To be clichéd, Happy New Year!

Hmmm, what has happened this year?

• Musical: January to April preparing for 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.' It was a good time, I met a lot of fun people and I temporarily improved my coordination issues. 
• My first job: Remember, future me; a summer student job at a church=doing everything no one else wants to do. Heck, I was really overworked, but I made money, enjoyed myself occasionally, had great coworkers, I'm not scared of kids anymore and found out my mad skills with a paper cutter.
• Eleventh grade: I've gotten a lot closer to my classmates. We have good times, I like my classes and I see an eventual end to high school. I've also joined choir which has been quite enjoyable. I finally feel comfortable in high school. 

What to look forward to this year:

• Another musical, Miss Saigon. 
• My IB French exam. *insert look of terror.*
• Summer and whatever happens then.
• The beginning of my 12th grade year. 

Goals:

• Pick up guitar again. I've slacked since summer.
• Read Lord of the Rings. 
• Take French seriously to avert disaster.

Tonight I get trek over to a hall in the sticks for the youth New Year's all-nighter. There shall be nachos, a bonfire on the beach, movies and me getting grumpy somewhere between 12 and 2 and going to bed. It'll be fun.
Love,
-J-

And one pasta with meatless balls?

I guess I've settled into a nice little place where I'm perfectly content doing nothing. I'll get to a point in the next few days that I might call someone and see if they want to hang out, but I just need a short break from life. People, activity, school work, whatever. I want to go on Tumblr, youtube, try cooking stuff, read books and watch musicals without having to care what other people are doing.

Monday until Wednesday I visited family. We went to the sticks to visit my dad's side of the family, the regular sitting around for a few hours after eating large portions of food. That evening we went to Hillsborough, possibly the most boring town on the face of the earth, the kind of town that shuns you if you weren't born there. There I saw all these people that I've never seen before in my life and ate terrible casseroles that all included way too much potato. I amused myself by chasing around my one and a half year old 1st cousin (my cousin's kid), Kari, making sure she didn't get lost. She's so adorable.

We stayed in the rather empty town of Sackville with my grandparents, didn't do much on Tuesday, and Wednesday visited my now split mom's parents in Shediac for several hours of slightly awkward conversation. 

*start small rant*
Through all these days of visiting, I realized that my relatives on my dad's side view me as the one who will succeed out of my cousins. I have three cousins older than me, only one of whom graduated from high school, but immediately got pregnant afterwards. It looks like I not only will graduate from high school, but I'm going to go to university, I don't get around and I'm responsible. Damn, my family has hopes for me. AHHH. PRESSURE.
*finish small rant*

Now I shall eat carrot soup. 
Love,
-J-

Merry Christmas lovely people of the blogsphere.

Merry Christmas you lovely people, and to celebrate, here is a rather downlifting Christmas video, if, you know, the holiday season has been too happy for you:

I'm getting ready to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special. Actually, I lied, I've already watched 20 minutes of it. I'm saving some for later.

Some of my gifts of today include a TI-Nspire CX (graphing calculator), which I do not feel worthy of. It's a bit overkill for what I need it for. I also have candy (SO MUCH) and pjs. Nothing really too grand this year because I made my big purchases I wanted this summer while I had a job.

Tomorrow I'm off to the family visiting circuit. Yesterday I had a rather interesting game of Apples to Apples with my mom's family.

And a slightly happier video:

Love,
-J-

Sweater madness.

 This morning I got a text while waiting for my extremely late bus:

Noah: Ugly sweater day made me think of you :) and made me realize that the 'ugly' can be replaced by 'hipster' :P
Me: Aww. How thoughtful.
10 minutes later...
Noah: Well this is awkward, ugly sweater day is tomorrow.

Kind of made my day. Why did that kid have to move away?
Love,
-J-

A mild case of writer's block.

MCHCHDHDFHDAH.

Yeah, I just hit a writer's block. Brb... or well, soon.

I'll try to find something interesting to document soon.

Oh, and for those of you who care and haven't seen, here is the preview to the Doctor Who Christmas special:

*waits anxiously to see if they can actually pull off a Narnia-esque episode*
Love,
-J-

Tree, tree, tree.

Yesterday my family participated in a heart warming Christmas tradition of dragging an evergreen tree into our living room, standing it upright with great difficulty and decorating it in ever so slightly tacky ornaments, lights and garland for a reason that nobody is quite sure of.

I'm in the beginning stages of looking for a part time job. I've had way too much free time lately... I've rewatched three complete seasons of How I Met Your Mother in the last two weeks. I began putting my resume together and I happily realized it doesn't look all that bad. Probably because I actually have job experience. However, it kind of sounds like I'm making it up. I mean, listed under my responsibilities for my summer student job are child care, assisting with day camps,  event planning, office work, fundraising and music... which sounds like a bit much for a 16 year old who had a job that lasted eight weeks. Well, I have hopes it will land me a job of non-fast food variety.
Love,
-J-

To submit, or not to submit?

I'm debating whether or not to submit a edited version of this post to a District High School Literary Journal (basically, a bunch of English teachers got together and came up with this.) I kind of want to submit it, just to see if someone is willing to publish my writing, even in a publication this small. The published pieces are being selected by a jury I know how critical these English teachers are.

Thoughts? Opinions? Should I do it? Please be honest. I'll still love you.
Love,
-J-

'Tis the season.

I'm really embracing the holiday season this year. Dude, I even got a sweater (both my mother and my brother are jealous of it.)

The Christmas Bazar was today. The choir preformed, but it was a bit of a throw away performance. The importance of a performance is directly correlated with how stressed tech crew is. Today they were downright relaxed.

And now is just another night where I chill and watch Rent (for the 5th time).

I'm pretty content with this.
Love,
-J-

What a lovely day.

Today was pretty much centered around food and entertainment. It was awesome.

It began with waiting line at school for Pancake Breakfast, possibly one of my favourite days of the year. The basic idea is that teachers slave over griddles for two or so hours so that we can eat pancakes and sausages that taste really good, probably because we waited in a line for half an hour to get them. But it is still just a really good experience, no matter how overrated it seems. I mean, a lot of people who have graduated still come back for this one day.

Then came the teacher assembly, where teachers make fools of themselves with their talents for our amusement and the holiday spirit. I was with a group of IB kids in the balcony and we clapped every time a tech crew member walked by on their way to the sound booth. The assembly ended with the stage packed with teachers and students dancing to the "Party Rock Anthem."

After that a group of 13 of us headed to Sahara, a Lebanese restaurant with a decent student special. Ema and I discussed afterwards that we should bring the IB room kids on 'field trips' more often, because they don't get out much. I had a pretty good time surrounded by my classmates while eating a pretty decent chicken wrap.

The afternoon of Pancake Breakfast day, there is always a basketball game, which I am yet to go to in my three years of high school. Classes were practically useless to go to because rarely people show up, so I went to the Library with Sam and Ema then we wandered though various dress stores in anticipation of Cabaret later this month.


I took my bus home afterschool and had a somewhat small taco party with Sam and Moriah, where we watched Chicago and Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog.


I had a good day but I am so tired.
Love,
-J-