Blog - February 2024

View the archive here and a little who's who on my blog here. My old miccroblog can be accessed here.

Quick Update!

Songs of the day: Francesca Battistelli - This Is The Stuff

Not much has been happening front facingly on the site, but I've been doing work here and there behind the scenes, because I've been pretty busy IRL, and I won;t be able to update my site again until this weekend. Over the last weekend, meanwhile, I went to an estate sale with my mum and bought a pillow and a Vera Bradley photo board for my future dorm room! I've also had some mild college excitement I won't get into for now, but suffice it to say I'm potentially looking forward to something. I'll update on what's happened this week over the weekend, but for now this laconic blog post will have to do, because I've got hella stuff to do before I go to bed. So I'll talk to all y'all later! I just wanted to give y'all a quick update. Toodles!

Published on Monday, February 26, 2024, at 9:09 PM.

Thrifting and Other Fun!

Songs of the day: Carrie Underwood - Renegade Runaway

I did indeed have a super party weekend!! Besides one part, but I'll get to that. Saturday morning, my mum and I went to our favourite CD store and I got an absolute haul of eight CDs and two DVDs, even though I didn't really want most of them all that much beforehand---but they were all on sale, so I might as well try them and then I can resell them if I don't like them. So far, I've listened to a Japanese EP by Tomorrow By Together, which I quite liked indeed, and I'm currently listening to Storyteller by Carrie Underwood for the first time and really like it so far!

On Sunday, my parents and I spent the day with my mum's family, ostensibly to help my grandparents tidy house, although not a tonne of tidying got done. My little cousins, as I've enumerated here before, are very energetic and thus it tends to get very hectic when they're all three vying for my complete attention at the same time. I am flattered that they think so highly of me, though, and I suppose it's better for sure than sangfroid.

Monday, Blue, Green and I had a nice little lunch together! We went to a sub chain I'd never been to before, which turned out to be quite nice! Although the chipotle sauce on their chicken chipotle sub was a bit on the spicy side, and there was a bit too much to boot. And then yesterday, my mother and I went to the library, had our favourite chicken tenders for lunch and then decided to do a marathon of three of our favourite thrift shops in our general area! We went to a little charity shop pretty near our library, where I got a few cute tops and my absolute favourite find of the day, a Vera Bradley purse! I absolutely love Vera Bradley, firstly because of the high quality of their products in general and secondly, and more importantly, because of the super fun, colourful patterns! I've hopefully made it obvious from my site that I'm a very colourful person---I mean, my site is named after my favourite colour---so Vera Bradley designs fit really well with me. We then went to a local flea market, but didn't find anything very exciting.

Finally, we went to a nearby Goodwill, where I found some more cute tops and some colourful jeans! They weren't skinny jeans, but I still really like them. (I'm a total sucker for coloured skinny jeans, à la Shinee, as shown below.)

My mother also found what will be my graduation present, but I'll keep mum on that in hopes that that will somehow inexplicably make it more of a surprise for me. (I know, it makes no sense!) The one bad part of the weekend was that I fainted for the first time. I won't get into details since it's my health, for one, and for two I don't want to alarm anyone, but suffice to say it was scary, but it was a one-off thing and I was better by that evening. I just regret that I didn't have a fainting couch or any smelling salts to let the Mrs. Bennet in me out. But that didn't really put a dent in this weekend, which was really good indeed! I'm very glad to have had this weekend. :) I'm less glad to be back at school, but it's no biggie---life is good! So yeah, I'll talk to all y'all soon---I hope y'all have been having just as good of a time as I have. Toodles!

Published on Wednesday, February 21, 2024, at 9:35 PM.

Super Party Weekend!!

Songs of the day: Girls' Generation - My Best Friend

Don't be deceived by the title, dear reader: I've not suddenly decided to throw a rager and trash my parents' house this weekend whilst they're off vacationing in Hawaii only for them to discover me and virtually hang me publicly like they do in the movies. Rather, I just have a five-day weekend. My school administration just randomly decided to give us five days off for President's Day compared to the normal four---most schools around here normally have Monday and Tuesday off, but this year my school is doing Monday, Tuesday and this prior Friday---which is today! And it's been quite a good day.

Firstly, I finally finished rewatching Pride and Prejudice 1995, and my feelings are definitely still what they were last April (or whenever I last watched P&P95) because AAH MR. DARCY!!!!!!!! Ahem. Mr. Darcy is totally the dreamiest guy ever! He is the KING of redemption arcs and has pretty much the exact character of my ideal husband (besides, y'know, the whole total-jerkwad-to-everyone-at-first thing).

I also cleaned out my closet after absolute eons of shirts accumulating, and got rid of a good amount! I'm going to give them to rummage sales, or re-sell them, or something or other. I just hope they find good homes not in my home! And I re-discovered a few tops I'd quite like to wear in the future, and re-integrated them into my main wardrobe rather than letting them gather dust with a bevy of clothes I couldn't stand now that I loved in 9th grade! This was long overdue and I'm very glad to have done it.

I also read an absolute tonne---I finished the second half of a novel this morning! I mean, that's some elementary school rate of reading right there! I hope to read a whole lot more henceforth. I also spent pretty much the whole day mostly off the Net, at least until after dinner. I do wish my Net use today had been able to be less fiddling around with RSS readers and all, and more surfing forums and the Net, but oh well. I also just got some other little things I've been meaning to do done, and overall it's been a very lovely day. And that's not even mentioning the snow!

Record scratch. Wait, snow? I thought it had warmed up!

Well, reader, that's what I had thought to, but it snowed today (the one day when I was off school!) and accumulated pretty well! The roads even got pretty slick---and just last night, when I heard about it, we all thought it wouldn't amount to anything. But the landscape was pretty and white all day, and the snowflakes looked (I didn't end up taking a walk or anything) all big and fluffy! But yes, overall, it was a really nice day today. And Monday I'm planning to have lunch with Blue and Green, and Tuesday my mother and I are going thrifting! It's shaping up to be an exciting weekend---so naturally, I'm excited! Toodles!

Published on Friday, February 16, 2024, at 9:35 PM.

Now and the Future

Songs of the day: Big Bang - We Like To Party

You know, what's struck me recently about being a senior is not that I'm going to be graduating soon---I've never been to a graduation besides my own fifth grade graduation, so it's not super serious to me somehow. But what has struck a cord with me is the fact that after graduation, it'll be moreso up to me, you know? I'll potentially have to get a job to help pay for college, and I won't have high school to look forward to in the fall. It'll be up to me and my friends to stick together as best as we can, even though we're almost definitely all going to be going to way different schools. It's a scary change for everyone, and it's only starting to hit me.

I don't really like to think about it that much, because I hope and pray that it'll be better than I fear, that I'll be able to have a great summer---because that's what scares me. Once I go off to college, I'm somehow more confident that I'll be alright, but in the meantime, I feel like it'll feel like some sort of limbo, you know? It's going to be... weird, and I just hope that my best friends and I can stay in contact and everything.

But enough of all that rubbish! I've had a pretty good day. I didn't have that much homework or anything---just a little English and Latin, and the rest I can do tomorrow. I've also been trying a new routine recently, where I take a bath or shower once I finish my homework, which ends up being around 5 or so, so I don't have to worry about it later, because that always throws my evening routine off, and I also end up having a wide-open few hours for relaxation! Although somehow that few hours doesn't feel like enough to get much done for my site or really surf the Net much at all, although it provides plenty of time to engage with my other hobbies.

So I haven't done as much work as I'd wish around the site, although I've been chipping away pretty healthily at the list of stuff I want to do around here. And I think that that's a good thing---slow and steady wins the race or something. I'll be able to sustain the feeling of having ideas and desires for my site longer this way, rather than a week or two of intense development and then ultimate webmisstress's block for a couple months.

I do, however, plan to work a decent amount on my site this weekend, since we have a five-day weekend this coming Friday through Tuesday for President's Day! Most schools I know of just do Monday and Tuesday, but for some reason, my school added Friday to the mix this year. I'm not complaining!! But yeah. My Pride and Prejudice performance for performing arts is tomorrow, and I hope I do Mrs. Bennet justice! In other news, my Latin teacher did a slam poetry/interpretive dance version of The Aeneid in class today, in PE I discovered I'm actually decently apt at being a handball goalie---at least relative to my normal athletic performance, probably because as a goalie I don't have to deal with the danger of a flying ball hitting anything but my shins---and I'm suddenly on crunch time for my yearbook deadlines, because I wasn't aware enough of the February deadline being in the middle of the month instead of at the end. So yeah, y'all---wish me luck in all this please, and I'll talk to all y'all soon---toodles!

Published on Monday, February 12, 2024, at 8:30 PM.

Cars and Computers

Songs of the day: The Wind - We Go

Here I am, back before the weekend! I meant to post last night, but I only had about a half-hour of computer time besides homework because it was a hectic day. We're finally looking seriously at cars, after the Crash a few months ago back in the fall, and my mother test drove one to pick me up from school yesterday! It's a Subaru, and it's actually really nice! It's a couple years old, so it has a CD player and actual buttons (GASP!), which appeal to my old-woman sensibilities, since I hate that in the new Subarus the only option is whether you want a huge touchscreen with everything on it or one that's twice the size with everything on it. I approved very heartily of the Subaru.

But we had to take it back after we test drove it and all that, and so I didn't get home to start my homework until 6:00, since I had had play practice beforehand, and so it was quite a long evening! But it was pretty good, except that I had thought I wouldn't have homework and I ended up having a pretty good amount, which was really annoying! But today was much more relaxing---I didn't have a lot of homework, I got home earlier, it was absolutely gorgeous outside and so I took a beautiful walk, and finally I've been able to just chillax all night!

Something that's come onto my radar recently: using PowerPC Macs in 2024! I remember when I was younger, for whatever reason the iBook Clamshell (like the one pictured below) was my absolute dream computer, even though I think I had pretty unreasonable expectations for its capabilities given its age at the time and the fact that its newest version of OS X was the better part of a decade out of date. Eventually I gave up on it, but recently I've found myself more and more attracted to old PowerPC Macs. There's just a certain je-ne-sais-quoi about them, you know? They harken from an entirely different era of Apple, when the Mac was a unique, innovative platform that wasn't being iOS-ified and when the Mac and the iPod were Apple's only focuses---they weren't spreading themselves too thin or hocking addictive smartphones to the masses or anything of the sort.

And besides, I'm just a nostalgic person overall, and I also much prefer their old computer designs after Jobs's return---even the ostensibly boring white plastic designs---to their modern design. So I registered for the MacRumours forum and I'm hoping to get an old PowerPC Mac soon to try and use for my (pretty light) daily workload! (E-mails, surfing Neocities, listening to music and word processing, for the most part) It may not go perfectly, but they can be had pretty cheap, so it shouldn't put me out if it doesn't. And it may go well---I have a pen pal who only uses a 20-ish-year-old Windows PC as his daily driver! (Shoutout to Daniel if you're reading this!)

But yeah, today's been a pretty good day overall. I'll talk to all y'all later---maybe from a Power Mac. Who knows? Toodles!

Published on Thursday, February 8, 2024, at 8:18 PM.

A Really Great Week!

Songs of the day: Jo Minhye - Teenage Superstar

Okay, I so meant to blog this week, I promise you, but for some reason I never got around to it. And the site's been pretty neglected this week as well, once again despite my intentions. But besides that, I've had a really great week! Every day was a good day in itself, but now I'll give you some of the highlights:

  • My cookies were a hit at school! I'm going to make another batch tomorrow after school, and this one WILL BE FOR THE NEIGHBOURS! Or at least one tray of them will be. I am getting a little bored of chocolate chip cookies, though---I need to branch out culinarily next weekend.
  • It was a five-day school week, which I think meant I wasn't tired and disoriented throughout the week for some reason.
  • I managed to stay off of YouTube and Reddit, my last remaining mainstream "social media" sites (although they're borderline in my opinion) for most of this week! (This is also not counting Pinterest, but that's more just a media site.)
  • One of my friends is asking me to build him a site, and I actually got a mockup done yesterday! Which I think will be the hard part, since now (assuming he likes it, but even if he doesn't, I've at least got the ball rolling) I've made the template to put everything in.
  • The weather's still been a bit chilly, but it's been warmer enough that I was able to go out for an hour-long walk today with just my trenchcoat over my normal clothes! And even then, it wasn't buttoned up for the whole time. But taking such a nice long walk is an absolutely amazing experience! I can see why people went on walks so much back in the Regency era.
  • I did have a couple last college applications to finish up, but I'm pretty sure that I'm done with those, and besides that I haven't had very much homework this week!
  • Finally, on Friday I happened to be in the right place at the right time at the end of the lunch period, and got a plastic baggy of left-over breadsticks to take home offered to me! And of course I said yes---who doesn't love carbs?

The college thing was a bit stressful, but I'm done with it now, and thank God for that! And I did have a confused near-accident today when I was crossing this horrible intersection near my house, but thankfully nothing happened, and it taught me to be more prudent in the future! Now, I'm going to go work on my site and surf the Net a little before supper, and maybe e-mail one of my e-pen pals later. I'll talk to y'all soon---hopefully before next weekend!

Published on Sunday, February 4, 2024, at 7:27 PM.

<-- Newer posts -- Older posts -->