guided by a new era

- I hit another Zingerman's truck in the parking lot today. This one left a mark on my bumper, too. I was backing out of a spot and thought I had room to back up just a liiiiitle bit more. I didn't. Oops.

- I am *so* proud of myself. I wrote my essay for Angela's Ashes in two days. All it needs is a bit of editing and a title and it will be done. Senioritis, my ass.

- I have completely, irrevocably fallen in love with Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I'm a little more than halfway through 2nd gig and it makes me sad to know that after 2nd gig is just the movie Solid State Society and then it's over. :( It's soooo awesome. As per usual, I've latched onto one of the minor characters who will never get more than one or two quick appearances each episode as one of my favorites. I have to watch most of the episodes twice to understand them completely, but aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh it's so awesome.

- Yesterday I discovered Pandora. It's amazing. I've found so much awesome music on it, and besides that it's good background noise for when I'm working. I have a relatively small collection of music (~600 songs, compared to most of my friends who have ~10,000) and sometimes I get sick of hearing the same songs over and over again.

- Yesterday I received my checks and debit card for my checking account. No more carry cash around everywhere. Yay for convenience.

- Two weeks until school starts. This summer is unequivocally the fastest summer I've ever experienced. I don't really remember July at all. It feels like we finished junior year last week, instead of two months ago. I'm excited for school, but not as excited as I've been in the past, since it's my last year of high school. I want to get the hell out of high school, of course, but I'm not looking forward to the stress + work involved with college applications. Especially since the cheapest college I'm looking at costs $18,000/year. And that's my safety school, so I probably won't be going to that one.

- Speaking of school, I need to finish the stuff for my class. I have yet to make more than ten presentations, and I'm only half finished with another ten. @_@ I have no regrets so far, but urgh. It looks like my goal of getting it all done over the summer won't be reached. I'm not looking forward to having to work on the class during the school year.

- Music plug: A friend of mine introduced me to My Dear Disco a month or so ago. They're a band out of Ann Arbor whose lead singer is a lesbian, and they're AWESOME. They call themselves "dance think music", but as far as official genres go, they're very techno. They've got an EP out that you can get on iTunes (and probably from Amazon), and their MySpace has a bunch of songs on it. Check 'em out.

- Apparently, Mike and Bryan confirmed at San Diego Comic Con that Jet is dead. DAMN IT.

- Over the summer I've become completely enamored with TLC's show Jon and Kate Plus Eight. It's about a family with a set of twins and a set of sextuplets. I don't quite know why I love the show so much, considering the fact that I don't ever want any kids of my own, but I do. It's very interesting.

- I've also come to love The B-52's, who I grew up listening to on car rides because my parents love them. The other day I found out that pretty much everybody in the band is some form of queer except for one of the female singers, which threw me for a loop because I'd grown up thinking they were all straight.

- I might have the chance to buy our family friend's old Buick Regal for $1000. If I save up some more money I could afford it, but I would have no way of paying for gas during the school year unless I magically nab a job soon, even though the car gets laughably good gas mileage for an American car made in the 90s. It would be a really good deal on that car, but I can't be sure that I'd be able to gas it up (regular unleaded gas around here is $4.25/gallon). It doesn't help that last night I had a dream that our neighbor gave us a new Mercedes-Benz station wagon, and we were going to trade it in for a Prius. IF ONLY.

These past three days, I have fallen in love with three things:

LA Ink
Tegan and Sara
Strawberry Panic!

I has new things to do yayz. But I can't find a downloadable MP3 of the opening to Strawberry Panic and it makes me sad. :(

omgosh. Personal Fitness is insane. @_@ I am so out of shape. I couldn't even jog half of the mile circuit, I had to power-walk most of it. Robbie was very right when she said that you bond with otherwise complete strangers in this class. We suffer together, therefore we laugh about it together while we are suffering. Good stuff.

I listened to a bunch of Fall Out Boy songs on Youtube, and while they're pretty catchy, I'm not all that impressed. They have that "stereotypical whiny alternative" band sound to them. You know what I mean? It's like...there's nothing unique about them. They're everything you expect from any sort of music band, especially of the alternative genre. Green Day is special in their own way because they rarely ever sing about love, and sing about a variety of things, although they do have a recurring drug theme. Oh, and they have a fabulous song about cross-dressing. Panic At the Disco, while lacking basic talent, at least adds their own spin to their music. And while I love the work Fall Out Boy does (I'm sure many of you have heard of the drama over the "stage gay"), I don't hold them in such high regard as many of my friends do. :/ Now to check out My Chemical Romance to see if it's just like Fall Out Boy.

I also installed a new mood theme, made by mizugazipan and logically. It took me about six or seven tries of copying and pasting all 129 images into the right boxes before it started working right. @_@;;