Part of the reason I'm updating is because I participated in a friending meme over at remusxsirius. Welcome to all those I met there. Feel free to introduce yourselves in this entry. Tell me whatever you want: whatever you think is most important or relevant about yourself.

The sad part of this is that that meme is probably more social interaction than I've had in the past month. I say that part of the reason for this is because I'm flat broke, but that's a lie. I AM broke, and I am still unemployed, but the fact remains that a normal person would find something to do or someone to hang out with despite having no money. The worst part is that I have trouble caring that I see and talk to nobody. I don't even talk to my family, really. I hide away in my messy den of a bedroom, and I'm not even doing anything useful. It's kind of pathetic, but I find it difficult to be moved by that fact. It's weird, because it's supposed to be a natural human inclination to crave human interaction, but I really feel like I could do without it.

I don't consciously avoid people. I'm not that unsocial. (Antisocial is a violent personality disorder that involves deliberately acting against societal norms and laws. A lack of interest in social interaction is "unsocial.") It just doesn't happen. It's not like many people make the effort to see me either, and for some reason I'm okay with that. I'd be okay with seeing them, too, mind you. It just doesn't happen and I don't go out of my way to change that fact.

I think the real issue is that I get comfortable being alone. The more time I spend that way, the less it bothers me to be that way. I wonder if I spend enough time by myself or only with my family, if I won't lose the ability to interact well with other people? Wouldn't that be interesting. Does that happen? This is a really awful entry for people to start off with. I swear, new people, I'm not a freak. Or maybe I am.

In other news, I started watching Death Note, and I'm really bummed that L is going to die. He's kind of perfect. I wish I knew someone in real life who was as quirky as he is, and I wish I had those analytical skills. But I'm not a natural genius, just someone who, judging from this entry, has more interest in fictional characters than actual people. What is up with that?

Wow, how weird am I.

I finally got an interview!

interview interview interview!

If all goes well, I'll be selling organic things to hippie vegans!  knock on wood like whoa for me, christ i'm broke.  And this is a job I have the potential to like!

EDIT:  Also, have I mentioned how much I love Coldplay's new CD?  Because, really? ♥♥♥

I miss having everyone basically within shouting distance.  Not all the time, but every once in a while I'll get that twinge... an idea or an urge to do something and then remember, "Oh yeah, I can't, that's at school."  Right now, I'm remembering how much I miss sitting at Eddie's at all hours of the night drinking refill after refill of diner coffee.  There aren't enough 24 hour diners around here.  The closest one is a 50s style one called "Happy Days," but the menu is overpriced and the food mediocre.  There are a few others, the one in West Chester and at least one in Coatesville definitely, but the fact that I can't drive and don't have a car anyway really puts a damper on these plans.  Nevermind that I probably wouldn't have someone to go with at a moment's notice.

Today, Erin left her phone lying around.  My brother was going through her contacts, and said, "I could send confusing texts to all of her friends.  I actually could, you know."

So, me, being the great sister I am, said, "Or you could send one to Meghan."

After a short but intense brainstorming session, we sent the following text:

"did you order fresh salmon??"

Two and a half seconds later, Erin's phone starts ringing.  Mike's end of the conversation went as such:

"Hello? ... No, she went to the bathroom... what?... yeah, did you order it? ....Well, it's here and it's addressed to you.  Okay, bye."  He reentered the room looking smug, after hanging up.  "She really thinks someone sent her a salmon!"

A few minutes later, Meghan enters and looks around.  "So where's my salmon??"

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)



1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - I am almost positive I have read this book... I feel like it was printed in one of my textbooks.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller Read part of it...
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare I have read a good portion of them...
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Isn't this part of the Chronicles of Narnia...?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie - Rushdie is a wonderful author.
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - I read this ages ago and barely remember it...
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker - Bolded because I read a good portion of it, italicized because I didn't finish and intend to give it a second shot.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  - boldish... I've read a bit of it but not the whole thing.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - When am I not reading this book??
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

There's a thing on Greenpeace's website where you can send a petition for their release.

And no, "pet projects" don't have anything to do with my dog. I just have all of these ridiculous and pointless aspirations, but no money to do any of them. I want to take up gardening, for one. I have no idea why and probably won't, but I still say I want to. I also really want to get into more DIY clothing, making my own, reconstructing, and TIE DYING. When I get something that will actually look nice tie dyed, at any rate.

I also really want a camera. Not a still one like I have, but a video camera. Part of the reason is that I want to try vlogging on youtube. One reason for this is that I think it will help me be more comfortable speaking both in front of people and a camera. Also, I feel like it's the Thing To Do. Beyond this, it would be nice to capture some fun memorable moments as videos rather than pose for a thousand pictures. Not that I feel like anybody would watch said videos if I posted them, but that is the most crucial of my desires at the moment.

I bought a new notebook today. I can't find the old one. I hope it isn't lost forever D:

I hope dinner is soon. I'm starving.

I need to become a decent driver, but I won't. I'm impulsive, easily distracted, and daydreamy.

I also need a job. STARBUCKS HIRE MEEEE.

I am getting my hair cut next week, and I want to do something a little different than I did last time. I want the bags to be heavier, I think, not as wispy, and blend a little less with the rest of my hair, I don't know. It just seems like I don't even have them. That, and getting the same thing over again seems boring? This cut seems like fun, but I don't know if it would look good on me. What do you think? Mine may be a little shorter than this, at any rate (if I end up getting it).

Also, I'm still playing with the idea of highlights, but I can't decide what. Part of me wants to get a bolder red color, and part of me wants to stick with blonde. Which do you think would look better? Neither? Both? I'm so stumped, honestly.

My real issue is that I am stuck at home all day with little to no social interaction, so I have too much time to think. Also, I don't know where my favorite writing notebook is. Anything in the previous post is probably a product of that.

I am so tired of being single.

I hate this entry already, but it's true. Part of the reason I hate it is because I always preach all of this bullshit about how it shouldn't matter, what matters is being happy alone, blah blah, but the truth is, I'm trying to convince myself as much as I'm trying to convince you. I know intellectually that it's true, but believe me, I am well aware that it doesn't help much.

I don't know if it's just because I've now almost officially been single longer than I wasn't, or if it's because I've had to watch my sister get exactly what she wanted, or if it's because I hear friends talking about how they were asked out on real dates, dinner and a movie, he pays, kiss on the porch at the end dates, but the fact of the matter is that you go so long without anyone showing even a little interest and you start to wonder if it isn't something wrong with YOU instead of them.

And I hate that I'm whining into this thing AGAIN, but it's not like I can talk to my family about it. They'll just tell me it's not important, or that I'm fishing for compliments (which isn't true, by the way). But whatever, it's my journal, scroll down if you don't like it.

So here I am thinking about all the ways I could reinvent myself, from actually taking time on my hair and makeup and clothing every day, to forcing myself to be outgoing and happy all the time, to actively participating in as many social situations as possible, to actually flirting or something. I hate the last one the most. Why is it that in order to catch a person's interest, instead of having an intellectual conversation with them or establishing a genuine human connection, you have to humiliate yourself like some desperate middle-aged Single Aunt whose biological clock is ticking down to zero? Why must I choose between my dignity and a relationship? We all know that if it came down to it I'd choose my dignity.

Then I'd just end up sitting at home at night, broke and whiny in front of the computer, glaring at everyone else's facebook albums... wait a second...

Not that I'll ever actually do anything about it. The most that would happen if I tried any of that is that I'd end up dressed to the nines, sitting at the back corner of a party with a notebook or a novel or just people-watching instead of participating. There's just something suffocating about being forgettable, I guess. I think the point of this isn't that I want a boyfriend, I'm not that pathetic, it's just that I want to know why it doesn't occur to anyone else to want me? I guess it would just be nice to be approached once in a while, I don't know, by people who aren't creepy 45-year-old truck drivers or eleven year old boys.

you are paleturquoise #AFEEEE

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well. Your saturation level is low - You stay out of stressful situations and advise others to do the same. You may not be the go-to person when something really needs done, but you know never to blow things out of proportion. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

In other news, I have temporarily lost the use of two fingers on my right hand. We were on our way to the after party for my sister's eighth grade graduation yesterday. I got out of the car, and because I was in heels, I grabbed onto the car to balance myself. Unfortunately, my father wasn't looking, and he shut the door on my middle and ring finger. My fingernails are still there, but bruised underneath, so I don't think they are broken, not like the doctor would give me more than Tylenol for this kind of break anyway. They are still swollen, though they don't ache so much, but it still hurts to use them. A peculiar thing I noticed: they actually hurt less while they were in the car door than when my father opened it (at long last. I was shouting at him rather incoherently, apparently). A necessary repercussion is that this entry was frustratingly difficult to type.

My sister and I are alone for a few days. We just finished watching Interview with a Vampire from our DVR. Louie was a whiny bitch the whole time. Lestat was awesome at the end.

Coldplay is amazing. I need this CD when I have money.

I really miss the LotR fandom. I'm telling you, it needs to happen again, stat. I don't even care about the annoying people, or the people who get more attention than me despite the fact that they don't know a period from a semicolon. I started rereading the trilogy, and it really reminded me how awesome it used to be.

Recently, Trin started creating group AIM chats for all the gals that used to be on the old MC yahoo group. It's nice talking to them again after so long, seeing what has changed and what has stayed the same. Tux, you have pretty much (and understandably) vanished off the face of the earth, but when/if you come back, help me fix this whole Shannon-wants-her-fandom-back thing. And anyone else, really. I know that there are a lot of random stragglers all over the internet who want the same thing I do (every time someone makes a post in ONTD vaguely related to LotR, there are a whole bunch of comments along the lines of "LOTR FANDOMMM ;_____; COME BACK I WANT YOU." So yeah, it's totally doable.) Ardaslash is really the only comm I have found that is still somewhat active.

But yeah, people, get on this stat.

I am such an epic geek.

I have never answered one of these before. You'd think that for the first one, I'd pick something more profound. Still, it's one of those burning opinions I always want to share and never get the opportunity to do so. I place significance on the strangest things, but I've always seen this question as one tangled up in morality and honor.

In other words, if I picked "pirates," I feel like it would say something about me as a person. This was never more clear than when I was sitting in the movie theatre, watching the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It was a movie fraught with inspiring speeches about Standing Up For One's Rights, and about how Nobody Owns The Sea, and Fighting Valiantly And Honorably, etc. And at first, you're like, okay. It's similar to Theoden before Pellenor Fields, or Aragorn before the Gates of Mordor. It's like, "Yeah! We're fighting evil! It's our right to sail and feel the salty breeze and live freely by... raping women, ruthlessly murdering civilians and stealing all their goods? Wait a second!"

Those movies made it seem wonderful and romantic to be a pirate. And, okay, even setting aside the necessary hygiene and health issues that come with living aboard a ship for months at a time, it's a serious stretch. I don't think people realize exactly whom they are rooting for. Pirates still exist today, only now they have military grade machine guns, and when they board, they'll mow you down with them, but not before they rape you. Maybe with swords and cannons, it seems romantic, but the prospect is infinitely more frightening in modern terms.

So, yeah, the answer is ninjas. The may have engaged in questionable tactics and guerrilla warfare, but at least they were fighting for a cause they believed in, bringing down what they viewed as an oppressive government for the good of the rest of society, not just for their own immediate gain.

1. Think of the first word that comes to mind when you think of me.
2. Go to Google Images and search for that word.
3. Reply to this post with one of the pictures on the first page of results (don't tell me the word).
4. Put this in your own journal so that I can do the same.

I stole this from Tess, who stole this from her friend, who got a lot of really revolting results. So, uh, don't be mean?

I sang at church today unexpectedly. I had honestly forgotten it was Sunday, so I didn't have time to change when it was time to leave, and I ended up going in jeans, flip flops, a cami and a zip up hooded sweatshirt. When I got there, Lumen Christi, the group I used to sing with, was playing, and only one girl had made it to mass. Normally the girl's sister is there too, and their other sister is a year ahead of me and also used to be a part of it. Neither of them were there, so when her father, who plays drums with the group, saw me walk in, he pointed me out to Joanna, and she asked me if I wanted to sing with them. I just zipped up my hoodie and suffered the heat. Not many people were there, anyway, it being Memorial Day weekend and all.

It's really strange singing with a group you're not normally a part of, especially when you miss the rehearsal beforehand. This applies also to ones you belonged to in the past. It's not that I've gotten worse, or they have, but there are small idiosyncrasies that make it difficult to sing as a group. When you've rehearsed together and sing together week after week, you learn to mold your singing to what everyone else does. When I was there, there were times I wondered if I shouldn't just let her have a solo, or her and Joanna have a duet. I did let her solo the first verse of one song, actually. She has a great soprano voice now. I remember when she was undeveloped, but now I think she could be better than either of her sisters, and that's saying something.

Another thing that makes it difficult is that my voice has changed since high school. I never used to have any sort of chest voice. I was a very classical soprano, all head, like ringing glass. I can still do that, but now that I'm not in such a strict environment, and because I'm in a very different choir now (one that likes to do more informal music as well as gospel), my style has change accordingly. Also, I have worked on my own to develop my chest voice more fully. As such, in the beginning I found myself floating between styles, because many of the notes I could hit either way. In the end, my old way seemed to blend better with the others. I did notice another difference: either my microphone was loud, or I've gotten stronger. I held the microphone much farther away than I remember doing and still sounded strong. I think it's the latter, because Mike Ford, the guitarist, and Joanna both mentioned it to me. I accepted the compliment but I was rather surprised, because I had thought, in the beginning at least, that I sounded like crap and wasn't blending at all. But I was always a nit picker.

Even though the congregation was small, I really enjoyed getting up there again. It's the performer in me, I guess. I'm not really an actor, but I love being on stage. It's a driving factor in why I'm teaching myself guitar. If I can accompany myself, I can play and sing in front of an audience. I do miss the thrill of performing for an audience. Lumen Christi used to fill that for me, even though it's church, because I used to do the Psalms all the time, from the high marble pulpit, and we'd split solos on the verses. I suppose it's rather incongruous to treat mass as a performance space, but there you go. It's really not the same in choir, sharing the spotlight with thirty other people. I want to sing in a band. I don't care if we never make it past open mic nights and doing covers in bars. It doesn't have to be anything big or successful; I just want it for me.

Chad is twenty one now! Happy Birthday, if you see this.

So my mom recently started getting Main Line Today magazine and it's kind of amazing. It's all high brow culture friendly. You know, the kind of magazine that has pictures of cast-iron leafy branch stairway railings with bright wood floors, next to other pictures of women dressed head to toe in Anne Taylor, sitting in the grass, sipping wine and laughing as an attractive saxophonist plays nearby and tables of handmade jewelry and abstract, colorful acrylic canvases dot the background. And it's all about this area.

In other words, it's wealthy suburban Philadelphia's incarnation of those magazines you get when you go to the Outer Banks, the ones that tell you where to go shopping, what tickets to buy, who teaches you to kite surf (which i really need to do), where to eat, and what "the locals" like. Minus the surf bum and plus summer pedicures. Yeah.

Anyway, my mom showed me the cover article when I came downstairs this afternoon, saying she had seen a few things that "sound like your kind of thing." (They totally were.) The cover article in this issue is "Summer Fun Guide: 37 great options close to home." And I really basically need to do all of it. They're the kind of things I hear about, but not enough of the people I come into regular contact with actively search out that kind of thing, and also for the past two years I've been stuck in Boscov's for the whole summer and that isn't exactly conducive to artistic celebration.

so here we go...

There's apparantly some kind of history tour in Philadelphia where they take you to all the historic taverns and you get to drink traditional colonial alcoholic beverages and listen to people tell you about Philadelphia history. I didn't know this before for various reasons, and I probably won't do it, but it's cool so it's on this list anyway.

On July 10-13 WXPN has what used to be called the Singer-Songwriter Festival. It's on the Camden waterfront, and I probably won't go to this either because we may not be in town? I'd like to, but if I have to miss it because I get to go to the outer banks, I don't really feel like I'm losing anything.

I may have missed Frida Kahlo, but Ansel Adams is next in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

July 4th at Penn's Landing is usually something we avoid just because it's so huge, but this time, John Legend will be there! John Legend is basically too cool for words. On top of that, from the 4th to the 6th there is an ICE CREAM FESTIVAL. Which is clearly conducive to my summer diet, and something I really should avoid. But really, have they always had this? How did I not know? Oh man.

This one is in bold because it is extra important. Have I mentioned my burning need to be at Folk Fest this year? My life depends on it. The lineup looks super amazing, as do the fun crafty things. It even piqued my MOM'S interest. So really people, let's make this happen. August 15-17.

Manayunk Arts Festival. I have never done this, but I have always wanted to, and since I know SOME of you are artistically inclined and at least partially local, I feel it is your duty to go with me. It's June 28-29.

This one I'm just going to go with their description, because, really, who WOULDN'T want to do this? It’s easy for imaginations to run wild in Winterthur Museum’s Enchanted Woods, a 3-acre kids’ fairyland that comes to life June 21 for an Enchanted Summer Day. Saunter along with the Irish music duet Danaher and MacCloud, while your kids snoop for Soot the troll under his wooden bridge or climb to the nest of Lark the music fairy. Meet Mother Nature in all her eco-friendly glory and welcome the season with Tatnall School students as they stage a maypole dance. I don't care if it's for kids.

This one is basically for Tess. Valley Forge has some sort of Star Party? I think they have telescopes. It said something about seeing galaxies.

Oh oh. The Kimmel Center has an annual Summer Solstice celebration that goes ALL NIGHT. It's probably way expensive and everything but it sounds cool so I'm listing it anyway.

And finally... Longwood Gardens has A TREEHOUSE EXHIBIT.

Also, apparently there's a monthly Jazz thing in West Chester on the first Thursday of every month during the summer, which, considering how often it happens, we should be able to do at LEAST once. It's on the street with vendors and crafty people and food and alcohol, and sounds like a lot of fun.

Nominees are out for World's Sexiest Vegetarian, and I'm not even a vegetarian, and I'm not a member of Peta either, but holy crap I'm having an identity crisis here.

WHOM DO I VOTE FOR??

Each member of AFI was nominated, and I love them all dearly, but I really can't choose between Jade and Davey I can't. How can you make me choose? There are a few other interesting people Sarah will care about, like Gabe Saporta and somebody from Fall Out Boy, but I don't remember who. To be honest, though, it's all about AFI. Jade or Davey I can't choose!

As for the females, I was gonna just scroll straight to Kristen Bell, who won last year and is really hot (and has all the right proportions unlike Hayden Panetierre), but on the way down, who did I spot but GRETA SALPETER! So, do I vote for the actual sexy person, or someone that I just think is adorable but not actually sexy like the title suggests? Decisions, decisions. There really are a lot more male nominees than female. I don't know if that means that there are more male vegetarian celebrities, or if straight women and gay men simply take more of an interest in the dietary habits of their celebrity crushes.

I don't even know why I care about this. I am not even a vegetarian. I mean, I have contemplated it multiple times, but while I live at home and at school, it's just way too difficult to eat a healthy, balanced vegetarian diet without more pills than an AIDS patient. At home it should be easy, but my parents aren't really willing to cater to alternative diets. Maybe when I move out. Maybe I'll learn to cook finally and teach myself exclusively vegetarian recipes while I do it. Maybe I won't, who knows.

My interest in that dumb contest makes no sense, but it will occupy my mind until I know what to do.