Not Quite Brain Crack

It's Friday and I don't have school! So in addition to actively thinking about my application essays (read: not doing,) I'm vaguely wandering the internet. Oh other hobbies. Why do I have you when the internet exists? For power outages, I guess.

I've been thinking about a lot of random things lately. It's not to the point of brain crack, because they're not really ideas, just vague thoughts. I wanted to get them out of my head, so I figured I'd put them on here. If you don't want to read them, skip to the last paragraph. Or just stop reading now. (You shouldn't skip them. It would hurt my feelings.)

I want to start pretending to be an anti-hipster, and say things like "My favorite band is The Beatles. You've probably heard of them, they're pretty mainstream." and "I like them better now that they're not underground. This way I can talk about them with everyone!"

I've been adding a lot of things to my bucket list lately, and totally ruining my accomplished to not ratio. I need to start doing more things on there.

I get my wisdom teeth out on the 20th and I can't wait because I've been taking ibuprofen pretty much daily for a month.

The upside to this is that I can now spell ibuprofen without having to look it up.

My high school's marching band is doing a sci-fi show this year, so I've been surrounded by nerd conversations for a good while and I'm not sure I can acclimate back into not nerdy society when the season ends. Maybe I just won't. (I'll give you a link when I find a good one that doesn't loudly announce our city name in it.) Our last show is tomorrow, so I should have more free time after that. I will try to update every week.

Googly eyes are awesome and I should glue them to things.

I should pledge Lust for Love, because it looks fantastic. You should too.

How awesome are the Proclaimers? Very super awesome.

I have a new lamp that's shaped like the robots from War of the Worlds. It has so much potential, but I'm ashamed to say that I've done nothing with them.

Shake-a-Booty is my new favorite song ever.

My hand currently says "I'm awesome," because Hank told me to write it. You should all go do this right now.

I've started a book review blog with my sister. It's called Two Sisters Book Blog. I'm heading there to review Daniel Kraus's Rotters, which I finished yesterday. Go check it out.

Irresponsible uses of my time

I'll be honest with you, blog. I don't know how often we'll be able to see each other this school year. Today is almost all the way through the second week and it's the first day I've only had a little homework. (This is partially due to my mishearing the instructions for my Lit homework and reading 129 pages of A Tale of Two Cities last night, rendering myself unable to speak in modern language, when I was supposed to have those 129 pages read for Tuesday. Cheers to accidentally being ahead.) And when I finished my homework, what did I do? I'll give you a hint. I did not start working on my college applications, and I did not start working on my birthday wish list. No, I caught up on my YouTube subscriptions. And then I read GraphJam. I'm not used to having to spend my free time responsibly. Actually, I don't think I've ever used my free time responsibly. I did start a spreadsheet to keep track of my college applications. And now I'm going to stop stalling and work on my birthday list. But I will update when not overwhelmed.

Maddie Goes on Lots of Trips

I realize I said I was going to keep this more up to date, and well, it's pretty obvious how that turned out. But I meant to, I swear! It's been a rather hectic month in the life of The Cactus, as I would call myself if I were inclined to being pretentious. I was in Georgia for a week, during which I went to Six Flags Over Georgia with my cousins, (Go Batman, go Batman, go!!) got my senior pictures taken, and toured Emory and Georgia Tech, both very good schools.

After that, I was home for a week, and then off to California, for a maternal family reunion and early celebration of my grandmother's birthday. As she pointed out, it was the first time all of us had been together since the last reunion, ten years ago in Germany. While we were in the bay area, we drove up to Berkeley for a tour, and went home through San Francisco. Something about Berkeley just appealed to me, and I would love to attend school there. It doesn't hurt that it's so close to San Francisco. Despite being a fan of heat and humidity, (I know, I know. Completely crazy.) I love the weather there, the fact that it doesn't get too cold, despite what Mark Twain says about it. The City has unmistakable character and charm.

After I got home from California, I was home for just about twelve hours before heading up to the mountains for leadership camp. It was a fun weekend of hiking, leadership and yelling. The week after was band camp, five days of surprisingly exhausting conducting. School started this week. Here's to hoping senior year is good and fun, despite being hard. And here's to hoping I remember to update when I say I will.

Part Two

So, I was one of the many that went to the midnight primere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two. Aside from being the end of an era, it was an amazing experience. I'd never been to a midnight premere before and it was just fantastic. I'd come in rather late to the community of Harry Potter. I'd been to the midnight release of the last four books, but other than talking to my family and friends about every tiny detail, it wasn't quite life changing, at least not completely. I learned about Mugglenet during the countdown to Goblet of Fire, but I never really realized that there was a community attached. I stumbled into wizard rock not long after I stumbled into nerdfighteria, around April 2010. I wish I could have been part of all of it from the beginning, but I'll just have to bide my time until I can go to a HP con.

I loved the movie, and not just because I have loved all of them. It hardly dragged and the battles were suitably intense. I would've liked to have seen Teddy, and Dumbledore could have explained more about sending Harry after the Hallows. Snape's memories seemed a little gapped and Percy returned without fanfare. I know they can't fit in every tiny piece of the books, but I was disappointed about a few things. Matthew Lewis was wonderful as Neville emerging as the badass we've always known he was. I can only hope that I will never stop loving Harry Potter, and neither will the world around me.

I'm Back!

Hey there blog. Long time no see, huh? I meant to give an explanation for stopping BEDA, and I guess it's about to turn into an excuse for not writing anything on here for seventy seven days. Here goes: I stopped writing for BEDA because I was very busy and got tired of boring, uninformative posts. I'd rather write something substantial when I think of it, instead of writing basically nothing for the sake of a deadline. Now I know for next year, I guess. (I doubt this will stop me from trying again. But you never know.) After I abandoned BEDA, I got swamped with homework and finals. And after a while, I forgot that I had a blog. Clearly I'm very responsible and have a good memory.

Here's a list of some of the things I've done since my last post:
Finished my junior year of high school
Jumped off a 60 foot cliff
Driven to Arizona in an unfamiliar, manual car
Seen wild horses
Floated down a river in 120 degree heat
Gotten lost in Las Vegas, New Mexico
Finished watching the entire series of Buffy
Become addicted to The Mountain Goats
Spent time with my cactus brethren
Redrawn and colored about a quarter of the octopus puns
Walked for eight miles down train tracks
Stood right next to the tracks as a train went by
Started filming/vlogging about my adventures
Found several new webcomics to follow
Learned how to scan slides into a computer
Bought my tickets for the midnight release of Deathly Hallows Part 2

In about a week, I leave for Georgia to visit family and get senior pictures. After that, I'm going to California for a family reunion. Then it's band camp and school starting again. Hopefully I'll manage to keep my poor blog somewhat up to date this time.

Dentist

My dentist has this new fluoride. Instead of the foam in the trays, this new stuff gets painted on your teeth. You can't eat for half an hour and it comes off when you brush your teeth that night. As much as the foamy fluoride sucked, I liked it better than the paint variety. It makes my teeth feel disgusting and everything I eat with it on tastes slightly off. On the plus side, I have no cavities for the seventeenth year running.

The Other 4/20

As a high schooler, it's hard to go the entire day of April 20th without hearing about pot. Sadly, it's easy to go without remembering Columbine. The shooting occurred twelve years ago today, and many ignore, or don't know about it, even here in Colorado, not too far from the town. I find this to be a disheartening fact, and would simply like to say that I haven't forgotten.