Websites that I like to peruse when I have an inkling of free time.

So it’s summer, and if you’re like me you’re stuck in this waiting mode because you’re schedule has these random gaps of free days. But have no fear! I’ve come to share some of my favorite websites that help me pass the time while I wait anxiously for my road trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

I don’t know about you guys, but I love infographics. Wait, you don’t know what that is? (huge gasp!) let me enlighten you! An infographic is a hip, new way of relaying information in a user friendly and engaging format. Think of it as the less boring version of a powerpoint! Good.is <- a place you should check out if you want to be informed on random things.

Secondly, shout out to my girls! If you’re a guy you’ll probably want to avoid HelloGiggles.com due to the fact that it might de-man you (what?). BUT if you’re a girl that likes cute videos, fashion tips, and articles written by Zooey Deschanel, then go directly to Hello Giggles. Now.

Also, I like perusing various design zines/blogs such as Grain Edit, Co.Design,and Design*Sponge. I get a lot of inspiration from these places, and I also amass a lot of envy for the brilliant minds that birthed those great ideas.

Another website I love is Lost at E minor. It sort of carries the theme of Good and some of the design websites I listed, but the amount of categories that it covers pertain more to art than other things. I don’t know. It just has a lot of cool things you can learn about like energy sustainable dance clubs and whatnot.

And of course I love reading your blogs (Aria, Lizzie, Natalie, Em, Drew, Christopher, Ed, Ashley, Eeshie, Ash and everyone else!)

In Two Parts

Blogger is starting to upset me greatly.

You see, I had this impressive post typed up and I was actually excited because I had something meaningful to share with you guys, but as soon as I hit ‘publish’ blogger encountered an error. Trying to stay positive, I checked to see if it had auto saved my post, but alas, it only saved TWO sentences. So here I am, typing up my blog post in Microsoft Word, scared out of my wits that Blogger will yet again glitch and lose everything I wrote.

For the post I originally wanted to share, I was going to update you on Shy Guy. Apparently he’s dating someone. That isn’t me. Yeah. Now, don’t get me wrong, my feelings aren’t hurt or anything, but I feel a little confused. He definitely sent me a lot of signals, but for now I’m just going to chalk them all up as mixed and misinterpreted. To be honest, I’m happy that he’s dating this other girl because she’s nice, pretty, good with animals and small children, and she goes to church all the time, and she’s not moving away to North Carolina anytime soon to go to college in the next few years--- so honestly she’s a good fit for him. I don’t know. I’m just curious to know what clicked in his mind to finally cause him step out of his shell and ask this girl out. Ah well, I’ll probably find out soon since the girl he’s dating is a friend of mine. Yeah. I actually found out they were dating through her, and I had to hide my shock as she gushed with excitement. Yeaaaaaaaah.

-----

I’ve been thinking a lot about “The long term” and how certain things haven’t been as important as they once were. For instance, the trip to London that’s being sponsored through my school is something that I’m not excited about anymore. The more that I think about my senior year, the expenses I’m going to amass for my parents, plus the bombardment of $40,000-ish for my college the following year the less hyped up I get about a $3,000 trip that’s going to be bogged down by chaperones and people that I don’t really like, sans one or two people. The same thing goes for people that I consider my “friends”. Often I find myself feeling emotionally drained because I invest so much time in people that will, in a matter of a few years, will be reduced to just passing acquaintances on Facebook.

To continue on with the eerie theme of pragmatism, I can only see myself staying in touch with about maybe 4 maybe 5 at the maximum of my friends from high school. As for my friends already in college-- well, let’s just say the ones worth staying in touch with are the ones that I actually make effort to hang out with. So I find myself at a crossroads with my high school relationships.

Do I want to continue chasing these dead-end friendships with people that aren’t going to help me out later on in life, or do I want to move on with my life looking forward, making life long connections with new people that share my ambitions and goals in life?
Either way, I think I’ll feel pretty crappy, but I think I’ll feel less crappy if I just slowly drift away from the people that don’t share my passion for certain things in life. Frequently, I find myself thinking, “What is important to me right now?” and as for now the things that are important to me are:
1. Getting into my goal college (currently High Point University)
2. Graduating high school with honors
3. Making lifelong connections
4. Acquiring a certain internship I’ve had my eye on
5. Living healthy

As you can see, my goals, upon first examination are pretty humdrum. However, from my point of view? I see personal fulfillment outlined with challenges that will inevitably lead to happiness because I’m doing what I want while being surrounded by people that are cut from the same cloth.

I don’t know. I didn’t intend for this post to be so… heavy. I’ve just come to the conclusion that holding onto these non permanent relationships are as futile as trying to hold myself upright against raging ocean waves. And I’m ok with it. I just hope everyone else understands that I’m not trying to burn bridges; I’m just trying to move on.

Time to share!

So since I've been home I've been working my butt off trying to get the 5 designs I needed to get done out of the way. So far, I have three done and I'm taking a break before my brain overheats and crashes like my last computer. Anyways, I decided to do something different and actually put pictures in everything to sort of simulate how the book would look with everything in place.
As per usual, feel free to tell me what you think! And, if you didn't already notice, I used an awful lot of pictures of Dylan.... but honestly, can you blame me? Tomorrow I have my Z-Club meeting so that we can talk about the upcoming events/parties we're going to be planning. Luckily, I live literally down the street from our sponsor's house so my friend Aria will be picking me up along the way :D

I'm going to make brownies for the meeting!

Back from camp

Man, let me tell you: it was a learning experience. I'm not really an outdoors-y, Christian-y, Church-y type of gal, so I definitely stepped outside of my comfort zone by going. Oh, did I mention it was a Pentecostal church camp? Yeah. For those of you who don't live in the south, Pentecostal or Church of God are considered to be on the extreme side of Christianity. Yeah. There were some major worship sessions that were filled speaking in tongues and profuse crying.

Like I said, I was proud of myself for not freaking out and going home on the first day. I found myself extremely uncomfortable at times, but I managed to still get something out of every devotional. Spirituality is something that is very personal to me, and I'm a strong believer that each and every person is unique in the way that they experience it (or perhaps in the way that they don't) and to top it off I'm very private about things like that so I really had to push myself to accept that my views don't extend to other people.

I may not have learned what they were specifically trying to teach me, but I do feel like I learned to be more tolerant of the beliefs of others to the point of respecting them for the passion that they have for it. I wasn't a big fan of the condemnation coming from some of the "youth leaders" for anyone that had an inkling of secular beliefs (really, it was on the verge of hypocrisy), but I met some really phenomenal people who made up for those certain adults. My legs and feet hate me for participating in the aforementioned marathon worship sessions (live bands FTW) and walking around in the marshes so much (gotta love the Louisiana swamp lands), but I really wanted to immerse myself in the environment so that I could better understand the mindset of this certain sect of religion.

Aside from all of the crazy religious hype, I had fun in the art class they offered making duct tape crafts. One of the cooler youth leaders who had some HUGE gages and wicked tattoos kept on calling me Asian because my crafts were "perfect". No lie, anytime he'd see me around camp he'd be like "HEY ASIAN!" It probably didn't help that had I painted pandas on my nails. But everyone thought it was funny, so it was cool. I ended up making a really cool duct tape wallet and duct tape rose. I made some other goodies, but those were the only two that I didn't give away. And although I didn't win anything at the late night game nights, I was happy that my friends at least won stuff and on the way back to the cabins I FOUND 10 DOLLARS. Sure, someone had probably lost it, but since I shared half of it with my friend Hannah who was with me at the time I chalked it up as a gift from sweet baby Jesus for being a good girl at camp and not playing pranks.

The guys were raunchy with the pranks though. I mean, they crapped in plastic bags, peed on bunks and doors, and stuck condoms on people's faces while they were asleep. I managed to make friends with this one guy named David though, who had just recently graduated from high school. We bonded over the fact that we were around the same age and shared a mutual love for Harry Potter (his sister looks like Ginny!).

I found it funny that we have the exact same Spanish Club t-shirt, despite the fact that we live NOWHERE near each other. Saying bye to him was bittersweet because I knew that the likelihood of us seeing each other again would be slim, but I was happy that I bonded with someone that awesome in such a short period of time. Goodbye hugs are the best! Ah well, I guess it's not truly goodbye since we're friends on Facebook now :P

Now that I'm home I feel extremely thankful for my bed, and shower stalls that I don't have to share. I'm not filled with the Holy Ghost and on the verge of speaking in tongues or anything, but I do feel at peace with myself knowing that I can still be true to myself in that type of environment without disrespecting or offending anyone. I can say that I'm very casual about my views on what I believe. I'm very into the One Love idea, and getting ready because it's a new day (I know I've probably shared this Asher Roth song with you guys before, but hey, it embodies how I feel about things).

Oh, and for those of you who also have an affinity for hipsters, when I got home Dylan had put up this new picture.He's so... dreamy. Man. Oh man. But then I remember that he's a player. And then I'm thankful that he's at least really attractive eye candy. Gosh. Did I mention that he's going to be an Architecture major? Jeez. I should stop talking right now.

As long as you're going to think, think BIG

I honestly don't understand why this is such a hard concept for people to grasp. Often, I'm frustrated by the complacency of others and how they can live life, stagnant, and then be angry at the world for something that is completely of their own doing. Then again, people are often frustrated with me because they don't understand my need to "go the extra mile" or my cliché "go big or go home" philosophy.

In fact, my life philosophies can pretty much be chalked up to a list of clichés, such as the aforementioned.

I'm ok with that.

But back to my point. People need, no OUGHT to live their BIG dream, even if that's being married with 2.5 kids, THAT'S OK. If that's what you want then don't let anyone give you crap about it. The same with being a transgendered guy named Zooey. It's ok. However, people are somehow under the assumption that as long as giving up their dreams/hopes/THOUGHTS in the name of altruism, it's ok. It's not. It's selfish because eventually the happiness of others won't be enough for them to live off of, and eventually whatever happy, fuzzy feelings they had towards the object they gave up their dreams for will turn into sour, bitter resentment.

Believe me, my mom is a living example of the aforementioned.

A lot of people don't understand my mindset. They think I'm selfish. And yeah, is it so bad to be in my own corner? The world has dealt me a great deal of rotten fish (definitely not as much as others) and a lot of the time I was the only one who completely understood what I was feeling. Because of this I developed a mentality that makes it nearly impossible to sway how I feel once my mind is completely made up.

Don't like my hair? Too bad.
You think reading Ayn Rand is offensive? Oh well.
You don’t like my shirt? Did you buy it? That’s what I thought.

I’m willing to concede on things (most of the time) if I’m overstepping my bounds, but really I found that I can still function and be happy with myself and my choices if I just take care of what I want and need. Every aspect of my life that I am in control of I base around this mindset and it doesn’t make me a bad person. I still volunteer on a regular basis,I’m still an active member of my community, I haven’t kicked any puppies, and I no longer feel the weight of depression that was caused by the judgment of others. I didn't care if they didn't like the way I dressed, I didn't care if they thought I was weird for being in debate, yearbook, multiple AP classes, and art--- sacrificing what could have been a "fun" life in their opinion. You know what, being busy makes me happy. And as an added extra, I don't have a criminal record!

In short, do what you want. Get what you want out of life. Do what makes you happy. Don’t throw away your big dream/goal because someone thinks it’s stupid or doesn’t see the point in it. They’re not you. They don’t understand. Maslow, this old guy who knew a lot about human nature said that the highest state a human can reach is self actualization. One major hurdle that most people overlook is the people that surround them. They mean well, but don’t let them get in the way of your dream.

So now, I will leave you with yet another cliché, from the children’s movie Horton Hears A Who:

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

*P.S. I’m leaving for camp Monday and I won’t be back until the 24th, so the likelihood of any online activity from me will be nonexistent. Also, I’d like to give credit to Nido Qubein for the title of this post, and the ideas it spawned.

I need magazines.

My meeting with Ashley and Bailey went well. We discussed certain things, made great changes, gossiped about people that we didn't like, marveled at how the universe could give the nastiest, meanest, most annoying high maintenance girls boyfriends--- you know. Girl talk.

But anyways, I've been looking at different magazines for design ideas, however the only magazines at my house are some old Rollingstones from when I had a subscription, a few issues of Time and The Economist, and a truckload of Texas Monthlies.

I've gone through all of them.

I need more.

Hopefully next time I go to the store I'll remember to grab some magazines or something, because in about 2 weeks I will be meeting with Ashley and Bailey yet again to see what we've accomplished. Ashley and I set a personal goal of 5 designs to have done.

To make things awesomer, I found out that at I can't bring my laptop to camp because it's a lo-tech place, so 5 good workdays are now GONE. I'll make do though.

Now for something totally unrelated, the other day I was at the library and one of the librarians in the children's dept. was telling my friend Rebekka and I about a book that was pulled from the shelves the other day by some random mom who got her panties in a twist.

She was infuriated that the library had a book called My Two Dads, and demanded that it be removed. Last time I checked, she was in a PUBLIC library, using their resources for FREE. Man, nothing gets my panties in a bunch more than uber opinionated people that think that they set the standard for what is right. Just because she thinks that a cute little picture book about an adopted Asian girl and her two dads is going to corrupt her son and turn him gay, does not mean that she can just demand for a book to be removed. Did her money buy the book? No. The State of Texas bought it. Did she HAVE to check it out? No. Last time I checked she had enough autonomy to pick up a Bible and go on her merry way.

Anyways, the librarian told me that they're not removing the book. It's just up at the front desk right now, and bound to be re-shelved the next day.

I pride myself in being tolerant. If I have a problem with a person, it's usually pertaining to their personality, and not their race/religion/sexuality.

But how can you be tolerant of intolerant people? If you have a method aside from just peacefully smiling and saying, "Well, it's nice that you believe that..." then please, let me know.

I should be doing other things

Like getting ready all the yearbook templates for when Ashley and Bailey and I get together tomorrow.

Or packing for camp which is on the 20th.

Or doing something with my hair which is slowly turning into dreadlocks via the neglect method.

But here I am, procrastinating as per usual.

Ha!

The party was fun. I spent almost the entire time in the pool, and I chilled with Hannah, Christian, this guy who graduated last year, and Harrison, who likes to wear speedos.

To those who know me best, water is not my element. I can't do anything fancy, in fact I can't do anything aside float and tread water. And even then I'm crippled by the growing irrational fear that I could drown. I felt a little out of place because everyone there was on the swim team at one point.

Christian, who is a super cute, super fit guy with a thick foreign accent kept trying to convince me to dive in, but as hard as he tried, he couldn't convince me. Man. He was really cute. Hannah and I kept giggling when he wasn't paying attention because of this random girl that kept flirting with him. After the girl and her friend left the pool Hannah and I teased him and Harrison about how they were being flirted with, to which Harrison disagreed, stating that they were only flirting with Christian. Christian, wide eyed and confused said that it was merely everyday pool chat.

Haha, I'm sure for him it's pretty normal to be flirted with 24/7.

On the bright side, he was impressed with my vocabulary. And my knowledge of Post Modern art. HA!

Anyways, I left the party promptly at 9, but not before grabbing a piece of pizza. I was starving because no one else was eating. And I hate eating by myself.

AHHH.... I need to quit writing and put together my first aid kit for camp. No more procrastinating!

Swim Party!

AHA! I've been invited to a party!

Well, this wouldn't be so much of a revelation, because I've been invited to 5 parties, 3 of which have been pool parties, but this will be only the second party I'll be attending.

I don't like going to parties where someone could drug my drink... That's not cool.

BUT I'm more excited because I'm going to be able to hang out with my friend Hannah (who I'm going to camp with in 6 days) and wax philosophical about hot guys, my inability to swim, and cute babies. Sheesh. I sound... not that cool.

Anyways, between making more yearbook templates, eating fuego Takis, and playing hopscotch I haven't been doing all that much. I think maybe sometime this week I'm going to go shopping at Old Navy for some shorts (don't judge.) and meet with Ashley and Bailey (an editor of UT Austin's yearbook!!) and probably play some more hopscotch.

I've been on the hunt for some decent summer-y dresses, but I haven't found any... Also, I forgot to mention, between doing a whole lot of things that aren't that important, I've been surfing YouTube.

Doctor Who will always have a special place in my heart. Adding Adam Savage from Mythbusters makes this video... Splendid.

Facebook "friends"

Ok, so the first screen shot wasn't so funny. In fact, it's kind of crappy that her ex-best friend stole her phone. But the other ones? Seriously people? Man, I'm glad that I'm not really friends with these people. In fact, I think the last person just added me because we had like 25 friends in common.

ACT done/New book

Ahhhh it feels nice to know that the last of my summer testing is over. The ACT was... ok. I found out that a lot of my friends are just now taking the ACT, like me.

I didn't feel as unprepared as I felt for the SAT. The science part though... That was just... UGH. I knew that it was going to be interpreting graphs, but seeing as how in my lab reports for physics I couldn't even put one together until second semester, it was pretty daunting.

But yeah. I'm just hoping I do well enough that I don't have to take it a second time. My friend Nathan half jokingly told people that he was going to take it another 3 or 4 times. I think I'll take it one more time, and then be done with it.

Anyways, yesterday I went to the library with my family so that my little brother and sister could see some little show that they were having. My brother was too little to sit through it so I took him and walked him around the library. I also quickly managed to snag a book to read. From the cover it looked like some modern Jane Austen spin off, but it happened to be a Jane Eyre modern spin off instead. With that said, it's not to bad of a book. I'm over halfway done, so hopefully I'll finish it up today.

I miss being able to read for fun. All the reading assignments I had at school really burnt me out of reading. I'm sort of dreading some of the books that I have to read over the summer, but hopefully they won't be too bad. Since two of them are non-fiction I at least won't have to sit through heaping paragraphs upon paragraphs of symbolism, character development, and extended metaphors.

Around this time last year/That guy I never wrote about

Oh Paul. So nice, so smart.

And probably still in Arkansas.

Last summer, when I went with my mom up to Arkansas I suffered from insomnia that was probably caused by stress, change in environment, and Paul.

Funny story you see, my mom and I have a weird relationship. It didn't really start to get weird until my parents got divorced and I told my mom, who I had been really close to up until that point, that I wanted to live with my dad..... AWKWARD.

Anyways, I used to go through these long periods of time (and I still sort of do) where I didn't see or talk to her, and then I would feel guilty. And then she would rope me into spending extended amounts of time with her. Well, after one of these bouts she roped me into going up to Arkansas with her so we could spend quality time with my new stepdad who had a job up there at the time. Also, I was a bit scared because she was taking my two little sisters up there, and I don't necessarily trust my creepy stepdad, so I my protective-ness came out.

Yeah. It sucked a lot.

On our first night there my stepdad took us bowling, despite the fact that I had repeatedly stated how much I didn't like to bowl. Luckily, they had a decent sized arcade and I managed to weasel $20 from my stepdad to use at the arcade. Once I had cashed the 20 in for quarters I made my way to the hunting games, because those are the only shooting games that I don't completely suck at. The arcade was pretty empty, and I was religiously feeding the machine quarters for about five minutes when I notice this lumberjack wannabe out of the corner of my eye kind of messing with some of the other first person shooter games.

About another five minutes, and 3 quarters later he walks over, picks up the blue plastic rifle next to mine and asks, with a hint of a southern accent if he could play against me. Me, being the smooth operator that I am, just nodded my head dumbly, almost missing the last three deer shots.

It was bizarre, to say the least. Playing a hunting game with some stranger, who could have been a child predator for all I knew. At first I didn't really pay any attention to him, and I just kept my eyes glued to the glowing screen in front of us that had the occasional deer/bison/rabbit running across it, but after a little bit things weren't so weird and I found myself exchanging friendly banter with him, and joking about how games like this make schmucks like us think that we can actually hunt successfully.

While it didn't feel like a long time, once we were both out of quarters I checked my phone and noticed that I hand spent nearly two hours at the arcade with this guy. And then I remembered that my mom had told me that we were leaving at nine, and it was already ten till. I turned to my impromptu gaming opponent and mumbled somewhat of an awkward bye/nice to meet you. And then we both sort of stood there for a minute talking, in this in between mode of leaving/staying.

"So... Thanks for wasting time with me. I'm Paul by the way."

"Oh. Yeah! I'm Lizzi."

"Yeah, um. Well it was cool just randomly playing with you. My friends dragged me here. Beer and bowling, ya know. And I'm driving them all home."

"Ok....?"

"......."

"......."

And now completely mortified because I didn't know how to eject myself from the conversation I just stood there and tried to mask my embarrassment by smiling and trying to walk out of the arcade area. Paul was a bit of a chatter box. In the span of a few minutes he had informed me that he went to Arkansas Tech, worked at a Hot Topic, and was wondering if we could hang out more while I was still in town.

I don't know if I was completely out of my mind, or if I just wanted to rebel against my mom, but I gave him our address, and told him I could hang out at night.

So we did. And for the rest of the 5 days I spent in Arkansas, those 5 nights I also hung out with Paul. The entire time I thought, "Man, this is some weird Nick and Norah stuff. Stuff like this never happens in real life." But it did. And it was the most fun I had that entire summer. We drove around town, walked in some creepy fields with the moon lighting our way, and got the munchies. A lot. When I left Arkansas we didn't say bye, exchange numbers, or become Facebook friends. He emailed me once but I didn't respond. I knew it wouldn't be the same, so I just let it be.

For the longest time I didn't even tell my best friend about him because I knew that if I did it just wouldn't be as special. This was the one thing that I didn't want to over think or over analyze to the point of it having no meaning. He was cool. And now I think about how much I've changed since last June.

It's like the freaking Twilight Zone in my head whenever I think about Paul.

Have you seen this movie?

As of late I've been on this intense Matt Damon/Leonardo DiCaprio kick(The Departed was like a dream come true when it first came out) and I've been watching all of the older films they've been in. This past week I watched Good Will Hunting and Gangs of New York. I think I watched GNY when I was 11, and hadn't seen it since. Watching it 6 years later is like reuniting with an old friend that I used to secretly hang out with.

I just noticed that most of my favorite American films all have 3 major things in common: The Irish, The Mafia, and buckets of violence. Hmmm...

Anyways, if you're into the aforementioned type of movies then watch Gangs of New York, and then while you're at it watch the The Boondock Saints
Yeah. Quality movies right there. Screw the Titanic and Kate Winslet's driftwood hogging ass.

Just In Case You Haven't Seen This

The honey badger don't give a shit!

And since my grandma is in town making up unnecessary work for my sister and I to do IDGAF either! We had to clean the windows on her car, my dad's car, and my stepmom's car. Why? I don't know. It's freaking 100+ degrees outside.

Living Sheltered

I'm quite lucky that I live in the area of Texas that I live in. We don't really have any natural disasters, unless you count a rainstorm every now and then that knocks over a few power lines. Seeing pictures like this from Iowa make me happy that nothing too big ever happens where I live. Well, other than the fact that Matthew McConaughey graduated from a rival school in my town. But that's about it.

Right now I feel like I'm just waiting for things to happen. I'm waiting to go to camp in Lousiana with my friend Hannah, I'm waiting to go to Florida, I'm waiting to visit a college in North Carolina, I'm waiting to finish up my last year of high school-----

With so much to look forward to I find it hard to live in the now.

On being a female.

So this morning I read Ash's post "Be more like the man you were made to be" and I felt like his description of what men are/should be was pretty on point.

In fact, they pretty much describe my dad to a tee. However, I can also agree
with this whole heartedly:

I know a ton (and see) a ton of older aged guys I certainly wouldn't
consider men. They just seem wildly immature, have a seeming lack of
authority
and are just - unmanly.

I'm sure right now the ratio of immature guys to non immature guys is pretty high because, well I'm still in high school. However next year when I go to college? According to my friends that are there right now not much has changed. So yeah. People will be people. The part of Ash's post that mainly caught my attention was this:

I guess I'm old fashioned in a sense that I also think a man should be able to
(and I sure hope I'm not being sexist here) take care, look after and respect
the girl he cares about, and do everything he can to protect her from whatever,
and always be there for her. I think any guy who can't do any of these,
especially the parts about respecting her, automatically is not capable of being
considered a 'man'. In my eyes, anyway. What kind of a man would mistreat a
woman? That's about as low as you can get, and something I sure as hell can't
tolerate.

Men should be like that, but often there's a big trade off that a lot of females have to deal with. A lot of guys that I've run across that are considered "gentleman" are often too soft.

In my family I'm the eldest child and grandchild. Amongst my peers I'm also in the "older" quartile so I'm often taking leadership positions in virtually everything I'm a part of. I don't know if it's nurture or nature, but I'm also a competitive control freak.

Often I find myself feeling guilty because a lot of the time I'm a real bitch. I run across these mild natured guys, like the ones mentioned above, that are honestly really nice, I mean they open doors, ask to help carry things, kill bugs, you name it--- and I find them annoying. I often refuse their help, at my own expense, because I'm stubborn and possess some type of complex that makes me want to be the dominant person in situations. Recently I was confronted about this, and at first I was offended(perhaps because of the variety of words they used), but after a while I realized that it was true.

In this day and age it's commonplace for a guy to get a away with douchey behavior because he's merely being manly. Personally, I run across TONS of guys that think they can get away with calling themselves men simply due to the fact that they can grow facial hair and sleep around(keep in mind I'm typecasting from my age group so....), however at the end of the day, when the party is over and all the weed is gone they all (literally) go home to mommy.

I can't stand guys like that. I also can't stand the overly chivalrous ones either. An impasse.

Due to the fact that there is an alarming number of guy douches many females have to adapt. A rough exterior is put up to combat their behavior, and many times it results in bitchy behavior that equals douchey-ness. And the nice guys are left to die in the dust as the idea of being a man of honor decays with the rest of society.

I guess what I'm trying to say through all this mumbo jumbo is that as a girl, it's hard to accept traditional gentlemen. We're not used to it. Blame the feminist revolution, loose morals, Americanism, or whatever--- the fact is, things aren't what they used to be.

In order for the old fashion ideology of courtesy to survive there has to be a change on both sides. A happy medium between nice/doormat and manly/assertive must also exist.

I don't know. This nigahiga video pretty much sums things up though(there's also a Kev Jumba version).

I'm working... well, designing

Personally, if I'm doing something that I enjoy then I don't consider it work.

That's why I think all those random guys that yell "do work son!!" at each other all the time hate sex.....But yeah.

Since summer has started I've been slaving away at my computer doing (mostly) productive things in Adobe InDesign for next year's yearbook. Here are some rough page outlines/screenshots that I've made over the past 5 days. Tell me what you think. All the random boxes will be filled with pictures, also on the above spread, the grey will be a full page photo bleed. I have about 4 others, but they're either half done, or so.... I don't know--- not presentable that I decided not to waste your time by showing them to you. My Co-Editor Ashley and I were going for a Seventeen/Teen Vogue look that would be yearbook appropriate as well. Also, we don't really have a color scheme, but right now design wise I'm really digging deep reds, black, and white. All of the other colors are pretty much just for fun-sies.

Anyways, as I was scouring the web looking for fellow InDesigners I found this gem:


According to this I could fall under either painter, or graphic designer, depending upon my appetite.

SATurday has lost it's meaning

Compared to most of you guys I'm a bit of a slacker. I'm just now taking the SAT :/

For some of my friends it's their 3rd or 4th time taking it. Now I'm usually not a pessimist, but the 4th time around.... I don't think their score is going to jump up all that drastically(some of the poor fellows are stuck in the 1850-1900 range).

Also, knowing myself, and how I "studied" I'm hoping for something in the 1850 range. That way any score above that would just elate me to the point of pure bliss. Sure, I'm capable of a solid 2100 or 2200, but seeing as I barely skimmed the vocab and did absolutely no math practice since being out of school--- well let's just say that it's a good thing this test didn't cost me (thank you Texas!).

The ACT however... I'm going to buckle down for that one, despite the fact that I heard it was the easier of the two. Then again, All American Boy told me this, and he made a 36(!!!!!!!). Plus, he also told me AP Economics would be easy (I later found out he had the highest grade in the class, even higher than all the seniors). Yeah, I don't think I can trust his experience on things.

But I digress, to my fellow juniors/seniors taking the SAT, GOOD LUCK and break both of your legs (that is, if you're a thespian) I know you guys actually studied and applied yourselves!

idgaf if I'm irrational

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a LONG time you might remember me mentioning Jacob Root. The guy who ruined my freshmen year of high school.

Well, in my attempt to move on with my life and forget about him I deleted him off of my facebook and avoided anywhere I heard he was working (he changes jobs quite frequently).

Yeah. The other day I commented on my friend Ting's photo and he had the nerve to say something to me on that picture. Sure, it wasn't agressive, but still---- I thought we had a silent agreement to never talk to each other ever again.

Ting is a big "vanity" picture taker, and me being the nice person I am, I commented on one of the 15 she had posted in the album. The anger I felt surge through me when I saw that he had purposefully gone out of his way to comment on the one picture I had commented on was immense.

I'm done avoiding him. I'm done not going to Starbucks with my friends just to avoid him. I'm done not going to Hastings just because he works there. If I see him a freaking Target so be it.

The fact that something as small as this upsets me... ah I'm angry at myself now.