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!!
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