BEDA Day 25: Yep

I haven't cried today. Which is... surprising. And I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not. You would think that not crying is always a good thing... but I think I'm supposed to cry today. But I haven't.

And I also don't have the energy to write a proper post.

Rest in Awesome, Esther. I miss you. Too much.

-Jess

BEDA Day 24: Might as Well

I had originally planned to write this while my video was uploading, but I actually haven't even started filming the aforementioned video. Because my camera died. MY CAMERA DIED. This may not sound like a big deal to anyone else, but my camera has never died before, even though I've had it for over a year I think. I don't know how long I've had it. But it's been a long time.

So it's charging. And I really wanted to make this video and sigh.

Today is John Green's birthday. I didn't get to help with the making of his birthday present because of vacation, but hopefully I'll be able to help write at least one message for the calendars that we'll be making for the rest of his life. He might not see it until he's in his sixties, but he'll read my message eventually. EVENTUALLY.

I have more things to talk about, but I'll be talking about them in my video, which will be uploaded later tonight. Hopefully.

(This needs no explanation. It's just AMAZING.)

-Jess

BEDA Day 23: EARTHQUAKE

So there was an earthquake here today. Well, not HERE... in Virginia. But I felt it here. It was quite the wimpy earthquake. Apparently it wasn't insanely wimpy in other places, but it was to me. The most entertaining part of the whole experience was watching Nick freak out and overreact over Twitter. Fun times. My personal favorite quotes:

Hahaha. I seriously had to stop myself from just screencapping his entire Twitter.

I've recently become obsessed with The Sims Social, which means that I have now become one of those people that plays games on Facebook. Which is disconcerting.

But THE SIMS SOCIAL YOU GUYS. It's so... amazing.

Kat and I are "good friends" on The Sims Social. And we had a lovely conversation last night:*

Ohmygoodness. Kat and I are now “good friends” on The Sims Social.

Hey interesting story about Kat and me: We have actually sort of kinda met in person sort of. Like, we were in the same room, a few feet away from each other, and acknowledged each others’ existence via Twitter. But never actually talked.

Oh the life of the socially awkward.

In fact I will point out that we have been in the same room AT LEAST THREE TIMES.

That I know of at least.

God we’re terrible.

I remember two. The first time I remember we just shared awkward eye contact. And then, the second time.

There might be more but I don’t even remember because we’re so awful at, y’know, communicating in person.

NEXT TIME WE ARE IN THE SAME ROOM, I AM TALKING TO YOU. YES.

I was at Triple Rainbow Awesome Tour, the Driftless Pony Club show, and Contour.

BUT YES DO IT

I mean we are GOOD FRIENDS after all

Now that you say that, I think I might vaguely remember you from the Triple Rainbow Awesome show. Maybe. I might. Not sure.

But anyway. We will talk and it will be glorious and still very awkward but in a glorious way because we are GOOD FRIENDS and that’s what GOOD FRIENDS do.

We should totally giggle together.

Anyways. I think that's all I have to say today.

ACTUALLY. NO. WAIT.

In case anyone reading this is interested: There is an opening for the Wednesday spot on Vlogstreet, a collab channel full of very lovely and adorable people. If you would like to join, check out this thread.

Now I'm done.

(Because it's Vondell Swain's cat. Oh, I'm friends with Vondell now on Facebook. Because of The Sims Social. Yeah.)

-Jess

*Kat in orange, and me in black, in case you couldn't tell.

BEDA Day 22: Wait

Um. It is past midnight.

I'm so bad at this.

Sigh.

BEDA Day 21: Oh right

I actually have to write a post today. Well, this is weird.

Gettysburg was pretty fun. I learned stuffs, too.

I got a good amount of footage, so I do believe that I'll be making a Thoughts From Places video about it.

I have nothing else to say, really. But I'm glad to be back to posting every day, because there's a little over a week left of August.

-Jess

BEDA Day 20: I remember

I remember sitting alone in my daycare when I was little. The daycare was a small place. It was supposed to be a house, and someone actually lived in it. It was next door to my future elementary school. The principal of that school was the one that lived in the daycare. She lived at the top of this ominous blue staircase. There were few rooms in the daycare, each one for a different age range. I spent most of my time in the main area. In this part of the daycare, there were two types of chairs; the normal ones were made out of plastic, but the others out of wood. There were only two wooden chairs, and they were different because they symbolized punishment. To everyone else, at least. When people were put on “time-out,” I never saw it as a punishment, just a time to stop talking. I loved to talk - still do, most of the time - but I thought that was interesting. That just by sitting someone in a chair, they become silent. Or they are supposed to become silent. I remember that sometimes I would choose to sit in the wooden chairs. I was never in trouble, I just wanted to sit, be quiet, and observe. I was amazingly thoughtful at age four.

BEDA Day 19: Zombicorns Chapter 2

We spend the rest of the day making plans. As expected, no one besides me wants to leave. “Settling down for a while isn’t a bad thing, Deagan,” Yanenowi says.

“But it could be! If we settle down for too long, we won’t be able to leave quickly, and that could kill us,” I say, exasperated.

Mia has been very quiet. I’m not sure if she just has nothing to say, or is judging us for wanting to leave. If she managed to stay in one place for so long...

“Well, there’s no point in arguing about this now. We have no reason to leave tonight or tomorrow, so let’s just let it go until it becomes important,” Amy says.

It’s times like these that I wish I never had chosen to stay with Yanenowi, Amy, and Rou. They never listen to me. Sometimes they’re right, but I generally know what to do. I look to Mia to see her reaction. She blinks and shrugs. I sigh.

“Fine then,” I groan.

I spend the rest of the day playing with Mr. President. I never noticed how much I missed having a dog. Animals are so interesting, and so much better to spend time with than people. Mia is still sitting, not talking to anyone. She’s been watching me and Mr. President the whole time, which is making me self-conscious, but what can I do? I don’t mind the silence. Rousseau, quiet little Rou, has also been silent today, but I’m used to that from her. Amy went out to go do something - I’m pretty sure she told me, but I wasn’t listening - and returns as the sun begins to set.

“So, Mia,” Amy says, plopping down next to her. “What was life like in Chicago? I haven’t been to a city in a long time.”

Mia looks at her. “Um. It was... Surprisingly secluded and empty. Sort of like this,” she motions to our surroundings, “But different because you know that people once lived there.”

“Did you live there alone?” Amy asks.

Mia looks down at her feet. “I had a friend there. Her name was Caroline.”

“Did she become one of them?”

Mia flinches. “No. She... she just left. I don’t know.”

Rousseau is drawing lines in the dirt with her finger. Sitting here with the dog on my own is even too anti-social for me, so I stand up and walk over to them, sitting across from Mia. “Where are you from, Rousseau?” Mia asks.

Rou smiles and sits up straighter. “I’m from Quebec. I did not know much English before the infection. I learned from others I met. I lived in a... apartment?” Rou looks at me for confirmation, and I nod. “A apartment. With my parents. They were not infected, and we tried to leave... They did not leave soon enough.”

Rou loves talking about her past life. I’m not sure why, maybe she likes practicing her English. Like the rest of us, her story does not end well.

“My mother, she was going to have another baby,” Rou continues, “She was infected. I was a... only child. My mother was infected first - she infected my father a day later. I saw both happen. I ran away.”

“We found her dying of malnutrition near Little Lonely Lake, funnily enough,” I say. “Yanenowi, Jeff, Amy, and I. About five months ago. She’s been with us ever since.”

“Who’s Jeff?” Mia asks.

“Oh. Right. You don’t know him,” I say. “He was from a little town in upper New York. One of Yanenowi’s friends that she made over the years prior to this whole... mess. Was in his mid-thirties when I knew him. Been without him for about two months.”

“What happened?” Mia asks.

“An attack. We were stupid, stayed in one place too long. Couldn’t get out in time. Jeff’s one of them now - a Z, I guess you would say.”

“As far as we know, he’s still alive,” Amy says, “But we obviously left him at our old spot. Probably planting corn as we speak.”

“Which is why we should really think about heading North soon,” I mutter.

“Oh, drop it,” Amy says.

“I can’t. I don’t want it to happen again - mainly to me, no offense - but not to any of us.”

Yanenowi tells us all to go to sleep. We’re all adults, and should be able to decide for ourselves when to sleep, but we always listen. It’s partially because she’s double our ages, but Yanenowi’s personality just makes her like a caring mother. Or what I imagine a caring mother would be like. I wouldn’t know.

An hour later, I’m still awake, lying still and looking up at the stars, not able to shake the feeling that we aren’t safe here.

BEDA Day 18: Why Mockingjay is so important to me

It was nearing the end of August, and all I was thinking about was going back to school. On August 24, I had to give tours of my school. I was anxious that day, because a book that I had been waiting for for months, Mockingjay, was being released. Throughout the tours I was jumpy, too excited for the book to handle doing anything else. I got blisters from all the walking, and nearly lost my voice from all the talking. When I got home, the book was waiting for me, light blue and shiny. Although desperately tired, I stayed up a few hours so I could read. I had to sleep eventually, though. And when I woke up, I was brought to my other house. Like any other day, I locked myself up in my room, but unusually, my computer was turned off. I only wanted to read, and I didn’t want to risk seeing any spoilers.

After a few hours, I decided to take a small break from reading just to check what was going on in the world. I immediately saw outpourings of sadness, and it only took me a few seconds to find out why. Our blessed star had become a supernova. I nearly shut my laptop, unable to handle what I was reading. The star, our star, couldn’t possibly be gone. Wasn’t it only a few days ago that she was surrounded by all of her friends, reminding the world to tell their friends and families that they love them? Didn’t we just win all of that money, with her, to make a difference in the world? She just made a video, giving us a tour of her house and then telling us she loved us at the end, didn’t she? But now she was gone, our star was never coming back. Esther had finally succumbed to cancer, dying at only sixteen.

I pulled myself away from everything. I didn’t want to hear or see anything. I closed Mockingjay, pushed it away from me. I cried. For a half an hour straight, maybe longer. Then I went back to reading. I wished that the book had been more cheerful. There was a war going on, and characters that I had loved dearly were dying left and right. Everything seemed more sad than before, each death more meaningful. I finished the book that same day.

Maybe Esther made the book better to me. But I get very defensive when anyone says that Mockingjay is a bad book.

BEDA Day 17: Zombicorns Chapter 1

This is a continuation of Zombicorns, a zombie apocalypse novella by John Green. It was released under a creative commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, as is this piece. This piece follows directly after the end of the story, in which the world is overrun by a kind of corn called Devotion131Y, which gives any consumers of it an incurable disease - AMRV. Those infected with AMRV become zombie-like, and spend their days planting and watering and tending to D131Y. It becomes their Ultimate Concern, and will not eat it because all they want to do is protect it. The main character of the original story, Mia, has lost all of her family members to the disease. She killed her only friend, and left her home in Chicago, heading up to Canada with her dog, hoping that the colder climate prevented the spread of D131Y. This piece is narrated by Deagan, a man who has spent the past year of his life in hiding, constantly running away, trying to avoid getting infected with AMRV.

I look North, in the general direction of the nearest lake, poised to run if I see any bit of gray. We’ve been here for a few weeks, and Amy’s convinced that we need to stay longer. “There’s someone coming,” she always says. Yes, obviously, someone is bound to be near here. But they’ve stopped being someone a long time ago. Amy’s sure that we’ll be able to get out in time if we’re attacked, but if we stay here any longer I’ll be saying, “I told you so,” as an ear of corn gets shoved down my esophagus.

I don’t see anything out of the ordinary this morning, so I quickly gather up some of the sticks littered across the ground. I think they can be used as firewood. I’ve been doing this for months, but I still don’t think I’ve mastered the art of finding wood that has the right level of moisture.

I start to walk back in the direction of our camp ground, and I hear a noise.

I stop, and turn around, cupping my free hand around my eyes to block out the sun. There’s nothing there.

It was probably an animal or something.

Probably.

I start walking again, this time trying to muffle the sounds of my own feet as much as possible. But I hear the noise again.

It can’t be.

No, wait, it really can’t be. It can’t be another gaggle. It’s a bit of a rumbling noise, like a car. They can’t drive cars.

Then I see it.

A truck crashes through a line of trees, and I jump and duck behind a boulder. It comes to a skidding halt. I peek out. The truck was probably once white, but is now so covered with grime that it’s more of a light tan color. I can’t see the driver. A single bark comes from the car. I hide myself behind the boulder again, and stay still for a few minutes, waiting to see if the driver does anything.

After what was probably ten minutes, I hear a car door open, and the sound of someone jumping onto the forest floor. The dog must be out of the truck as well, because I can hear it pacing.

The person starts walking in my direction.

I debate with myself silently. Should I stand up now? Or wait for them to find me? Should I look like I’m hiding? Or dead? Or... just... sleeping?

I don’t get to make a decision, because the person is now standing in front of me. It’s a girl, probably in her late teens. Her messy hair is pulled back, either very light brown or unclean dark blond. She’s pointing a gun towards me, and I realize I should say something so she doesn’t kill me.

“Hi,” I say to her. My voice sounds rough, and I cough.

“Hi,” she says hesitantly. “What was the name of the first person you ever loved?”

I stand up, and brush off the back of my pants. “Well, that’s quite a personal thing to ask someone you just met. Why do you want to know?”

“I.. It’s... Just answer the question!”

“Okay. Um. I... I don’t know.”

“Z!” she yells, and does something with the gun, and oh Zeus I’m going to be killed by a person, not one of them, while getting firewood.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, my legs shaking despite this being a good time for my masculinity to be prominent.

She doesn’t answer me, just shakes her head. She steps closer, adjusts the gun so that it’s facing right at my heart. I sniffle.

“Deag!”

And then Amy is there, behind the girl, and never in my life have I ever been so happy to hear her annoying voice. The girl spins around, pointing the gun towards Amy, who squeals and widens her eyes.

“Are you human?” the girl asks Amy.

Amy nods, “Yes. And I can prove it. Ask me whatever. Just - just put that down.”

The girl lowers her gun, and turns to me. “Why should I trust you? Either of you?”

I can’t speak. My brain can’t form words. I have forgotten the entire English language, as well as the moderate amount of the French language that I have learned thanks to Rou.

“He’s human,” Amy says.

“I can’t know that for sure. Neither can you.”

“He definitely is, though. What has he said or done to suggest otherwise?”

“He wasn’t able to recall an emotion-based memory. First thing to go.”

“Oh. What did you ask him?”

“What the name was of the first person I ever loved,” I interject.

Amy laughs quickly. “Ah, see, he’s never loved anyone. Coldest person I’ve ever met.”

The girl meets my eyes. “Fine then. But actually,” she looks back at Amy, “I don’t even know for sure that I can trust you or anything you’re saying.”

“Ask me the question, then.”

“Okay, what was the name of the first person you ever loved?”

“Easy. Deagan, that one,” Amy points towards me and I scowl at her.

The girl smirks quickly. I roll my eyes at Amy. “That’s frustratingly true,” I sigh.

The girl puts the gun down on the ground and takes a few steps away from it, towards me. Amy makes an audible sigh of relief. “Tell me something, then,” the girl says, “Anything. Anyone you miss? Your parents? Any friends?”

I shake my head. “I don’t miss anyone. I hated all of them. I’m glad that they’re gone and never coming back. I wish that I missed someone.”

“I don’t understand him at all. But he’s still human,” Amy says.

Everyone sits quietly for a few minutes. The wind is starting to pick up, and a few leaves drop to the ground. Autumn is almost upon us, which is a problem for me, only because it will get harder for me to convincingly say that we need to get farther North. The dog walks over to the girl. He looks a bit like a beagle, almost too much like Dobby. I realize that I lied when I said I didn’t miss anyone, though it would’ve sounded pathetic to say that I only miss my dog.

The girl breaks the silence first. “I’m Mia.”

“Amy.”

“Deagan, though you already knew that,” I pause, “What about the dog?”

Mia smiles and replies, “Mr. President.”

I nod, reach over to Mr. President, and scratch behind his ears. His tail wags slightly.

Amy looks up at the sky. “We’ve been out here a long time. We should start heading back, or Yanenowi will start to worry.”

I stand up and stretch. “She always worries. But yeah, we should go.”

“Are you going to come with us?” Amy asks Mia.

“I mean, if you want me to. Sure,” Mia replies.

“You can bring the truck, if you want,” I say.

“Nah. One of the tires is shot. Apparently driving through the woods is a bad idea.”

You’d think that I would’ve gotten used to this, but it still amuses me every time we come across someone new. It always starts off hostile, and the hostility just fades away as soon as it’s clear that everyone’s human. There’s never any exchange of information that would suggest that we should join together. The basic bond of humanity is enough these days.

Amy starts describing to Mia where we’re going. I search around for the wood that I collected, scooping it up with my left arm. Mr. President follows me, eyeing the sticks. I make a mental note to give him one when we get back.

We start walking back towards camp. The wind is roaring, which I prefer to the silence, where my paranoia can create all kind of horrors. I keep my eyes on the ground, watching the placement of each stone, knowing that I’ll trip if I don’t. Mr. President trots happily beside me.

I start to smell fire. I look up and see Yanenowi and Rousseau sitting in front of the fire, looking at Mia semi-suspiciously. Yanenowi turns to me. “Ah, thank you, Deagan. This is almost out.”

I trip.

Thankfully, I am nowhere near the fire. The sticks fly everywhere, a few of them even managing to land where they would be placed in a few minutes. Amy and Rou are giggling. I see that Mia is trying to hide a smile. Yanenowi sighs. “Nice one,” she says, reaching out her hand to pull me up. I recollect the wood nearest me. Mr. President is a few feet away. He seems to have stolen one while no one was looking.

I hand the wood to Yanenowi. She sits back down next to the fire, motioning for us to join her. “Who’s this?” she asks after we all sit down.

“I’m Mia,” Mia says, her eyes glued to the flames.

“Where’re you from?”

“Chicago, originally. I was there for a while. I’ve been heading up north for a month or so.”

“Why did you leave?” Amy asks.

“The same reason why everyone leaves. There was nothing left for me there. The whole place was over run by corn. I hoped that maybe I could find someone up here. Looks like I did.”

Mia glances around. “There isn’t any corn here. Are there actually no Z’s?”

“What are Z’s?” I ask. We’re probably all putting her on the spot, and I don’t mean to add to the interrogation, but it just slips out.

Mia narrows her eyes. “I - you know, the... zombies? I guess you could call them? The ones infected with AMRV. With the corn.”

“Oh. Them,” I say.

“We don’t have a name for them,” Yanenowi says.

“Z’s, huh? Interesting. In any case, no, there are none here as far as we know,” Amy says.

“That’s amazing,” Mia says.

“We leave when they show up,” I say. “There’s no way to survive with them around. Did you say that Chicago was full of them?”

Mia nods, and pulls her legs close to her, resting her head on her knees.

BEDA Day 16: Place I Lived

When I was born, I lived in a house in New Smithville, near Kutztown. There was something about that house - maybe that there were few people around - that made it somewhat magical. Most of the rooms were typical, except for one. It was my sister’s room, technically, but it never felt like that to me, because I had never seen her inside the room. The walls were purple, and the sun would always shine in from a back window. It gave the room a sort of lavender glow. The thing that always drew me to the room, though, was the colony of lady bugs that lived inside of it. It was a family, a nation of lady bugs. Every week I would go inside of this lady bug room and write down how many bugs I found. I wouldn’t give them names, but I would write down their color and number of spots. Then, I would search around the room for the carcasses of other lady bugs. Most of the time, there were more dead bugs in the room than ones that were alive. I was strangely never bothered by this. On occasion, I would find a particular lady bug that I would name, and then take it from the room. My grandmother had given me a hand painted “bug house” when I was very young, and I would put these rescued bugs inside of it. Now that I think about it, they would always seem very scared when they were put inside. They could probably smell death. I didn’t understand that you needed to give the bugs food - I didn’t know what they ate, either. The bug house became more of an unintentional torture device. After a while, I stopped using the bug house, but the bugs kept returning to that purple room.

Sometimes, I looked out of the window in that room, to the forest behind my house. I had never seen the inside of the forest, but my imagination made it better than it ever possibly could be. In my mind, there was a waterfall to the left of the edge of it, which was impossible, but I was convinced. I would have dreams about this waterfall. In my imagination, a train would drive through the waterfall several times a day. It was black and maroon, actually very similar to the train to Hogwarts. But I couldn’t possibly have imagined it as that, because I hadn’t even read Harry Potter at the time. The existence of this train wasn’t as easy to refute, as we were fairly close to an actual set of train tracks, and late at night, I could hear the trains, hoping that one of them was my train. I grew up with these lady bugs, waterfalls, and trains. They were my only companions, really. It was a small neighborhood, all with kids much older than me. I was very emotional the day that we moved away. I still have dreams about that house. More like nightmares.

BEDA Day 15: Ten Years From Now

Ten years from now, I will be twenty-four years old. By this time, I hope to be fluent in French, hopefully Romanian as well. I will have had a decade’s worth of experience playing the ukulele, and I hope I’m actually good at it by then. I will be working on getting a book published, if I have not already. I’ll most likely have finished with college by this time, and I might still want to become a therapist. I could already be one. I measure my life in specific periods of time, and I could be in one very far away from the one that I am currently in, though I really hope I am not.

Ten years from now, technology will have advanced greatly. I hope that printed books are still around. Computers will still be around, because I don’t think they will ever go away, but they may look almost nothing like the ones we have now. Maybe the Internet will finally be accepted by older generations, and people on television will stop talking about it like it’s this crazy thing that those crazy kids use.

So many things will have changed between now and then. Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia, and thinking too much about what may happen prevents us from focusing on what is actually happening. I don’t like to think a lot about the future because ten years from now, I’ll know that I was wrong.

BEDA Day 14: Good morning!

Hello! My BEDA post was awful last night because I had a headache and went to bed and almost fell asleep but then remembering about my blog and yeah. There were really awesome thunderstorms last night, and we got nearly 3.7 inches of rain. I had that headache because of the storms though. Not the noise. I love the noise. But because of the pressure change. We haven't had a lot of rain this summer.

I'm leaving for Gettysburg in a little over an hour. I'll be gone for a week. But I've set up this blog to post every day so that I fulfill BEDA requirements.

And I sound like such a girl but I won't talk to Gil for a week and that makes me sad and GAH I'm just going to stop talking because I'm annoying myself with how stereotypical I am.

(For legitimately no particular reason.)

-Jess

BEDA Day 13

Boop.

BEDA Day 12: Not much to say

Today was the last day of my writing class. It was fun, but I'm glad that it was over, because I really just need some quality Tumblr time before school starts again.

I keep freaking out because I haven't finished my summer work yet. I really need to do that. Like, by tomorrow night.

I was going to talk about Turntable.fm again, but it's becoming a daily thing. So yeah.

My mom and I went book shopping today. I got Anna and the French Kiss, City of Bones, and Suite Scarlett. I'm excited to read some more, but I really can't do that until I finish my summer work.

(Someone played this yesterday on Turntable.fm and I just can't. This song is so amazing.)

-Jess

BEDA Day 11: Songs about butts

I'm like 20 minutes late for BEDA. Woops.

I was with some lovely people on Turntable.fm again tonight and eventually we decided on a theme which is insane because that room never has a theme... But the theme was songs about butts.

Let me tell you, there are many songs about butts.

I've heard too many songs about butts tonight, and the phrase "songs about butts" has yet to get any less funnier. So I'm going to bed. Hopefully tomorrow* I'll write an actual post.

(Because butts.)

-Jess

*Er, later today.

BEDA Day 10: Turntable.fm

Today was much less productive than I hoped it would be. Excitingly, I got an email from Pottermore today! But it was only telling me that I am one of the million to get early access. Which I already knew. I still have to wait a bit to actually get into the website. *shrug*

I've just become addicted to turntable.fm which is this awesome music website that is difficult to describe. The room that I'm in is awesome, the people in it are awesome, everything's just awesome. Most rooms have a theme, but this one doesn't, just "good music." We've gone from Red Hot Chili Peppers to Sons of Admirals to Spice Girls to classical music that I don't remember the composer of. It's amazing and fantastic and yeah.

This is where I end this post.

-Jess

BEDA Day 9: Happy Birthday to My Least Favorite Person

I’m not a fan of complimenting others, but when I do it ends up being very excessive. My most common one is calling someone my favorite person. I do this amazingly often. Like yesterday, when Harry was on blogtv, I was going to tweet that he was my favorite person. He’s really fun and nice to talk to and stuff, but he’s hardly my favorite person.

Vondell Swain posted an accent video yesterday, and I felt the urge to call him my favorite person. Actually, if I go through my comment history on YouTube, I think I did call him my favorite person. I love Vondell - I’m still not exactly sure why - but I don’t think he’s my favorite person.

I have no idea who my favorite person actually is, but if you make me temporarily happy, I’ll call you my favorite person. So, like, if you ever want to be called my favorite person, just talk to me for a few minutes, and you’ll instantly become my favorite person.

But anyways. It’s Tuesday August 9, and that means that it’s the birthday of my LEAST favorite person. Or favourite, as he would say.

Kidding, Samuel :)

Yeah so it’s my friend Sam’s birthday today which is fun. I’m very proud of myself that I remembered* that his birthday was today, because I’m abysmal at remembering summer birthdays. I guess I’m slightly better in August because of BEDA, which forces me to constantly remember what the date is. Regardless, he should feel special.

I’m posting early** because today will be a boring day consisting of doing summer work for school and saying Joyeux Anniversaire to Sam every few hours.



(Partially because of Sam’s birthday... But you guys. Look at his collabmates. The Vlogstreetians are so freaking adorable. Like, they really are some of my favorite people.)***

-Jess

*Without Facebook’s help, I should add.
**I’m writing this in my writing class, which is something that I should have thought of doing before.

***By the way, Sam, I am the baby of my collab channel too. So.

BEDA Day 8: Probably had a point

You guys. I'm too tired to be writing this. Why do I wait to do my BEDA posts this late?

In my writing class, everyone else is mainly working on SAT and college admission stuff. But like. I'm not even in high school yet SO I DON'T CARE. So I just worked on writing my continuation of Zombicorns. I have the first chapter done and I like it. It'll probably be on the internet eventually, but not tonight.

For the starter activity, we had to write about a memorable event, and I wrote about August 25 of last year, the day that Esther died. I've been thinking a lot about Esther, because of Esther Day and it being August and yeah. But also I started rereading Mockingjay.

I should never reread this book.

Every single time I do, something bad happens. The first time, Esther died. This time, the riots currently going on in England.*

Oh I have to post this now so that I meet the deadline.

I probably had a point but I don't remember now.

-Jess

*I was going to say London, but it's now spread all over the place.

EDIT: Oh, and Harry (aka harryisaleaf) had a blogtv show and I was only there for a few minutes but that was fun.

BEDA Day 7: Abby sucks*

I'm currently in at Mike Lombardo's blogtv show. But he's not even, like, on it. I've just been having a blogtv chat party with various MiLo internet friends. The front page of Blogtv has this really awful band playing, which was just described by Char as "that crappy nickleback cover band." Which Alexa has now called Pennyback. Anyways.

Abby made this lovely observation:

If you run your mouse back and forth across the big play button in the middle of the video, it sounds like tap dancing.

So I've been spending most of my time doing that. I'm not sure if Mike is actually going to, you know, go online any time soon. But. Yeah.

(Because Alexa at-replied me on twitter with this song... And it's now stuck in both of our heads. At least Photograph is out. I'm pretty sure this is better.)

-Jess

*She told me to title it this, by the way.

Edit: Abby ended up going live on Mike's blogtv. And we wrote this story and yeah: http://abbystubenbort.blogspot.com/2011/08/jess-sucks.html

BEDA Day 6

Oh hey. I'm just posting this so I can say that I blogged today. *temporarily forgot about BEDA*

BEDA Day 5: Cows are cool

The fifth day of August! This month is going so slow. Gah. It always does.

I don't like, forget that I live in a small farm town, but I was very aware of it today. We ate at a DINER. And then went to a DAIRY. THERE WERE COWS. Cows are cool.

We haven't been to the dairy in a long time, and my dad was sure that we haven't since we moved to our current house. But I know for a fact that we did. Only because I know that this kid whose family owns the place was Gil in late fifth/early sixth grade. So.

Actually, those of you reading this might not even know what that means. I explained the whole Gil thing at some point, but I can't find where I did that. But like. It stands for Guy I Like and the owner of the title that changes every once in a while. It's by far my easiest way of keeping track of time.* I can't talk about the current Gil because haha yeah he READS THIS BLOG. SO. Like. If I say anything, he'll immediately know it's him SO NOPE.

In other news...

The Pottermore Magical Quill Challenge is finished now. I was lucky enough** to register on the first day. I think that everyone I know now has an account. Like, seriously, does anyone not have at least one by now? All that's left for us to do is wait for the welcoming email. I'm hoping that the people who registered on the first day will get their emails sooner, because if the people who just registered a few hours ago get in within a few days and I have to wait a few weeks... I'll be upset.

Honestly, I'll get over it. I'M MAGICAL.

That is all.

(Because Tom is awesome. So is Lady Gaga.)

-Jess

*Better than my age, which is really strange.

**I hate saying that. I wasn't lucky - I just didn't sleep and stayed up until 5:30 in the morning.