Jazzin' it up in KC, among other things

Who knew?  Who ever knows, actually.  Our hotel doesn't have free wifi -- it has wifi, yes, but you must pay $10 a day for it.  One of the high schools where the tournament is being held at (which was the one everyone's elimination rounds were being held at and also policy pre-elimination rounds were held at) has free guest wifi.  Nowhere else does.  I did pay for one day of wifi, so here I am, blogging.  Today I'm just bumming around the hotel because I don't have to do anything!  So nice.  I've bought more books (thanks to my disease), but more importantly, last night I bought yarn.

My first impulse to buy yarn was centered around the desire to do something nice for my boyfriend, who recently has bought me a lot of gifts.  I figured I'd knit him a proper sweater, seeing as the EPS raglan, on forethought, was icky.  Not to mention, due to my lapses in attention, it had a few mistakes in it that were very noticeable.  It's frogged officially now on Ravelry.  I think my next sweater for him will be the Seamless Hybrid, which seems to look nice on a man.  I ordered eleven 50g balls of KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in Thyme, which I think is a nice muted color and pretty classy for someone who can't wear anything with blue dye.

Also!  I bought yarn to make a hat and fingerless mittens for myself to go with the Heroine coat I plan on knitting.  I'll get to knitting that coat someday... if I really apply myself, I could knit it in a week or two.  It's knit in pieces and then seamed up and felted (shitshitshit)... I had better knit this before I go away to college, actually, because I can't imagine where I'd get the resources needed to felt anything in college.  I refuse to do washing machine felting on my first try.  I'd like my piece of knitting right where I can see it at all times, thank you!

And I also bought the best sock yarn ever.  Wonderful stripes and colors and hues.  I love knitting socks.  The Blackrose socks are on hold right about now because I left the pattern for them at home and I'm working on the Falling Water scarf right now, and it's just positively lovely.

So yep.  That's what I've been doing.

Hustle and bustle

Things have heated up pretty quickly over in my life and I've been pretty busy.  Mostly it's been work [insert frowny face here].  I always seem to pick up people's shifts, which leads to me always being at work.  And with Asshole Boss there (well, most of the time he's not, actually), it's not exactly pleasant.

I bought more books yesterday.  The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck; Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Thomas L. Friedman; and Cathedral of the Sea, by (ahahaha) Ildefonso Falcones.  What a name!  My friend and I were laughing about how serious he is.  I bought the last two on the bargain table at Barnes & Noble, so I got two shiny, huge hardcover books for $13.  Life is so good, let me tell you.

Maybe at this point I should inform my readers that I have a disease.  Little research has been done on this disease, even though it afflicts a goodly number of the planet's inhabitants; thus, it does not have a name.  I buy books way faster than I can read them.  I haven't read a third of my bookshelf, and I keep buying books!  I just love having books!  My dorm is going to be so crowded with books.  Books and yarn, that's pretty much my life.  Oh, and languages.  But learning languages doesn't take up as much space as my stash and my library.  So, yeah.  I buy books when I don't need to buy books.  Mostly it's because during the school year, I'm mostly too tired or too occupied to sit down and read for very long, so the only reading I get done is the required reading for school.  But now, summer is here, and I am planning lots of days where I sit outside on my porch swing and do nothing but read.  I've got half of the Wheel of Time series to get through, for goodness sakes!

Also, next week, I'll be off to Kansas City.  The national debate tournament is coming up and we leave on Saturday.  The hotel will have wi-fi for sure, but I'm not so certain about wherever the tournament is being held.  Who knows when I'll blog next?  My partner and I are hoping to at least break at nationals, so we'll see.  If we don't, though, I'm not going to be as heartbroken as when I lost state.  This is the last debate tournament I'll ever have to do, and I'm kind of looking forward to a week from now when it will all be over.  Then I can just sit back and relaaaaaax.

In for a rough summer

Today I found out that Ryan's not going to be having his phone or computer the whole summer.  Which means I can't talk to him unless I write him letters through the postal service.  It's going to be a long summer.

So if I suddenly seem like I've gone off the deep end, you'll know why.

Netbook blues

I am here to whine.

I waaaaaaaaant my netboooooooooooooooook now now now now now.

Ahem, that will be all.

Blue fuzzy alpaca from hell (and baby polar bears!)

In the past two hours, I've started a scarf four times.  Each of them have been frogged, unraveled, or simply torn off the skein of yarn because this charming, charismatic blue alpaca that taunted me from the yarn store shelf is easily breakable.  It's not this beautiful yarn's fault that I've started a damn scarf four times today and that none of those attempts have worked out.  Really, it's not.

At least, that's what I've been telling myself.

Sigh.  I went to my LYS today to get some more yarn because I'm a fiber head.  I already have SO MUCH YARN, but I thought I'd go and get more because there are just some people in my life that I want to knit for.  I got this really lovely blue alpaca (from Nashua Handknits -- same people I got that wacky sock yarn from!  Amazing!) and some plain old black Lamb's Pride worsted for a friend.  The products, I mean, will be for the friend.

But really, I've started a scarf FOUR TIMES ALREADY.  Definitely time for some ice cream and Planet Earth. (Oh!  Today I was lucky enough to receive Planet Earth as a graduation present from the best boyfriend anyone could ever ask for.  He's amazing and I love him and I've got Planet Earth!  I've already seen BABY POLAR BEARS!)

Graduation and summer

Well, I haven't done much knitting in the past few days due to fear of ladders and working and, oh -- graduating high school.  You know.

DID I MENTION I'M DONE WITH HIGH SCHOOL FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER?!?!?

Never again will I be forced to encounter huge masses of dumbasses.  Never again will I be forced to sit through a class which doesn't somehow pertain to my major.  Never again will I have to encounter narrow-minded approaches to education.  Hell, never again will I be forced to go to class.  In college, if I hate a class, I can just teach myself and show up for the exams.  Likewise, if I want to learn about something, I can crash lectures.  I won't be forced to adhere to conservative school principles or principals, nor will I be treated like a brain-dead delinquent.  I can get involved in the things I want to get involved in without fear of restrictions.  I can live on my own.  I can be freeeeee!

Commencement was actually a lot better than I thought it was going to be.  Mr. Zeck gave a good speech about not settling for some half-ass rate of yourself and achieving great things; he also managed to take a good spin on labels.  Taylor's speech was cute and personalized to our class and even though I don't like the guy very much, it made me smile.  I thought Mr. Kelly fucking up people's names was hilarious, though in retrospect it was pretty horrible.  These kids were graduating and he messed up their names, paused, held up the whole thing, and had to find the right name.  I probably only thought it was hilarious because I personally know Mr. Kelly.

After commencement was a little weird though, because I found my family immediately and found everyone I wanted to see immediately, and then after that I wanted to leave.  Here's everyone, hugging everybody and their mother, and then here's me, desperately wanting to leave because I really only like about 15 members of my graduating class.  I'm such a misanthrope.

Now, on with life.  I have a national debate tournament to attend, but after that, no obligations.  Now is the time that I can start being everything I want to be.  I've got all the time in the world, and I am damn excited.

To kick things off, yesterday I bought the Bhagavad Gita and the most kickass thermos I've ever seen.  These may seem like two very minor things, but this book will shape much of my life philosophy, and this thermos will hold my drinks wherever I go to read it.  The thermos will keep drinks cold for 4 hours, hot for 1 hour, is double insulated and has the best leak-seal protection I've ever seen.  Amazing amazing amazing.

A nice surprise

I was looking at my stat counter today.  People actually read this thing!  Imagine!

Socks and ladders

The blackrose socks are going swimmingly, and I'm loving the yarn.  Love love love it.  It's both self-striping and variegated, which sounds atrocious but is actually the coolest thing ever to hit yarn, ever.

But here's my problem... So I'm going strong on the heel flap, feeling quite proud of myself for converting a magic loop pattern to DPNs when it comes to making/turning the heel and gusset... considering the instructions are lacking and I've only done it once.  Anywho.  This happened last time, too, with the Monkey socks -- but when I'm working on the heel flap, and also just plain whenever I'm working on three dpns, I get these huuuuge freaking ladders that crawl up on me.  Well, not huge, but when I finally pick up the gusset, it's big enough to look like a generous yarn over.

HOW DO I STOP THIS?

I'm definitely going to wear the socks anyway (if they fit.  I have large feet), but for professionalism and the possibility of selling knitwear, I'd like to know how to fix this.  I feel an epic journey on the interwebs is in order.

Black rose to my socks

I started a pair of socks.  The pattern is called Blackrose socks.  Then I made a few mistakes (ladders, wrong cast-on, random and inexplicable decreases, skipped a lace row) and scrapped them.

So now I have to start over.

Lovely time in NJ is coming to a close tomorrow.  Then I just have finals and nationals, and then I'm done!  I shall be working on my blackrose socks whenever I can.

In other news, the yarn I'm using, Nashua's Best Foot Forward in Autumn, is variegated and I absolutely love it. This is staggering, because I hate variegated yarns but this one looks lovely.  It also obscures the lace pattern.  Who knew.

Well, here I am

... in Jersey.

I'm actually having a really lovely time.  Despite this past week being a week in which I thought I was going to relax but found out otherwise, I have blessedly not been as tired.  During this whole week (excluding last night), I haven't gone to bed before 1 AM.  Although, last night should count, considering I had to wake up at 3:30 AM to catch my flight.

I nearly died of a heart attack today several times.  First of all, the bus to take me to O'Hare was fifteen minutes late.  For someone like me who likes to be at the airport in plenty of time, even if the airport bus was spot-on time, it would've been an abnormally tight squeeze.  Naturally it wasn't.  I got to the airport with forty-five minutes to go before my flight and due to my genius of printing out my boarding pass ahead of time managed to make it to (what I thought was) my gate in fifteen minutes.  But wait!  There's more!  My boarding pass and the boards at the airport told me to go to the wrong gate.  F8, they said.  If not for the intervention of an extremely helpful gentleman, I would've missed my flight.  We were chatting and he was telling me about how you could get text alerts about your flight, and since my phone was already off he decided to do it for me.  This was the point where I discovered my gate was actually E7, not F8.  I had to book it to the other side of the terminal and managed to make it 15 minutes before my plane left.  Phew.  (For reference, I usually like to arrive at the airport about two hours before my flight.  The earliest airport bus, however, would only take me to the airport one hour before my flight.)

But, here I am, safe and sound.  Ryan's family is pretty charming (a lot better than mine, but what's new?) and their house is a genuine menagerie.  It's amazing.  They have like, eight rabbits, two tortoises, two guniea pigs, three hamsters, a snake, a leopard gecko, and two frogs in the bathroom.  Rabbits are really soft and cuddly... just in case anyone wanted to know.

Tomorrow I'm going yarn shopping at some local yarn stores, because if I don't start a new project for me as soon as possible, I'm going to explode.  I still haven't ever knit anything for myself.  Not to mention, knitting provides daily stress relief in a way nothing else does.  Although being in Jersey, not having anything to do, and hanging out with Ryan all day is the best stress relief cocktail I could ask for, I still want to knit.

Time to do some Ravelry cruising.

Four different topics

I need to start a new knitting project or I'm going to go insane.  Technically, I should finish the EPS raglan and begin on Hope's scarf.  Sigh.  In truth, Hope's scarf seems daunting to me right now when all I really want to do is knit a nice cardigan or shawl or mittens or something.  (Sorry Bree, it'll get done  D: )

On a complete tangent, I had a very nice weekend with Ryan and saw him off to the airport yesterday.  Bree went with us, and when we were on our way back, we missed our train.  We ended up skipping around Millennium Park and hanging around a Dunkin' Donuts... and who should sit at the table next to us but real, genuine hookers?  They were really terribly dressed and were talking about "the business."  Yeah.  We also saw a crazy hobo on Michigan Ave.  He was speaking in tongues.

On another complete tangent, I've also been playing on Skritter for awhile.  It's a website designed for kanji practice for Japanese... seriously, the most amazing kanji practice site ever designed.  It makes learning kanji fun (for me, at least).  So fun, I use the verb "play" when I talk about Skritter.  I play on Skritter.

Headway on life problems has been made, I think.  Waiting for the start of summer for things to really kick off (about a week and a half).  Feelings towards AAP are slowly dying down to embers.  The release from the emotions he stirred up in me makes me want to cry, it's so good.

Amazing

Ryan's coming to see me tonight.  Expect me to disappear off the face of the earth now that he's here.

Oh, and I finished all of my IB exams!  I'M FREE!  Now I can start getting off of my ass and maybe doing some things?

The Trifecta of Depression

WARNING: extremely long blog post about life problems

Sometimes the ginger life ain't so easy.  I'm having some problems and I think I can't go to bed with any semblance of peace of mind until I get these thoughts out of my head somehow.  I don't like talking to people about it because there's nothing, really, that other people can do to help.  In order to overcome these problems, changes are going to have to occur inside of myself.  (Of course, others can give moral support and encouragement, which is greatly appreciated.)  Not to mention, it's difficult for most of the people I know to relate to my problems.  And, I haven't told many people about it yet, so in order for people to get the entire story, they'd be sitting there until next July.

But I'm going to tell you, O Blog Readers of Mine.  Not just to tell someone, but so I can get these thoughts organized and presented in a fashion that will help me understand them as well.

The problems in my life either fall under the heading of Arrogance or Sloth or Hate.  The arrogance of other people is getting me down; I always feel compared and judged by these people.  And sloth because there are changes I want to make in my life, and I know how to do them... it's just that I haven't.  There's no reason why I couldn't have done anything.  I just haven't.  And hate because I can't deal with hating humanity very well.

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Arrogance... It's really the arrogance of other people, and maybe some traces of arrogance in myself.  I hate arrogance.  In my humble opinion, nobody is better than anybody else and everyone is entitled to their lifestyle as long as it doesn't harm anybody (philosophical questions aside).  I must admit that sometimes in my thoughts I fall victim to arrogance; many a time there has been when I have imagined myself better than some crude people I know.  But I know that on the inside, we're all the same.

What really gets me, though, is the presupposed self-importance that many people carry around with them.  I don't like it.  It makes me feel a little bit sick to think that they think they're better than me.  One person in particular haunts my life with his arrogance and immaturity even though I haven't spoken a word to him since December (who hereby will be referred to as Aforementioned Arrogant Person [AAP]).  Every time I'm in his presence, I feel like every action I make should somehow be geared to telling him that I am not the lowlife he thinks I am.

But more than this person, I feel like the things I do in life should be done to tell everybody that I am worthy of high thoughts.  Right now in high school, I'm dealing with everybody in my class who has a higher rank than me, higher GPAs than me, better scholarships than mine, more awards, etc., etc.  In reality, I don't care that I don't have these things.  I don't need them to be happy.  All I wanted was to go to IU to study languages and become a translator, and I'm getting that!  IU gave me enough financial aid so that I can realize my life goal.  I have everything I want set before me, and I'm still suffering from bouts of depression because I feel like I have to prove myself to people.  How messed up is that?

I had a realization one day that I live in an extremely competitive society where high achievement -- not happiness -- is considered success.  I honestly do not give a flying fuck about achieving as much as possible.  I care about achieving what makes me happy.  But what makes me happy is not what everyone else thinks goes into the formula for A Good Person.  Thus, my happiness goals conflict with the societal image of a person worth thinking highly of.  Societal schemas still rubs off on me, though, and I can't help looking at all of the achievements everybody else has made and becoming depressed.

I'm all for achieving a lot in something you're passionate about.  I haven't really been achieving much lately, though (see Sloth), and so that might have quite a bit to do with my depression.  I want to be involved in humanitarian causes, languages, and religious activities -- all things I'm not doing right now.  You should achieve great things in areas you have a passion in, by all means.  But I'm not doing that either.

Social networking sites do nothing to help my obsessive comparisons.  I look up a lot of people on facebook to see what they're up to way too much.  If I weren't so obsessed on what everyone else is doing, then maybe I could get up off of my ass and go do something of my own.  I'm making this out to seem like I'm a closet case, which isn't really true at all, but my words do have something to them.  I spend way too much time in front of the computer, torturing myself by looking up AAP's profile and becoming so angry with the fact that he is so arrogant... I'm only emotionally beating myself up.

So when I compare myself all the time to everybody else, I can't help but feel lackluster.

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Moving on to Sloth.  Admittedly, I am a lazy person and enjoy inactivity.  This is destroying me, though, because as mentioned beforehand, I don't get up off of my ass to do anything.  There are so many things I want to do, and I'm not doing them.  Why?  There is no reason why.  A mental block, perhaps, but if there is one it is so subtle, I don't even know it's there.

I want to learn six languages, start some knowledge on my midwifery training, knit, lose weight, start on the path to religious realization, start my yoga training, and read.  I also have a job and am going to be a college student.  All of this is really hard to fit into one life, I know, but it is so doable.  I know I can do it.  And I don't.  I'm not going to lie when I say that I have some problems with my weight.  I'm not fat, but I am by no means fit, either.  And this bothers me.  I want to be fit.  I have all the tools before me to become what I want to become, and I'm not doing it.  Not doing anything to further my dreams drags down my self-esteem even more.  And it makes me even more depressed when I look around at my life and realize that I am not a step further towards my goals today than I was a month ago.

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And finally, Hate.  I hate humanity, I hate how people mindlessly go about their lives, I hate how I can predict where half of my graduated class will be twenty years from now.  I hate ignorance and arrogance and apathy about important things.  I hate lies and untruth.  I hate war, fighting, and pointless conflicts.  I hate atheism, intolerance, propaganda, irresponsibility, being woken up, boredom, and petty-ness.  The list goes on and on, but most importantly, I hate AAP.

AAP and I used to be friends.  We used to be very good friends, as a matter of fact -- he was one of my best friends.  And then he started to change... and become more arrogant.  He began to believe that his opinions on everything were better than everyone else's.  He laughed at others' stupidity.  Sometimes he would sit on the internet, find pictures of people, and laugh at them because they weren't like him.  He thought his opinion was the only right opinion to have on naturally subjective matters, like politics and music.  Then he found someone who was just like him and had the same arrogance level, and everything magnified tenfold.  Now he likes to make fun of people who aren't like him.  Eventually, I bitched him out and told him to stop talking to me.

I just can't get over losing him to something I dislike so much.  I can't deal with the fact that I hate him.  And I don't hate him, per se... but the thought of him makes me sick.  I can't wait to get away from him when I go to college, yet I occasionally peek through his tumblr and facebook profile to see what he's up to, and everything I see intensifies my anger and dislike.  I find myself thinking about him at least once a day, and I can relate so many things about him that I don't like to almost anything anyone says.  It's sad.  It's terrible.  Because all of his activities or anything he does is just a representation of his arrogance and the pleasure I know he gets from being "different" and "hip" and (shudder) "avant-garde."

I hate all of this, and I can't let it go.  His presence is a shadow over my life and there's no reason why it should be, but it is.  My prolonged hatred of him is eating away at my spirit, slowly but surely, and I need to find a way out of not only hating him, but hating everything else as well.  I need to find a way to deal with everything so that I can find inner peace and not be bothered so much by annoyance from AAP and the world.

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I compare myself to everyone and feel lackluster.  I don't take the steps necessary to fulfill my aspirations.  I am mired in the hatred of humanity and AAP.  In short, I've got some problems and need to do something about it.

Arrogance will be solved when I manage to adhere to my own principles of happiness and achieve them.  Sloth will be taken care of when I start working towards my goals.  And Hate will be tossed away when I can manage to start the path towards self-realization and finally not be troubled so much by everything.  Someone I know always laughs and is happy she's not like everything she hates; I can't do that.  But maybe someday I can work towards it.  I don't have to be angry at everything.  I just need to learn to let things go.

Easier said than done, but at least I've identified the problem.

I survived today

Bio exam was moderately well-taken (except for the material our teacher never taught us -- but that's a rant for a day with more free time and energy), debate work was slogged through, and work went all right.  I am home and not even dead tired.  I have enough energy to write my grade justification essay for my history teacher (i.e., I've known you for four years and I've worked very hard this quarter, so in lieu of having no grades for me, give me an A).  It's good.

I survived today!

Side note

I've just read the last few posts I've made recently, and I have to make a side note to apologize for the absolute monotony of everything.  I promise I'm not this boring.  IB exams and work are just eating my life.  This vortex of fatigue should end this Sunday, though, so that's when normalcy shall resume.

Whatever normal is.

Of Mitsuwa and Overwork

I have just a week before things slow down and I can relax.  Really, I should have taken this day as a personal day but I chose instead to accompany a few friends up to Chicago to Mitsuwa Marketplace.  Mitsuwa is a Japanese department store in Arlington Heights and it sells almost everything; they also have a food court that offers the best udon I've ever eaten (but I haven't eaten much udon).  I kind of need a day where I can regather my resources and get everything organized... that was supposed to be yesterday during the morning, but that never happened either.  The Great Purge?  It's still waiting.  It kind of has to happen tonight.

Whenever I get really run down, I always have these urges to just lay around and do nothing so I can recuperate from the world.  Trouble is, there's usually all sorts of things I still need to do... so this often resorts in a lot of stuff going undone.  My two most challenging IB exams are coming up this week, bio and Japanese, and I really should be studying a lot for them; instead I nap a lot.  And eat ramen.  And take trips to Mitsuwa.

Tomorrow I have three and a half hours of bio exams to sit through before heading off to a two-hour debate meeting and then going straight to work.  With the rate tonight's going at, it'll probably be on six hours of sleep, too.  Kill me.

The Great Purge

I feel a little guilty for not writing in this regularly, even though almost nobody reads this.  I guess it's the integrity of the matter.

Well, anyway.  I really wanted to talk about "Nicole wants to be a conscious consumer."  For two reasons, really.  One, it's alarming how much stuff that I have that I never use.  And two, it is also alarming on how once I spent almost all of my weekend earnings ($75) on food alone.  Food.  Consumable stuff that I didn't even need to buy and could easily have obtained at home.  $75 that might have been able to be put towards a new laptop for college.  So, I am feeling like a very mindless American right now and this weekend, the Great Purge shall take place.

I feel that all of the possessions that I have cluttered into my room have also cluttered my lifestyle.  It's kind of a bummer to come into my room at the end of a very busy day and just look at all of the stuff, and then also realize that because I have so much stuff, it's really hard to keep my room clean.  My laundry gets out of hand because I have so many clothes, my desk gets cluttered because there are so many useless papers, etc.  I feel that if I can narrow down my possessions to things I really need, and keep it that way, that ultimately it will make me happier.  This also carries some deeper religious undertones... everything in this world has energy, and that energy becomes stagnant when the thing isn't used for its purpose and just sits there.  There is a ton of stagnant energy in my room, not only from unused objects lurking in drawers, but from the unbelievable amount of crap blocking energy from moving around my room.

Enter the Great Purge.  Anything I don't need will be donated to Goodwill.

Things also need to be organized, so that I can easily determine what will take the trip with me down to Bloomington and what won't.  I need a basket for my yarn.  Go figure.

Things that aren't about knitting

Knitting?  What's that?  Yeah, I haven't been knitting at all.  I worked on the EPS raglan for... about twenty minutes today after I finished my third history exam.  Three essays in 2 hours and 10 minutes.  Can you say essay fatigue?  The AP English kids also had their exam today, so in Japanese absolutely nobody wanted to do anything (but that's not different from any other day, anyway).

I'm kind of glad because today I had a re-surge in my desire to actually learn Japanese.  It made me happy and made my college major seem worthwhile.  Hooray!

Aaaand, today I went clothes shopping.  Again.  This is actually more relevant than it seems, because it has ties to "Nicole wants to be a conscious consumer."  More on this later though, considering this blog post has been festering in my browser for two hours while I've shopped for laptops, researched processors, and switched from Microsoft Office to Google Docs.

It's been awhile

I've been working lots of hours, and my IB exams started this week.  Needless to say, I'm pretty swamped.  And when I'm not swamped, I either sit and stare into space with a zombie expression on my face or sleep.

I've been knitting on the EPS raglan.  Mindless stuff.

Pointless ramblings

Hi.  More nothing to report, here.

Most of my week last week was spent trying to hide under a rock.  But all was in vain.  I was really just depressed about state debate, I think.  Last weekend (like, the nine days ago kind of last weekend) was the state debate tournament and... well, I don't really want to brag, but my partner and I have the ability to fucking walk into that tournament and OWN BITCHES.  Except, that didn't happen.  We got knocked out in octafinals.  Jeff and I were a favorite to win state and we got knocked out at octafinals.  It was illegit.  I don't want to whine so much because it's bitchy and annoying, but sometimes I just can't stop myself.  It wasn't because we messed up that we got knocked out... I'm just in policy debate, the most complicated debate event there is, and the people in charge of the tournament decide it's a good idea to have people with NO BACKGROUND in policy judge us.  Needless to say, we won the debates (according to policy's standards), but the judges voted us down.  It was painful, sad, sickening, tearful, and depressing.  So I spent a lot of last week just wanting to stay in bed, because I care about debate quite a bit.

By the way, please read that link.  It's the absolutely hilarious and somewhat true explanation of policy debate.  I linked it directly to the solar implosion sub-section, but the rest is very entertaining.  My debate event is so crazily complicated and just plain awesome that Uncyclopedia has written about it!  I laughed so hard when I read this article... It is seriously one of the best internet findings, ever.

Ummm in other blog-worthy news, I worked for fifteen hours this weekend and went to see The Twelfth Night at VU.  Dear lord, it was hilarious.  I was a tad dubious in the beginning, because I honestly think that actors in plays try too hard... But towards the middle it became extremely entertaining, especially in the scene where Malvolio reads aloud the letter Mariah forged, and Toby and his friend are scrambling around the stage trying to hide from him... it makes me laugh just thinking about it.

You totally understood that last paragraph, didn't you?