Stone Soup

I have the most uncontrollable urge right now to clean. To take my house and shake it so only what is necessary holds on and we can all start over.

Really. There is soooo much crap in my room that just isn't necessary!
I'd really rather do that right now than study AP Euro. Which is really saying something. Cause I HATE cleaning, but apparently I hate European History more.

I don't really hate European History. I just hate how much effort this class demands. It doesn't help that I don't even get to take my own notes since she just gives them to me. But now I need to take notes for a quiz I have to make up tomorrow and I've been stuck between cleaning and studying and somehow I just ended up here instead....wasting time.

Gah. Life is crazy. I just have to remember, only two more days til I'm out of school for Thanksgiving Break. Thank God! It's like it's Wednesday, which makes this seem so much more bearable. I think I used the wrong "bear". Fuck it.

To-Do List for Thanksgiving Break:
1. Clean like a mad woman (my room and bathroom aka throw out shit)
2. Essays for college applications (if one more person says I should already have those out by now they can shut the hell up)
3. Watch movies. A lot of them.
4. Read books. A lot of them.
5. Sleep.
6. Dye hair temporarily? advice anyone? my thick hair makes me nervous about it.......

Alright world. Here I come. I'm going to do terms and watch New Moon (oooh guilty pleasures) on the internet. Chou!

I should be reading Mayor of Casterbridge right now. I actually find it entertaining, but I'm just so fucking tired of school.

I need to find a place. My brother keeps telling me this and it's true. Somewhere I can go, a coffeeshop or bookstore or park or library, where I can just chill, read, do what I want and get what needs to be done done.

Applying to college is the scariest thing as it makes me choose where to apply. There are SOOO many good colleges in the USA and I refuse to be limited to Georgia. There is a 90% chance I will not be going to a school in Georgia. But when I think I finally have everything narrowed down, I get a billion things in the mail from NYU and Cornell and gah, I don't want to only pick a few. I want options soo bad because I don't want to be stuck here. I know plenty of people are happy to stay here, but I've already been here for 18 long years and I'm ready to see a world outside of the Bulldawgs (that is the proper spelling) and outside of sweet tea.

As much as I love rural areas, maybe I need to submerge myself in such a different culture as the city? Where else will I be able to find internships and buyers for my work?

Damn. I need to go read. I don't want to. I'm scared I will fail AP Euro because I can't bring myself to stay away from my escapes.

 Currently reading...

1. The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory

2. The Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

and

3. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger



Yep. I got this awesome new leather journal thingy. It's beautiful.

 Today I started my new job at The Oconee Leader, a small, local newspaper. I'm basically checking ads and e-mailing them out and getting them where they should be.


The thing is, while they were training me, my mind was just buzzing. It was honest to God a huge overload on information as I struggled to understand Quark, Adobe Photoshop, Publisher and manage them so that way files could be taken off them all and put into the other appropriately. And I'm so scared that I'm never going to remember what to do in this instance, or what to do when that happens and I'm afraid they'll fire me cause I'll just be taking up space and valuable time.


I go back tomorrow at 4 and I think my boss-lady said she and her husband would be leaving at 4:45, leaving me to work on this stuff alone. I still am not quite sure what the hell I'm doing. How the hell am I supposed to have a confident understanding of all this in less than two days?!?!?!?!?!




I hope this isn't more trouble than it's worth.
Which happens to be $6.50 an hour....

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes


Reviews coming soon....

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde


Rating: 8.5/10 or A
Review: Finished! Quite the book I tell you...the fact they didn't realize Mr. Wilde was gay back then is quite hilarious, considering his long paragraphs describing the beauty of men, Gray in particular, and his short choppy sentences explaining a woman's beauty as relating to her good taste in large hats!.I did enjoy it though, another thought-provoking book about vanity and the perhaps even the shortcomings of concentrating so hard on making oneself smarter. Definitely a must-read. Wilde's writing is like poetry, so silky and flowing that you have to read passages over a couple times just to take it all in!

18. Chocolat by Joanne Harris

 
Rating: 8/10 aka -A
Review: Surprisingly good and with such vividly delicious descriptions of all chocolates and sweets that only the most devout dieter could keep their hands away from the nearest foil-wrapped blessing. Harris writes it so you can see the story from both the protagonist's and the antagonist's point of view, though balanced nicely so that way you know more about the protagonist instead, as many would prefer. Thankfully by seeing the movie, the whole book was not ruined for me. There were still some secrets the movie failed to reveal that were surprising and intriguing to try to figure out throughout the book. There was some magic to the book that I was not expecting, and I don't mean like magical personalities or anything goofy like that. It was more of a romantic mysticism, a sort of kindred soul that followed and revealed more than expected. There are some phrases in French I had to have my mother translate for me, as well as the way to pronouce some of the names, but they didn't halt my progress at all really.


All and all, I would be very willing to read another book by Joanne Harris.

The next books I'm working on are:

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde  (I have less than 100 pages left)

and

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (if I can finally afford a copy for myself!)

10.  Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

Actually fairly good for a teen book...dealt with important issues, though I thought some of the relationships, while though indeed developed, could have gone deeper, could have felt more instead of just growing. You know when you read something and you can feel each emotion? I wanted to see the relationships that way.

Plus it came with 30% off coupon for Borders which I am in dire need of considering the amount of money I have on me. Perhaps once I get my check cashed... n

There was an eclipse! I took pictures, but my hands wouldn't hold steady enough cause I was so cold!


So cool.

Books to read:

 

12. Rebecca by Daphne du Murier

35. Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

I used to devour books.


As in finish a book in one day and then beg for more. I used to read until the words blurred and I was overcome by sleep. When did my relentless passion end? I suppose it came with cable. Though cable can be a comfort for tired eyes unable to focus on a well-worn favorite, I wonder how many classics I would have under my belt if I had never discovered Pokemon and the Little Mermaid.

I mean, I read tons of fanfiction, but what about real, touchable books? That grow yellow with age and get that almost flowery scent about them as the years go by.

I want to return to what I had been, but I wonder if I'll be able to manage reading, art and school. Art, algIIadv, and lit/comphnrs are easy enough to get A's in but it's just APUS that I worry about. I don't have the easy inclination towards memorizing dates or putting things in chronological order. Perhaps if I were more organized, if I did my hw the day I got it, perhaps if I studied more profusely then I could be a little Rory Gilmore.
However I am no Rory Gilmore. Otherwise I'd have Milo Ventimiglia.

With the death of cable, comes the birth of my book-obsession. (I hope)

( Books to read )