti-O's, and made myself a peanut butter sandwich. Reason being? I went through maybe four jars of expired or moldy jelly and decided that peanut butter seemed safer. I did the dishes while the kid annoyed me, and decided that it would be best to run off the extra energy outside. I got out the 3D Chalk (actually works, and really cool) and we kept ourselves amused for quite sometime. Eventually the mom came home, and I was relieved of my soccer mom duties.
Now, a question for my nonexistent readers. I get paid $7 an hour for babysitting, which to my knowledge, is low. Understandably, the mother is not rolling in money, and I know things are tight, so I tend to be more understanding. However, today I had to drive a total number of 40 extra minutes, and didn't receive any compensation. Is this something worth addressing?
But anyways, soccer mom-ing was somewhat enjoyable, and will be fun when they're my kids. However, monetary compensation and an overbearing mother make it not so fun.

day one.

Today is the first Monday of Summer Break, and in celebration, I'm blogging. My intention is to blog everyday for the rest of summer, and to keep the topics somewhat entertaining, I'll try something new each day. I'm not sure what this holds for me, but I do know that it's going to be interesting. So, without further ado, today's tale.
Exercising my new found freedoms in both driving and summer, I decided to try a car wash. My car was gross from a window marker massacre. Instead of being frugal and wiping it off, I drove to the car wash. First of all, let's just clarify that it might be one of the most intimidating experiences for a new driver. I tried to turn around when I realized there wasn't a machine to take my credit card. Unfortunately, the car wash seemed to be the hopping place to be, and a line began to form behind me, blocking me in and forcing me to go through with the car wash. I had to actually talk to the poor guy who worked there, give him my card, and allow him to pressure wash my car with a bizarre soap and water mixture. In what seemed like a strange driving test, I had to position my left tires into a track that would allow the car wash to control my car. Another bizarre sensation. With my car in neutral, no brakes allowed, I was completely at the mercy of the machine.
The experience continued to worsen as I "drove" through the car wash. The noodle-like sponges pounded my car, the soap and water continued to rain down, and I could only sit, helplessly. This carried on for a solid minute, giving me plenty of time to exercise my screaming capabilities. The minivan and I got to the end of the wash, experienced a thorough blow-out, and then had to travel through one more awkward situation. Two workers armed with towels were waiting eagerly for me and attacked my car like my dog attacks a Ritz cracker. They worked at my window, sending hopeful glances my way. I assumed this meant they wanted some sort of tip, but I didn't know if that was commonplace. Nevertheless, I tipped them quickly and got out of there.
Not such a fun experience, but at least my car's clean.