The Adventures of Hercules

Monday the 27th of the year two-thousand-and-nine.
Hercules is reported missing at 3:00.

I come home and see dad frantically driving into the garage, claiming that Hercules had gone astray. Now normally, Hercules just gets out of the house and runs into the neighbors' garage to eat the neighbor-dog's food, but he was really gone. He was MIA. And clearly he missed his vet appt for his shots. After searching around the neighborhood for like an hour, Dad and I retire to nervously waiting at home for a phone call; Hercules' dog tag had our phone number on it (ah, the classic dogtag, all for utilitarian purposes, none of this fashion nonsense). It soon becomes 6:00 then 7:00 and still no signs of Hercules. Dad and I, having attempted to appear calm and collected, are slowly becoming more worried and nervous. It starts to turn dark and the storm clouds roll in. At this point, Mom has just found out and is speeding home from work. Before coming home she checked the entire back neighborhood and asked all of the families at home. Still no signs of Hercules. Mom comes in exhausted and distraught. We all begin to picture the worst, but Mom, after just a couple of minutes, runs out again to search for Hercules in the backyard. At this point (8:00), it's raining and she's helplessly just yelling his name, but someone from behind the fence, hearing our calls, said that she had found our missing pug. It was a miracle! Hercules, 9-10 years old, is very hard of hearing and can barely see. We were so grateful and relieved. We ran over and brought Hercules, who had been equally shocked and panic-y, back home. It was an amazing story and I'm so glad we found him.

It's sad, but you only truly realize the really important things in life when they're gone, or on a temporary exploration.


Lakers beat the Jazz 4-1 and move onto the 2nd round.

the blog buffet

Buffets always seem so delicious and wonderful, but, when you really get down to it, it's just another excuse for a massive amount of sub-par food. If it's a good buffet, the overwhelming amounts of food will balance out the quality of the food. And with that, my blog buffet (feel free to pick and choose):

The Research Paper: What seemed like a daunting, perilous task to construct a coherent, six-paragraph essay on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is finally over. Yes, I am aware that it doesn't seem very intimidating and horrible, but it is. Not only do you have to analyze the novel on your own, but you have to take other, fancy literary peoples' analysis, and analyze them (essentially analyze and analysis). All with the added bonus of following a ridiculously strict guideline provided by the MLA committee (*shudder*). Ironically, as the left-brained nerd that I am, I was easily able to own the MLA formatting points (hopefully) and was actually left just worrying about my content. I think that the most difficult part of the whole process was keeping up with the mini-deadlines (as the process actually took around 3 months). Everything would have been better if I was left to write my entire paper the night before, which is what I ended up doing (thanks to my wonderful BSing for the mini-deadlines). Hallelujah it's over!

APUSH: aka AP US History, is kicking my butt. I absolutely despise history because it just doesn't interest me and therefore I can't remember anything, ever. Anyways, the AP test is coming up on May 8th (the same day as my violin recital...fml) and I'm dying. To make things worse, I'm always taking the SAT US history subject test on May 2nd. Prayers and miracles needed...

National Merit: A long time ago in a land, far, far away...I took the PSAT. Apparrently I'm a genius (hahahaha...vomit), and I now have the opportunity to tell two colleges of my awesome-ness via National Merit Scholarship Corporations. Problem. Where in the world (is waldo/carmen sandiego) am I supposed to send them to? Ahhhh!

LAKERS: are up 2 to 1 in its playoff matchup against the Utah Jazz.

Saturday Academy Internship: remember the internship applied for a couple of months ago? I should by finding out within this next week. Hopefully I got the position because if I didn't, I don't have a Plan B. No, I don't want to spend my summer rotting away at home.

End of Blog Buffet. One mint per person.

Orchestra Districts

So...there probably won't be a NYC post, but we''ll still acknowledge that it happened (even though it goes blogless).

Today was the Salem-Keizer Orchestra Districts Festival Day (SKODF? errrm). Following years of tradition, a group of the girls went out to breakfast, Sassy Onion, early this morning. It makes me feel sick/nauseous every year, but it's totally worth it. And then we all headed over to West (usually districts is at North, but whatever). Camerata performed 2 movements of Respighi and a Capriccio by Suplevsky at 10:30. The stage, new to all of us, was really strange because on stage it sounded like no one was playing, but apparently it sounded good in the audience? Personally, I didn't think it was one of our better performances, but I think we placed first (I haven't heard it from the actual source yet). Nevertheless, it was lots of fun, minus the sightreading...which is just another story for another blog. After lunch the Symphony played the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 7th, Mascaganini's Intermezzo, and Hoe-down. I honestly felt terrible about this performance. The tempos were different than we normally practice and the instability in the front stands was probably scaring the crap out of the rest of the orchestra. Luckily our sightreading went really well, but honestly, I probably owe some practice time.
Then I came home and slept/watched some nba playoffs (yessss!).

Cavs blow out the Pistons
Bulls upset the Celtics
Rockets kill the Blazers

airplane encounter

It's currently 3:00am and I have this sudden urge to finally get down the story of my "airplane encounter" from the ride back from NYC last Monday, April 6th.

I sat down in my assigned window seat, planning to switch with whoever sat in the spot next to all of my close friends. I soon found out that passengers from JFK aren't as amiable or flexible to seat changes. Finally, my last hope for switching seats to a different location comes walking down to his seat. An average-looking man sits down and immediately strikes up a conversation of how I'd need to pay him "a hundred or so dollars" to switch seats with him. He liked the aisle seat. He was awkward and strange. Little did I know...that this man would continue to talk to me for the rest of the trip. Mr. Joe continued to tell me about his job as a real estate manager, his one-room apartment that currently had instruction going on underneath it (to make way for a subway...hmmm. unintentional rhyme), his current trip to go skiing in Utah (our layover), and his interest in music (when he found out that I was on the orchestra trip). As we talked, my interest in a medical profession came up and he simply said, "you'd make a great doctor." Almost any other time, I might've found this man fairly annoying, but something about him grabbed my attention. God seemed to be placing me in this situation to comfort and entertain this lonely man. So I ignored the man trying to sleep in the middle seat and continued to talk. Sadly, I fell asleep due to the ridiculous lack of sleep on the trip. I woke up to him asking if I wanted anything to eat. "Sure, thanks." He gives me his cookie. And then I notice that he's reading an Anatomy text book with another text book underneath. I do a doubletake and remember his random comment to me about being a doctor. So then I have to ask him "what the books are for, and what he does (real estate, really?). It turns out that Mr. Joe had gone to medical school, but didn't feel comfortable taking the boards due to his lack of understanding of "big picture" anatomy. He became a clinical psychologist, but then got bored and became a real estate guy. And now he reads anatomy text books to stimulate his mind...

So this story really has nothing to do with his coincidental medical term. His loneliness just grabbed me and I ended up really enjoying his story and conversation. Honestly I'll never forget Joe, but I'm sure he's back to being an awkward real estate guy in NYC right now. I guess you just have to be open-minded to meet people, even on a crowded airplane from JFK.

prom?

So...it's been a while. And I guess the nyc post will have to wait. Lesson learned: never promise that the next post will be awesome...

Obviously, I'm not the type of girl that tries to look "good" on a regular basis. I mean I don't look gross and scruffy everyday, but let's just say I wake up at 7:10 and leave the house at 7:30 (shower, breakfast, etc included) every morning. Which is why I was a little hesitant about prom. But Brandon asked. I said yes. And soon (and by soon...I mean like five days before) I was equipped with a dress, shoes, and a boutonniere (aka the flower thing). Our group was awesome! It was Ethan and Kelsey, Jeff and Bekah, and Brandon and me. The guys were great and made a huge breakfast for us before we went to Silver Creek Falls. After some hiking, picnicking, and frisbeeing, we went our separate ways to get ready and met back up for pictures and dinner. Bush Park was freezing, but still good for pictures. And Kyoto, the one and only tepanyaki place in town was quite good. The dance at the convention center was super fun and the ice sculpture was probably the coolest thing ever. After everything, i came home and collapsed as mom pulled out 45 bobby-pins out of my head. A day well spent.

Happy Easter! (two hours ago...)