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.

BEDA Day 4: If Jess was in charge...

I'm kind of too tired to write anything about today. I started working on my continuation of Zombicorns, but I have legitimately only written one paragraph of it so.

Today's starter in my writing class was "If I were in charge."

In this episode of Jess over-thinking things...

What would I even want to be in charge of? My problem is that I really don’t want to be in charge of anything. I’ve never liked the idea of being in any sort of position of leadership. I’m probably over-thinking things, but I don’t want to be in charge, because every decision would be too much for me and I would create even more problems. I’m more of a protester. I want to work for things to change, even if they won’t. I don’t want to have the power to change anything instantly. That’s probably why I’ve never wanted there to be world peace. If I don’t have a problem with something, there’s nothing left to do in life. If everything was perfect and/or instantly changeable, there would be no reason for anyone to be here. If I were in charge, I’d probably hide away, never making a decision, because having even the smallest amount of power is, to me, terrifying.

(This is my favorite cover that MiLo has ever done. Actually, I lied. My favorite is Shortwave, Part 1. Then this. Actually. Can't Be Tamed was pretty awesome, too. Um. Anyways I really like this cover that MiLo did one time.)

-Jess

BEDA Day 3: ZOMBICORNS.

I'm listening to Florence + The Machine and there's a thunderstorm outside and yeah sounds are fun.

Anyways. It's the third day of August, also known as Esther Day. I just want to warn all of you that I'll be an emotional wreck on August 25. Just a warning.

But today is a very positive day. Everyone's supposed to tell their friends and family that they love them. I'm such an awkward person, so like... I didn't, really. Every day, I want to tell certain online friends that I love them... So you would think this would be a perfect day... But no.*

Oh hey Tumblr just distracted me for a half an hour.

My writing class is really, really lovely. We're only three days into it, but I'm already so glad that I joined. I didn't work on that opinion piece from yesterday at all today. But I wrote about a season for my starter activity. Actually, I'll post that:

Every time a new school year begins, I am asked to describe myself. It’s become a tedious thing over the years, especially since the questions don’t make much sense. Most often, I’m asked to compare myself to a form of weather or a season. I’ve never liked the weather analogy, because it makes you sound depressive if you don’t describe yourself as a “bright, sunny day.” The season thing doesn’t make much sense either, because it implies that everyone can be sorted into four different personalities, which just isn’t true.

I almost always end up going with my favorite weather or season. I say that I’m a thunderstorm, which gives a bad impression, as if I will lash out in anger or are in any way loud. I’ll go with autumn, but that makes it seem like I’m a colorful person or something. Which I’m not.

Autumn isn’t exactly my favorite season. I have two, distinct periods of time that I love. The first is when autumn slowly evolves into winter, and the second is the time in approximately late January to early February, when for most, it seems that winter has gone on for too long. There’s something about the lifelessness that I like. When the only thing moving outside is the wind, desperately trying to penetrate the insulation of the buildings. When the only precipitation is rain that comes down to create heavy floods, or ice so strong that it breaks windows.

They’re the times when the earth tries to get back at us. It yells, telling us that we shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be doing this. It yells at the other animals, too, but they go into hiding. Our chauvinistic species is still too proud, too stupid to stand down. So we sit in our too large houses, trying to create heat that will slip out and be crushed by the cold anyway. I like these times, because they illustrate our desperation, more so than any other time I’ve seen.

I could never say all of this on the first day of school, though. Instead, I just say that I prefer cold weather, which is true, and am sensitive to the heat, which is also true. But it’s so much more than that.

We always have a break half way through the class, when my friend Lexie and I head down to the cafeteria and eat Skittles and are amused by the college kids watching cartoons. I brought a book today, Zombicorns by John Green, actually. I've always wanted to continue writing from the end of Zombicorns. I feel like it's just begging for it. I was talking about it with Lexie as we were walking down to the cafeteria today. Our teacher was walking behind us, and he gave me some ideas on how to continue the story...

So I started making an outline for my continuation. Mainly some loose character descriptions, and a collection of names that I want to use. I also have some topics to research: forms of high-functioning autism,** the landscape of southern Manitoba,*** and corn.****

I'll probably start writing it tomorrow. I'm excited, because the story that John started is so interesting. Now I'll post the picture of me holding the book, because I like it and it is sort of relevant.

(I was going to talk about this song in my piece about autumn/winter, but then I didn't. So.)

-Jess

*I did, like, fall asleep this afternoon though. So some - most - of these internet friends that I love are from different time zones, and by the time I woke up they were all asleep. Hopefully. I don't know. Some of them stay up really late.

**Thanks to my teacher. It sounds strange now, but honestly, it's brilliant.

***Which will probably be where it takes place. Maybe.

****If you've read Zombicorns, this is not surprising.

BEDA Day 2: I'M ACTUALLY DOING STUFF

Greetings, everyone! It's the second day of the lovely month of August.

I'm super excited that both Hayley G Hoover* and Kristina Horner are doing BEDA this month. A bunch of YouTubers are also doing VEDA/VALA, which would be a good thing, but because I was in Maryland for a week, I'm really behind on my subscriptions, and it's only going to get worse and worse as the days go by.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem, because I could just spend all day on YouTube. BUT HEY GUESS WHAT I'M ACTUALLY DOING STUFF.

I'm taking this writing class at a local college. It's called the College Bound class, and like... I'm the youngest in the class. Some of the people are stressing about the SAT, and I'm just sitting there like, "LOL wut's high school??" It's going really well though, and the teacher is nice. I started a first draft of this... opinion piece, I guess, today. About online communication and url friendships and stuff. I'll probably include it as a substitute post at some point this month, whenever I feel too lazy/are too busy to post.

On the first day of class, which was yesterday, we did all of these introduction activities. I hate these sort of things. Like the first thing we did, which was "List 10 adjectives to describe yourself." I hate doing that, because it seems like whenever I say something good about myself, I'm lying and being conceited. But if I say something negative everyone will think I'm depressed and/or have a low self-esteem. The next thing that we did was fill out this survey thing, which would help to introduce us even more. Most of the questions were about our writing strengths/weaknesses, our writing process, what we want to learn from the class, etc. But there were also questions about our "activities/hobbies/interests." One of the questions was in school activities. I'm really glad that I did newspaper. Because unlike everyone else, I don't do much with my school.** But then we had to say what we do outside of school. Most people said things about, like, parties and sports and stuff. My thought process:

Er, um. Internet. Tumblr. YouTube. Can Torchwood be considered an activity? No. Um. Uhhh.

So that was fun.

Today was my stepmom's birthday, so I made her a giant card. Seriously, giant. Probably two feet in length. I could go measure it now, but meh.

After dinner, my dad was searching through what we had recorded on our DVR, and I found a program at the very bottom of the list that was saved from May 24. MAY.

MAY.

It ended up being the Glee season finale, which my stepmom has yet to see. So we watched that.

Alright, BEDA Day 2. How was that? Much better than yesterday's, anyway.

Should I do the song lyric thing that I always used to do? I think I'm going to include a song suggestion at the end of each post. Yeah.

(I know you've probably heard this song by now, but like, Vondell's video makes it better.)***

-Jess

*Whom I've been calling Hayley Ghoover lately, thanks to the Contour.

**I'm just now realizing that I could have said that I was a Student Leader, but whatever. The title sounds kind of pretentious.

***Maybe not. I just like thunderstorms.

BEDA Day 1: Haha

Um, hi. It's still August 1. Yeah.

Today has been a really good day, and I was going to explain why, but then I got too tired and yeah.

Better* post tomorrow.

-Jess

*actual

Hi.

This blog has been really neglected as of late. I can be found in a ton of other places across the internet, and I guess I stopped using this blog because of the effort needed to type up a blog post. I'll start using the blog more frequently again, though. I've said this before, but this is my official announcement that I'll be doing Blog Every Day in August.

I did BEDA last year, and although it was quite the challenge, once August was gone I really missed it. August will be my last full month of summer before high school, and I'll be doing tons of exciting things throughout the month. Well, minorly exciting. Probably not exciting at all to most people. But I tend not to leave the house very often. So.

I'm announcing this earlier than I thought I would, because I'm going to Maryland for a week. Hopefully I'll make a Thoughts From Places video while I'm there, because that'll be my first that is outside of my state. I may not. I actually have multiple folders full of footage that I recorded to make Thoughts From Places videos, but I never got around to it. They are really difficult to make.

I'll be back home for July 31, which is good, because I can't wait to hear what it is we have to do to get into Pottermore early. Sometimes when I imagine things like this, I can't imagine NOT getting into it. But with Pottermore, I realize that it is very unlikely that I'll be one of the few chosen to enter a few weeks (months?) early. Either way, I'm excited.

Hopefully you'll all stick around to hear about my life this August.

-Jess

Jess watches Doctor Who

Hellooooo everyone. Remember when I did Doctor Who reactions a few months ago? Well, I'm kinda doing the same thing again, except I'm starting from the beginning. I've actually already finished the first season. So, if you're interested in Doctor Who - and hearing me ramble about Romanian subtitles - check out this blog and this twitter.