[Insert standard complaints about Ohio winters here], because that's all anyone seems to be doing these days, and I sure wouldn't want to shake up the status quo. School is fine so far; nothing too terribly stressful has happened yet. As always, my friends and I are having lots of random adventures. R.J. has successfully converted Jamie, Pat, and me into fans of his favorite TV show, Leverage, so that has become a default part of our Wednesday nights. We've also somehow turned into semi-regular ice skaters.
Two weekends ago, we went ice skating on Saturday night with R.J.'s younger sister. She figure skated for many years, and R.J. played hockey when he was younger, so they're both pretty good. Jamie's a decent skater for someone who doesn't practice very often, and I thought I would be okay because, though I had only been skating two or three times and the last was when I was twelve, I used to be pretty good once I got the hang of it. I think Pat was really not excited to go, but he took one for the team. Once we actually got out on the ice, he managed to do pretty well. I did not. Ice skating was about a hundred times harder and scarier than it was when I was twelve!! The others deemed my skates weren't tied tightly enough, and it got a little easier after I re-laced them, but it was just really painful to my ankles and stressful. I fell five times, I think, and I didn't have very much fun.
Now don't think that was meant to be a sob story, because it continues. Every Thursday night the college sponsors a Mid-Night Madness (MNM) event from 11 PM to 1 AM, and this week it was ice skating. Jamie, Pat, and R.J. went ice skating again last weekend while I was at home, so they were all very excited to go with MNM. I was not. I kept saying I didn't want to be really sore for the ball I'm going to tomorrow (more on that in a bit), because last time my ankles and calves were on fire for about five days, but I also just didn't want to be so stressed out and scared again. The boys kept trying to change my mind, pointing out that I wouldn't get better if I didn't practice and it might not be so painful the second time around, and so I finally decided to go (at about 10:45 PM). And guess what...I had a lot of fun!! I didn't fall at all, and I managed to survive two collisions (other people running into me) in the space of ten seconds. I had the skates with snapping closures like ski boots rather than laces, and they were a lot more comfortable and supportive. I'm hardly sore at all, too. I don't often admit the boys are right about something, but they were right about this.
So ice skating was pretty awesome, but that pales in comparison to the most awesome thing that occurred recently. Last Saturday fan communities for LOST, Firefly, True Blood, The Wire, and Heroes joined the Harry Potter fan community raise money for Partners in Health, one of the organizations that is doing major relief work in Haiti. The event, Helping Haiti Heal, kicked off with a webcast that lasted for nearly six hours and featured MuggleCast and PotterCast, Hank Green, several wizard rockers, author Lev Grossman, the Harry Potter Alliance, and several celebrities, including Matt Lewis and Evanna Lynch from the Harry Potter movies. They managed to raise over $36,000 on Saturday alone!! I have never been so proud to be a member of the Harry Potter community!! Donations are being taken through tomorrow. If you donate at least $5, you can win fabulous prizes, including autographed memorabilia from Ghostbusters, a replica lightsaber, custom-made Harry Potter scarves and blankets, Nerdfighter and wizard rock CDs, and many, many autographed books, including a rare first edition of Looking for Alaska and an entire set of the Harry Potter books (donated by J.K. Rowling herself!). If you're interested in contributing, check out this link.
I'll wrap this up now by gushing about how excited I am for tomorrow night, when I'm going to hp-ohio's Crystal Ball to dance the night away in an incredible castle with friends both old and new, and how excited I am for Tuesday night, when the final season of LOST begins!!
Chipotle trips this year: 2
Friday, January 29, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Longest. First. Week. EVER.
Holy cow, thank God it's Friday!! As you might have guessed from the title of this post, this has been the longest first week of school of my life. College is weird because you kind of have two first weeks of school (at least if you're on semesters), but the first week in January is usually a little easier than the first week in August because most of your stuff is still at school and some of your extracurricular things are just carrying over from a month ago. I, however, had to move everything back into my dorm room on Sunday night, except for things that kind of belong to both me and my roommate Jamie, like the phone and the clothes drying rack and our mascot, a little animatronic dragon named Bernice. I got most of my things organized that night, but there are still a few little things like getting out my dishes that I'm procrastinating about.
Monday was an okay day; it was just long. I had three classes: Stagecraft, Spanish-American Civilization, and Dance in the Musical Theatre. Stagecraft is already a lot of fun, because the teacher is hilarious and I've already heard a lot of crazy stories about him because he's my friends' boss in the scene shop. Spanish-American Civ should be good because it's with the Spanish prof who's slightly less crazy, and my friend Lauren and I sit around and talk about how much we miss Ecuador before class and whenever we have downtime. Dance in the MT looks like it will be a very interesting class and I think I'm going to learn a lot. Most of the class is made up of Musical Theatre majors who are very loud and always talking, but I have four wonderful fellow Dance minors in there too. Monday night was full of adventures, like going to Shannon's house to get her puppy and bring him back to the Green Room, going to Giant Eagle to feed my friend R.J.'s chocolate milk obsession, and then making a Taco Bell run at 10:30 because Pat had just gotten back from his welding class in Cleveland and hadn't had dinner yet. Like I said, a loooooong day.
Tuesday was a nightmare. I somehow I woke up with an eyelash already in my eye, which was very painful. I went and suffered through First Aid and Safety Education at 8 A.M., but the eye was getting worse and worse and I eventually had to go to the Health Center. They poked around in my eye and finally determined that I hand managed to scratch my cornea. By this time I was barely able to make it back to my dorm. I couldn't open my eyes for more than a few seconds because blinking was so painful, so there was no way I could have gone to my afternoon classes. I literally sat or laid on my bed in the dark for almost eight solid hours before giving up and going to bed around 8 P.M.
Fortunately the eye got much better over night, and I was perfectly able to go to class (same schedule as Monday). Stress was relieved with Chipotle and various shenanigans at the Arts House, including watching the season premiere of Leverage, which is R.J.'s favorite TV show. I like it a lot, but it will have to go by the wayside when LOST comes back on in two weeks!!
Yesterday I finally got to go to my Tuesday/Thursday afternoon classes, Music in Film and Acting. The former is inherently awesome. Music and movies. Enough said. The latter is also going to be awesome, because I have some highly entertaining classmates and the professor is hilarious. We played a game in which two people had to crawl around on the floor with their eyes closed in search of a rolled-up magazine. When one of them found the magazine, he or she had to then try to find the other person and hit them with it while the rest of the class stood around and laughed.
Today has been fine, although Jamie and I are currently in charge of coming up with a Plan B for tonight's entertainment. We were going to go to the St. Ed's/St. Ignatius basketball game (Pat and R.J. went to high school at St. Ed's and St. Ignatius is their MAJOR rival), but it's apparently sold out. So who knows what mischief we'll get up to...
Chipotle trips this year: 2
(I stole this idea from Hayley G. Hoover, who has been counting her yearly burritos for a long time, but imitation is the highest form of flattery, right? And I'm counting "Chipotle trips" because I don't always get a burrito. I love Chipotle, but it's kind of a luxury for a poor college student who spends too much money on other essentials like books and CDs.)
Monday was an okay day; it was just long. I had three classes: Stagecraft, Spanish-American Civilization, and Dance in the Musical Theatre. Stagecraft is already a lot of fun, because the teacher is hilarious and I've already heard a lot of crazy stories about him because he's my friends' boss in the scene shop. Spanish-American Civ should be good because it's with the Spanish prof who's slightly less crazy, and my friend Lauren and I sit around and talk about how much we miss Ecuador before class and whenever we have downtime. Dance in the MT looks like it will be a very interesting class and I think I'm going to learn a lot. Most of the class is made up of Musical Theatre majors who are very loud and always talking, but I have four wonderful fellow Dance minors in there too. Monday night was full of adventures, like going to Shannon's house to get her puppy and bring him back to the Green Room, going to Giant Eagle to feed my friend R.J.'s chocolate milk obsession, and then making a Taco Bell run at 10:30 because Pat had just gotten back from his welding class in Cleveland and hadn't had dinner yet. Like I said, a loooooong day.
Tuesday was a nightmare. I somehow I woke up with an eyelash already in my eye, which was very painful. I went and suffered through First Aid and Safety Education at 8 A.M., but the eye was getting worse and worse and I eventually had to go to the Health Center. They poked around in my eye and finally determined that I hand managed to scratch my cornea. By this time I was barely able to make it back to my dorm. I couldn't open my eyes for more than a few seconds because blinking was so painful, so there was no way I could have gone to my afternoon classes. I literally sat or laid on my bed in the dark for almost eight solid hours before giving up and going to bed around 8 P.M.
Fortunately the eye got much better over night, and I was perfectly able to go to class (same schedule as Monday). Stress was relieved with Chipotle and various shenanigans at the Arts House, including watching the season premiere of Leverage, which is R.J.'s favorite TV show. I like it a lot, but it will have to go by the wayside when LOST comes back on in two weeks!!
Yesterday I finally got to go to my Tuesday/Thursday afternoon classes, Music in Film and Acting. The former is inherently awesome. Music and movies. Enough said. The latter is also going to be awesome, because I have some highly entertaining classmates and the professor is hilarious. We played a game in which two people had to crawl around on the floor with their eyes closed in search of a rolled-up magazine. When one of them found the magazine, he or she had to then try to find the other person and hit them with it while the rest of the class stood around and laughed.
Today has been fine, although Jamie and I are currently in charge of coming up with a Plan B for tonight's entertainment. We were going to go to the St. Ed's/St. Ignatius basketball game (Pat and R.J. went to high school at St. Ed's and St. Ignatius is their MAJOR rival), but it's apparently sold out. So who knows what mischief we'll get up to...
Chipotle trips this year: 2
(I stole this idea from Hayley G. Hoover, who has been counting her yearly burritos for a long time, but imitation is the highest form of flattery, right? And I'm counting "Chipotle trips" because I don't always get a burrito. I love Chipotle, but it's kind of a luxury for a poor college student who spends too much money on other essentials like books and CDs.)
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
2009 in review & looking forward to 2010, all on no sleep
It's quarter to eight in the morning and I am still on winter break, yet I am awake and typing. "Why is that?" you may be wondering. Well, it's because I woke up at 2:30 PM yesterday and haven't slept since. Every time I'm home for an extended period of time, my sleep schedule gets weirder and weirder, even though every time I'm home I promise myself I won't let that happen. So I stayed up all night and am going to try to stay up all day until I can go to bed at a reasonable hour.
What an auspicious way to start the new year. Or something like that.
I'm sure you've noticed, as I have, that lately everyone and their brother has been ranking the events of 2009 and giving excessive commentary about said events. 2009 was a very strange year in a lot of ways, and it definitely had some low points, but it was also a really great year for me. Therefore, I now present Madeline's Top Five Events of 2009.
5. Dance Concert 2009, my school's annual student dance showcase in February. A week prior to the show, I would never have imagined this event would make my list of top events. To make a long story short, the piece I was choreographing was very unfairly pulled from the concert nine days before it opened because one of my dancers felt that we weren't going to be ready in time, and rather than bringing her concerns to me, she went straight to the director, and rather than discussing the situation with me, the director just decided to pull it. I was devastated. While that part of Dance Concert is still a rather sore subject, it turned out well in the end, because I was offered the opportunity to assistant stage manage the show as a kind of consolation. I had never held a crew position before, and I wound up having a blast and making some really great friends, which leads me to...
4. As You Like It, which was the spring Shakespeare show. One of my roommates was the stage manager, and because I had had so much fun crewing Dance Concert and I had those new friends who encouraged me, I took my roomie's suggestion to crew AYLI. I wound up being the light board operator, and I again had a total blast. I got to push buttons, have fun conversations on headset, and get to know a lot of people better and make even more new friends.
3. Montreat Worship & Music Conference, which is hosted every year by the Presbyterian Association of Musicians and is always one of the best events of the year. This was the best year out of the eight that I've attended, however, because the guest artists were members of Friends of the Groom, a Christian theater company based in Cincinnati. My church has performed about a dozen of their musicals and we've had the privilege of working with them at two retreats in years past. They brought so much to the Montreat experience this year, and I had the opportunity to take part in one of their pieces during a worship service. Also, I got the opportunity to go down a few days prior to the conference and spend some time with some good friends whom I rarely get to see.
2. Living in Ecuador for ten weeks with an incredible host family and amazing friends. I don't even know how to begin summarizing this in a few sentences, so see my last three months' worth of blogs for the big picture.
And finally, the most important event of 2009...
1. LeakyCon, the most life-changing four days I've ever experienced. In short, close to a thousand Harry Potter fans gathered in Boston to celebrate life, love, and our favorite books through music, art, writing, drama, discussion, and activism. That doesn't begin to cover it, however, so if you've never heard of LeakyCon, please check out this previous post.
Other awesome things that happened during 2009 included my discovery of the VlogBrothers on YouTube and my subsequent conversion to a citizen of Nerdfighteria, finally getting my driver's license (don't mock me, please), and finally, on the very last day of the year, attending my first hp-ohio event. hp-ohio is a group for adult Harry Potter fans who live in Ohio (or at least have a general association with someone who is somehow connected to Ohio), and I now have even more new friends whom I'm hoping to get to know much better in the near future.
So that was just a little bit of my 2009. The first few days of 2010 have been pretty great, because my friends Jamie, Pat, and R.J. came down on New Year's Day and I had a lot of fun showing off awesome things that central Ohio has to offer, like COSI and Wildlights at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. This week is going to be extremely busy as I get ready to go back to school, but it should be an interesting semester. I'm very much looking forward to January 30, on which I am attending hp-ohio's annual Crystal Ball.
I usually suck at keeping my New Year's resolutions, so I'm going to refer to them as "goals" in an attempt to obscure the actual significance from myself. Therefore, my goals for the new year are:
1. To eat healthier, both in terms of what I eat and when I eat, and to actually take advantage of B-W's really great rec center that I pay for whether I use it or not.
2. To read 52 books this year. I know there will be some weeks in which I won't have any time to read aside from schoolwork, but I'm shooting for an average of a book per week.
3. To save money for LeakyCon 2011! I already have half of the minimum amount I'll probably need, which is a great thing, although I did just drop $160 for a ticket and hotel room for the Crystal Ball...but some sacrifices simply must be made.
4. Blog more often! Self-explanatory.
I'm going to go eat some breakfast now. Happy 2010 to you all!!
What an auspicious way to start the new year. Or something like that.
I'm sure you've noticed, as I have, that lately everyone and their brother has been ranking the events of 2009 and giving excessive commentary about said events. 2009 was a very strange year in a lot of ways, and it definitely had some low points, but it was also a really great year for me. Therefore, I now present Madeline's Top Five Events of 2009.
5. Dance Concert 2009, my school's annual student dance showcase in February. A week prior to the show, I would never have imagined this event would make my list of top events. To make a long story short, the piece I was choreographing was very unfairly pulled from the concert nine days before it opened because one of my dancers felt that we weren't going to be ready in time, and rather than bringing her concerns to me, she went straight to the director, and rather than discussing the situation with me, the director just decided to pull it. I was devastated. While that part of Dance Concert is still a rather sore subject, it turned out well in the end, because I was offered the opportunity to assistant stage manage the show as a kind of consolation. I had never held a crew position before, and I wound up having a blast and making some really great friends, which leads me to...
4. As You Like It, which was the spring Shakespeare show. One of my roommates was the stage manager, and because I had had so much fun crewing Dance Concert and I had those new friends who encouraged me, I took my roomie's suggestion to crew AYLI. I wound up being the light board operator, and I again had a total blast. I got to push buttons, have fun conversations on headset, and get to know a lot of people better and make even more new friends.
3. Montreat Worship & Music Conference, which is hosted every year by the Presbyterian Association of Musicians and is always one of the best events of the year. This was the best year out of the eight that I've attended, however, because the guest artists were members of Friends of the Groom, a Christian theater company based in Cincinnati. My church has performed about a dozen of their musicals and we've had the privilege of working with them at two retreats in years past. They brought so much to the Montreat experience this year, and I had the opportunity to take part in one of their pieces during a worship service. Also, I got the opportunity to go down a few days prior to the conference and spend some time with some good friends whom I rarely get to see.
2. Living in Ecuador for ten weeks with an incredible host family and amazing friends. I don't even know how to begin summarizing this in a few sentences, so see my last three months' worth of blogs for the big picture.
And finally, the most important event of 2009...
1. LeakyCon, the most life-changing four days I've ever experienced. In short, close to a thousand Harry Potter fans gathered in Boston to celebrate life, love, and our favorite books through music, art, writing, drama, discussion, and activism. That doesn't begin to cover it, however, so if you've never heard of LeakyCon, please check out this previous post.
Other awesome things that happened during 2009 included my discovery of the VlogBrothers on YouTube and my subsequent conversion to a citizen of Nerdfighteria, finally getting my driver's license (don't mock me, please), and finally, on the very last day of the year, attending my first hp-ohio event. hp-ohio is a group for adult Harry Potter fans who live in Ohio (or at least have a general association with someone who is somehow connected to Ohio), and I now have even more new friends whom I'm hoping to get to know much better in the near future.
So that was just a little bit of my 2009. The first few days of 2010 have been pretty great, because my friends Jamie, Pat, and R.J. came down on New Year's Day and I had a lot of fun showing off awesome things that central Ohio has to offer, like COSI and Wildlights at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. This week is going to be extremely busy as I get ready to go back to school, but it should be an interesting semester. I'm very much looking forward to January 30, on which I am attending hp-ohio's annual Crystal Ball.
I usually suck at keeping my New Year's resolutions, so I'm going to refer to them as "goals" in an attempt to obscure the actual significance from myself. Therefore, my goals for the new year are:
1. To eat healthier, both in terms of what I eat and when I eat, and to actually take advantage of B-W's really great rec center that I pay for whether I use it or not.
2. To read 52 books this year. I know there will be some weeks in which I won't have any time to read aside from schoolwork, but I'm shooting for an average of a book per week.
3. To save money for LeakyCon 2011! I already have half of the minimum amount I'll probably need, which is a great thing, although I did just drop $160 for a ticket and hotel room for the Crystal Ball...but some sacrifices simply must be made.
4. Blog more often! Self-explanatory.
I'm going to go eat some breakfast now. Happy 2010 to you all!!
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