No Shave November!

It's the most wonderful time of the year: November! I did a little dance of joy yesterday when I realized it was the 1st. And this year, I will conquer not shaving for a whole month.
Bring it on, traditional conventions of beauty. (Just kidding, I'm not a feminist or anything.)

Day 1: Nothing exciting. I realized that my rent for the month is due, Halloween is over (I dressed up as Beyonce, and the haunted house we went to scared the crap out of me) (Happy 20th Birthday Mikel!) and it was November, which means turkeys, snow here in Utah, more midterms, and participating in a tradition I don't quite understand nor know the origins of, but I could potentially look like this at the end:


Day 2: Still nothing exciting. I'm somewhat prickly. Turns out my sister back home isn't shaving either. So when I get to see her during Thanksgiving, we'll both be relatively disgusting and we can embarrass our parents together!

I went for a jog to blow off some steam, and a girl in our hall bought a fake hamster that I thought was just the cutest thing!

Also, the RUDEST lady called at work today. Kept me at the office for about an hour after. I didn't mind, except I tend to stop listening when my blood sugar gets low. Which happens exactly at 5:01 pm. Then I must venture home to eat.

Day 3: Okay, I'm starting to get pretty gross. But my shower time has decreased by at least 30%. I'll begin averaging the times.

We got a new guy at work today! I'm no longer the rookie! My coworkers told me I should haze him. Except he's not a freshman. In fact, he is married. "Happily married, Ellen, so don't hit on him."

Still, I'm super excited to not be the new kid anymore!

Also, I ran into a friend from high school. I told her my life plan. Yes, I have a life plan. I think not shaving is making me brighter. Then again, maybe not.

The most important thing college has taught me so far:

"There is no such thing as good writing. There are only good re-writes."

Why on earth should that be important to me, a chemical engineering major?

The best part about this quote is that my chemistry professor told this to us. He told us about this brilliant guy he knew (one of his MIT buddies, I believe) who's done so much for the world of science, but no one knows or cares because he can't express his ideas. Wouldn't that be frustrating?

People say math is the most important skill you can have, but that's wrong. You can easily hire someone to do your taxes for you.

My prof was probably saying this to justify assigning us weekly chem writing assignments, which are scary because you post them online and the other students in the class grade them. It's also fun trying to get it in before the deadline after a hectic day.

In grading other students' posts, I must say it amazes me how many brilliant students here have no idea how to write. Frankly, it makes me very angry.

But I also thank my lucky stars that I had high school teachers that beat writing into me, to the point where I can spit out a thesis and POAs and give you five paragraphs in 45 minutes, tops. And I still catch spelling mistakes, weird grammar/punctuation, and unclear ideas all the time in my writing. I also have a bad habit of using way too many commas.

I'm always trying to practice good writing, whether in my blogs, facebook, or on actual assignments that count for something. All in the quest to be a good writer. So if I ever write something awkwardly, grammatically incorrect, or totally wrong, feel free to send me an angry email.

The Only Problem

with dating nice guys is when you stop dating them.

On the bright side, this guy is gonna end up doing something like this:

I wish I had that kind of capability.

To be a freshman again...

My parents keep buying me random things, which is very nice of them.
However, they're things like a laundry bag, extra-long twin sheets, a mattress pad, vacuum, backpack (with a 17" laptop sleeve, BOO-yah!) etc.

I don't know whether to be excited or bummed.

And a "Drop All Classes" button?

Really? That seems kinda dangerous.

However, I will admit college-preparing is an exciting time.

On flute players:

Remember those days in elementary school when we were old enough to begin signing up for band/orchestra/choir and we felt like such big kids? And the majority of the class would sign up, only to drop out half way through the year after playing Hot Cross Buns one too many times?

Ahh, I remember painfully having to sit through all of the elementary school concerts, the four hour long ones, because my band teacher was nice enough to give everyone a solo, even the kids that didn't know which way was up or what treble clef was. It was all about our self-esteem, or some crap like that. Then you get to high school and all they do is tell you you suck. Anyway, I remember playing eight beautiful, humble bars of Auld Lang Syne on flute, whereas everyone else played 1-2 pages of toneless, dynamicless, painful music. My parents do too. Thanks mom and dad! (They actually got to do that three times; one for each kid.) And don't forget, on top of the solos, we had to play songs together, with plenty of dissonance!

I was in choir for two years too. I even got a solo in 4th grade. Like, what the hell were they thinking? Yeah, I don't know either.


But back to band, I stuck with it through middle school and high school, moving up through the ranks, and played flute for various youth symphonies and ensembles, finally landing that coveted 1st chair spot. Actually, no one really cares, as long as you're good, but it looks really good on college applications and resumes.

So I've spent my fair share of time with a variety of flute players. For whatever reason, there are many stereotypes associated with flute players, so let me de-bunk some of them:

The myth - All flute players are...

Ditzy: In my experience, this goes half-and-half. Meaning, half of the flute players I've known were complete morons, and half were not. That doesn't mean the were-nots were the most intelligent people I've met, but they had enough common sense to not walk into heavy traffic, lose their flutes, etc. Unfortunately, you can be a moron and still be good at flute. To my frustration.

Flute players, on the contrary, can be incredibly shy. Or personality-less. Take All-City: During sectionals (which I hated, for this reason), Mr. Schnieder (sp, sorry dude) was cracking all these jokes to the second flutes, and Cloe and I laughed our obnoxious horse laughs while the other girls stayed perfectly silent. And motionless. It was scary.

Gay, if you are a dude: I've only met one gay man flute player in person, and I must say he was AWESOME. This meeting, however, was during our San Fransisco band trip, where we had a music clinic at Berkeley (which may or may not have upped the gay:straight ratio). Sitting next to him was another dude flute player, the quiet Asian type with trippy colorful shoes, who was most definitely straight. Both were awesome guys, and killer flute players and soloists.

I think this stereotype stems from the fact that flute playing is female-dominated, but c'mon guys, back when instruments were first invented, only men could play them. Someone had to take one for the team and play flute. For the record, the overwhelming majority of guys I have met were WAY better than the average flute player, gay or not. During the clinic, both said I was a fantastic sight reader after their Tchaikovsky piece. It made my heart melt just a little. :o)

Also for the record, when we saw the San Fransisco Symphony, the flute player (who was an adorable old man) was killer.

Stuck up: The stuck up ones usually aren't good. That goes for pretty much anything competitive. Like this one kid tried convincing people he was better at drums than Derek. Yeah, no.

B****es: Nope, just me.


However, the gay guy from Berkeley and I were discussing the competitiveness of flute playing in our respective residences, and I quote him, "The flute players here are so cut-throat!" The Asian guy silently nodded his head in agreement.

I think flute players come off this way just from the sheer number of us. Groundbreaking fact: the more of us there are, the less opportunities to play in the ensembles we want. And the opposite is true: You'd never think a bassoon player was a jerk.

So let the games begin! There was a girl during All-City auditions who completely glared me down in the warm up room last year. After I smiled at her! Meanie. But, if you meet the incredible flute players of All-City, I swear, they are all super-nice. Myth: Busted.

I can't remember how I was going to incorporate this, but I was going to post a video of my district solo from last year. First Sonata for Flute by Bohuslav Martinu. Oh right, mom and dad, for all of the awful, mediocre concerts you had to endure, my gift to you is an awesome solo. My bro Bohuslav and I got 4th at districts (or 2nd Alternate, because there were so many flute soloists, as mentioned earlier. Yes, I am bragging. You trying putting that piece together in a week). Didn't get called back to state though. Hmph. But look at him, he's a pretty chill dude, huh?

Birthday Woes

I recently turned 18, and typical of my teen birthdays, many things went horribly horribly awry. First, I dropped my [brand new, spotless, flamingo red] phone shortly after parking at the pool, and it clattered on the asphalt beneath my car, which broke my heart to watch. Even at 18, I'm still attached to material things.

Afterwards, I wasn't feeling too hot (actually, very much hot. Like, not in the good way) so we went home, and in an effort to walk it off (in the blistering heat I wasn't used to) with Derek, who was being very, very patient with my drama-queen attitude, I began to feel nauseous and ended up throwing up my birthday Icee all over the sidewalk. (Which must've been super attractive.) In an attempt to walk home, I kept getting dizzy and had to lay down on the dirty concrete every few steps. A couple people driving by asked if I needed a cell phone/ambulance/help and we politely explained we lived close by and were alright. So they drove away saying "Wow that scared the [bleep] outta me. I thought she was dead!"

With Derek half carrying-half dragging me (with many breaks on the way), we finally made it home. Where I then slept for about four hours while Derek was stuck watching Friends reruns. But I felt much better after my extended-birthday nap, whoo.

Let's take a look back at all of my past birthday unpleasantries (and some humorous situations):
17th: I had the great idea of hanging out with a person from my past who made me buy him a burger, and proceeded to make me cry. Shame on me.

16th: Camp meeting, all day (and night). Ohh midsummer birthdays.

15th: Actually, quite alright. I do recall a butterfly attacking me. Got it all on my new camcorder.

14th: My last Maryland birthday. Had a garage sale to sell all the crap that accumulates when you stay in one place too long, which really upset me because I'm attached to material things (and may have a bit of a hoarding problem). The waiters sang to me at TGI Fridays for dinner as I was coloring on the kids menu. Ohh to be fourteen.

I feel like this is all birthday karma from my toddler days when I'd run around in my underwear and obsess over my presents. However, I've learned over the years many valuable things: drink lots of water (instead of Icee), don't hang out with mega-tool-burger-pigs, don't sign up for camp stuff that conflicts with your special day, figure out how to get rid of all the butterflies in the world, and don't do potentially embarrassing things at a restaurant where your birthday dinner is being held.

On a happier note, I still got my family birthday dinner this weekend, and will get a birthday-date dinner this week from a very, very patient boy who didn't run away as I puked on his shoes. He also got me birthday blingage. I win.

Here I am...

Livejournal was full of emo and/or angsty kids. So in turn I started writing in an emo/angsty manner, and I did not like it. Figuring out new websites is a great way to spend the summer!

I also checked to see if there was anything salvageable from there, and alas, there is not. There was just a lot of stuff on boys, ex-boys, an attempt at poetry (believe it or not), a mention of engineering camp, and a ton of rambling about nothing.

So if I start doing that here, someone hit me. Okay? Thanks.