49-9

Hoo boy, I love going to UT games. Especially the games when we STOMP all over the opponents.

(49-9!! Woo!)

Seriously, I love going to UT games. The pregame hype is my favorite, I think. The UT band is awesome, with so many people they can cover the entire field with members.


Sometimes I think that when the game actually starts, it's a little disappointing!

Another part of the games that I always enjoy are when the whole 90,000 person crowd starts to chant "TEXAS FIGHT". One half says "TEXAS" and the other "FIGHT" and it's exhilarating to hear the sheer volume of it. (I mean just look at that. The entire stadium was filled.)


Here are a few shots of the game... Enjoy! (Needless to say, I brought my Fancy Camera.)

Okay, so I have never seen this before, but this thing kept me entertained for the entire game! It was a floating camera held by strings that were attached to the stadium lights.

One of the greatest parts is when the team runs out of the fog.
Hook 'em Horns!
Before the game they always roll out the Texas-sized Texas flag. :D
Look! It's Bevo! It was his birthday last night.
The kick off...

And a few band formations for ya!

...This was the funniest part of halftime: Everyone in the band left one shoe on the field after they spelled 'TEXAS'. If you look hard you can see it!


Overall, a great night. We stomped all over the Aggies and that is how it should be.

(While we were walking back to our car during the 4th quarter, we scored another touchdown. We passed by an Aggie while we shouted "Touchdown!!" and the guy said: "I don't know who did it, but I wish nothing more than a stubbed toe on him.")

On the needles

What could they be? Hmmmmm...

Are they christmas pressies? Hmmmm...

How much do I dislike the auto-focus because it doesn't really focus right? Hmmmm....

Only time will tell...

A-C-E!

So Brandlyn (my most favoritest wonderfulest bestest friend evarrr) had her first cheerleading competition today! So I went and pretended to be her Mommy and cheered her on!

Brandy is part of the Austin Cheer Elite squad, and they don't cheer for a team, they just dance and cheer. I thought they were good (You can watch the video, and decide for yourself) but Brandy thinks they could have done better. She messed up, and they couldn't really hear each other, and oh well. She has another six competitions, so I think she will do better in the future.

Brandy looks super cute in her uniform. ;) (look!! She's eating chocolate! I didn't know cheerleaders ATE!)


And here is my favorite picture of the day. I think she looks so beautiful.



And here's her from the back. (I was stalking her with my Fancy Camera.)


And here is the video of their performance. (Just so ya'll know, at the very end there, the girl who back handsprings her way across the stage is Brandlyn. She's on the left of the screen most of the time.)

Spring isn't quite yet in the air, but that won't stop me

(...This is the post I meant to write yesterday... but I got distracted and watched the new mythbusters episode instead. [I love me some Discovery Channel!] )

Yesterday, I signed up for classes for the spring!

My next semester looks pretty similar to this semester, except that I start later... And can sleep later! (Yaaaaay!)

Monday/Wednesday/Fridays look a lot like this:

10am: French 2.
I like French... I'm learning. Why stop now? (Plus, you need 2 semesters to get language credit at all...)

11am: Freshman Composition 2.
Required for Freshmen to take.

2pm: Solar System Exploration.
Yaaaaaaay more astronomy!! I am very excited about getting to take this. :)

And Tuesday/Thursdays look like this:

12:30pm: Third Rock
This class was my "um, well I need another class so I suppose this will work" class. It's a geology class, and apparently so easy you don't even need a textbook... but I will reserve judgment on that.

2pm: Pre-Columbus to Civil War American History
I look forward to this class. Apparently the teacher is a little dull... but oh well.

I think Tuesdays and Thursdays will be my favorite. I can sleep late!!

So that's my schedule. I'll draw up another pretty picture and post it next semester so yall can see it. Or, if you're my mother, you can print it out and stalk me and know exactly where I am all the time. (Sort of.)

Have to cut this blog short... Astronomy class has started and we're talking about cosmology, and frankly, cosmology is like studying "Everything Else That Doesn't Fit Into A Nice Simple Category".

Story time!!

This is the story of a girl who had a birthday.

The girl was awoken at seven in the morning by a phone call from her best friend in the whole world, and despite the early hour, she did not say anything rude. She instead rolled over in her bed and mumbled a few things into the phone before falling back asleep. When her alarm went off half an hour later, she pressed snooze so many times she lost count.

Her mother called her next. Although she was disappointed that she was not the first to wish the birthday girl well on her birthday, her mother said wonderfully sweet things to her. After speaking with her mother for a while, she finally dragged herself out of her bed.

She walked across the room and grabbed her computer, which she promptly took to her bed and crawled back under the covers. It was cold on this morning, you see.

She has emails from people all over the word, wishing her well on her birthday. Every one was like getting a gigantic hug.

She dutifully went to class (Both of them actually) and learned much, spanning from Foreign Policy to Cosmology. (She found that foreign policy was much easier to understand. And probably more easily executed!)

After classes, she went home and took a nap. It was a good nap in her warm bed. She was awoken by a knock on the door from a friend to come and give her a hug for her birthday! What a surprise!

Much later that day, her roommate barged into her room and said "LET'S EAT CAKE!" and so the candles were lit and the cake cut and enjoyed. After that, they left for a dessert of indian food, the birthday girl's favorite food.

The girl went home that night and went to sleep... visions of friends, family, and a total of thirty-one email and facebook messages she received dancing in her head.

-----

(For the record, 19 feels a lot like 18... except that 19 is a prime number, and 18 is divisible by 2, 3, 6, and 9. :D)

I baked a cake!

(But I haven't eated it yet!)

Anyway.

It's only hours left till my Birthday Day... and I baked myself a cake! It makes me happy. I love baking and decorating... even if it is only "Add 3 eggs, water, and oil and stir. Stick in oven. Wait 30 minutes. Enjoy." The whole act of being in the kitchen and bustling about just relaxes me. I may even do the dishes.

Doesn't it just look scrum-diddily-umptious? (I think so...)

And wanna see something even cooler? I'm 19 on the inside, too!


Yeah. That's procrastination for ya. (Why yes, I do have a paper due tomorrow, what gave it away?)

And oh! What is that? Look! An Abby NOT procrastinating!


So... only 25 hours and 25 minutes until my specific birth moment. (Bet my mom doesn't call me at 11:55 tomorrow. She'll probably be asleep. Just like how Cinderella loses all the magic at midnight, my mom turns into a pumpkin after 11pm, too.)

(Hrm. Perhaps I just issued a challenge without meaning to.)

Early Birthday

(Mom told me I had to blog, or she would disown me. Eesh.)

Today, I had an early birthday. Sort of. Mom and Duncan came down to visit, and we went to Fiesta Texas. This turned out to be an excellent idea! The high today was something around 70-75, and it was perfect and sunny and a glorious day to walk around a theme park.

Usually, we make a circuit around the park, and by the time we get to the end, a good four or five hours has passed and you feel significantly worn out and ready to go home and slap on some aloe to nurse your sunburns.

It turns out that in November, this is not the case. There are no lines to stand in. Anywhere. I think the longest line we stood in was about 10 minutes.

We made our circuit today in around 2 hours and 15 minutes. We even walked around again after that, just to see if we could do anything else. We went on roller coasters (Mom went too! Yay! She didn't go on the Rattler. I don't blame her. The Rattler is the largest wooden roller coaster in Texas... possibly the southern US. It rocks. (And sways when there's a strong breeze.)

After that, Duncan touched my wireless internet and made it work. (Actually, he sat down at my desk and literally rolled the mouse over the 'wireless connection' button and made it work. It turns out that he now has the Touch of Healing. I will take advantage of this in the future, methinks.) So I am now officially wireless in my apartment. Again. I will gladly put away the long yellow connecting cord I have been tripping over for the last month or two.

We mooched about my apartment, ate cake, and I opened cards, and then, when we decided we were hungry enough, marched out to find somewhere to eat.

We started at PF Chang's. Went to the italian restaurant across the way. Walked back toward our car to another restaurant. Got in our car, drove to Macaroni grill, walked to Texas Roadhouse. Got in the car again, drove to Chile's. Walked to Carrinno's. Walked past Joe's crab shack and then finally arrived at Logan's.

Everywhere had a 45 minute to an hour wait. (My question is, seriously? Who goes out on a Saturday night?) (Hrm, it seems everyone.)

When we finally got to Logan's we decided to eat there despite the wait and munched on peanuts while we waited. And then threw the shells on the floor. (Because that's how we roll.)

I had a good day with my mom and brother. Love them, miss them already, hope they made it home safe. :)

(...3 days until my birthday...)

(Hey Mom! You don't have to disown me now!)

An upcoming challenge

If you're wondering where I've disappeared to, the answer is that I've been sitting on my couch watching tv all today. It's just one of those lazy days, I suppose...

Brandlyn came down last night and we had a lot of fun walking around campus, drinking starbucks, and eating at the Roadrunner Cafe with Abby and Nathan. We hollowed out a pumpkin (I baked the seeds! Not as good as when mom does it, and I forgot to set the timer (Oops!) so some of them are a little overcooked, but I am well on my way to becoming an excellent pumpkin-seed-baker... I wonder if that counts as an accomplishment in life?) and made pumpkin bread, which I assure you is very yummy. We would have tackled a pumpkin pie... but seeing as I have never a) baked a pie or b) done anything but carve a pumpkin, we decied to reserve that for a later date.

-----

The last few days, I have had something occupying my mind. Y'all all know that I write and edit fanfiction as a longstanding hobby. It's what really got me realizing how much I really enjoy both writing and editing and it has fueled my creative tendencies throughout highschool. One of the coolest things that has come out of it has been the realization that I can turn editing, my hobby, into a career that I might actually enjoy AND profit from.

So anyway. Fanfiction. Been doing it for five and a half years, and I almost think that recently it's been more of a habitual thing than anything. I wrote my first story, called Not Knowing, and it took me 3 years to write it and it's a good story (And a source of pride to me, as it is my most popular to date. With 50,000 hits and nearly 300 this month alone, I would say that it's still alive and still read), but I have definately progressed and improved since I started and finished that story... a lot. Every time I read through it, I enjoy the rise and fall of the story, but every time I see places where "I could have phrased that better" and "Gosh... did I write this?" I think that if I were to write it all over again, I probably wouldn't... just because my tastes and talents have changed since then.

Anyway, so for the last three months I've been brainstorming, plotting, and writing its sequel, called Never Realizing. It's good, I'm proud of it, I cannot believe that I cranked out 14 chapters in less than a month and a half. It's cool... only problem is, it's fluff. It's a fluffy little sequel that, while it is well-written and actually really funny, is still fluff. No serious plot twists or drama, just a fourteen-chapter writing exercise in character development, really.

So while I've been writing this story, I've been itching to write something that is truly a challenge within the genre. So the other day, Siobhan and I had a bit of a brainstorm session... and came up with something quite brilliant that I am so excited to start researching and writing.

A crossover of Alice in Wonderland and Lord of the Rings.

I don't mean sticking the Mad Hatter, Tweedle-Dee, and Tweedle-Dum into Middle Earth in with the nine walkers... I mean taking Tolkien's characters and molding and manipulating them into the characters created by Lewis Carrol and then finding places where the stories can be connected. It'll be a challange, I know I'll get stuck a lot and probably toss out nearly-finished chapters pretty frequently... but I am so excited to have the prospect of something that will really make me feel accomplished for the first time in a good while. I think it might make me feel like it's not 'soft-core' writing anymore.

Finally, a challenge.

-----

As an aside, I have these habits of consistently spelling certain words wrong, and "Challenge" just happens to be one of them. I will admit I spelled it wrong every time while writing this blog.

Fun with Asterisks

A short list of things I have to do (mostly) in no particular order:
-Write article (edit article, finish by 5:30pm tomorrow.)
-While writing article, sit in Starbucks and uphold the Person Who Looks Stressed image that you have upheld for the last 3 weeks solid.*
-Attend newspaper meeting
-Polish off Astronomy homework
-Research for politics extra credit assignment**
-Read essays in English book
-Create Thesis for next English paper (I think I will be writing about the dying art of the letter.)
-Curb the Runescape addiction***
-Finish Never Realizing****
-Barnes and Nobles.*****
-Call AT&T (AGAIN.)
-Mop. Even fake wood tiling needs love.
-Clean bathroom******
-Make my bed


*I think that the people who work at starbucks (Starbuxians?) should know me as the Person Who Looks Stressed. I sit in the same spot every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon with some kind of caffeinated beverage of the coffee persuasion, alternating between looking stressed with my hands on my face and looking stressed while typing.
**Which is due on MY BIRTHDAY... (wtf.)
***Dunc, I am so close to 68 smith I can almost taste it. And by the way, check out my stats on the hiscores. I am beginning to pwn.
****Never Realizing is my current story-in-progress. I have a chapter and a half left to write but cannot seem to get it out of my brain.
*****I don't really want to buy a book (with the exception of one...but it's like $5 and I may or may not give in, depending on how the grocery list turns out this week), I just want to go and inhale thebooky smells.
******Aha, bet you got scared when you saw the asterisks after the 'Clean Bathroom' task.

Number 44

I am thrilled, I am honored to have participated, I am proud of my country.

Are y'all ready for this? It's gonna rock.

A weekend of awesome

Right now, I am writing this on my computer in Brandlyn's car... and you will see this later. (Or, well, now.) But I have quite a weekend to tell you about.

Let me preface this blog with a fact: Brandlyn and I have been planning on taking a road trip forever. We’ve sat at countless lunch tables, in countless trees, and spent many hours over the last fourteen years of our friendship speaking of the many road trips that are possible… to Colorado, to California, to many points all across Texas. And finally, this weekend, we found the perfect excuse to hit the road and enjoy the wide open stretches of Texas.

We went to a Nerdfighter Convention!

I spent this whole weekend with my best friend, doing crazy things, singing loud, and trying new things.

Friday afternoon, Brandlyn and I stood in line to vote. It was her first time ever voting, and my second (I voted in the Texas primaries last march.) The starbucks in the grocery store was doing “curbside delivery” to the long line of people voting. A guy would flit back and forth between the starbucks stand and the line and take people’s orders. Very smart, I would say! We both voted (and got stickers! Which I swear was my incentive for voting last March.) See? I got a sticker.

After we voted, we went to my neighborhood’s Halloween party and ran a fishing booth, where kids cast the line over with clothes pins on the end and we attached candy to. It was quite a successful booth, and by the end of the hour we had given away all of the candy.

We left the party a little early and headed to a concert at the Frank Erwin center downtown. Carrie Underwood was performing… and I have to say that it was a really great concert… one of the most fun that I have ever been to. It was nice to be able to sit up at the top (we were literally 4 rows down from the very top of the balcony), put our feet up on the chairs in front of us, and spend the night listening to country music. Carrie Underwood has the most incredible voice, and her opening band was just as good as her. They were Little Big Town, and were great performers. If you’re into country at all, they’re worth a listen.

I got some videos on my camera and some really great photos while there. I brought my fancy camera… it goes without saying.

LIttle Big Town.

That's a cute guy in the band. Photo taken of the big screen... my camera can't zoom THAT far!

Isn't this a cool picture? It looks like I turned a portion of it black and white, but it was just the lighting.

Carrie... that girl has got some serious pipes. I am way jealous of her voice!

Brandlyn developed a crush on the violinist. He sang, played violin, and guitar... I don't blame her!

After the concert, Brandlyn and I walked to the Capital Building, which, if you didn’t know, looks practically identical to the Capital Building in DC… except that ours is taller. And pink. (It’s made out of good old Texan Pink Granite.) Brandy and I goofed off for a bit and posed on a cistern.

You can kinda tell that it is pink... It's so beautiful at night.

I bleed orange, too.

I am not sure what she is doing, but it sure looks cool.

See? I still got it in me.

The next morning, we hit the road to Dallas at about 10 and I spent the first bit burning songs onto CDs. We made a list of 101 songs (6 hours of music, five CDs in all) and spent the 4 hours driving to Dallas singing loud and just chatting. We stopped about an hour outside of Dallas in Italy, Texas.

They had a really great bathroom... especially considering it was a truck stop.

While trying to figure out where we were, I zoomed in with my camera on the water tower, which neither of us could read, and it turns out that my camera could.

And this is Italy, Texas, which looks like a lot of Texas: Flat.

And Brandlyn saw a… something. You try and figure out what it is.

We got to the outskirts of Dallas and stopped to see a movie. High School Musical 3 was our choice. It was actually really good! I think the larger budget made a difference, and I think I liked this movie more than the first two, actually. It had a lot to do with the fact that Brandlyn and I could really relate to this movie more than the other two, since we just graduated last May. Brandlyn loved the choreography and I was blown away by the music. It’s actually worth watching, which I would have been iffy on recommending the last two.

By this time, it was about 6 and Brandlyn and I were hungry and wanted to visit her brother at his work. Devan is a chef at Nobu’s in Dallas… and we sat at the sushi bar and were treated to so much good food… it was incredible. We racked up a bill of around $100, but because everyone loves Devan (and his little sister, of course!) they gave us a lot of it on the house. I ate sushi (red salmon or something) and (I think it was) jalapeno yellow tail in a citrus sauce, and rock shrimp (which was delicious. I think I am ruined for shrimp for the rest of my life ;) ), and the most incredible beef kebab-like things I have ever tasted. And then this fantastic dessert that was a banana dumpling-like object and green tea ice cream with a small chocolate cake. After eating some of the best food I have ever tasted, we headed back to Devan’s apartment and crashed. I fell asleep very quickly, but Brandlyn went out because one of Devan’s friends was having a birthday party and he wanted to see Brandlyn.

And now, today… which was the whole purpose of the road trip!

Today was the kickoff of the ‘Tour de Nerdfighting’. I have been following these two brothers, John and Hank Green, on Youtube for the last two years.

They did a project last year, where they communicated mainly through video logs (vlogs) because they realized their whole brotherly relationship was spent via email and text message. Over the 2007 and 2008, they have acquired quite a following, who have dubbed themselves ‘Nerdfighters’.

Today was a chance to meet the two brothers and listen to John read from his new book Paper Towns. I got my book signed by the two and got a CD of songs that Hank has written. It was really cool to finally meet the two, since I’ve been following their lives for the last two years … almost like meeting celebrities. Brandlyn was very nice about it and tolerated all of my nerdiness, and enjoyed the whole thing as well. They both signed my copy of Paper Towns. (Which you should read, if you get a chance.)

We left and hit the road and now we’re about half an hour out of Austin. We’re driving through Round Rock as I type, and this blog has taken about 40 miles to complete. Do you feel like you’ve travelled a lot too?

The most awesome part of this weekend wasn’t eating really good sushi for the first time, or meeting youtube celebrities, or even kicking Brandlyn’s ass at Wii Mario Kart this morning… it was spending the whole weekend with my best friend, who is my sister in every way but blood.