A short rant, but then I promise there's good stuff

Angry, angry, angry. News flash: I am not a child. I don't drink. I don't really understand the rules of football and basketball even after seven years of watching games. I don't always get the mature (read: vulgar) jokes right away. And I literally could not care less about March Madness. None of those things, however, in any way make me five years old. I am an adult. I don't need to be protected from stupid things people say. I don't need you to cover my ears when someone makes a dirty joke, even if I'm going to find it completely disgusting and unfunny. And guess what...I don't need to be informed that boys - particularly boys I know very, very well - get angry when their sports teams lose. I am tired of being treated like a baby.

Okay, moving on. I just had to get that out there.

Last week I was home for spring break, and it was the week of the musical at my high school, so the entire household revolved around the show. The production was Thoroughly Modern Millie, and what a fabulous show it was!! I got to see it several times, because I got permission to watch rehearsals for research for my project for my Dance in the Musical Theatre class, and it just got better and better and better. My sister was in the show, playing the role of Alice, one of Millie's friends, and also serving as an Ensemble member, Dance Captain, set and logo designer, and the understudy for Millie. My parents and I got to see her perform as Millie at one rehearsal, and I was so proud! Everyone else in the cast, crew, and orchestra made me proud too! I have a number of friends who were involved, including one of my best friends, Emily, who played the actual role of Millie, and she gave the performance of her life so far, which is definitely saying something! I think it might be the best show our school has done since we've been in the district, and that's even more impressive when you know that 90% of that success came from the kids and 8.5% of it came from the awesome parent volunteers, the orchestra director, and the choreographer. Suffice it to say the director is less than the ideal candidate for the job (since I don't need to get into another angry rant).

Other highlights of spring break were shopping with my mom, watching LOST with my friend Helen who was home for her break, and seeing Alice in Wonderland (the 3-D is totally not worth the extra cost!) and having other random adventures with my friend Carie who was also on break. But mostly, it was a week about Millie.


Alicia as Millie


Emily as Millie and Alicia in the brown wig and pink top directly to the left

My best friends' wedding

I went to a wedding on Saturday. Two of my best friends from high school married each other. I cannot begin to express how weird that is for me.

Don't get me wrong; it was a beautiful wedding. I've known Tawni and Nate for years and I am so happy for them. I just feel really, really old! I also can't even fathom getting married at this point in my life. For that to happen, of course, I would first need to find a boy that was interested in me, something that seems unlikely, but that minor detail aside, I couldn't ever see myself getting married before about 25 anyways.

All of this has been so hard for me to process. For one, I'm barely used to the idea of Tawni and Nate being engaged. They dated for over a year in high school, but they broke up early in senior year and things were a bit awkward for a while. By the time we graduated everything was peachy keen, but they were just friends. They got back together last January, and they were engaged by Valentine's Day. I'm not sure I even knew they were dating again before Facebook told me they were engaged! They love each other so much, though, and I know God is guiding their lives, and I know they're going to be very happy together.

The other day in my Music in Film class we watched the opening sequence of The Sound of Music, and I was suddenly struck by a deluge of memories. Tawni and I became friends during our freshman year of high school, thanks largely to marching band and Spanish class, but one thing that really cemented our friendship was our school's production of The Sound of Music. We were both cast as nuns, so we spent a lot of time learning music together and then a lot of time playing cards and tossing a tennis ball around and generally goofing off when we weren't on stage. That all feels like it was only a year ago, two at most, but no...that was FIVE years ago! I've spent so many treasured times with Tawni in the last five-plus years, but I just can't figure out where any of that time went.

I've only known Nate since our junior year of high school, when he transferred from the local Christian school, but I have so many memories with him as well, mostly from our Drama Club adventures. At the wedding, when Nate stepped out in a white tux, I couldn't help but laugh to myself as I remembered our junior prom...Tawni's dress was white, so Nate was the only boy in our group wearing a white tux, and I can still hear Tawni's mom exclaiming, "Nate, you shine like a little angel!"

I don't like growing up. To be honest, I've never really liked it, but I suppose it's inevitable. There's not much else I can do, except reiterate how much I love Tawni and Nate and wait to see where God takes all of us next...


Tawni and me, The Sound of Music, 2004


Tawni and Nate, junior prom, 2006


Nate and me, graduation, 2007


Me, Tawni, Nate, and my sister Alicia, February 13, 2010

I have awesome friends.

As always, I'm just full of things to talk about. My life is kind of ridiculous, but also ridiculously amazing.

I'll start off with the Crystal Ball last Saturday. I don't think I've had so much fun since LeakyCon. I cannot overstate how much I love the folks from hp-ohio. Save for my friend Jordan, whom I've know since eighth grade, I had never met anyone in the group more than once before last weekend, but I feel like I've known them all for years. I got to the beautiful castle grounds about 3 PM, and I went down to the event center to help finish up the decorating. Everything was blue and white and silver and gold, so beautiful and full of magic. Jenny, who was in charge of the ball this year, did such a fabulous job of planning everything. We had lots of fun going through the three tasks of the Triwizard Tournament, and I won the third task by finding where Scabbers was hidden, so I got to keep him! He's adorable, not a filthy, backstabbing traitor. Jenny and Philip taught everyone to waltz, which was a lot of fun. The food was just heavenly, and we danced the night away to a great mix of current pop, pieces from the movie soundtracks, wizard rock, and standard awesomeness like "Jump, Jive, and Wail" and "Thriller." After the ball was over we all went down to the pool house. The pool was supposed to be heated but it was actually freezing, so as many people as possible crowded into the hot tub and the sauna. I didn't have my swimsuit, so I just sat at the edge and dangled my feet in the hot tub. We finally went to bed around 3:30 in the morning. I was exhausted, but it was totally worth it. I can't wait to be able to see all the hp-ohio folks again!! If the weather cooperates, I'll be seeing some of them on Tuesday!

My second occasion to revel in my friends' awesomeness this week came on Tuesday, a very important day in human history. The final season of LOST premiered on television, and as always, I watched it with one of my best friends, Helen. She goes to Marietta College, which is a few hours away, so we always sit on AIM during the show and call each other at the commercial breaks. Helen was totally on fire this week! She called so many things before they happened and she came up with several extremely interesting theories. I'm not even going to go into a LOST discussion here because I'd wind up writing for hours, but I'll just say that this season is going to be every bit as insane and mind-blowing as we all anticipated. If you're looking for some good LOST discussion, you should check out this made-of-awesome blog.

My final instance of awesomeness this week was last night/early this morning. It was decided that a party was in order, so party we did. I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I can't overstate how much I appreciate my friends making accommodations for me as far as alcohol is concerned. I hate alcohol. I've had sips of wine, of a mojito, and of margarita before, and even though they might have had other good flavors in them, I couldn't get over the taste of the alcohol. I can't even imagine drinking beer because it smells so awful to me. And even if I liked alcoholic things, I wouldn't be drinking at a party anyways because I'm only twenty. Call me a square, but I'm not a fan of breaking the law. Anyways, my friends made sure there was plenty of Dr. Pepper on hand for me, and they taught me to play beer pong with cups full of Dr. Pepper mixed in with the cups of beer, even though that kind of messes with the rules because I couldn't help drink the other team's leftovers when we lost. I surprised myself and everyone else by being more than halfway decent at the game, and I don't really think being sober gave me much of an advantage. I may be laying off the Dr. Pepper for a while, though, because between two rounds of beer pong and a game of kings, I drank well over a liter.

Yeah, my life is kind of ridiculous. Even so, I wouldn't trade it for anything. :)

Ice Skating and Awesomeness

[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

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.)

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!!

Merry Christmas!!

Okay, I sincerely apologize for being such a procrastinator and not blogging in so long. In my defense, when I haven't been busy with procrastinating, I've been rather busy with other things.

A bit of backtracking: I've been home for almost two weeks now. Leaving Cuenca was really, really hard. I was okay until I got out of the car at Amauta and saw my friend Paul hugging his host mom and just bawling. Then I lost it too. The bus ride to Guayaquil was very long and rather subdued, but by dinner time we were all in better spirits because we were just excited to get home. Saturday's flights were fine, apart from a couple of people in our group being shouted at by TSA personnel for wearing Che Guevara T-shirts in the Miami airport. We spent the night in Chicago, and though our plane was a bit delayed, I still managed to make it to my sister's Nutcracker performance Sunday afternoon in Upper Arlington, and it was fabulous as always.

Since then, I've just been getting ready for Christmas. All my presents are now wrapped and under the tree, the house is all decorated, and I've made a ton of puppy chow both for my family here and to send to my family in Ecuador. I've cleaned my room and hung out with my parents, and I've gotten to see a lot of friends. I saw a good portion of my dance studio family at the Nutcracker, and I got to see everyone at church on Sunday. The other night a bunch "the old crowd," my friends from high school who are still like my brothers and sisters, came over to my house. We watched A Muppet Christmas Carol and Beauty and the Beast, which are the sort of sophisticated, grown-up movies we like to watch when we get together. I also got to meet Caleb, my friend Megan's two-month-old son. He is just adorable, and Mego is a fantastic mother, just like I knew she'd be.

Now it's Christmas Eve, and I have to start getting ready for church before too long. The two Christmas Eve services are one of my absolute favorite things about the whole holiday. The early one is the family service, with all the music and scripture readings provided by the kids, and while it's a little chaotic, I love it. I've already seen the bulletin for the later service, and the title of Pastor Phil's meditation (basically a really short sermon) is "Star Trek: The First Journey." My immediate thought was something like, "Star trekkin' across Galilee / On these stinky camels to find the newborn King." It should be pretty epic, because Pastor Phil is just awesome like that.

I wish you all a joyful and merry Christmas with lots of fun and food and family. Amid all the wrapping paper and tinsel and pecan pies, don't forget why we're celebrating: the birth of our Savior in a tiny stable thousands of years ago. As Linus said, "That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown!" And now I leave you with more words of wisdom from another of my favorite characters, Kermit:

"There's somethin' in the wind today that's good for everyone
Yes, faith is in our hearts today, we're shinin' like the sun
And everyone can feel it, the feelin's runnin' deep
After all, there's only one more sleep till Christmas
After all, there's only one more sleep till Christmas Day!"